NA5 Form Vietnam: Entry and Exit Form, How to Fill It In

What Is the NA5 Form?

The NA5 form is the Vietnamese entry and exit declaration, the paper card every visa on arrival traveler fills in before landing. Its official name is the Declaration of Entry and Exit, and in Vietnamese it is called Tờ khai nhập cảnh, xuất cảnh. You will hear people call it the immigration card, the entry form, or just "that white form the crew hands out." It is all the same thing.

The form asks for your personal details, your passport information, and the basics of your trip: flight number, dates, where you are staying. It exists so immigration can record who enters the country and why. Vietnam has used some version of it for decades, and the current NA5 is bilingual, Vietnamese on one side, English on the other.

Here is the part that confuses people: the NA5 form is not a visa. It does not grant entry, it does not replace an approval letter, and it costs nothing. It is paperwork that supports your entry. Your actual permission to enter comes from whatever visa you hold: an approval letter for visa on arrival, an e-visa, or an exemption.

So when do you actually touch one? Almost always on a plane. The cabin crew passes them out during the flight, and plenty of travelers fill theirs in somewhere over the sea. If your carrier does not carry them, or you land at a smaller airport, blank forms sit on a table near the visa on arrival counter. You fill it in, hand it over with your passport, and that is the whole interaction.

One more thing worth knowing up front: if you are arriving with an e-visa, you can skip this form entirely. E-visa holders go straight to the immigration line with their printed e-visa. The NA5 form is a visa on arrival thing, which is why it is so tightly tied to the approval letter process. More on that next.

Who Has to Fill Out the NA5 Form

The short answer: travelers using visa on arrival. If you land with an approval letter and plan to get your visa stamped at the airport, you fill in an NA5 form. It is one of the four things the officer expects at the counter, along with your passport, the printed approval letter, and two passport photos.

E-visa holders do not use the form. When you arrive with an e-visa, you present the printed e-visa at immigration and go through the normal line. No NA5, no extra counter. The e-visa itself contains all the information the form would collect. This catches some people off guard, because they see other passengers filling in cards and assume they missed a step. If you hold a valid e-visa, you did not miss anything.

Visa-exempt travelers do not fill it in either. Citizens of the visa exemption countries walk straight to the passport control desks. Same for anyone holding a temporary residence card or a 5-year visa exemption certificate: no NA5 needed.

What about land borders? If you cross into Vietnam from Cambodia or Laos by road, the NA5 form does not apply. Border crossings use their own procedures, and officers there will tell you what they want on paper. That is also why the form is so closely tied to airports and to visa on arrival specifically.

And children? Every traveler fills in their own form, including infants. A baby gets their own NA5, with their own passport details, signed by a parent. The officer needs one form per person, not one per family.

Where to Get the NA5 Form

You have three ways to get your hands on an NA5 form, and they are not equal.

On the plane. This is the standard route. The cabin crew walks the aisle with a stack of them before descent, usually after the meal service. If you miss the pass, ask a crew member; they almost always have more in the galley. Fill it in during the flight and you skip the crowded table at the terminal entirely. This is the move that saves you ten minutes at the busiest hour of your trip.

At the airport. Blank forms are available at the visa on arrival area in every international airport in Vietnam. Look for a table with stacks of forms and pens near the VOA counter, usually before the immigration rows. Tan Son Nhat in Ho Chi Minh City and Noi Bai in Hanoi have the biggest tables because they see the most VOA traffic. At smaller airports like Cam Ranh or Phu Quoc the forms are still there, just quieter. The downside: you fill it in standing up, often elbow to elbow with people from your own flight.

Print it in advance. You can fill in a blank copy before you leave home and carry it with you. A printed, pre-filled NA5 is accepted without drama, and it is the fastest option at the counter: walk up, hand everything over, done. One warning: the form layout does change occasionally, so if you print one weeks ahead from some random website, glance at it again before you fly. An out of date version is still readable, but why risk it.

When you book an approval letter through NamVisa, just ask and we will email a current blank NA5 copy along with your letter, so you can fill it in before you leave for the airport. It is a small thing that removes the last piece of airport scrambling.

Field by Field: How to Fill It In

The NA5 form looks busier than it is. Most fields are copy work from your passport. Write in block capitals, use a pen, and follow this order.

Personal details. Full name exactly as printed in your passport, family name first if that is how the passport shows it. Do not anglicize, do not swap the order. Date of birth in DD/MM/YYYY format, so 14 March 1990 becomes 14/03/1990. Gender, nationality: the country that issued your passport, not your ethnicity.

Passport fields. Passport number, passport type (ordinary passports are type P), date of issue, date of expiry, place of issue. All of this sits on the photo page of your passport. Copy it exactly, one character at a time. A transposed digit in the passport number is the single most common error on this form, and it is the one that gets you pulled aside.

Visa fields. Here is where most people freeze. The form asks for visa number, visa type, and visa issue date. If you are arriving on visa on arrival, you do not have a visa yet. Your visa is stamped at the counter after the officer checks your approval letter. So leave the visa number field blank and let the officer complete it. Writing something random is worse than writing nothing. If the letter itself carries a reference number, you can note that, but blank is correct and expected.

Flight and trip details. Flight number, the date you land, the date you plan to leave if you know it, and your port of entry, which is the airport you are landing at. Purpose of visit: tourism, business, or visiting relatives. Keep it to one word where possible.

