What a visa run is, how to do one step by step, and what it costs from every major city.
A visa run is a day trip to the border and back. You leave Vietnam by land, get an exit stamp, step into Laos or Cambodia, and cross straight back with a fresh entry stamp. That new stamp starts your next stay, which means you do not have to fly out of the country or overstay.
The whole thing usually fits in one long day. Vans pick you up before sunrise, you spend an hour or two at the border, and you are home by evening. For people living in Vietnam on tourist visas, it is the cheapest way to keep resetting the clock.
Most runs pair the border trip with a new 90 day e-visa application. The service files it while you are on the Cambodian or Laotian side, and it lands in your email a few working days later. One trip, one fresh visa, no flights involved.
Anyone on a tourist visa who wants to stay longer. The 90 day e-visa is the standard these days, and when those 90 days run out, a border run is how you renew. Digital nomads, remote workers, and long-stay tourists all cycle through the same routine.
You also need a run if you entered visa free and want to stay past your exemption. Several passports get 15 to 45 days without a visa, and the border is the simplest reset for those too.
The alternative is a temporary residence card, which skips the border entirely. But a TRC takes paperwork, a work permit or marriage certificate, and a few weeks. A visa run happens tomorrow morning. For most people the run is the faster fix.
Vietnam shares land borders with Laos, Cambodia, and China. For visa runs, only two crossings get regular use, and which one you use depends entirely on where you live.
Located in Tay Ninh province, about 2 hours from Ho Chi Minh City. This is the crossing for anyone in the south. Nha Trang and Da Lat run their services here too, usually via an overnight sleeper bus or a direct private car. Cambodia visa on arrival runs about 1.1M VND. Full details in our Moc Bai border crossing guide.
Located in Quang Tri province. This is the crossing for anyone in central or northern Vietnam. Da Nang is closest at about 4 hours. Hanoi is about 8. Hue and Hoi An also use this route. You cross the Lao Bao-Dansavanh international checkpoint, get a Laos entry stamp for 30 to 40 USD, and turn right around. See the visa run to Laos guide for the full picture.
Each city has its own route, its own pickup points, and its own price range. Here is the short version; the city sites carry the local detail.
Route: QL22 to Moc Bai border. Pickup in District 1, Thao Dien, Thu Duc, Phu My Hung. Cambodian side: Bavet. Total round trip about 10 to 12 hours. Bilingual fixers handle the paperwork on the Cambodia side. Shared van around 1.5M VND, private car around 5-6M VND. Cambodia visa roughly 1.1M VND at the border.
Route: west on QL9 to Lao Bao. Closest major city to this crossing. Pickup across Da Nang city. Shared van or private car, same-day return, about 10 to 12 hours total. 90 day e-visa filing available.
Route: Ho Chi Minh Highway south to QL217, then to Lao Bao. Pickup in Old Quarter, Tay Ho, Ba Dinh, Long Bien, Gia Lam. A longer drive than Da Nang, so private car is the common choice. English-speaking crew. The 90 day e-visa desk processes Standard, Fast, or Rush filings.
Route: sleeper bus to HCMC, then car to Moc Bai. Or direct private car from Nha Trang. Pickup in Tran Phu, Vinh Hai, Cam Lam, Cam Ranh. Sleeper bus around 1.5M VND, private car around 6M. Cambodia visa 1.1M. 90 day visa 2.4M.
Route: QL1A north then QL9 to Lao Bao. Closer than Hanoi but not as close as Da Nang. Pickup in Hue City, Lang Co, Dong Ha, Thuan An Beach. Quang Tri fixers handle the border fast track.
Route: sleeper bus from Da Lat to HCMC, then car to Moc Bai. Or private car direct. Best for people staying in Da Lat who do not want to arrange transport separately.
Route: to Lao Bao via Da Nang. Pickup in Hoi An and surrounding areas. English-speaking guides. Standard and Rush 90 day e-visa processing offered.
If you have never done one, the process sounds more complicated than it is. Six steps, most of them waiting in a van.
That is the whole thing. The only real variable is the border wait, which depends on the day and the gate. Want the deeper version? What is a Vietnam visa run covers the rules and edge cases.
Budgets vary by city and by how many people split the car. The full table is on our visa run costs by city page.
Most visa run services can file a 90 day Vietnam e-visa application for you while you are at the border. The trick is timing: the application has to be submitted after you exit Vietnam, so your passport shows a departure stamp, but before you re-enter. The fixers handle this.
