Passport Renewal, Kompleks KDN Jalan Duta (2018 Edition)

Gave it a go last week when it was still the mid year school holidays (against my better judgment). Was given a choice to either wait out the madness that day or come back the next week when it's no longer school holidays. Seems fair enough, so I left. 

I had heard that afternoons were relatively peaceful, so I decided to give that a go for this renewal. I also remembered that they were also closed for lunch, so I didn't rush. I had an early lunch and got there at about 1.50 p.m. and found sweet parking on the grounds. 

Yup, people waiting in line for the afternoon session.
Dunno how long the first people in line were waiting for.

The lights finally came on a little after 2 p.m. and they were calling out for people with young kids, senior citizens, OKU, etc, before letting the rest of us in. Thankfully, there weren't too many of those. 

I suppose the good thing about this time was that since the last renewal, passport renewal now costs RM200. Because it was after lunch, most of the counters were up and running so numbers were going quickly and it wasn't that long before it was my turn.

Will I finally experience the miracle of the one hour passport? (It hasn't happened for me in the last 10 years). I was about to find out.

Finally it was my turn, gave the lady old passport and IC, did the biometrics (always a pain), took the picture (she was nice enough to let me go a couple more times), signed off on it, was told to wait for my queue number to be called to pay. Just wear something dark; even if your head is covered. Had to hold back a snigger when I saw a young lady wear the provided black tudung over her own light coloured one for her picture. 

There was only ONE payment counter open, and she was doing batches of 2, 3 people at a time. I was told that the payment cut off was 4 p.m.? Any later, you can't get your passport on the day itself. Apparently the one hour starts from the time you paid, not so much when you walk in. So I took in an iced Neslo at the cafeteria/Kayu Nasi Kandar outlet downstairs (there's also a Gloria Jean's Coffee, but that expensive AF) and was back after half an hour. I knew things were heating up when I saw the ladies return with a fresh batch of passports. With the receipt and IC, I got a shiny new passport as well as my cancelled previous one after about 10 minutes? 

All in all, it took about 2 hours from start to finish. Waiting for the actual passport was probably less than an hour. The final picture was erm, fine, I suppose. But it was still black and white/monochrome so if something happens to you, you could use it as a funeral pic.

Oklah, can say I got a new passport in one hour... more or less.