Tourist Visas for Vietnam and Cambodia ?

whiz

Hi Guys, I want to apply for Tourist Visas for Vietnam and Cambodia before I go to South East Asia, whats the cheapest and best process to apply for these Tourist Visas for both these countries ?
I will only be staying 1 week in each country.

Note I emailed the Vietnamese embassy in London and they quoted me £60 sterling for a visa...a bit surprising as I see on a website called www.vietnamvisa.ie its only $65 dollars
http://www.vietnamvisa.ie/

Note any responses would be much appreciated .

conor_ie

Hiya,

I'm heading that way next month, Cambodia has visa on arrival at both it's airports and land crossings, just make sure you have some extra passport pictures handy for your visa.. Also be prepared to hand over a $20 "Processing Fee" :rolleyes:

As regards Vietnam, You DO need to have your visa organised before you travel, I plan to get mine while I'm in Cambodia... My hostel offers the service for about the same money as you mentioned in your post.

If you have any other questions dm me and I'll do my best to help

Uncle_moe

I used myvietnamevisa.ie and had no hassle at all.
AS for Cambodia, I think the visa is only available on arrival, either by air or land. Think it was $20 or something alright but I didn't need any passport pictures despite everyone saying I'd need them. That was about 3 years ago.

solerina

I got my VN visa from the website as it was far cheaper at the time than getting it through the VN embassy in London. I use myvietnamvisa.com as far as I remember. It was fast and easy. You paid the fee to them and needed dollars when you arrived in VN, you had to pay there too, but still cheaper than via London embassy (you had to arrive by air-into HCMC, Hanoi or Danang if using this type of visa). You could get a Cambodian visa easily at the border from VN.

retalivity

another person who used myvietnamvisa to get a visa on arrival, and it was fine, if you plan on crossing into vietnam by land then you have to get one from an embassy beforehand.

The scamming going on at the land border between vietnam and cambodia (Bivet?)is unreal.
The visa is now $30 (as of jan 2015) The guys on the bus were trying to charge us $35 for the visa and confiscating the passports, no chance of that happening. The cambodians on the border will also try and charge people an extra $5 to 'speed up' the process, we refused to pay it, only took an extra 10 minutes than those who did pay it. However, our bus took off without us, leaving about 10 of us and the guy who was doing the visas for everyone else on the bus. He then told us we could catch up with the bus if we got a lift on motorbikes (for a fee of course) that were conveniently waiting outside the border. Had a french woman with us who was raging and grabbed all the passports from the guy and would not give them back to him til he got us on the bus. Ended up walking about 1.5k past the border and casinos where the bus had pulled over. I know it only a few dollars here and there to smooth the process but i hate giving scammers the satisfaction of conning you out of money that you do not need to spend.

Also stopped at some shop halfway between there and phnom penh where everything was about 5 times the price as normal. The bus also took off when some guy was in the toilet, again there was a motorbike conveniently nearby who gave him a lift back to the bus, for a fee.

Always felt the vietnamese were worse for scamming than the cambodians, never encountered much hassle after we got to phnom penh, and the bus company we were on orchestrating all these shenanigans were all viet.

whiz

here guys thanks for your replies.....should i bring plenty of american dollars ? instead of local currencies when travelling in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia

retalivity

You will definitely need dollars in Cambodia, its the de-facto currency there - they only use Cambodian riels for change less than a dollar.

It helps in the other countries, epecially around visas/borders.

solerina

whiz wrote: »

here guys thanks for your replies.....should i bring plenty of american dollars ? instead of local currencies when travelling in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia

We brought dollars so that we would have currency no matter what, but we actually took dong out the minute we got to VN and never used dollars there at all. It's certainly security to have dollars available though !!!

Uncle_moe

just make sure to exchange riels and dong before leaving those countries as it can be tricky to exchange them once you've left. I think its illegal to bring VN dong outside the country but i had loads going to cambodia and got rid of them there. Great thing is they have to pay you the market rate for currency there unlike ireland where banks can make up their own exchange rate.