Visa on arrival in Vietnam

2:30PM: Our plan landed in Vietnam. It took us 30 minutes just to get to the airport building.

3PM: We arrived in Vietnam, the first room in the airport you walk into is clearly immigration. We quickly scouted around and found a line for Landing VISA. We get into the line and start asking others in the line where they got the forms from to complete. We managed to get our hands on a form just lying around and start completing the form.

By the time we got to the front of the line I literally only needed to complete the expiration date of my passport and they wanted to send me to the back of the line. I managed to just complete the form and stick it down for them to take it.

With little to no english ability the guy behind asked "how many?" Isabel responded two but he clearly didn't understand so I just showed ✌🏻and he took our passports and photos and said, "take seat over there". The over there that he was referring to was 10 lines of airport benches full of people who clearly have been waiting there for some time.

3:22PM: I guess this will take a while.

Isabel is stressed as per normal when it comes to immigration. I am sure she has done something wrong that I am not aware of in her life before me and she is scared her history is going to catch up with her at some border post. This time she might actually be worried for a good reason as some how her first application for the visa online somehow come out with my date of birth for both our date of births. She did correct it by applying for a new visa but her name still appears on my visa with the wrong date of birth and she is worried that they don't see her name is on two different visa applications.

3:29PM: Needless to say I am the only one sitting in the seating area, Isabel is pacing around.
On that note, we had two seats next to each other and then Isabel got up without putting her bag on the seat and within seconds some asian sat down. They just see and open space and no matter how small they will squeeze into it. Seriously at the KL airport 6 people literally jumped the line in front of me on 6 separate occasions because I was not touching the person in front of me. They take invasion of personal space to the next level!

3:40 PM We are still waiting for better days, and two unsuspected British tourists asks us if we are waiting here to take photos. Lucky for us we had photo before we got here (thanks to Isabel's good research), I they are probably going to be here much longer than us.

Every couple of minutes they announce who's passport is ready, the announcement is almost impossible to hear or understand, its basically sounds like this: "gggg whi phillahubdkgajbfk".

4:05PM: By this time it was comfortable on the seats waiting, i mean I even had a earphone in one ear watching some videos to kill time. The next moment they did an announcement that again I could not hear or understand, luckily Isabel heard it was my name.
We went to the front, got our passports with visas in and we had to pay USD50, I only had USD60 and I got 200,000vd change. While i was paying some other asians name got called and he felt that he had to pay immediately so I just saw and arms reach over my shoulder with USD25, and the joke of it all the lady behind the counter helped him before she gave me my change. The rules of standing in line and wait your turn do not apply in Vietnam.

4:16PM: Now the fun starts as we have to join yet another line to go through passport control. Its almost easier to get into the US than to get into Vietnam.

4:29PM: We get to the front of the line and they call us, we walk forward and they send me away as we are only allowed one by one at the passport desk, not in families just one by one. Good luck to those who come to Vietnam with Kids.

4:31PM: Finally we are through, I guess its not too bad we have only been here 2 hours.

{Roedolf}Read more