Visa for Burma

[jasperuk]

Planning on going to the gay festival in August, anyone been to Burma recently and have first hand experience of the new "Visa on arrival" process?..dont really want to spend 2 days getting the visa from the embassy if I can get it at Yangon airport.
Thanks

[yaraboy]

no direct experience but VISA now available as per numerous other Forums. I am going back in Nov and plan to get VOA

[pong]

not fro myself-from the travellers-forum I most trust-Lonelyplanet. Should be possible now-the hurdle that airlines dont know of it and hence refuse boarding seems to have met by now. It does cost a lot more as the pre-arranged visa(which you can easily have done for you by an agent-no need to get up that early and stand ''in line''). There is another exit/airprottax-cash US$10-on leaving.
There is 1 requirement: you must be able to show 300US$ in cash-this needs not to be changed, but it is needed anyway to have cash US with you-payments for trains, HTLs, entries etc. from whitenoses are dont in $$. And you should be able to show some confirmed HTL or address-try to get some online booking. This does not appear to, or is not reported to, uniformly asked for/applied. But this is Burma/MYanmar: anything goes like in the 50ies, haphazard, inconsistent and surely something goes broke or wrong on the way. Happy travels!

[billyhouston]

Beware, they are supposedly going to stop providing Visa on Arrival from 1 Septemberto enable an evaluation the programme.

I'm sure it has nothing whatsoever to do with their desire to keep 'undesirables' out of the country during the, so called, election slated for 7 November.

[jasperuk]

Just to finalise my original question...just back from Burma, the Visa on Arrival was in place, no problems, quick easy completion....$20 -$30 fee plus 2 photos and 5 minutes later out into Yangon. Return $10 departure fee (all new notes)

[nanette]

I just got back from a week's trip to Myanmar, 11-18 Sept. People without visa were being turned away.
Effective 1st Sept 2010 Myanmar immigration has withdrawn the Visa on Arrival facility.
Please read AirAsia.com travel advisory.
Apparently the country is having a general election in November, and the govt. does not want too many curious foreigners in the country before that.
Businesses related to tourism were complaining about the reduced number of tourists, and were quite desperate for customers. Now is the buyers' market.
The exchange rate is around 950kyat to 1USD & getting lower. Used to be more than 1000kyat to the USD.
Myanmar is a beautiful country with friendly people. I had a good experience on my first visit & shall return. :happy7:

[pong]

Birma/Myanmar has never really been a sellers market. About any of the numerous reports Ive seen the last 3-4 years have been lauding the lack of tourists. MOre informed travel-fora predict that even pre-arranged visa will be getting more difficult to get and maybe even impossibkle for the time around those elections-to prevent sneaky journalists coming in.
OTOH AirAsia has doubled its flight from BKK and also added flights from KUL-so that may mean roughly more as 100 new tourists/day extra. And those frequent visitors complained that their well-known hotels have upped prices-which mya indicate that tourism is up.