I can only assume, instructorinasia, that you don't hold a US passport and so don't know from multiple personal experiences what actually transpires in the vast majority of instances. I have no doubt that in the case of that particular visitor of yours and that particular immigration agent the visitor dealt with a fuss was made, but it is certainly not true as a general rule that immigration officials will not use a passport page that says 'endorsements'. Immigration officials can grasp at any small detail they choose in order to detain a visitor for additional information or a longer interview, even when the real problem is something else entirely.
I personally have a number of filled-up passports because I travel in and out of all of the countries in the region so very frequently, and there are visa stamps on every one of my passports on endorsements pages. In my current passport, there are, in fact, a pair of Indonesia entry/exit stamps on one of my three original endorsement pages, and I still have about 15 totally blank pages left in the passport. On another endorsements page, there's a Thailand extension of stay stamp. In other words sometimes a busy immigration official places a stamp on one of those pages even when there are other blank pages and/or spaces left in the passport. Because this happens so frequently, the ACS offices have a special 'endorsements' sticker they paste onto the first 'visas' page (page B) of the extra-page inserts--there's often no place left on the official 'endorsements' page to list that endorsement. And even that sticker gets stamps put on it! I'm looking at one of my page B 'endorsements' sticker pages right now, and it has four stamps on it. Another page (page A), with printing all over it reading, 'This supplement forms a part of the passport. Ce supplement fait partie integrante du passeport. Este suplemento forma parte integral del presente passaporte,' has two stamps; a different page A from a second extra-pages insert with the same text on it has three stamps, etc.
Furthermore, every page (pages A-X)of an extra-pages insert has the word 'visas' at the top of the page. My point is that the page does not have to be a page with no headers, as the travel agent told Adam, as stated here:
Hello, I'm going to Indonesia in a few weeks and resurrected this thread due to something my travel agent told me. As quoted my passport should have have "at least 2 pages, side by side, in your passport that are blank that do not have the header of Visa at the top ofthe page. If you don't have sufficient pages you'll need to obtain additional pages."
Is this overkill? I have plenty of blank pages with the Visa header but one of the non-Visa header pages was stamped on a recent trip to Mexico and a typed statement saying that the passport was a replace for a damaged passport done by Uncle Sam's state department. You actually only get three of these pages with a new passport.
Furthermore, if I'm reading this post correctly, it's clear that the Mexico authorities have stamped a non-visa (i.e., "endorsements") page, which is very much parallel to my experience (BTW, the 'endorsements' header isn't really a header, but is printed along the bound edge of the page.)
Having clarified all that on the basis of extensive experience, including multiple annual trips in and out of Indonesia, I would say that:
1) Adam, the member whose post I have quoted, has nothing to worry about in regard to needing additional blank visa pages for a trip to Indonesia, given that he has sufficient blank pages with the word 'visa' at the top.
2) The travel agent who gave him this information is either woefully misinformed or has issued a blanket statement for all travelers to all countries based on the regulations of some country that actually does have these requirements.
