Indochina Loop Visas for Americans: Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos in One Trip

Three separate systems — what each one is

Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos each run their own electronic visa, issued by their own immigration authority, valid only for their own country. There is no reciprocity, no transit arrangement, and no combined product across the three. A Cambodia eVisa gets you into Cambodia and nowhere else; the Vietnam and Laos e-visas do the same for their countries. You hold all three, you present each at the relevant border, and that is the whole arrangement.

The Cambodia eVisa for Americans

The Cambodia Tourist eVisa is $80 USD all-in for US citizens, with the Business eVisa at $90. Both are approved in 3 business days and delivered as a printable PDF by email. The visa is valid for 3 months from issue and allows a 30-day single-entry stay. You apply with a US passport scan, a passport-style digital photo, an email address, and a card. There is no return flight, hotel booking, or bank statement required at the application stage — the Cambodia eVisa is one of the lightest application packs in the region.

The Vietnam and Laos e-visas for Americans

Vietnam issues Americans an e-visa that costs about $25 for single-entry or $50 for multiple-entry, valid for up to 90 days depending on the option you select, and processed in roughly three working days. Laos issues an eVisa that runs about $50 for US citizens, with a visa-on-arrival path at major airports as a fallback at roughly $35 to $40 plus small handling charges. Both ask for the same core inputs — a passport scan, a digital photo, and a card payment — and a planned entry date and intended entry/exit point. Unlike Cambodia, neither Vietnam nor Laos has a separate arrival card to file; once each e-visa PDF is approved, that single document is what their immigration desks check.

The practical upshot: you are running three parallel mini-processes, not one big one. They do not talk to each other, so a delay or a flagged photo on one side has no effect on the others. If you want to compare what each fee in the region actually buys, our Cambodia visa cost vs Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos breakdown puts the regional prices side by side for Americans.

What the loop costs and what you upload

For a standard one-direction loop, the combined visa cost for an American adds up cleanly. A single-entry Vietnam e-visa at $25, a Cambodia Tourist eVisa at $80, and a Laos eVisa at $50 comes to $155 in visa fees for all three countries. Add the $5 verified Cambodia e-Arrival Card and the total reaches $160 for the full circuit, fully covered. If your route re-enters Vietnam at any point — common when you fly home from a Vietnam hub — swap the $25 single-entry Vietnam e-visa for the $50 multiple-entry version, which lifts the visa total to $180 plus the e-Arrival.

These are line items, not deal-breakers. The Cambodia figure is fixed and all-in: it includes the approval delivered as a printable PDF, free resubmission if Immigration flags a correction, and US-timezone support, so there is no second invoice if your photo bounces. Budget all three visas at the start of your planning and the paperwork barely registers against flights and accommodation for a multi-week trip.

The documents all three countries want

The good news for loop travelers is that the upload pack is almost identical across all three. Prepare one set and reuse it: a clear scan or photo of your US passport bio page with all the machine-readable text legible; a recent passport-style digital photo against a plain white background, no glasses, neutral expression; a working email address that accepts PDF attachments; and a card for payment. Cambodia accepts Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

One detail that catches Americans on all three sides: your US passport needs at least 6 months of validity from your date of entry, and every immigration system reads your details from the passport machine-readable zone, so the name on each application has to match your passport exactly — character for character. If you hold a second nationality, decide which passport you are traveling on before you file any of the three visas, and use that same passport for all of them. Our Cambodia eVisa documents guide for Americans walks through the photo and scan specs that cause most avoidable rejections.

The order to apply and when to file

Apply for all three visas on the same day, ideally 10 to 14 days before your first international flight. There is no operational reason to stagger them — the three portals process independently, in parallel, in about three business days each. Filing together also means you have all three approvals in hand well before departure, with buffer to fix a flagged photo on any side without touching your travel dates.

If you want a small sequencing preference, file whichever country you enter first as the priority application, and keep the entry dates on each form aligned with your actual itinerary. The Vietnam and Laos e-visas ask you to nominate an entry and exit point, so have your first airport or land crossing decided for each before you start those forms. The Cambodia eVisa asks for an intended arrival date but does not lock you to it — the visa is valid for 3 months from issue, so a date shift of a few days inside that window is no problem.

Build in a buffer, not a panic

Three business days is the standard approval window for each visa, but "business days" is the operative phrase. A US weekend or a Cambodian, Vietnamese, or Lao public holiday extends the calendar wait, so a Friday-night application does not start moving until the following week. Filing 10 to 14 days out absorbs any of that. Leaving three visas to the last 72 hours is the single most common way loop travelers turn a routine set of applications into a stressful one.

