Nha Trang visa runs for US, UK and Australian passports

Vietnam keeps two lists and they decide everything. The first list is the 45-day visa exemption, built by Resolution 44/NQ-CP in March 2025 and extended to twelve more European countries by Resolution 229/NQ-CP in August 2025. Twenty-four nationalities sit on it. The United Kingdom is one of them. The United States and Australia are not.

That single fact changes what you pay and what you carry. A British passport walks up to the counter at Cam Ranh or at Moc Bai with nothing filed in advance and gets 45 days. A US or Australian passport needs a visa before it crosses anything, and the 90-day e-visa is the one to hold.

We run the same bus for all three. The difference is on your side of the paperwork, so here is the honest version, passport by passport.

Same pickup sweep from 03:00 to 05:00, same 500 km run up QL27C over Khanh Le Pass, same arrival at Moc Bai between 10:00 and 12:00, same 20:00 confirmation the night before. The table above is the only place the three of you diverge.

The exemption resets on every entry

Resolution 44/NQ-CP gives British citizens 45 days per entry, counted from the day you arrive, and the arrival day is day one. The old rule that required a 30-day gap between visa-free visits was repealed back in 2020, so there is no waiting period to serve. Leave, come back, the counter gives you another 45.

What the exemption does not do is extend. There is no in-country extension for a visa-free stamp, not at the Khanh Hoa immigration office and not anywhere else. If your 45 days are running out and you want to stay, you leave and re-enter, which is a visa run.

So for a UK passport the run is the short one: 1,500,000 VND for the bus seat, plus the Cambodian visa at the Bavet window, 1,100,000 VND, and no Vietnam visa to buy at all. The 45 days comes back free at the counter. The exit stamp at Moc Bai is what makes the re-entry legal, so you cross properly rather than turning around at the line.

When a UK passport should buy the e-visa instead

Two cases. If you want 46 to 90 days in one stretch, a 45-day exemption cannot get you there, so you enter on a 90-day e-visa instead. And if you are crossing three or four times a year, stacking short visa-free stamps is the pattern officers notice. A 90-day e-visa cuts that count in half. You cannot blend the two on a single entry, so pick whichever length you actually need.

A US passport is not on either exemption list. That is not a 2026 change and it does not look likely to move. So your Vietnam time is whatever visa you hold, and for a tourist stay that means the 90-day e-visa.

The numbers are public and small. Twenty-five US dollars for single entry, fifty for multiple, paid on the official portal at evisa.gov.vn. Official processing is quoted at three working days, and the realistic allowance is a week. Around Tet it stretches to two. We file yours on the Standard bundle for 2.4M VND, which buys you not having to babysit the portal on a bus with patchy signal.

Here is the part that trips people up at the border. Vietnam does not hand tourist visas to unprepared arrivals at a land gate. Your new e-visa has to be approved before you exit, and a single-entry one is spent the moment you cross out. Turn up at Moc Bai on an expired single-entry e-visa hoping to buy something at the window and you will be turned around, on the Cambodian side, with no ride home.

Apply listing Moc Bai as your entry port and check the file detail on our 83 entry checkpoints guide. Passport needs six months of validity past your arrival date, plus a blank page for each stamp. Print two copies of the approval and keep the PDF on your phone.

Australia sits on neither resolution, and there is no bilateral arrangement to fall back on either. Vietnam has a handful of those, Chile and Panama at 90 days, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Mongolia at 30, but Australia is not among them. So for an Australian passport the 90-day e-visa is not one option among several. It is the option.

Everything in the US section above applies word for word: 25 or 50 US dollars on the official portal, three to five working days, approved before you exit, six months of passport validity. The 5,000,000 VND Standard bundle covers the Cambodian visa at Bavet and the e-visa filing together, which is the version most of our Australian riders book.

One habit worth keeping, since you are crossing on a document rather than an exemption stamp: check the exit date on the e-visa against your flight out before you book anything. The dates are fixed once the PDF is issued, and a 90-day e-visa that lands two weeks before you planned to fly home cannot be moved. If that happens, plan the next run instead of counting on an extension, because there is not one.

Most of our riders fly into Cam Ranh and then ask about the digital arrival card, so here it is plainly. Since April 2026 Vietnam has run a free pre-arrival declaration, and it has been rolled out across the big airports. Cam Ranh is on the list. So if you land at CXR, you file at prearrival.immigration.gov.vn inside the 72 hours before your flight, and you arrive with a QR code on your phone.

