Digital Nomads

Can you change your flight to Thailand and wait there until you go to Vietnam? I'm assuming Canadians don't need visa for Thailand ..

Bring an extra $100 usd or value equal to that in cash I went to Vietnam in 2018/19 and still needed to pay them that there even after getting a visa when I landed

There is a service that got me a visa for 300 bucks in 24 hours on a weekend.

Visa on arrival. There are a bunch of different services online that can turn this around really quickly.

Contact Vietnamese embassy and arrange to pay for the visa in cash when you land in Vietnam. This is what I did when I made the same mistake.

I applied on the website https://evietnamvisa.vn/. You can pay more to expedite the process, see the prices here

Enjoy your trip!

Buddy, have you heard of the word "a"? Sure doesn't look like it from your post haha.

Hope you get it sorted out and it works out without too much pain

you stay in tokyo until you get a visa or you go elsewhere.

If it makes you feel any better you are by no means the first, and will not be the last person to have done this.

a lot of places let u apply at the border... even if they said u e need to apply b4 hand. even china was like this (15 years ago to be fair). I fucked around getting my visa then discovered I could have gotten at the border. Iran was like this too.

I did same in 2010..got one online overnight. Not really a big deal?

don’t they have an eVisa system? apply online and hope for a swift response

I did something similar a couple of months ago. I just waited in Thailand for my visa application to be processed. It took 5 days! I think the average is 3 but just be aware it can take even longer.

First-world people are sooo funny sometimes!

Don’t listen to some negative people here - also a Canadian who made the same mistake 4 weeks ago. Vietnam and Cambodia are 2/35 countries I’ve visited requiring this goofy pre-registration, and Vietnam just changed it from VoA recently. It’s baffling.

Unfortunately we had to get a hotel in Brisbane and stay an extra 5 nights until we got approved. Sorry about your experience

https://www.vietnam-visa.com/super-urgent-visa-service/

You pay extra but you can get one superfast.

Happens a lot. In the airport we saw a guy being denied boarding at the gate for a flight to Vietnam, we assume because he didn't have a visa.

We made that assumption and was paying attention to that flight because we were also supposed to be on that flight, but decided to double check visa requirements the night before and found out lol. So instead we were taking a flight to KL that was leaving at the same gate an hour later.

1. Find a hotel in Tokyo for the next few days
2. Apply for an evisa for Vietnam.
3. Call your lodging in Vietnam and explain you’ll be a few days late. You’ll have to swallow any penalty and surrender any non-refundable nights.
4. Enjoy Tokyo
5. when you get your Vietnam e-visa, book a new ticket to Vietnam for the following day

Give yourself a little grace. These things happen and you know this won’t happen to you again now that the lesson is learned.

25 years of solo travel and I almost made the same mistake earlier this year in another country but caught it in time to cancel my airfare for a full refund.

I used http://www.evisa.com.vn.

Coupon code ‘Legal nomads’ used to get you a 20% discount but that was back in 2014/2015. Don’t know if it still works now.

I once screwed up my application which was already last minute. Found an agency online that offers "expedited" visa processing, usual time is 3 business days, they did it same day for me. It was expensive ($150 USD or something) and pretty dodgy (correspondence through Whatsapp etc) but I decided to roll the dice and it worked, same day. I asked how they do it and they basically they said they have contacts in the embassy I assume they bribe lol

They have an emergency visa on arrival for 125usd I believe. I messed up on my visa and when I arrived they gave me this option.

Hahah I literally had this same exact thing happen to me. I was leaving from Tokyo to India and I was so used to getting visa on arrival, when they asked me to show my visa, I was just like "Huh?"

So they wouldn't let me board my flight. I ended up just applying for the Indian visa at the airport and then booked a flight to Taiwan for the week instead to wait it out until I got the visa approved.

Don't worry about the E-Visa, get on an expat group on Facebook marketplace. Someone will know someone who can get you a "visa on arrival", should cost about $50 and get sorted in a couple of hours, maybe a little more for the rush.

Forgetting a visa is such a first world problem

I feel you man. Sometimes I totally forget to look up visa rules because I've been able to go everywhere with my Canadian passport. Thankfully this hasn't happened to me yet.

You traveled across the world “assuming” you don’t need a visa? You can get an eVisa, but just a passport doesn’t cut it. Go back to Canada.

At least this is a mistake you'll never make twice!

Had this situation.

https://govietnamvisa.com Sign up for express service as fast as you want. Pick airport pick up and they will come to the airport to work out documents for you.

You can pay $500 usd to have a 1 hour approved visa, probably cheaper than staying in Japan for 3-5 days lol

I used visaonlinevietnam last year to get a visa same-day. Just figure out if it's more or less expensive than staying in Tokyo for a few days while waiting for the regular visa process.

Jesus. You made me panic and triple check my visa stuff lol. I go to Vietnam in 5 days. British passport tho so I get 44 days

These are moments where very i value my German passport A LOT, it's quite helpful

There are services there which can take care of it and meet you at immigration. This happened to me also.

Pay a private agency for urgent visa

I'm sorry I don't travel much, but could someone please explain me about this issue? If I have a visa-exempt passport, I'd still need a visa when going to Vietnam from Japan?

Classic canadians. Most entitled country in the world.

It’s been 5 years, but you can get one in Vietnamese airports. I did, and I’m CAN, too.

Fly into Phu Quoc? It's a VOA, at least for US passports

Then continue onward

my sis f'ed up her evisa, we had a few days and I saved her ass by contact a travel agency on taobao where they can issue pre-clearance letter for visa on arrival in 1 biz day.

Bro I’ve been there haha…. I had to spend three nights in the airport waiting for my visa to clear. So either go hang out in Tokyo or get ready to spend some nights in the airport.

Too late now but get into the habit of checking “Do xxxx citizens needs a visa to go to xxxx country”. When I was getting my Brazilian visa (pre Olympics) there was a guy there who somehow got on the plane to Brazil and was immediately sent back because he didn’t have a visa.

Do an expedited e-visa. I got mine in an hour in the Hong Kong airport. Literally got it one minute before the desk closed. Was sweating bullets. You do pay for the service but it’s cheaper than a Narita hotel.

Welcome to the club. And sorry that you are having to deal with this, and will probably lose quite a bit of money in this regard.

​

Rant: Indian passport and I ran into the same problem a month back. Things were different when I travelled to Vietnam previously just before the pandemic. You could just land and have a visa on arrival within a 15-20 minute process. Submit your passport, flight tickets and fee and boom, get a visa on spot. Now you have to apply online for e-visa before arrival, pay a significantly higher fee while dealing with several attempts to upsell you to an useless urgent service, airport fast-track and airport taxi, and then wait for 5-10 days to get the eVisa. I ended up losing close to 500 EUR thanks to this whole drama as I had to reschedule all my flights, hotels etc. Honestly, the whole experience of being offered so many paid add-on extra services and misleading urgent top-ups on the official government visa website left a very bad after-taste.

I fucked up my visa for Vietnam. Only realized after I landed at Da Nang. Paid around $150 for an "emergency visa fix". Let's call it what it is, a bribe. Lesson learned. Your problem though is that with no visa at all the airline probably won't let you board