If you want to feel special when you come to Danang, book the $15 airport experience

Recently I have been talking to some of the Koreans that I hang out with and they live and work here in a sort of strange, everyone knows they are working illegally but nobody ever does anything about it sort of way.

I know dozens of these people and they are never afraid of getting "busted" and says it never happens. Perhaps I will talk about that in greater detail later but that is not what this post is about.

I was talking to one of them about how I had recently gone on a visa trip and when I arrived back in Da Nang the line at immigration services was so long that they had to put officers at the top of the escalators that lead to that area because there was no longer any more room for people to stand.

Let's just say that I was standing, and barely moving as I waited for my chance to go though for several hours. Then the Korean friend told me that for a little bit of money, you can purchase the "fast lane" for immigration in Da Nang but you have to book it, you can't just turn up and decide you want it because the line is long.

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I've never seen this sign so I kind of suspect that it was superimposed on it by whoever made that picture. I can't say for certain but I don't think that the fast-track is actually a part of legitimate services that are officially offered by Vietnam Immigration and it appears as though it is just a way that the officials make some money on the side.

For whatever reason that it exists though, for me it is really worth it after standing in a long line with no way out for more than 2 hours.

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For whatever reason, there always seems to be enough officials on hand at departures but at arrivals they don't really seem to have the same level of ability to process people coming and going.

Traveling in an airport is stressful enough, but to then be faced with a huge line at something you MUST go through at the very end is just kind of heartbreaking. You thought your trip was almost over, you can see the finish-line, but now you have to stand for a long period of time when all you want to do is get the heck out of there.

Well, now you can do that and there seems to be a lot of tour agencies that are selling it as well

I'm not sure about the legality of it but well, in that particular part of the airport, the country, and the world for that matter, the immigration officials are the only authority so if they want to sell this, who is going to stop them? I may as well benefit from corruption if it is going to exist.

Some might say that by paying the price we are only encouraging them to have long lines on purpose and you might be right, but go ahead and try to start an uprising in an immigration terminal, see what happens to you.

For me, this is worth the extra little bit of money because I consider my time to be valuable.
When you get the VIP service they have a guy standing there with your name on it next to other people's names. You go up, show that guy your passport and off you go to a private line that has zero people in it.

I will definitely pay for that and if you want to as well, simply search for "VIP immigration Danang" or "Fast track immigration DaNang" and you'll find a lot of options for making this happen.

According to my Korean friend you can also have $20 hanging out of the top of your passport and just ask a guy in a uniform which line you are supposed to go to and will be taken there as well but I don't think I have the balls to so brazenly bribe an official.