It is not a visa and it does not replace one. It is an extra step laid on top, free of charge, and nobody should be charging you for it. There is one official address and no third-party portals, which is worth remembering because copycat sites that ask for a card payment are exactly the scam the Immigration Department keeps warning about.

The part that matters for a run day: Moc Bai is not covered. As of September 2026 the declaration applies at the airports, at the Dong Dang land gate up on the China border, and at a list of seaports. It does not apply at the Cambodia crossings our convoy uses. Land runners on the same-day loop can skip it entirely.

There is no published limit on how many times you can cross, and anyone who tells you there is one is making it up. What exists instead is officer discretion, and discretion gets used when a record looks like residency rather than travel.

Somewhere around the third or fourth Cambodia loop inside six months, the questions at the window can change shape. What brings you to Vietnam. How you support yourself. When you are flying home. Those are ordinary questions with ordinary answers if you are genuinely coming and going, and awkward ones if you are not.

Your history is a file rather than a memory. Every entry and exit sits against your passport number, and since Decree 286/2026 took effect on 15 September 2026 the agencies holding those records share data in real time. That is not aimed at tourists. The two things enforcement is actually chasing are overstaying and working on a tourist entry without a permit, which are separate offences from crossing a border. The detail is on our Decree 286 page.

Two habits keep a record boring. Run on a 90-day e-visa rather than stacking short visa-free stamps, which turns a dozen crossings a year into three. And if Nha Trang has quietly become home, look at the residence routes instead of the loop, which we compared against the run in visa run versus visa extension. If your stamps already look rough, send us a photo before you book and we will say so.

One line worth separating out, since plenty of operators blend it. The government e-visa fee is 25 US dollars single entry or 50 multiple, paid to the Immigration Department on the official portal. The 2,400,000 VND on our table is desk work, not a government fee. File it yourself and you pay the portal and keep the 2.4M. Hand it to us at the border and that is what the line covers. The full breakdown, including annual run math and the costs nobody budgets for, is on the cost page.

Do UK citizens need a visa for Vietnam in 2026?

No. A British passport gets 45 days visa-free on every entry through to 14 March 2028, with nothing filed in advance. A run renews that for free, which is why UK riders usually book transport only.

Does a UK passport still need the Cambodian visa?

Yes, and this catches people out. A run means physically entering Cambodia at Bavet before you turn around, so the Cambodian visa applies to every passport on the bus. It is 30 US dollars for the tourist visa or 35 for the ordinary visa at the window, or 1,100,000 VND inside our bundle.

Can a US or Australian passport use the 45-day exemption?

No. The exemption list is fixed at 24 nationalities across two resolutions and neither the United States nor Australia is on it, nor do they have a bilateral arrangement. The 90-day e-visa is the tourist route, at 25 or 50 US dollars.

How long does the e-visa take?

Three to five working days officially. Give it a week in practice, and two weeks around Tet, when the Immigration Department closes and approvals pause. Rush tiers run Monday to Friday only, which is on the 90-day e-visa guide.

Do I need the digital arrival card for a visa run?

Not at Moc Bai. It applies at the airports, including Cam Ranh, so it is a flying-in step rather than a border-run step. If you land at CXR, file it free at prearrival.immigration.gov.vn inside the 72-hour window before your flight.

Tell us which passport you hold when you message, because that decides whether the visa desk is part of your day or not. A UK passport on a 45-day reset is the lightest version, a US or Australian one carries the e-visa filing, and both ride the same bus.

Booking is a WhatsApp message to +84 369 308 237. Confirm by 20:00 the night before and your pickup window comes back the same evening. Pickups run 03:00 to 05:00 across Tran Phu, Vinh Hai, Cam Lam and the Cam Ranh resorts, and the run goes out every day of the year, Tet included. Payment on arrival, free cancellation up to 24 hours out.

New to the route? The full day is walked through on the step-by-step instructions page, with pickup times and run days on the schedule. Riders coming from the bay itself should read the Cam Ranh pickup guide, since the timing differs from an in-town start.

Same rules at every border, different roads. Ho Chi Minh City runs the shortest version of the Moc Bai trip, Da Lat riders join from the highlands side, and Da Nang works the Lao Bao and Bo Y crossings instead. The network city comparison lines all of them up, and our own Bo Y versus Moc Bai page covers the other route out of Nha Trang.