I applied for visas (NZ passport) for my partner and myself 2 weeks before leaving for Vietnam from Sri Lanka (we have been travelling all year). It took several attempts, and hours, to even get the payment accepted trying various debit and credit cards.

You have to check the application yourself every day to see the progress. On the 5th day (business days) it said I needed to amend the residential address in Vietnam (I never usually book accommodation more that a couple of days in advance), I had only given the hotel name, so I added full street address. After reviewing before resubmitting I noticed that the date of entry field had jumped forward a day in 2 locations of the form (something that occurred every time after as well!) which would’ve meant less processing time for us, very frustrating! I picked up on this and fixed it each time.

I had to ‘amend’ 3 more times before it was finally granted 4 hours before my flight. I made zero changes in the application in the last 2 submissions but got accepted, how does that make sense?! They had also given me a completely random 13 day entry window which didn’t even match my requested date of exit…

My partner was not so lucky, her visa was granted 2 days after we were meant to have arrived. Luckily our original flight into Vietnam was a connecting flight via Bangkok which we went to for 3 days and had a great time. But after this disaster we decided if they make it that hard to enter then it’s not worth going to at a much greater expense. Ended up coming to Philippines instead and had my phone snatched out of my hand after 2 days in Manila. FML