Visa For Vietnam
Most visitors to Vietnam require a visa to enter the country.
Tourists from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland traveling to Vietnam and staying for 15 days or less don’t have to apply for entry visas, provided that their passports are valid for at least three months and that they can show their return ticket. Those who wish to stay longer than 15 days will need to apply for a visa.
Thai, Indonesian, Lao, Malaysian and Singaporean do not need a visa for a visit up to 30 days.
Philippines passport holders do not need a visa for a visit up to 21 days.
Japanese and South Korean passport holders do not need a visa for a visit up to 15 days.
A single entry tourist visa means that if you exit Vietnam you will require a new tourist visa to enter Vietnam again.
All travelers must have a passport valid to 6 months after their planned exit from Vietnam. The above information may change without prior notice. It is your responsibility to check whether or not you are subject to a tourist visa for Vietnam. You may ask the Vietnamese embassy of your country.
Tourist visa validity
A one-month tourist visa is usually sufficient for most visitors though it is possible to arrange 3-month and 6-month multiple entry visas.
If you arrive to Vietnam by land, it is NOT possible to get a visa on arrival. You must obtain the visa beforehand
Collect your visa before arrival from your closest Vietnamese embassy or consulate. Or
collect your visa on arrival at Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City or Danang International Airports.
We strongly recommend you obtain your visa before arrival to avoid long delays and possible complications at the airport.
Visa upon arrival
Visitors must obtain visa approval prior to entry. The procedure with a service provider can be summarized as follow:
(1) Passport details and arrival, departure dates are to be sent to a service provider no later than 14 day prior to your departure. (You can send by email, fax or snail mail; the service provider needs: full name as stated in passport, gender, date of birth, passport number, expiry date, nationality, arrival & departure date, place to receive your visa – please advise which Vietnamese Embassy or Consulate where your want to get your visa stamped)
(2) The service provider then goes ahead and submits these details to the Vietnamese Immigration Department.
(3) The Immigration Department will confirm the service provider of the visa approval and send it by fax/telex approval to the Vietnamese Embassy or Consulate in the country of visitors’ residence
(4) The service provider will send you the approval document via email.
(5) You bring your passports & 2 passport sized photos to the Vietnamese embassy or consulate to get the visa stamped (stamp fee will be paid by yourselves).
Visitors can obtain a visa upon arrival in Vietnam. However, we recommend this option only in cases of emergency as it much more expensive than a regular visa and as it is not always free of complications at the arrival airport.
Probably the best place to obtain a visa for Vietnam is Vietnam’s embassy in Bangkok.
A Vietnamese visa always specifies where you will be arriving and where you will be leaving, in addition to how long you can stay. Stick to that to avoid unnecessary trouble. We also recommend you to leave the orginal passport and ID’s together with the immigration exit card (which you get at the international airport upon arrival and which you will have to present to the immigration when departing) in the hotel safety box and go around with photocopies of the passport.
Bargaining
It is quite common to bargain in Asia. To keep one’s face which is important in this part of the world, it should be good-natured and one should never lose temper or start arguing. Once the price is agreed upon, which can be between 10 – 50 %!l(MISSING)ower than the initial offer, the deal is done and one should not get frustrated when learning that someone else got the same at a lower price.
Beggar Fatigue
Like in any other developing country (and often in developed countries, too) you may come across beggars for whom begging is a way of survival and sometimes a business for themselves or for those standing behind them. If you don’t want to give anything just walk away from them if you can or tell them firmly (while staying friendly) you have nothing to give. If you are prepared to give them something, don’t give money, as it will encourage more people to become beggars instead of trying to find work, but buy them a meal or food instead.
Bloggers, Trip Advisors, Story Tellers
The big travel guides like Lonely Planet or Travel Fish send their “inspectors” from outside once or twice a year at best to Nha Trang to update their information and travel advice. In this very fast changing part of the world some of the information gathered may already be obsolete when it’s published. They are also publishing comments and tips from travelers on their websites.
