3 month e-visa requires application form for stay extension? (!)

@Clip

My advice is for you to leave tomorrow, and apply yourself through the NATIONAL WEB PORTAL ON IMMIGRATION while in Cambodia. That application portal does not ask from where you are applying.

Be sure to bring a digital copy of your passport, as well as a recent digital photograph to submit with your 90 day application made from Cambodia. Conversely, and since it doesn't ask from where you are applying, you could always reenter on the 45 day visa-free and submit the 90 day application through the portal I cited above once you're back in VN.

From all reports you will not have any difficulty reentering with a 45 day visa-free entry.

When you have time, please report back to the forum the process(es) you went through (endured?) to rectify this.

(I'm really getting the sense that there is some sort of power-play at work within the VN political/immigration bureaucracy. Very frustrating for eVisa applicants)

What does the forum advise? -@Clip

A different agent

    What does the forum advise? -@Clip

A different agent   

    -@OceanBeach92107

LOL! Yeah, that too

Thanks so much for your reply, Aidan!

Apparently I am one of two out of 500 people since the 15th of August who had this issue. The agent says many of the other 498ish were also in Vietnam and that she found it shocking that I would be flagged like that.

Seems my regular poor luck with things 498 others can take for granted puts me somewhere between a "strict guy" and a "power-play" - but I doubt me trying to wonder why will really get me anywhere.

Anyway, the agent agrees with you that I should not have a problem getting back in for 45 days. Since the 3 months is ultimately more about convenience than necessity, I feel like the best option would be for me to come back in on the 45 days and then try the old website. At least then the agent and I can get it organised and hopefully confirmed with plenty of advance notice, giving me proper time to prepare if things continue to be awkward. The agent says this is the best option as well.

Therefore, I wonder if there is any reason why staying in Cambodia at much greater expense would be the best option?

Just thought I'd better check that train of thought. Otherwise, thanks for putting my mind somewhat more at rest.

Don't worry about updates. I know how frustrating it can be if someone raises an issue then never gets back.

    What does the forum advise? -@Clip A different agent         -@OceanBeach92107

It's an agent I've seen mentioned here and I don't think they have a bad rep on the forum (but not being a regular I could be very wrong).

I feel like the 'pending for application form' issue isn't the agent's fault, to be fair.

On the other hand, I paid in full on September 1st so it has been a week and this only came to light because I had to message for confirmation and it's literally the night before.

I feel like this is genuinely odd, which caught the agent by surprise. I accept they could have got back to me about this earlier. That's the main issue with the agent maybe.

Therefore, I wonder if there is any reason why staying in Cambodia at much greater expense would be the best option?Just thought I'd better check that train of thought. Otherwise, thanks for putting my mind somewhat more at rest.Don't worry about updates. I know how frustrating it can be if someone raises an issue then never gets back.        -@Clip

You're very welcome, and thanks for keeping us in mind once this is all done.

Not sure if I understand your question about staying in Cambodia. What I was suggesting was that once you have cleared VN immigration's exit gate, and received your VOA at the Cambodia border and entered Cambodia, use your phone and submit the application from there. It'll take just a couple of minutes. Just make sure you have data or wifi available, of course. Once the application has been submitted, you're free to saunter back into VN.

That original application portal is very easy to navigate. Do it once or twice yourself and you'll see that you won't really need the services of an agent (though many find it much more convenient, ie. food, water, transportation, walk-through exit/entry gates etc).

@Aidan in HCMC

Ah-ha!

Sorry, it was me misunderstanding your suggestion.

I see now.

But now I have another question: wouldn't the new website have flagged me based on a VN address? I don't get how being across the border would change anything. They would still require an address, right? It's not like the website is actively tracking my real-time location. So I would need to provide a Cambodian address? (I know, I could probably make that up.)

I see your idea but I'm a bit confused still.

-

About using the website myself: I did it once not long after they introduced the e-visa policy, post-pandemic. I also did the Moc Bai trip alone a few times before, both paying bribes and also not doing so.

I concluded in any situation I don't like the experience there so I've switched to preferring to use an agent. This was the first one I found (recommended by someone I knew).

I have to say, agents doing the same thing out of Thailand are way better on every level in my experience.

  @Aidan in HCMCAh-ha!Sorry, it was me misunderstanding your suggestion.I see now.But now I have another question: wouldn't the new website have flagged me based on a VN address?

From what I can gather, NATIONAL WEB PORTAL ON IMMIGRATIONdoes not share a database with PUBLIC SERVICE PORTAL MINISTRY OF PUBLIC SECURITY. It was the latter which your agent used.

