Intercontinental Duty-Free turned me down too:
[QUOTE=Brandon88]That's odd. Are you Asian? Perhaps they only allow caucasians to slip by? (assuming you aren't)
Maybe because they know me for several years. The guy working there always asks me to bring him a carton of smokes that can only be had for $60 USD. No way Jose![/QUOTE]
I am a caucasian, and I visited the Duty-Free place in the B1-level of the Intercontinental this week (Sept. 11'th).
There was a woman by herself behind the counter and not another person in the entire shop. I picked out 2 bottles of red from Argentina and was pleasantly surprised when the price was just US$7 each . . . that would be roughly 65k rupiah per bottle. But then the woman asked me for my "diplomatic credentials". I misunderstood at first, and handed over my passport. She handed it right back and told me "No, only diplomats can shop here".
I tried a few things - "Look, I'm a tourist, and tourists can buy duty-free" . . . "It's only 2 bottles" . . . "How about if I pay the duty on these duty-free bottles" . . . "What can I do to make it possible for you to sell this wine to me?". Everything was no sale; she was very firm, even though there were zero other people in the store.
It turns out that there is another wine-shop directly across the hall-way from the Diplomats-Only place. That one (called Bacchus) WILL sell to anyone, but the very cheapest bottle in the entire store is roughly 200k rupiah, and most are considerably more expensive than that.
I asked the staff in Bacchus why I couldn't buy from duty-free, and they said "Oh, sure you can. It is only Indonesian's who cannot shop there". So I went straight back to Diplomats-Only wine-shop, and got turned down again.
Net/net, there must be either some luck involved on a hit-or-miss basis, or some trick to getting served in the Diplomats Only shop. That is a pity, because the prices are much, much lower than at nearby Bacchus.