Trip Advisor is another very popular international travel guide worth reading – fed with information, opinions and stories by numerous travelers. Unfortunately, information about hotels, restaurants and bars may not always be reliable as no few owners and their many “highly enthusiastic guests” seem to post numerous fake reviews lauding their place as the most wonderful one and telling readers just how awful their competitors are.
virtualtourist is another travel website which is popular with budget travelers. It belongs to the same owners as Trip Advisor. Its members are mostly backpackers who tell their travel stories, upload a trove of photos worth watching and give unlimited travel tips. Although based on a rather narrow individual experience there is a tendency amongst the members to generalize things and put them out of proportion. Cachaseiro recommends, for example, “NEVER to go around by motorbike taxi as they are well known for robbing tourists, especially at night. The bicycle rickshaws on the other hand, have a reputation for being very honest.” Williebobs praises the absolutely perfect “New travel agency in Nha Trang, offering great range of boat trips, city tours, transport tickets (bus and train and plane). Just pop along and speak to the very friendly staff (ask for Vy, she speaks good English!)”… And another virtualtourist member writes under Warnings about a “Mineral Water Scam” as “the street vendor used a plastic bag and did a swop of another cheaper mineral water brand” which her friend “only realized when she was back in the hotel room.”
Wikitravel is another very interesting open source information website, wiki-style, that offers information within its self-imposed bureaucratic rules. Wikitravel’s policy says, for example, that “it is not an apartment-finder service” and does therefore “not allow rental agency listings”. It is, however, a hotel room-finder service as it publishes plenty of hotels. Thus, the correct Wikitraveler always stays in a hotel but never in a condo, a serviced apartment or a house… Here again, information has to be taken with a grain of salt (pun intended) as business owners may post their self-portrayals under fake identities and the “information” given therein may be totally biased.
Then you have a host of bloggers which post their information, tips and travel stories from a very, very personal perspective which makes them so fascinating and entertaining to read. Perhaps the most active and the most outspoken blogger is Owee, a Canadian who decided to retire in Nha Trang. He is not only retired, but also a busy traveler in and outside Vietnam, he runs the 1-star Tide hotel on the outskirts of Nha Trang offering boat tours, motorcycle rental and scuba diving tours as well, he is also a family man married to a Vietnamese lady and a blogger on owee58.com and he is posting comments on many other blogs and websites, too. On the Trip Advisor’s popularity index his hotel made it to rank No. 7 of the 76 listed hotels in Nha Trang.
Book Shops
Foreign language books (mainly second-hand) can be found here:
Phuong Nam Book Shop, 62A Thai Nguyen St. is a large bookshop in a modern 2-storey building with a pleasant restaurant and an English book section.
Some 4- and 5-star hotels such as the Hotel Sheraton and the Novotel (see “Hotels”) have book shops selling English-language books and foreign magazines.
Business & Investment
“With all its favorable natural conditions, an abundant working force, and available material bases, Khánh Hòa has been creating new opportunities and working out new and open policies for domestic and foreign investors to enter joint cooperation.” Department of Planning & Investment of Khanh Hoa province
Most foreign and domestic investment in Nha Trang, the capital of Khanh Hoa province, is done in resorts, hotels and restaurants. It is also a competitive location for investment in light industries (e.g. garment and fish processing etc). We will give here information on opportunities as well as the business and investment environment and the experience of foreign investors.
We now start featuring foreign-invested businesses here:
Orange Sailing Holding BV is based in The Netherlands, with its head office in The Hague.The companies’ main objectives are the development of charter concepts for yachts, as well as construction, sales and exploitations of charter yachts. Orange Sailing’s representative office in Vietnam, where the yachts are built, is based in Nha Trang. The Financial Times has published an interesting article about this company.
