The fun and games that is tourist visa application

If you hold a European or American or Singaporean or British or any other ‘useful’ passport (as ranked here), you would very rarely experience the excruciating bureaucracy that is visa application. Being Indonesian, my passport takes me visa free (i.e. visa not required or visa can be obtained on arrival) to 57 countries and territories, which does not sound too bad until you realise that the majority of those countries are in South East Asia (e.g. Singapore and Philippines)… or countries you don’t normally think about visiting as a tourist (e.g. Djibouti and Iran). I have travelled visa free to  the Maldives, Peru and Morocco – but I always bring a print-out that says I can travel visa free with me! And for countries that say I can get visa on arrival (e.g. Tanzania), I still applied for the visa before I left London. I’m definitely not used to traveling without applying for a visa beforehand!

Being so used to applying for visas, I have memorised the required documents by heart. Living and working in London, I’ve applied for Schengen visa the most number of times. So here’s the list + tips and tricks for a Schengen visa application.

1. Visa application form – completed and signed (obviously)
2. Passport + photo copy of the photo page and signature
3. UK residence card + photo copy (front and back)
4. Passport photo (some countries ask for two, some only ask for one)
5. Proof of employment / study
6. Proof of travel (method of transport, e.g. flight booking)
7. Proof of accommodation (booking or invitation letter)
8. Travel insurance (minimum coverage of €30,000 for emergency medical and repatriation expenses)
9. Proof of financial means to cover the cost of the entire holiday (latest three months current account bank statements, reflecting a minimum amount of £50 a day of the holiday)

Tips and tricks:

1. Visa form is 99% free of charge – don’t get fooled!
2. Pay close attention to the requirements and sequence of documents – if you sequence them properly, your submission time can go as low as 2 minutes (yes I’ve experienced this myself)
3. Make sure your passport has at least 2 blank pages and is valid for at least 90 days beyond your return date
4. Make sure your UK residence permit is valid for at least 90 days beyond your return date
5. They always ask for recent passport photo – as long as you’ve not used the photo on any previous visas in your passport, you should be fine
6. Even if you’re staying with friends, I normally book a cancellable hotel as this makes application so much easier. Don’t forget to cancel the booking once you get your visa!
7. If you can collect your passport yourself, do it. This saves you special delivery fee (which costs around £15)
8. Sign up to the SMS service. VFS offers this, and even though it costs an additional £1.95 I think it’s money well spent
9. All documents submitted must be recent – i.e. not older than 1 month of submission date

I was granted a 2-year Schengen visa early this year (from the Dutch embassy), so hopefully the above tips and tricks work for you too. Good luck!