Vietnam will start health screening for visas starting in July

Business is booming in the tourism sector of Vietnam and for someone like me that lives in a tourist section of the country, you can see that this country wasn't exactly prepared for the massive uptick in tourism that started just post Covid, and has continued to go up ever since.

This city is absolutely swamped with tourists every day of the week and while I am happy that people are making money, it is kind of annoying how everything and anything is completely overrun with tourists day and night.

The government has been mulling over how to handle this, and as far as I know this has never been an issue for Vietnam in the past. This country is quite industrial and provides a lot of goods for a lot of the world. The first thing that comes to mind is the textile industry and how if you are wearing a pair of athletic shoes you can look on the little tag that is on the inside and there is a very good chance that those shoes were made here.

They haven't been overly concerned with entering the tourism game and one of the main reasons was that Malaysia and Thailand had always dominated that part of things and I guess they figured that they would just take the scraps and be happy with that.

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Vietnam doesn't really bother with telling the public why the increase is happening or maybe they don't really know. We that live here attribute it to two major things though and this doesn't necessarily mean that we are correct just because we live here.

1> Thailand lost their number 1 spot for tourism because of increased cost of travel there and also people getting a bit fed up with the ever changing and difficult visa procedures. Also, the country of Thailand has gotten a reputation of being a place where everyone is trying to rip you off all the time when you are a tourist. Vietnam has a reputation of not being those things and the visas are really straight-forward. It's just easier to come here

2> A very large portion of the tourism here is from Russians, who face pressures from some countries and perhaps even some discrimination. Russia and Vietnam have been close allies for a long time and they receive preferential treatment here.

Whatever the reason is, there is no denying that tourism is HUGE here now and a lot of people, including the government, have seen the need to curb the demand a bit and the first of such things has been passed by the government and is being implemented starting on July 1st.

For the first time in a while, people coming to Vietnam will have to do a health declaration 7 days or less prior to arrival and submit it for entry. This is a really easy thing and it is available online. Mostly it is just a questionnaire and I don't really understand the purpose of it. Upon arrival tourists will be subjected to health screening and I've seen this, and it isn't too rigorous. It's simply a body heat cam and if you light that thing up like Predator as you walk past it you will get pulled to the side.

These were in place during Covid and I am yet to speak to anyone that was pulled aside because of it.

There are also certain countries such as African nations that will have to provide proof of vaccinations against something or other.

The strange thing about all of this is that there hasn't been any sort of disease outbreak because of the increased tourism so I don't really see the point of any of this. This has the potential to make Immigration take longer at international airports but Vietnam is normally pretty exacting when it comes to efficiency. I have never had to wait any sort of inordinate amount of time in the dozens of arrivals I have had over the years. If this potential extra wait is something that people would rather avoid there is a VIP track that is available for a very low price of like $20 or something like that.

This step is making waves in the news only because it is the first time that Vietnam has ever had any sort of extra requirement for entry. The concern here is that this country could wind up micro-managing Immigration the way that Thailand has and it could backfire much like it did for them.

For the time being nobody is really complaining because it wouldn't do you any good if you did. I think that something should probably be done to control the influx and am just hopeful that they don't introduce some sort of entry-fee to get into Vietnam the way that so many other countries have.

For now this is still a wonderful place to visit and to live as an expat, but those of us that already live here are a bit worried about it becoming too popular and we have all noticed that the prices keep going steadily up, especially for things like long-term apartments.

What will this measure have as an impact? Probably not a great deal honestly and hopefully it doesn't lead to visa limitations in the future.