u/sap303

Paid for vip immigration fast track ta Than Son Nhat and here's my recent experience.

Arrived and had to search through hoardes of people to find a guy with a placard featuring a generic travel company who was also surrounded by dozens of other customers. Silly me thought vip fast track would mean sonebody would be clearly seen waiting to meet me with my name lol.

Anyway after they found my name on the long list they had, I was the lead into the fast track section.

Great, I thought. Wait... Where's the fast track? There were literally hundreds of people queuing. Each separate line at least 30 people in front. It looked worse than an immigration line in any country I've been outside Vietnam.

Needless to say, the "non fast track" line was absolutely horrific too. Goes without saying.

All in all, I was 35-40 minutes queuing as a 'fast track'. Other people who were on my flight and in normal lane were out after me of course, but not my *that* much.

I reckon I saved maybe 20-30 minutes in line. But I mean you're going to be waiting anyway on your bag and your grab car. I think it's really not worth the money at all.

The bottom line is that here are simply WAY too many people applying for fast track. Nowadays seemingly everybody is doing it. The fast track was packed and wasn't that much shorter than the regular queue especially when you account for the regular queue having more counters open.

Saigon Airport now has a problem of its own making: Make the queues so shit that everybody pays for fast track, which then becomes shit because everyone is doing it, then nobody want to pay for it because it's basically a waste of money and doesn't make sense anymore.

Tldr: Far too many people doing it, which negates the benefit. $20-30 to 'save' yourself maybe 30 mins standing (which you'd be doing anyway after you get out.) If you've money to burn and want a minor benefit and to perpetuate a shakedown racket, go ahead I guess.

Not really worth it in my experience.

Yeah I know fuel gone up recently, but this is just a bad deal now compared to other airlines. (It was already veering that way before the fuel hike).

I was looking at flights form HK to even short haul destinations, eg thailand/Vietnam. And it's almost $800 in taxes and surcharges. That's in additon to using 9000 miles (ard. 900 dollar value).

If I compare to other airlines, I can get a flight for cheaper with a normal ticket, even including luggage.

Using air miles just doesnt make sense anymore.

Seriously, the recent da nang immigration experience was as bad as saigon.

Long, snaking line that almost reached out the door.

People skipping.

Only 3 counters operating.

Zero queue management or enforcement.

Priority and diplomatic queues open and empty, then a plane load of Chinese arrive and immediately enter these, bypassing the long line (and I highly doubt there's hundreds of "diplomats" among them).

Zero enforcement. Officers don't give a shit that they're not in the right passport lane and have skipped the line.

Then after a long while I see another immigration officer approaching the counters. Finally, a new counter will open and the congestion will be relieved. And where does he go? To another unopened "diplomatic" lane. Where the 20 or so remaining Chinese rush into, to make their existing queue even shorter.

Meanwhile those of us standing in the normal lanes hundreds of people long, just look on in disbelief.

Then when the officer is done with serving the fake "priority" lane, he just leaves and ignores the massive line. Open another counter? Nah.

Seriously such a mess and bad impression. Even worse than saigon. At least there's a degree of queue management and enforcement.

The set up at da nang just incentivizes rule breaking and shitty behavior. Overall was there an hour. I guess they'll be ramping up the shittiness in future with the goal of matching saigon, to incentivizes payment for fast track.

Oh and you know when you get off the plane and into the bus. Immediately after the bus door opened, a bunch of white people (I guess long term "expats" or whatever) literally sprinted out the door and pushed past people. I've never seen that behavior before anywhere. Obviously there is a reputation that the queues are horrendous.

Typing this as I entered Singapore in under 30 seconds using an auto gate.