It just boggles the mind how poorly implemented this stupid form is. Let me start:
1. There's one field "Name." What about fields for first, last, middle? Any particular order you'd like to have here?
2. Can't just enter DOB and passport expiry. That'd be too easy. Have to click on a calendar, flip back to your birth year, then pick month and date from a calendar. I guess the upside is, you find out what day of the week you were born.
3. Form wants a cell phone number. Have a passport from country A but want to use a cell phone from country B? Error message! Now, I'm guessing, I can't be the only one who uses a local phone number in my travels. But go ahead, call me at home and leave a message.
4. The form needs to be filled out within three days of arrival. How convenient! I suspect it may be looking at the local time at the location you're submitting the form from, because I was unable to submit at what would have been 3am Malaysia time.
5. Need to dig up the address, state, and post code of your hotel. Always nice to learn some of the local geography!
6. There's of course no option to "add another traveler," so if you have a larger party, you have to enter everything again from scratch.
7. The form collects a good bit of information they have anyway from swiping the passport, but some potentially pertinent stuff these forms often ask -- what airport will you be arriving at, what's the flight number, where are you headed next -- is omitted.
8. Submitting the form seems to work. An automated email summarizing the submitted information arrives within seconds. This email does not advise any further action required, but at the bottom contains a PIN followed by the cryptic "**Use PIN to check registration information and visit pass information." There's no link provided, but when navigating back to the registration page, there are tabs "check registration," "check visit pass," "check egate eligibility." When using the former, a summary of the submitted information pops up, which includes this language: "NOTE : Click PDF icon to download Malaysia Digital Arrival Card." It is not clear whether this is a requirement or an option.
I find myself reminded of the chapter on retirement in Parkinson's Law, which stipulates that a combination of air travel and the filling-in of forms leads to complete exhaustion; "the high official who is given enough of each will very soon begin to talk of retirement." It's really a wonderful read, which I'll remember to download for the anticipated lengthy wait at KLIA arrival.