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Visa information for entering Vietnam
Always double check with these sources:
The Vietnamese Embassy in the USA
The Vietnamese Embassy in the UK
The Vietnamese Embassy in Bangkok
Sourced from WikiTravel
Most visitors to Vietnam,
except citizens of Nordic (except Iceland) or ASEAN
countries (except Cambodia, East Timor and Myanmar),
Russia, South Korea and Japan, require a visa in
advance. A single-entry tourist visa valid for 30 days
costs US$25 (although exact fees vary depending on
issuing country) and takes around 4-7 days to process;
express visas take 2-3 days at twice the price. Visas
are now generally valid for all entry and exit points.
Some Vietnamese Embassies
offer a "While you wait service" (May 2008), where a
single entry visa can be gained in 15 minutes. This
service costs US$92, but is approved instantly. You are
required to bring a valid passport, passport photo and
cash payment (cards not accepted).
A fairly convoluted visa on
arrival process has recently been introduced, but this
requires a prior application to Hanoi and is generally
intended mostly for groups and citizens of countries
without Vietnamese embassies. The visa-on-arrival is now
available at the Arrival Hall (in front of the
Immigration Check-in Section) of the Tan Son Nhat
International Airport.
Vietnam has moved away from
the old A4 carbon copy arrival forms. Recently, they
have started to use arrival/departure cards which are
very similar to those found in Cambodia, Indonesia,
Malaysia, and Singapore. Keep the departure portion of
this just as safe as your passport, as you will have to
produce it when leaving the country to avoid a fine.
Depending on the present
level of SARS, avian flu you may be subjected to a
so-called health-check. There is no examination, though,
but yet another form to fill in and, of course, another
fee. If you can get hold of a handful of dong it is only
2000 dong per person, but they charge US$2 for the same
"service" if you only have greenbacks!
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