Just saw your cruise question. Not a lot of info/data about cruises, in my experience. I had thought there were some special regs for cruise passengers, like visa waiver on their stops or something, but I could be very wrong on that. Seems like VOA would be the safest option for the first scenario, but if trying to get a VOA on arrival from a ship, would be something I've not heard of. I thought VOA was just in the airports, not at the land or sea border points.