If you are sketching the actual days on the ground, our guide to splitting 30 days across Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos maps a realistic three-country route with the visa checkpoints marked and the stay limits worked out, so you do not overstay any single leg.

Crossing between the three: the land borders that work

Two land borders carry most of the loop traffic between Cambodia and its neighbors. The Vietnam side is Moc Bai (Vietnam) to Bavet (Cambodia) on the Saigon-to-Phnom Penh route — tourist buses run it daily, the trip takes roughly 6 to 7 hours including border processing, and Americans with both visas already approved walk through without issues. The Laos side is Dom Kralor on the Lao side to Trapeang Kreal on the Cambodian side, on the route between southern Laos and Stung Treng, with minibuses and through-buses serving it. Both crossings are open and operating normally in 2026.

The non-negotiable rule across the loop: every visa must already be in hand before you reach the relevant border. Neither Cambodia nor its neighbors issue a casual tourist visa at these land crossings on a reliable, planned basis, so a missing approval means you do not cross. This is exactly why filing all three online, 10 to 14 days out, matters — the land borders are not a fallback for a visa you forgot to apply for.

One regional note that reshapes any overland plan involving Thailand: every Thailand–Cambodia land border has been closed since June 2025, with no scheduled reopening confirmed as of April 2026. The old Bangkok-to-Siem Reap overland hop no longer works. If Thailand is on your wider itinerary, you fly between Thailand and Cambodia rather than driving. The Vietnam–Cambodia and Laos–Cambodia land borders are unaffected by that closure — they remain the reliable overland links for the loop.

If the Laos crossing is your plan, our guide to the Laos-to-Cambodia border at Dom Kralor for US citizens covers the bus routes, what the officers check, and how long each side actually takes. Flying between the loop cities is also straightforward — Saigon to Phnom Penh, Hanoi to Siem Reap, and Vientiane to Phnom Penh are all short, well-served hops.

The single-entry trap on loop trips

This is the part that catches more loop travelers than any document mistake. All three visas default to single entry, and single entry means exactly that — one crossing in, and the visa is spent. The moment you leave the country, that visa is finished, even if you intended to come back the next day.

Picture a common loop: fly into Saigon, bus to Phnom Penh, see Angkor Wat, head up to Laos, then return to Vietnam to fly home from Hanoi. That route enters Vietnam twice — once at the start, once on the return — so a single-entry Vietnam e-visa will not work. You need the $50 multiple-entry Vietnam e-visa for that itinerary. The Cambodia and Laos eVisas are both single-entry by design, so each handles its one leg of the loop perfectly — but if your route re-enters Cambodia or re-enters Laos at any point, that second entry requires a second application for that country.

The rule of thumb: count the number of times you cross into each country, and buy an entry for each. One entry into a country, single-entry visa. Two or more entries, multiple-entry where the country offers it (Vietnam), or a fresh application each time where it does not (Cambodia and Laos). Map your border crossings before you file, not after you have already paid for the wrong entry type.

Re-entering Cambodia after a side trip into Vietnam or Laos is common enough that we wrote it up in full: our guide on re-entering Cambodia after Vietnam or Laos for Americans walks through exactly when you need a second eVisa and how to time the fresh application so it does not stall your loop.

The Cambodia e-Arrival step and putting it together

One last piece that neither Vietnam nor Laos has an equivalent for: the Cambodia e-Arrival Card. Every air arrival into Cambodia must file it — 14 fields covering your passport, flight number, arrival date, accommodation, and a short customs declaration. It is separate from the eVisa, mandatory, and submitted within 7 days before your flight into Cambodia. Our verified e-Arrival is $5 USD, checked end-to-end before it reaches Cambodian Immigration. A single date-format slip on the Card is one of the most common reasons travelers get bounced back at the kiosk, so it is worth getting right.

If you fly into Cambodia, you file the e-Arrival Card. If you cross into Cambodia by land at Bavet from Vietnam or at Trapeang Kreal from Laos, the e-Arrival requirement does not apply the same way — it is the air-arrival step — but your eVisa still has to be approved and in hand. Vietnam and Laos ask for nothing equivalent on either side; each e-visa PDF is the whole document set at its own immigration desk.

So the full loop, start to finish: three separate visas, filed online on the same day 10 to 14 days out; one Vietnam e-visa (single or multiple entry depending on your route), one Cambodia eVisa, and one Laos eVisa; the Cambodia e-Arrival Card if you fly into Cambodia; and every approval in hand before you reach any border. When you are ready, you can apply for your Cambodia eVisa now, and keep our Cambodia visa for US citizens hub bookmarked as the single reference for every Cambodia rule, fee, and document.