I don't get how being across the border would change anything. They would still require an address, right? It's not like the website is actively tracking my real-time location. So I would need to provide a Cambodian address? (I know, I could probably make that up.)

After your passport has been scanned, and immediately upon receiving your exit stamp, immigration will know that you have left VN and at which border crossing.As for address, I think you've answered your own question. Lots of Bavet hotels available online, and there is no penalty in your changing your mind and returning to VN instead of going on to Bavet to your hotel.

I see your idea but I'm a bit confused still.-About using the website myself: I did it once not long after they introduced the e-visa policy, post-pandemic. I also did the Moc Bai trip alone a few times before, both paying bribes and also not doing so.I concluded in any situation I don't like the experience there so I've switched to preferring to use an agent. This was the first one I found (recommended by someone I knew).

Understood, perfectly.

I have to say, agents doing the same thing out of Thailand are way better on every level in my experience.       

-@Clip

Good luck tomorrow. Looking forward to hearing how it all went.

(the "quote" function is misbehaving. Admin has been made aware and have opened a ticket for IT to investigate)

Got stamped back in for 45 days with no issues.

Agent said she will try the old website to apply, but since asked for a UK address so maybe she's going to update the pending application with new dates and address.

Going to get this done way early so I know what's ahead of me.

I'll update the thread as soon as I know how it goes.

    Got stamped back in for 45 days with no issues.
Agent said she will try the old website to apply, but since asked for a UK address so maybe she's going to update the pending application with new dates and address.
Going to get this done way early so I know what's ahead of me.
I'll update the thread as soon as I know how it goes.
        -@Clip

Welcome back. Good to hear no effect on your visa-free eligibility.

And yes, please. We'd all be very interested in the agent's opinion of the original (updated) application portal.

Thanks for writing back, Clip.

Sorry it was a while.

The agent got back to me to say they tried to edit the original "still pending" application (on the new website) with a UK address but it wasn't accepted.

I believe she then applied on the old website and some days later told me she had received the visa and congratulations for 3 months.

So I will go on the 20th October now.

This was extremely important to me because I have just 4 clean pages in my passport so 3 months gives me enough time to get a new one in good time.

I don't care if I waste a couple of pages or three, I think it is good practice to be on the ball well in advance.

Actually a guy got hit up for $80 on that last trip because he didn't have two spare pages in his passport.

In my experience borders sometimes enforce policies that were always there but nobody noticed. Like needing the equivalent of 20,000THB to enter Thailand. Big sign on the wall with the policy then internal musical chairs or someone getting out of the wrong side of bed in the morning suddenly results in a shock.

3 months in VN and 4 pages still to go in my passport tells me do it now, so I can live not to regret it later.

Hopefully this should be the end of this topic, but I trust nothing until I've seen it happen (as you can imagine given my experience being mysteriously denied).

If I don't post again that's me on a 3 months visa getting a new passport ahead of time and life is pretty good.

Cheers all, and particularly Aidan!

This was extremely important to me because I have just 4 clean pages in my passport so 3 months gives me enough time to get a new one in good time. I don't care if I waste a couple of pages or three, I think it is good practice to be on the ball well in advance.

Actually a guy got hit up for $80 on that last trip because he didn't have two spare pages in his passport. If I don't post again that's me on a 3 months visa getting a new passport ahead of time and life is pretty good. Cheers all, and particularly Aidan!        -@Clip

Drat! I forgot to mention this. I hope you have a chance to read it before your border run in January.

Be careful you don't run into the same problem a fellow Canadian expat had when he renewed his passport. (Link)

Very important to make sure you visit immigration to get the entrance stamp/date on the old passport transferred over on to the new passport.

What does the forum advise?


    -@Clip

A different country.

    What does the forum advise?    -@Clip


A different country.
   

    -@jayrozzetti23

What does the forum advise?    -@Clip

A different country.        -@jayrozzetti23

Judging by the absence of foreign tourists (and of some of the familiar long-term expats here on the island) I'm inclined to think many have chosen that option.

Has me wondering, though. Is it due to Visa issues... or the snakes!

    What does the forum advise?    -@Clip

A different country.        -@jayrozzetti23

Judging by the absence of foreign tourists (and of some of the familiar long-term expats here on the island) I'm inclined to think many have chosen that option.

Has me wondering, though. Is it due to Visa issues... or the snakes! -@Aidan in HCMC

I saw an article somewhere recently that said the tourist numbers for Phu Quoc were down & they needed to up their game to attract tourists back.

It did not mention snakes but implied that "sharks" (not the swimming ones) might have something to do with it. Personally & I mean just personally I have visited Phu Quoc 3 times as a tourist & thought it was way over rated.

