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

Bring an extra $100 usd or value equal to that in cash I went to Vietnam in 2018/19 and still needed to pay them that there even after getting a visa when I landed

There is a service that got me a visa for 300 bucks in 24 hours on a weekend.

Visa on arrival. There are a bunch of different services online that can turn this around really quickly.

Contact Vietnamese embassy and arrange to pay for the visa in cash when you land in Vietnam. This is what I did when I made the same mistake.

I applied on the website https://evietnamvisa.vn/. You can pay more to expedite the process, see the prices here

Enjoy your trip!

Buddy, have you heard of the word “a”? Sure doesn’t look like it from your post haha.

Hope you get it sorted out and it works out without too much pain

you stay in tokyo until you get a visa or you go elsewhere.

If it makes you feel any better you are by no means the first, and will not be the last person to have done this.

a lot of places let u apply at the border… even if they said u e need to apply b4 hand. even china was like this (15 years ago to be fair). I fucked around getting my visa then discovered I could have gotten at the border. Iran was like this too.

I did same in 2010…got one online overnight. Not really a big deal?

don’t they have an eVisa system? apply online and hope for a swift response

I did something similar a couple of months ago. I just waited in Thailand for my visa application to be processed. It took 5 days! I think the average is 3 but just be aware it can take even longer.

First-world people are sooo funny sometimes!

Don’t listen to some negative people here - also a Canadian who made the same mistake 4 weeks ago. Vietnam and Cambodia are 2/35 countries I’ve visited requiring this goofy pre-registration, and Vietnam just changed it from VoA recently. It’s baffling.

Unfortunately we had to get a hotel in Brisbane and stay an extra 5 nights until we got approved. Sorry about your experience