Aaaargh, Business Visa Defeat! Activate back-up plan for Vietnam…

Yesterday was my last day at work, so I’ve done the ‘goodbye and thanks for all the fish’ routine.  It was grim, I didn’t leave the office until gone 7.00 p.m. and it was a lonely and rather thankless day.  However, I wanted to leave everything as professionally as possible irrespective of the reality that my carefully labelled files may never again see the light of day. Anyway,  the upshot of this, is that there is no going back, P45 pending, I’m going to have to head off somewhere, hence I could do with a break frankly, so it was a shame that today brought bad news, though also potentially a solution.

First The Bad News:

Today, I got back in the post my documents that I’d sent to be legalised.  I feel thwarted, I’m supposed to be leaving in a couple of weeks and I haven’t made it over the first administrative hurdle!   It seems that I haven’t followed correct procedure.   So you can perhaps succeed where I have failed, the process – as I now understand it – I will give below, but honestly, I’m increasingly thinking applying for a Business Visa in advance is too problematic, don’t even go there, find a work around.  If you have to, then try this:

• Dig out your relevant certificates
• Get these copied, and then the copies certified by a public notary – I have abandoned the pre-departure business visa application route so haven’t done this, looks potentially expensive
• Then they need to be approved again by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office – nope, absolutely no idea to which section, how long it takes etc
• Then finally, send the approved documents for legalisation by the Vietnamese Embassy – but this is still unclear, they say they retain them, my contacts in Vietnam want to have them, does not compute
• Presumably, then (if you have letter of invitation, medical certificate, police certificate) you can try again for a business visa, but I wonder if recently appearing guidance means it better left to your business associate to navigate and pay for too!

Frankly, I could scream, this has already been a time consuming, opaque and expensive process.  I am grateful that my certificates and copies were returned together with a cash refund (minus postage) of my postal order, but even so, I am quite taken aback at how problematic the process of trying to get a business visa has been.  Not for the faint-hearted, but possibly not even appropriate to try.  I think increasingly because my hosts haven’t had anyone from the UK before they aren’t able to appreciate how off-putting and whole visa malarkey can be.  Worsened because throughout all of this I can’t get anyone to talk to me at all, or respond to email enquiries that ask for specific clarification.

A possible solution:

So, on a brighter note, I finally got a helpful email today from the intermediary who originally passed on my application to the Vietnamese University.  It was a relief to finally get a clear steer.  Essentially, the recommendation is ‘From what I understand from the website of Embassy of Vietnam in UK, they stopped processing business visa due to some legal changes.  Applying for such visa should be cumbersome. Therefore I advise you to apply for tourist visa and carry relevant documents with you. As soon as you arrive in Vietnam, we will support your business visa application‘.  So this is what I’m going to do, next challenge is getting a tourist visa, as once again there is contradictory information on the embassy website.

Bring on The Tourist Visa Challenge:

Check the relevant website – no costs are given you have to email for that.  There is an online form, but I couldn’t get it to work, though that was a relief quite honestly, as the pdf is much more straightforward to make sense of.  For example, The online form requires a passport photo that is 4 cm by 6 cm, the downloadable pdf asks for a more UK standard size photo to be attached.

There are no costs given on the website, and the email I received in connection with my request for clarification about this only gives costs for a 30 day visa.  I’m worried this wont be long enough as I plan to arrive just at the start of Tet, a massive Vietnamese holiday for the lunar new year.  I’ve seen this described as a mix of millennium new year celebrations, Christmas, New Year, Birthdays, the whole kit bang and caboodle rolled into one.  I don’t think they’ll be much visa application processing going on then!  I do want to do this, but the bureaucracy is a real deterrent.

I try to remember that possibly I’m a pathfinder here.  Once I’ve worked it out it will be easy to advise someone coming after me, I suppose you have to do the equivalent of ‘kissing a lot of frogs’ before you meet you handsome partner, just watch out you don’t pick a poisonous one en route, it can ruin your day.  In relation to a successful visa application then maybe I have had to reach the end of all these many and manifest administrative cul de sacs in order that I ruled them out and finally made it to the finish.  I still feel like I’m living through my own bespoke episode of the krypton factor, and it’s not looking good.  On the other hand, even if there is a reluctance to issue business visas, surely they will want to welcome tourists?  Watch this space.

To keep you both entertained and informed, here is the sort of frog you should not kiss. It is a poison dart frog from central/south America apparently, and is rather fine I thought, Enjoy!

A universal problem-solving formula:

In the meantime, if you are wrestling with any problems, however complex, I came across this formula which I consider to be genius – I hope it works for you!