As I landed in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, after a 33-hour door-to-door journey from Phoenix, I aimed to get to the hotel as quickly as possible to shower and sleep. I handed my passport and e-visa to the airport employee in the passport control area, fully expecting to pass through quickly, collect my luggage, and leave. Instead, he handed the documents back to me and shook his head: “Refused.”

I assumed there was a misunderstanding since I’ve traveled to 46 countries and never had a problem, so I got in another queue and asked another hardworking to help me. He looked at my documents and said the name on my e-visa did not match the name on my passport. The culprit? My middle name was missing.

After being passed around to different employees for over an hour, I was told I had two choices. I could return to Tokyo (my last connection before Vietnam) or pay for a “very, very expensive” emergency visa. My shock turned to horror, as reality set in: Was I going to miss the Mekong cruise I had booked? My imagination ran wild with how much this emergency visa could cost – $500? $1,000? How much money was I willing to spend on this problem to solve it?

After several difficult conversations full of language barriers, I learned that the emergency visa would only cost me $130 (what a relief!). Processing would take an hour and they would not accept credit card payment. They demanded Vietnamese dongs, but ultimately accepted American currency because that was all I had on me.

Later, I learned how I had “forgotten” to include my middle name: the electronic visa application did not have a designated field for this purpose. My middle name was supposed to be on the same line as my first name, but I didn’t know that. Why was my visa application accepted if this discrepancy was a problem? It should have been rejected and sent back to me to complete it again.

When do you need a visa?

“US citizens are required to obtain a visa before entering 72 countries,” says Antoinette Hannan Leon, vice president of ItsEasy.com Passport & Visa Services, noting that this number can fluctuate depending on changes between countries. national agreements. “This includes traditional visas, electronic visas and visas issued on arrival.”