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

Pay a private agency for urgent visa

These are moments where very i value my German passport A LOT, it’s quite helpful

I’m sorry I don’t travel much, but could someone please explain me about this issue? If I have a visa-exempt passport, I’d still need a visa when going to Vietnam from Japan?

Welcome to the club. And sorry that you are having to deal with this, and will probably lose quite a bit of money in this regard.

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Rant: Indian passport and I ran into the same problem a month back. Things were different when I travelled to Vietnam previously just before the pandemic. You could just land and have a visa on arrival within a 15-20 minute process. Submit your passport, flight tickets and fee and boom, get a visa on spot. Now you have to apply online for e-visa before arrival, pay a significantly higher fee while dealing with several attempts to upsell you to an useless urgent service, airport fast-track and airport taxi, and then wait for 5-10 days to get the eVisa. I ended up losing close to 500 EUR thanks to this whole drama as I had to reschedule all my flights, hotels etc. Honestly, the whole experience of being offered so many paid add-on extra services and misleading urgent top-ups on the official government visa website left a very bad after-taste.

It’s been 5 years, but you can get one in Vietnamese airports. I did, and I’m CAN, too.

Fly into Phu Quoc? It’s a VOA, at least for US passports

Then continue onward

I fucked up my visa for Vietnam. Only realized after I landed at Da Nang. Paid around $150 for an “emergency visa fix”. Let’s call it what it is, a bribe. Lesson learned. Your problem though is that with no visa at all the airline probably won’t let you board

Some good advice in here OP but the amount of people in here saying they made the same mistake is crazy… you guys call yourselves digital nomads and cant think to check visa requirements???

Anyway yeah good luck going home OP… this is probably the best decision considering the thought process behind this mistake. Asia (or traveling in general) may not be for you.

FYI Vietnam is a COMMUNIST country. Not much to do with visa requirements but you’d think knowing this you would at least bother to check the visa reqs…

Pretty sure you can get Visa on Arrival once you get to ‘nam. If you have a couple days apply for the e-visa.

Look on the Facebook visa advice pages for Vietnam. There’s several agents that can fast track it with immigration for issues like these. Beats waiting another 3 days if you don’t have that option.

You can pay to get it fast tracked, but it’s a bunch of cash…

I funny enough fucked my visa in Tokyo for returning to Hanoi ( small typo cause I rushed it) and I had to pay 120 euro to get it fast tracked in 24 hours. I could have just waited for my regular visa and stayed in Tokyo for similar money, kinda regret not doing that 🥲

You can get an e visa in 2 hours.

BTW this is an airline issue - the Vietnamese govt. Website says Canadian citizens can have a visa on arrival. The airlines haven’t caught up yet and it’s costing people 100s of dollars.

One time I was leaving the hostel in Guangdong, China to go to India. As I was leaving, one of the guys I met there asks me “what kind of visa did you get?” 😳😲 I would have loved to see my picachu face.

I ran back in, extended one night, called the airline to reschedule (paid a penalty) and went online to get my visa. Paid for the urgent one.

The blunder costed me about $300 in total, had an extra night in Guangdong and one less day in Kolkata.

It happens :)

Last time I did my eVisa for Vietnam I’m pretty sure it was less than 48 hours until approval, maybe even 24.

Tokyo isn’t far.

Apply for the visa, chill in Tokyo, buy a new flight, swallow the fact that you’ll lose out on a few hundred bucks - it happens.