The e-visa comes back in a few working days by email. Standard processing takes 3 to 5 days. Rush processing is faster for an extra fee. Once it lands, you print the PDF or keep it on your phone, and that is your permission to stay for the next 90 days.
Four things moved this year, and each one changes a decision you make before you book: which document gets you back in, how visible your crossing history is, what a late stamp now costs, and what the Cambodian side hands you at the counter.
A 90 day e-visa costs USD 25 for single entry and USD 50 for multiple entry, and neither price has moved. What moved is the list of places that accept it. Resolution 389/NQ-CP, dated 2 December 2025, took the e-visa network from 42 checkpoints to 83: 17 airports, 27 land gates and 39 seaports. Before that, a runner in a smaller city often had no e-visa gate within a day's drive.
The multiple entry version is the one most people skip and should not. It costs USD 25 more than the single entry and saves a second application, which is less than a whole run costs. If you have a trip to Bangkok or a family visit inside your 90 days, it pays for itself before you use it.
Decree 286/2026 replaced Decree 64/2015 on 15 September 2026. The clause that reaches a border gate is Article 7: the foreign ministry's visa system writes to the national immigration database the same day it approves a visa, with a five working day fallback if its own systems cannot upload directly. Article 8(5) runs the other way, with border control data moving between the police and the border command in real time.
So the officer holding your passport can also see the run you did in August. That is not a new ground to refuse you, and a run is still legal. It does mean a pattern is visible rather than guessed at. Four or five land crossings in six months is the shape that draws the follow up question, and the answer that works is a concrete one: where you live, what you do here, when you fly home. Keep the stamps and the receipts for the runs you have already done.
There is no daily overstay rate in Vietnam and there has not been one since Decree 282/2025 came into force on 15 December 2025. The fine is a bracket chosen by how late you are, not by how many days you were late: 500,000 to 2,000,000 VND under 16 days, 5 to 10 million VND from 16 to under 30 days, climbing to 30 to 40 million at a year or more. The deportation column goes from "no" to "possible" at the 16 day line.
This matters to a runner because the arithmetic people do in their head, that a few days late is a few hundred thousand dong, stops being true somewhere around day 16. The same table applies at a land gate and at Tan Son Nhat. The full bracket table is on the overstay page, including what an officer can add on top of the fine.
From 3 October 2026 Cambodia issues visas digitally across every category and no longer affixes the adhesive sticker. Visa on arrival still runs at the counter, so nothing about the queue at Bavet changed. What changed is what you carry away: there is no Cambodian sticker in your passport to point at.
That makes the Vietnamese exit stamp the proof you left. Photograph it at the window with the date legible, before you turn around. The e-visa application built on that run needs the stamp, and a blurred photo taken in a moving van is the most common way a one day run becomes two.
None of this changes the timing problem, which is older than any of the decrees above. Your exit date is the deadline, the run eats a day, and the approval for the visa you come back on has to exist before you cross. Book three days before the stamp runs out rather than the morning of, and check the gate your city actually uses on the checkpoint list instead of assuming it is Moc Bai.
There is no legal limit on land border crossings, so most people run as often as their visa expires. On a 90 day e-visa that means roughly four times a year. Immigration does look at passports with many back-to-back stamps, so most travelers space runs out rather than doing them weekly. Real-time entry-exit data sharing under Decree 286/2026 (from September 15 2026) makes that pattern easier for officers to see, so keeping runs spaced and documented matters more.
Yes, you pay for a visa on arrival at the border. Laos charges about 30 to 40 USD, Cambodia around 1.1M VND. You only need it for the few minutes you are on the other side.
Budget 2.6M to 4M VND per person for a shared van run including the neighbor visa. Private cars run 5M to 7M VND total. Add about 2.4M VND if your service files the 90 day Vietnam e-visa for you.
Yes, the border is open to everyone and the process is the same. The catch is timing: your exit stamp photo has to reach the e-visa system, and the new visa has to come back before you re-enter. A small mistake can turn a day trip into an overnight stay.
Under Decree 282/2025 (in force since December 15 2025), overstays of under 16 days cost 500,000 to 2,000,000 VND, and longer overstays climb through brackets up to 40,000,000 VND with possible deportation or a blacklist. A visa run done before expiry avoids the fines and the risk entirely. More detail in our visa run FAQ hub or the overstay fines guide.
Last updated: 30 October 2026