Overseas travel tourist visa requirements | All you need to know
Most frequent travelers know that countries require a visa. A visa is the permission a country gives foreign citizens to be in their country. In today’s post we cover everything we learned about overseas tourist visa requirements, our mistakes and the visa-essentials we recommend. This blog post is not about visas to specific countries, but rather is an outline to guide you through what you should be looking for or asking about. Let’s dive in!
Visa Requirements
The easiest way to find out what the visa requirement is for your country is actually Wikipedia. For example you can see below the requirements for US citizens vs Japanese citizens. It’s a quick way to identify parts of the world where you must apply for visas in advance. Basically, green is good! This is particularly useful if you are traveling long term. We started our trip in South America and as you can see, it was relatively easy to move from country to country.
Of course, for up-to-date you must check with the embassy/consulate of the country you are wanting to visit. Once we figure out we want to visit a country, we always double check if the Wikipedia information is still current.
Main categories of tourist visas:
Visa on arrival - it literally means that you will apply to a visa upon arrival to the country you are visiting. Sometimes you’ll have to pay a fee, aka a reciprocity fee, so make sure you find out how much that is and if you need cash or if they accept credit cards. If you do need cash, find out if you must pay in the local currency or if they accept other currencies (like dollars or euros).
e-Visa - not to be confused with a visa on arrival. In this instance, you apply online and pay any visa fees usually with a credit card or Paypal. Some places also offer a visa on arrival, just be prepared to have immigration be longer than if you’d applied early by using the e-Visa system. One such place, as of 2019, is Cambodia - we did the visa on arrival but the e-Visa would have been muuuuuuch faster; if you have to choose, pick the e-Visa.
Visa required - these types of visas you must apply at the local embassy or consulate, surrender your passport and wait until your visa is processed. An example of this for US Citizens to China or Russia. Visit the website of the country you want to visit and follow the instructions on how to apply to their visa. Alternatively, you could hire a service that will do all the paperwork for you. We’ve never used these kind of service, but they are commonly used by businesses processing business visas. This blog post is about Tourist visas, but those same services sometimes help you process both tourist and business visas. If you’ve used this service before, please leave a comment as to your experience and if you’d recommend them; we’d love to hear from you.
Check additional requirements for your visa, such as:
Is your passport expiring w/in 3 to 6 months? Some countries require that you have at least 3 to 6 months before your passport expires or they won’t grant you a visa. Knowing this is especially critical when visiting a place that offers Visa on Arrival because they could reject you at the airport and send you home.
Do you have enough free pages? Some countries require at least 3 empty pages - that’d double sided, not single faced. Again, this is especially important if you are counting on a Visa on Arrival or an e-Visa.
Have you visited an area not friendly to that country? For example, we heard that in the middle east they’ll give you a hard time if you have a stamp from having visited Israel. Or EU citizens who visit Iran, need to apply for a special visa when visiting the US.
Do you need any vaccinations or medicines? Like Yellow Fever shots or malaria pills. For example, if you visited Peru longer than 3 days, then plan to go to Brazil and you don’t have a yellow fever shot, even if you didn’t go to a yellow fever area, you cannot board to go to Brazil. Make sure the country you are going to doesn’t have special requirements like Brazil.
Mistakes we made
Not giving ourselves enough time for the visa to China. Thankfully we were still able to visit a little thanks to the transit visa allowed to US Citizens. Transit visas can be a great way to visit a country when all else fails, of course you can’t stay as long, but at least you get to visit a little.
Essentials
These are the items that are worth carrying around with you, even when you think you have everything figured out.
Extra passport photos - we carried around 4 extra photos and they came in really handy. In Cambodia we ended up needing one (and we didn’t think we did) and in India we needed one to get a SIM card. These photos don’t take up a lot of space, but can save you a headache.
Printed copies of your passport - we carried around 2 plus an electronic copy on your phone in case we need to print one. The only place we needed to bring our own copies was on the border between Peru and Bolivia, and we had extras, but you never know when the rules will change, so we just carried 2 extra just in case.
Cash - US $10, US $20 and US $100, unmarked, no tears and preferably printed in the last 5 years. Keep these flat and as ‘clean’ looking as possible. Some places don’t have change, or the change they’ll give you would be hard to exchange because exchange houses can be picky about the condition of your bills. Try to avoid this situation by having more than just US $100 bills.
Question for you! Have you ever used a visa service? Either through work or for yourself? If so, leave a comment below, we’ve never used one and are curious what other people’s experiences are.
Lastly, if you are planning to travel long term, we found this blog post by The Professional Hobo, super helpful.