@goodolboy

I also visited Phu Quoc and found it to be at best a rustic destination. I stayed at a lovely, though somewhat expensive isolated, beach-side hotel with thatch-roof cabins and bamboo strip lattice-work walls. The food was good, but, as I say, expensive and there were very few restaurants to which I could walk from that place.

The resort paid a worker to go up and down the ample beach every morning and evening collecting trash that washed up on the shoreline -- plastic bags mostly. That part was pretty ugly, actually, as it was easy to imagine what it all would look like if nobody was doing that task. And I had first-hand experience with that in Nha Trang at a resort there -- so-o-o much plastic trash. So sad.

I did go into town and take a motorcycle tour run by an Aussie which was nice -- pepper farm, fishing villages, fish sauce factory, good food.

Overall, though, Phu Quoc is pretty sleepy, or at least it was in early 2016. Time flies, as you know.

    What does the forum advise?    -@Clip

A different country.        -@jayrozzetti23

Judging by the absence of foreign tourists (and of some of the familiar long-term expats here on the island) I'm inclined to think many have chosen that option.

Has me wondering, though. Is it due to Visa issues... or the snakes! -@Aidan in HCMC

In my case, I had already decided to leave Vietnam in order to "start the next chapter of my personal expat journey", i.e. for a change of scene, so neither the visa issues nor snakes and sharks were factors influencing my decision.

However, I would say that reading about the visa issues on this and other sites has dampened my enthusiasm for a return or visit to VN.

I still urge people to go to VN, Thailand, Laos or anywhere but here because with high season starting, we're already having difficulties getting a table at some of our favorite restaurants.

  What does the forum advise? -@Clip

A different agent         -@OceanBeach92107

It's an agent I've seen mentioned here and I don't think they have a bad rep on the forum (but not being a regular I could be very wrong).

I feel like the 'pending for application form' issue isn't the agent's fault, to be fair.

On the other hand, I paid in full on September 1st so it has been a week and this only came to light because I had to message for confirmation and it's literally the night before.

I feel like this is genuinely odd, which caught the agent by surprise. I accept they could have got back to me about this earlier. That's the main issue with the agent maybe.  -@Clip 

I'm really glad for you that everything was eventually sorted for you and you are now on the new 90-day regimen and not stuck with 30 day limits.

Even better (perhaps) for you, that you now have the longer 45 day UK visa exemption available as a safety valve of sorts.

Just following up on some things for the sake of casual readers of this topic (and to satisfy my own curiosity 😉):

Did you realize that you were paying for your evisa on the 1st day of a 4-day national holidays weekend when immigration was closed for anything but emergency business until Tuesday, 5 September?

You didn't mention paying the much higher emergency rate, so it would seem that the earliest your agent could have directly contacted immigration on your behalf (to get you to the top of the queue of applications submitted online over the long weekend) would have been early on Tuesday morning (5th).

So the agent seemingly applied electronically on your behalf giving you no special advantage over the throng of people applying that weekend.

I can't help wondering if the agent made the error of listing you as having your residence in Vietnam, which is a red flag for immigration when dealing with TOURIST visa applications.

Also, this all transpired just a half-month after the new immigration rules were put in place on August 15th.

So I would have expected the agent to alert you that you'd probably need to pay an extra fee for expediting your application, as there were significant reasons to doubt whether your visa would even be available by the 9th (a Monday after the next weekend).

This is why I suggested a different agent.

Some agents are very good at dealing with special cases while others take advantage of churning the easy business that foreigners could accomplish for themselves, if they were so inclined.

While I'm sure that particular agent handles normal business well, it really does seem that they dropped the ball in this case.

Kinda related:

I read back through all of your posts starting in August 2021.

You often mention being prepared for the requirements of employers, but you are still using tourist visas.

I'm guessing one of two things:

You haven't been able to find employment here in Vietnam, or you are accepting employment that doesn't qualify you for a business Visa or TRC?

That's definitely not meant to cast aspersions.

It's just to say that this kind of stuff that you experienced happens more frequently to people who are attempting to live in Vietnam on tourist visas.

I think all of the signals from the government over the past couple years have been that they want to tighten up on people living here and possibly being illegally employed here with only a tourist visa.

Some of this is just supposition on my part, and hopefully you aren't offended by me thinking out loud.

My (questionable) advice to anyone applying for a TOURIST visa here: NEVER list Vietnam as your residence and always be prepared to use an address in the nation of your passport.

Who knows if that would have helped in your case, but I heard more than one Visa agent recommend that.

Anyway, Cheers to you and better luck in the future 🙏

Woah, this thread blew up in all kinds of ways and there was me thinking it would have been done with.