Address in Vietnam. The hotel or the address where you will stay, including district and city. If you are staying with friends, their address works. Immigration does not verify it, but it should be real, because a made up address is a bad start to a trip.

Signature. Sign at the bottom, in ink, the way you sign your passport. An unsigned form gets sent back to you at the counter, which means re-queueing.

Common Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

After years of watching travelers fill these out, the same errors come up again and again. All of them are avoidable in under a minute.

Writing in pencil. The form must be filled in ink. Officers will hand a pencil form back, and you will be re-writing it at the counter while your flight-mates walk through. Blue or black pen, nothing else.

Wrong passport number. Usually a transposed digit or a misread letter, like 0 for O. Compare what you wrote against the passport photo page twice. This error is the one most likely to slow you down at the counter, because the officer has to reconcile the form with your passport and your approval letter.

Name mismatch. Your name on the form must match your passport exactly. If your passport shows a middle name, include it. Do not use the name on your boarding pass, which airlines sometimes shorten, and do not use your nickname.

Panicking over the visa number field. You do not have a visa number yet on visa on arrival. The field gets filled by the officer after stamping. Leaving it blank is correct. Do not invent a number, and do not copy the agency reference off the letter unless you are sure that is what it is for.

Wrong date format. Vietnam uses DD/MM/YYYY. Writing 03/14/1990 instead of 14/03/1990 flips your birth date and your entry date into the wrong month. If the form shows a printed format, follow it.

Skipping the signature. It is the last field and the easiest to miss. An unsigned form bounces back at the counter, and the queue does not wait.

Filling one form per family. Every person needs their own form, including children and infants. Parents sign for young children. One form per family saves nothing and guarantees a delay.

At the Counter: What Happens Next

The NA5 form is not the end of the process, it is the start of the final step. Here is the full sequence at the visa on arrival counter, so nothing surprises you.

Find the VOA counter. After you deplane, follow the signs. At every international airport in Vietnam there is a desk marked Visa on Arrival or Landing Visa before the main immigration rows. At Tan Son Nhat and Noi Bai it is clearly signed. At smaller airports it is a quieter desk, but it is always there for arriving flights.

Hand over the stack. Passport, printed approval letter, completed NA5 form, two passport photos. The photos are 4x6 cm on a white background. If yours are wrong, most airports have a photo booth nearby, at $5 to $10.

Pay the stamping fee. Cash only, USD or VND. Single entry is $25, multiple entry is $50. Bring small bills, because change is not guaranteed and nobody wants to break a $100 note for a $25 fee. This fee is separate from whatever you paid for the approval letter, and it goes to the government, not the agency.

Wait for the stamp. The officer checks your letter against the immigration database, completes the visa fields on your form, stamps the visa into your passport, and hands everything back. From counter to passport in hand, budget 15 to 30 minutes in a normal line. During peak hours, when several international flights land together, it can stretch to an hour.

Then join the main line. The VOA stamp is your visa. You still go through regular passport control like everyone else, get your entry stamp, and you are officially in Vietnam.

The whole point of filling the NA5 form well is that it keeps the counter interaction to seconds. Complete form, correct details, cash ready: you are through. A sloppy form turns a two-minute transaction into a fifteen-minute discussion.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I download the NA5 form?

There is no official download page for the paper form. It is distributed on flights and at the visa on arrival counters in every international airport in Vietnam. If you want to fill one in before you leave home, get a blank copy from your visa agency. NamVisa emails a current blank NA5 with every approval letter on request, so you can complete it at your kitchen table instead of at an airport counter.

Do e-visa holders need to fill in the NA5 form?

No. Arrive with your printed e-visa and go straight through immigration. The NA5 form is only for visa on arrival travelers.

What happens if I make a mistake on the form?

On the plane, ask the crew for a fresh copy; they always have more. At the airport, take another blank from the table. If you only notice the error at the counter, a neat single line through the mistake with your correction beside it is usually accepted, but a clean form is the safer play.

Can children travel on a parent's form?

No. Every traveler, including infants, needs their own NA5 form with their own passport details. A parent signs for a young child.

Is there an online version of the NA5 form?

Not for entry into Vietnam. The online portal is for e-visa applications, which is a separate process that produces its own PDF. If you hold an e-visa, you do not need an NA5 at all.

The Short Version

The NA5 form is a one-page entry and exit declaration for visa on arrival travelers, handed out on planes and available at every airport's VOA counter. Fill it in block capitals, in ink, copying your details straight from your passport. Leave the visa number blank; the officer completes it after stamping. One form per person, signed at the bottom. Hand it over with your passport, your printed approval letter, two 4x6 cm photos, and the $25 or $50 cash stamping fee, and you are through in minutes.

If you are still in the earlier stages, our step by step guide to Vietnam visa on arrival 2026 covers the approval letter and the whole landing process, and the e-visa guide is the better read if you can skip the counter entirely.

When the form is the least of your worries, that is what we are here for. NamVisa has issued approval letters since 2016, our team is on the ground in Vietnam, and urgent letters come back in hours, not days. Send us your passport details and travel dates and we will tell you what is possible, standard or same day, and email your letter, with a blank NA5 if you want one, before your flight.

Already in Vietnam and thinking about the next trip, or the current one? A visa run through SaigonVisaRun handles border crossings from the south, and overseas Vietnamese or their spouses can look at the 5-year visa exemption instead of repeating airport procedures. Both are part of the same Vietnam visa network we run.