Visas for Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam

honru

Looking for advice on visas for these countries. A group of us are flying in to Thailand, spending a week or less there, then travelling Cambodia-Vietnam-Laos or Laos-Vietnam-Cambodia and then back to Thailand for about three weeks. As travel authorities will only give a 15 day visa to Thailand when entering via a land border, is the best thing to do is to apply for a double-entry visa from the Irish consulate, thereby allowing us to stay over 15 days?. And what about applying for visas in the other three countries? What is the best action to take there?

Gatica

How long are you planning on spending in the 3 countries? If you're staying anywhere long enough to sort out your visa then you can usually do that in each country as you go before the next. e.g. get Cambodian/Laos visa in Thailand, etc...

If you're spending under a month in each, then you'll probably know approximately your dates of entry, in which case it should be easy enough to prearrange your visas.
Cambodia does 30 day e-visas valid for 3 months from the date of issue (by land only valid at Bavet as far as I know); Laos is simple, visa on arrival, just have your crisp dollars ready; Vietnam does 29 day visa on entry from a specified date, plus a stamping fee when you have a visa-approval letter. We used http://www.starvietnamvisa.com/ to get our pre-approval letter.

If you're applying to Thai visa, you cannot apply more than 90 days before your planned date of entry, you get a 60 day visa. Don't know anything about the multi-entry. Check out their embassy website.

Stinicker

Why not fly into Thailand (thus getting 30days) from one of the three countries you mentioned, look up Air Asia and it will probably be cheaper than the combined cost of the overland transport costs and Visa fee.

Challo

Unless you're under specific time constraints, makes more sense to stay in Thailand for max 30 days when you fly in, then travel to others and back into Thailand via land after Cambodia, so you'll have another 15 days again. Anyway, it's pretty easy to get extensions on visas for Thailand, if you're up North for example, lots of agencies over a day trip to Burma so you can walk over the border and back into Thailand again. Well that was in 2010.

Laos & Cambodia are both 30 days and given on arrival. Vietnam has to be organized in advance, can do via London embassy (or Trailfinders here will do for a fee) or can also get organized while you're in Laos/Thailand via agencies. Loads of them as most people are on the same kinda trip.

solerina

i got my vietnam visa from www.myvietnamvisa.com its really not a visa more of a pre approval letter, however its only valid if you fly into the country (to HCMC, Hanoi, Denang)...otherwise you will need to get an actual visa at the embassy in London (or in one of the countrys you visit in SE Asia before Vietnam

honru

Thanks for the responses. Unfortunately our itinerary is such that we fly in to Bangkok, spend no more than a week in Thailand, travel to the other three countries and then return to Thailand for the latter half of the trip. I did consider the idea of a day trip or something along those lines to Burma, however it seems unlikely we would be able to fit it in to our schedule. Applying for a double entry Thailand visa (70 euro) seems to be the way to go, though it could be the case that we need only one prebooked tourist visa (35 euro) just for the second entry, as you receive 30 days for free on arrival (one criteria however is that your departing flight is not in excess of 29 days, so perhaps we do need the double entry visa).

Fred Swanson

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bluemagpie

You can get the Vietnamese visa in Bangkok, easy to go to the embassy yourself, can use the bts skytrain, from there less than a 5 min walk to the embassy, fill in your forms with a passport photo, pay your money, hand over the passport and collect it the next day, or cheaper again the day after.

There are loads of visa run options in Thailand to pick up another 15 days, or as another poster said fly back into Thailand, especially if stuck for time, boarder crossings into Thailand can take a long time, especially from Cambodia, about 4 hours of queuing when I was there.

Have a great time!

Gatica

honru wrote: »

(one criteria however is that your departing flight is not in excess of 29 days, so perhaps we do need the double entry visa).

If you're leaving to Cambodia within a few days then you're leaving the country within the required period. As someone mentioned you can get visa extensions, so on your second entry just get an extension on your 15 days.