Five days of refreshing that status page. Five days of wondering if I’d made some mistake on my application. Five days of my wife asking if we needed a backup plan for our Hanoi trip. The Vietnam e-visa process is supposed to take 3 working days, but mine stretched well beyond that.

Turns out, there’s a difference between “working days” and actual days. My application hit right before a Vietnamese national holiday I didn’t know about. Once the offices reopened, my approval came through within hours. The visa itself was perfect – 90 days, multiple entry, exactly what I’d applied for.

The lesson here is simple: apply early, check the Vietnamese holiday calendar, and don’t book non-refundable flights until you have that approval in hand. The system works, it just doesn’t work on weekends or holidays.

For official information and to check your application status, visit the evisa.gov.vn.