Yachts For Vietnam
Vietnam’s ambition to develop a strong maritime industry, exploiting its extensive coastline and strategic location, has taken a hit because of the near collapse of Vinashin, the heavily indebted state-owned shipbuilder that was meant to be a national champion.
But while industrial shipbuilding may be passé, some investors believe that Vietnam has the potential to develop a yacht industry, capitalising on the emergence of a new class of wealthy business owners.
There are currently only two “serious” luxury yachts in Vietnam, according to Ruurd van Putten, a Dutchman who is trying to develop the industry from his base in the resort city of Nha Trang, south-west Vietnam.
He hopes that, as people get richer and more marinas are built, Vietnam will start to follow China, South Korea and Thailand, where the market for yachts is expanding rapidly.
“People in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are buying holiday villas in places like Nha Trang and Danang and they are potential yacht owners,” he said. “After they’ve bought a big house and a big car, what’s next? We hope it’s a big yacht.”
In addition to setting up his own boat charter company in Nha Trang, van Putten is an agent for Northrop and Johnson, a super-yacht broker, and is working as a consultant on the construction of Vietnam’s first marina, which is part of Diamond Island, a high-end residential development in Ho Chi Minh City.
Van Putten said that construction of the Diamond Island marina will start by the end of this year and other marinas are planned at Halong Bay, in north Vietnam, in Danang, in central Vietnam, in Nha Trang and Mui Ne, another resort town in southern Vietnam.
With only two luxury yachts permanently based in the country, cynics might wonder why Vietnam needs all these marinas and whether they will ever, in fact, be built.
Van Putten believes it is a “chicken and egg” question. “Without the appropriate facilities, you aren’t going to have the yachts,” he said.
Many wealthy Vietnamese like to show off and sellers of designer handbags, luxury cars and the jewel-encrusted Vertu phones produced by a Nokia subsidiary have found Vietnam to be a thriving market.
Customs
Visitors to Vietnam are allowed to import and export an unlimited amount of foreign currency. But upon arrival at the airport they are required to declare currencies and amounts on an official form and to show to immigration officers when entering and leaving the country while the import and export of the Vietnamese Dong is strictly forbidden. Up to 400 cigarettes, 2 bottles of liquor and an amount of perfume and gifts is considered acceptable for personal use and may also be brought into the country.
Dangers & Annoyances
Stay safe and cool!
Crime rate is still low in Nha Trang, but on the rise. Though not rampant, there is pickpocketing and, for example, jewellery disappearing during an embrace. During massage it can happen that somebody sneaks into the room and removes the wallet from the clothes. To avoid any trouble don’t carry too much money and valuables with you, leave it with the reception or in the safety box of the hotel room or the condo.
Travel in groups when you are out roaming the streets at night. We strongly recommend to take a taxi from 11 pm. People coming home from the clubs and bars late at night should in any case order a taxi to avoid unpleasant surprises. Be wary when leaving bars and nightclubs – male tourists receiving a lot of attention from young Vietnamese women have later discovered that their valuables have been taken from their pockets.
Unobservant tourists are sometimes heavily overcharged and feel utterly annoyed and frustrated when they find out. Therefore, check and compare prices before buying a product or a service, in particular make sure the taxi driver uses the meter and fix the price of a tour before you start it.
Dry Cleaning
The best dry cleaning service in Nha Trang resident expats have dealt with for years with no complaints is Thoi laundry on 1B Ton Dan Street. Tel. 058 526868, mob. 0913 483141. Dry cleaning of a suit costs 2.5 USD.
There are also a few shops doing laundry, mostly in Huong Vuong street. The price per kg is approx. 40,000 VND.
Hairdresser Jean-Lou Baly has 3 washing machines where you can wash your laundry, too. He is in the center of the city and his address reads: Lou Kim Hairdressers, 8 Biet Thu Street.
<snip>
[Edited: 2015 Feb 07 07:41 - traveltalesofawoollymammoth:258356 - No commercial links please, privately message the blogger for further information]
Reply to this 
