We're flying through SGN in a couple of months, arriving at 12:05 am on ANA, and traveling onward to REP on Angkor Air on a separate ticket at 7 am the same day. (I know that SGN is a terrible airport for transits, but the airfare was so low that we decided it was worth it.) With such a short transit, it seems like a better plan to just stay in the airport (we've had terrible luck with waits in the immigration section of SGN before), and sack out in the sleep pods if possible, or on some chairs if not.
After reading through the forum, and the excellent advice on this thread, I'm thinking of getting VOA invite letters for $6 each (there are 4 of us), but not actually getting the VOAs. My rationale is that:
1) The VOA letters will avoid potential hassle with the airline when we board either our first flight to NRT or our second flight to SGN (one ticket); and
2) If we have some sort of disaster with our connection, we could actually enter Vietnam, rather than being stuck in the airport for a day or more.
Any thoughts on this? I know that we might potentially have to pay $31 total for a visa, rather than $25 for an e-visa, but the expected value of paying $6 pp as "insurance" seems like a better deal to me.