Vietnam Currency

ormeau 1

Is it possible to get this in Dublin? A friend told me he couldn't pay for his entry visa when he arrived at Saigon airport because he didnt have any with him. He ran in to loads of problems as a result.

Tails142

They take dollars I believe, also you can get your visa in the uk embassy for 60 ahead of the trip

Tipperary animal lover

Hi, u can apply for visa through the London embassy or as i always do is get voa it costs $45 on arrival u can go through a visa company from vietnam they sort out your visa for ya we used myvietnamvisa.com, just make sure ya have the $45 on arrival, no need to get Vietnamese dong just bring €'s with ya and change there. Any more questions just ask.

GabbyJay

Don't think you'll be able to buy VND in Dublin, but just bring USD with you as it's what they normally expect. I think they would accept Euro too but better not to leave it to chance.

Tipperary animal lover

Been to vietnam many times and have always taking the €, you'd be mad to change € into $ then into dong, u get a very good rate for the € about 27,000 to the euro.

jt_dublin

Hi Ormeau,

We are just back from Vietnam & Cambodia. We bought our Visa On Arrival at Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City airport and paid in US Dollars.

To do it this way, you need to use an agency to get you an Approval Letter to enter the country without a pre-arranged visa and to then buy your Visa on Arrival. We used this agency http://cheapvietnamvisa.net/, they were one of the cheapest we found and the letter was back in about 24 hours! You just need to decide whether you want a 1 or 3 month visa and whether it is single or multiple entry. We were going to Cambodia and then re-entering Vietnam, so we needed a multiple entry visa. The cost of the visa stamp depends on this. You will see the cost on the visa website above. It varies from 45 to 95 dollars. Other posters here say that you can also use Euros but I wasnt aware of this.


When you arrive in Vietnam, you then just go to the Visa on Arrival counter, give them your letter, passport & dollars and they issue the visa. The queueing system there seems a bit random. When we arrived it looked like there were 3 lines queueing, but it seemed that we should be only in the middle queue... Not sure why! Then they just took everything from us and we didnt know whether to wait there at the counter or to go sit down nearby... Anyway we sat down and we waited about 20 minutes ... They started to call out the surnames... and some people who queued after us got their visas before us... But that is just how it works, so it's best just to wait patiently.

One other tip about arriving at the airport.... If you are taking a taxi, there is a taxi rank outside to the left. You dont have to get in the first taxi in the queue. I would only take preferably a Vinasun taxi (white car) or else Mai Linh (green car). On the meter you should only pay about 200,000 (10 USD) to 250,000 (12 USD) to go in to the city centre district 1. Other taxis will either try to agree an rip-off price with you or they have what would be called 'fast meters' where you will pay about double the normal meter rate.

Enjoy your trip.
JT.

sarkozy

You can use dollars and bank machines take Cirrus/Maestro. Machines often spurt out both currencies, whichever you prefer. No hassles.

Gatica

ormeau 1 wrote: »

A friend told me he couldn't pay for his entry visa when he arrived at Saigon airport because he didnt have any with him.

No idea how that could possibly happen as they require payment in dollars, not their currency. At the time we travelled it was $25 for the stamping fee. If you have neither, then I guess there could be issues.

Pinkmoon19

We where in Vietnam last year, flying from Indonesia and Air Asia wouldn't let us board our flight without the Visa approval letter and Vietnamese visa paperwork. We had to get emergency visa papers and they cost us $100 dollars each!! Definitely make sure to do your paperwork before you get there.

Tipperary animal lover

Gatica wrote: »

No idea how that could possibly happen as they require payment in dollars, not their currency. At the time we travelled it was $25 for the stamping fee. If you have neither, then I guess there could be issues.

The price has gone up for single entry to $45 stamping fee now since last year, you wont get on any flight to vietnam without a visa or approval letter for visa as the airlines will be fined big time.

They don't get fined I don't think, they just have to get you back to where you came from.