Mistakes are unavoidable for any first-time travelers when ones fly to another country. The mistake is even more dangerous if ones failed to get a visa that may even lead to postponement of an important business trip. However, if the mistakes are foreseen, your trip would be much more guaranteed to go on smoothly. In this article, we’ll look at 5 most common mistakes when applying for Vietnam visa on arrival.

Many people think that they can get a visa directly at Vietnam airport without applying online beforehand. That is NOT true, you may end up with delaying/cancelling your flight or waiting at the airport until an approval letter is issued. Therefore, you are required to contact a travel agent to ask for an approval letter before picking up your real visa at Vietnam airport.

Simple mistakes ones may make when filling in application form such as wrong spelling of the full name, bad hand writing, incorrect passport number and date of birth seem to be nothing to be worried about, but indeed they are. In some cases, your applications are possibly rejected by the airlines only because of those minor mistakes so just be very careful to write nicely when filling in the form.

Although it is available on most of the information channels, not every passenger knows that visa on arrival is applicable for air travel only. This means if you intend to enter Vietnam by border crossing or sea entry without a Vietnam visa beforehand, your trip would be immediately stopped at the border. Therefore, if you prefer to enter Vietnam by other means of transport rather than by air, you need to contact to Vietnam Embassy/Consulate for more details.

Passengers are often confused about the validity of the visa whether it starts from the day they provide in the application or the day they arrive at the country. The correct answer is the arrival date one writes down in their application form. Therefore, setting up a clear timeline or schedule for your trip is highly recommended.

In contrast to a lot of optimistic visitors’ thinking that it is easy and very fast to extend ones’ Vietnam visa as long as you are in Vietnam, the procedure may be a bit complicated and requires a lot of time and efforts. Thus, our advice for you based on the experience as a travel agent is to apply for a 3 month visa in advance instead of 1 month visa if your trip has any possibility to be lengthened in order to save a fair amount of extra money.