Types of visa to Vietnam

Tourist visa: (short staying time) It’s what you need to enter Vietnam! Available one-month single-entry visa (stay in Vietnam maximum one month). Tourist visa may be extended one time for 30 days after your arrival in Vietnam. If you plan to spend more than one month in Vietnam, or if you plan to exit Vietnam and re-enter from Cambodia, Laos or China, you will need a one-month or three-month multiple-entry visa with the approval from local agents.

Business Visas: Business visa is usually valid for three or six months, allow single entry or multiple entries and the right to work. Getting a business visa has now become cheap and easy, although prices are about double those of a tourist visa. It is generally easier to apply for a business visa once in Vietnam, after having arrived on a tourist visa.

Student visas: A student visa is usually arranged after your arrival. It’s acceptable to enter Vietnam on a tourist visa, enrol in a Vietnamese language course and then apply at the immigration police for a change in status. In reality, the easiest way to do it is to contact a travel company and have them help you make the application.

Visa Extensions: If you’ve got the dollars, they’ve got the rubber stamp. Tourist-visa extensions cost as little US$10, but it is easier to pay more and sort this out through a travel agency. Getting the stamp yourself can be a bureaucratic nightmare. The procedure takes two or three days and you can only extend one time for 30 days. In theory you should be able to extend your visa in any provincial capital. In practice it goes smoothest in major cities, such as HCMC, Hanoi, Danang and Hue, which cater to mass tourism.

Re-Entry Visas: It’s possible to enter Cambodia, Laos or any other country from Vietnam and then re- enter without having to apply for another visa. However, you must apply for a re-entry visa before you leave Vietnam. If you do not have a re-entry visa, you will have to go through the whole Vietnamese visa nonsense again. Re-entry visas are easiest to arrange in Hanoi or HCMC, but you will almost certainly have to ask a travel agent to do the paperwork for you. Travel agents charge about US$25 for this service and can complete the procedure in a day or two.

Vietnam visa information

Only citizens of certain countries can visit Vietnam without an Entry Visa (valid for visit within 30 days), specifically as follows:

– Not more than 30 days: for citizens of Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Laos.
– Not more than 15 days: for citizens of Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland.
– French citizens holding valid diplomatic passports are exempt from visa requirements when visiting Vietnam and are allowed to stay for up 3 months at one time or on several visits within six months since their first immigration dates.
– Citizens of Chile holding valid diplomatic or official passports are exempt from needing entry, exit and transit visas in Vietnam’s territory and are allowed to stay for up 60 days on each visit.

Citizens from all other countries are required to get an Entry Visa before departure or a pre-approved Entry Visa (issued on arrival at Vietnams International Airports) supplied before arrival in Vietnam.

The whole Visa-to-Vietnam Application Process should be recommended to you as follows;

It is common that you obtain your Entry Visa by having a valid passport stamped prior to your departure by applying to the Vietnam Embassy and/or Consulate (in case there is a Consulate instead of Embassy) in your country. However, if your particular city does not have a Vietnamese Embassy, and you wish to avoid procedural delays (anywhere from 4 to 10 days) which sometimes happen with visa approvals at embassies outside Vietnam, myvietnam-visa.com can make this requirement a fairly easy exercise. We provide a specialized form which you may copy and paste into a word document, fill out the required information and return to us by fax or email. We will then arrange to obtain the visa approval code service for you. Yet, you still subsequently have to get the official Vietnamese Stamp of with your passport to the Embassy or Consulate to get the Visa Stamp on your passport on the same day. You are now ready to go to Vietnam!

In case there is no Vietnam embassy or Consulate in your country, or you would like to make Vietnam part of a multi-destination trip, we recommend Visa upon Arrival as your best option.

What is a ‘Visa upon Arrival?’: this is probably the easiest way to obtain your visa without having to chase down embassies, consulates and the like prior to your trip. It is a valid alternative when applying for a tourist visa. The Entry Visa will be stamped on your passport as you pass through our Immigration Checkpoint. Though valid for thirty days, it can be extended once you enter Viet Nam. With this type of visa, you only can enter the country by air.

How to get a Visa upon Arrival: The service also facilitates customers at most in this case. We obtain what is called an Approval Letter for you from the Viet Nam Immigration Department. Then we will send you a copy by fax or email. Copies of the same document will be forwarded on your behalf to Vietnam Immigration Checkpoints at International Airports only. Thus when you arrive in Viet Nam, the Immigration officers will have those documents on hand and will be able to issue your Entry Visa expediently.