@Aidan

I have become aware of the 'no stamp in the new passport' issue and I have some updated info about that. I planned to make a new thread with some further information I have but then I saw your PM, the Canadian's thread and the further replies to this one.

I will respond to more recent replies in this post then add my new info in another reply afterwards.

@OceanBeach

I'm not offended. Valid concerns and for the right reasons.

That was actually a very informative and rather extensive post.

"Did you realize that you were paying for your evisa on the 1st day of a 4-day national holidays weekend when immigration was closed for anything but emergency business until Tuesday, 5 September?"

I don't remember exactly, but probably not. I don't remember the agent mentioning it either.

"You didn't mention paying the much higher emergency rate, so it would seem that the earliest your agent could have directly contacted immigration on your behalf (to get you to the top of the queue of applications submitted online over the long weekend) would have been early on Tuesday morning (5th)."

I don't know exactly the date she applied. At the time she said she'd done the application already. There were two applications anyway, on the "new" website that was rejected and then on the "old" one which was accepted.

"So the agent seemingly applied electronically on your behalf giving you no special advantage over the throng of people applying that weekend."

I believe this is the case. I was told (by another foreign customer) she can apparently organise TRCs and other legal papers with immigration, though as far as basic border trips go I think she is just applying via the websites as anyone can.

In fact, I'm not even fully sure what this 'emergency' option is.

"I can't help wondering if the agent made the error of listing you as having your residence in Vietnam, which is a red flag for immigration when dealing with TOURIST visa applications."

I suspect you are right: when she asked for my address for the initial (failed) application  I assumed she meant my VN address, and upon receiving it she seemed to just go ahead with the application.

As previously stated, she then told me it was rejected due to being "in VN already" so for the second application, on the old website, she used a UK address I then gave her and things went smoothly.

"Also, this all transpired just a half-month after the new immigration rules were put in place on August 15th."

So not meaning to make excuses for her but perhaps this is why she overlooked or didn't know about the address issue, or something like that.

"So I would have expected the agent to alert you that you'd probably need to pay an extra fee for expediting your application, as there were significant reasons to doubt whether your visa would even be available by the 9th (a Monday after the next weekend).

This is why I suggested a different agent."

IIRC there was no mention of any option for expediting my application with a 'special advantage' as you put it.

"Some agents are very good at dealing with special cases while others take advantage of churning the easy business that foreigners could accomplish for themselves, if they were so inclined.

While I'm sure that particular agent handles normal business well, it really does seem that they dropped the ball in this case."

I think so too.

"Kinda related:

I read back through all of your posts starting in August 2021.

You often mention being prepared for the requirements of employers, but you are still using tourist visas.

I'm guessing one of two things:

You haven't been able to find employment here in Vietnam, or you are accepting employment that doesn't qualify you for a business Visa or TRC?

That's definitely not meant to cast aspersions."

No worries.

Since those earlier posts I was on a Work Permit for arguably the most legally strict and well-connected language centre in HCM for the school year 2022-2023 (they do public schools). It's the one with a reputation for blacklisting contract-breakers. Couldn't be more legal and above board.

This was right after my posting about a trip to Cambodia. I spent 2 months there as a tourist, did a month in Bangkok and got a business visa, then re-entered Vietnam for full time 100% legally supported work.

I've now taken time out for medical reasons but I will probably (hopefully?) be back into classrooms once the new passport is normalised.

"It's just to say that this kind of stuff that you experienced happens more frequently to people who are attempting to live in Vietnam on tourist visas."

You are absolutely correct. I've known people like that. It's a life of either delusion (until the inevitable nasty surprise) or desperation (because they are not qualified).

My situation is temporary, but I suppose I am technically living here on tourist e-visas. I suppose I am a medical tourist! I have to keep going back to FV Hospital and I couldn't do that working full time, though my autoimmune issue seems to be settling down now, in time for a new passport and new job.

"I think all of the signals from the government over the past couple years have been that they want to tighten up on people living here and possibly being illegally employed here with only a tourist visa."

I generally agree, though the 3 month e-visa is something of an enabler.

"Some of this is just supposition on my part, and hopefully you aren't offended by me thinking out loud."

Not at all. Going through someone's old posts doing detective work might trigger some people but I think I understand your reasoning. People post so often across the internet about things that later turn out to have extra significant context. Having as much information as possible enables all of us to live our lives more securely.

"My (questionable) advice to anyone applying for a TOURIST visa here: NEVER list Vietnam as your residence and always be prepared to use an address in the nation of your passport."

From experience I second this... NEVER do it.

"Who knows if that would have helped in your case, but I heard more than one Visa agent recommend that."

I am 99.99% certain it would have helped.