An invitation arrives from a university in Vietnam. It may be brief, it may not mention money, and the dates may be vague. The reflex is to decline politely or to leave it in the inbox.
Both are usually the wrong call. These invitations tend to be genuine, and the return on three days is often higher than a conference week — provided a few things are settled before you accept.
Read the invitation for what it does not say
A short or formal-sounding invitation is not a sign of a poorly organised visit. Invitation letters are often drafted in an institutional register and translated, so tone tells you little.
What matters is what is missing. Ask about it plainly — your hosts will not read the questions as reluctance, and in most cases nobody thought to include the answers.
Five questions to ask before accepting
Who will be in the room, and how many? This changes the talk entirely. Doctoral students in your subfield, a mixed faculty audience, and three hundred undergraduates are three different preparations.
What do they want the talk to do? Introduce a field, present recent results, or teach a method. Hosts usually have a specific hope and will tell you if asked.
Which costs are covered? Ask directly about flights, accommodation, local transport and any honorarium. Budgets vary widely and a host with limited funds will often still cover part — but they may hesitate to open the subject.
If funds are tight, consider whether your own institution or funder has a mobility scheme. Many do, and hosts frequently do not know this is possible.
What else is planned beyond the talk? If the answer is only the talk, propose more — see below. Hosts are almost always glad to add sessions.
What paperwork do you need from them, and when? Formal invitation letters, stamped and signed, are sometimes needed both for your own travel approval and for their internal process. Ask early; these documents can take weeks.
Shape the programme yourself
The single highest-value thing you can do is ask for a programme with more than one item. Suggest:
A narrow session with the research group — ten to fifteen people, working discussion rather than presentation. This is where collaborations actually start.
A session with doctoral students alone. Ask for it without faculty present if that can be arranged gracefully. Students ask real questions when their supervisor is not in the room, and this is often the most useful hour of the visit for everyone.
A lab or facility visit. You learn what your potential partner can actually do, which no email exchange establishes.
Unscheduled time with the host. Whether anything follows the visit is usually decided in this time. A programme filled from breakfast to late evening — a common form of hospitality — will crowd it out, so ask for it explicitly.
Practical notes
Timing. Confirm as early as you can; rooms, approvals and student schedules are arranged well ahead. And check the academic calendar with your host — a visit during examination weeks or the Lunar New Year period will draw a thin audience through no fault of anyone.
Language. Ask whether the talk should be in English and whether interpretation is planned. For a mixed audience, slides that carry the argument on their own help considerably, as does speaking in shorter sentences than usual.
A named contact. Ask for one person's mobile number for the whole visit. Often this will be a doctoral student, and the hours spent with them will be among the more informative of the trip.
Honorarium mechanics. If a payment is offered, ask what the institution needs from you and when it will be processed. Payments to foreign visitors can involve tax paperwork that takes months if it starts after you have left.
What your hosts may not tell you
Three things worth knowing, because they affect how you read the visit:
Hosting you may be funded from a small, specific budget that took effort to obtain. Turning the visit into something they can report on — attendance, photographs, a concrete follow-up — genuinely helps them.
Your hosts may be more constrained in time than they appear: teaching loads are often heavy, and administrative duties are substantial. Thin email replies before the visit are rarely a signal of low interest.
And junior researchers in the group may be hesitant to approach you directly. If you want to hear from them, ask the host to arrange it rather than waiting for them to come to you.
Afterwards
Send the concrete next step within two weeks, while it is still easy: co-writing a specific piece, a joint proposal to a named call, or hosting one of their students for a short period.
Say plainly what you can and cannot do. A clear "I cannot take a student this year, but I can co-supervise remotely" is far more useful than an open expression of enthusiasm that quietly expires.
And if the visit produced nothing beyond a good talk, say so kindly and leave the door open. Some of these relationships start on the second contact rather than the first.
Should I accept an invitation that doesn't mention funding?
Ask directly which costs are covered — budgets vary and hosts often hesitate to raise the subject; your own institution may also have a mobility scheme they don't know about.
What should I ask about the audience?
Who will be in the room and how many, and what the hosts want the talk to do — introduce a field, present results, or teach a method.
How do I make the visit lead somewhere?
Ask for more than one item: a narrow session with the research group, a session with doctoral students alone, a facility visit, and explicitly unscheduled time with the host.
What paperwork should I request early?
A formal stamped invitation letter — needed for both your travel approval and their internal process, and it can take weeks to produce.
