If you plan to go abroad for dental care, make sure you’ve taken care of things like passports and visas.
Depending on where you’re from and where you’re going, you may need either, or both.
If you’re European and headed for another EU country, you’ll be fine with a national ID card (or passport) and you won’t need a visa at all.
If you’re a US or Canadian citizen, you won’t need visas for Europe either.
If you’re headed to Thailand, most of you won’t need visas either but – if you’re going to less frequented countries like China, you’ll definitely need a visa, wherever you might be from.
Visas come in every color and shape
But first things first.
Getting Your Passports
Citizens of large countries often don’t have passports until they’re significantly older because there’s so much to see in their own countries that they don’t need to travel abroad to ‘see the world’. This is often the case in the USA, for example, where fewer than 40% of citizens have passports. It is less so in Australia and New Zealand, where young people have a tradition of travel after school and so often go abroad in their twenties – with passport.
Wherever you’re from, getting your first passport will usually entail a number of steps that are the same anywhere.
Getting the Form
Each country does it differently. These resources will help you locate the passport office if you’re a citizen of one of the following countries:
United States
Canada
Australia
New Zealand
United Kingdom
After the form
If you look at the form carefully, you’ll notice you need to do several things:
1) get some photos: these are very specific, of a certain size, and in some countries there are even further specifics, like not smiling for example
2) pay: make sure you make the proper payment to make sure you don’t waste time; if your application doesn’t have all the bits and pieces it requires, it may be returned to you
And now, the visa
In case you’ve never had one of these, a visa is usually a stamp in your passport that allows you to travel to a certain country. They can be free or extremely expensive: it depends on where you’re from, and where you’re going.
Getting a visa isn’t unlike getting a passport: it usually involves filling in a form, providing photos, and paying some money. Each country is different. You can either use a professional service like Visa HQ (they’ll handle the entire process for you) or you can search individually by country, for example with the terms Visa + name of country. It’s more time-consuming but of course it’s free.
Once you have your passport and visa, you’re all set in terms of paperwork.
Your next step will be to find some good travel bargains or a specialized dental travel agency that will get you where you want to go! Dental Implants