Vietnam Visa - 12/16/15

In preparation for the Vietnam leg of this trip, we started the process of getting our visas last week.  Vietnam requires visas in order to enter their country and travelers have the option of obtaining one at Vietnamese embassies or upon arrival at Vietnamese airports.  We thought it would be easier to get it ahead of time and not have to deal with it at the airport.

First we had to take the Sky Train to the Phloen Chit stop where we then headed south to Wireless Road which is where the embassy is located.  It's a fair distance, but definitely not too far to walk.

 We reached our destination without incident:

Enter through this door:

Once inside we both had to complete and sign a two sided visa application and pay the processing fee.  Currently, the fee for a Vietnamese visa is 2600 baht per person with a four day processing fee (visa is ready to pick up on the 5th day).  Expedited processing (ready to pick up the following day) is 3000 baht ($84 USD) per person.  We opted for expedited processing because the embassy keeps the passports of applicants while they are preparing the visas and we didn't want to be without our passports for five days.

We were given a receipt for our passports:

And, returned to pick up our visas (which are attached to a page inside the passports) :

 The residence of the United States ambassador is across the street from the Vietnamese Embassy:

The United States Embassy is a few blocks further south.  We decided to walk to the US Embassy so we could see what it looks like.

On the way we passed the the New Zealand, Ukraine and Qatar embassies:

After walking a few blocks we reached the United States Embassy:

Which is in there somewhere:

 There were a lot of Thai guards around and one of them yelled at me for taking photos, so we didn't stick around.   Makes me wonder how difficult it would be to enter the embassy if a United States citizen needed assistance.