Expat

A real one. When you first land at the airport and get a SIM card, they will sometimes try to pass off a pre-activated SIM that was registered under someone else's name. Or it might be a data-only package. Or a short-duration plan that will expire. None of those are a long-term solution.

The best plan is to go to the name-brand kiosks at the airport - Viettel, VinaPhone, or MobiFone - and they should set you up properly. They are usually past immigration. They will need your passport, and they will take a picture of your face for verification. Fun fact: the facial verification system doesn't cope well with beards. I have a beard. It couldn't see my mouth, apparently. Took a few tries.

Once you have a properly registered number, you can get set up on Zalo and Shopee.

This is not insurance advice. These are rough guidelines only.

There are basically two places to get your insurance - from a Vietnamese insurance company like Bao Viet or an international one like SafetyWing.

And there are three kinds. In-hospital only, full coverage, and evacuation coverage.

Your first choice is: do you want a local Vietnamese company or an international oneƒ. The Vietnamese one will offer much lower coverage, but also much lower cost. You will also be dealing with a different health philosophy than you might be familiar with in your home country. There might be surprise exclusions on the policy that you would not be expecting.

The international companies cost a lot more, but likely offer more coverage at higher limits, and more portable coverage if you decide you want to move to, for example, Thailand.

Side note: look for a policy that is "pay first". The hospital recovers directly from the insurance company. The other way: you pay the hospital and then get money back from the insurance company. Which is less good.

The next choice: do you want hospital-only or full coverage. The full coverage option would include things like skin conditions that need a prescription, or maybe help with a sprained ankle. Whereas hospital-only kicks in if you are seriously injured or sick enough that you need to go to the hospital overnight. Hospital-only is cheaper. Also keep in mind that doctors are inexpensive here. I paid $25 USD to see a doctor at a major hospital down the street. I got an MRI and it cost me under $100 USD. (And then I got it right away - no waiting at all.)

Evacuation insurance is the last bit: do you want to pay money to get yourself shipped to a country with better care? Or even back home? I found it wasn't cheap. I think it made more sense in 1997, but Vietnamese health care, especially in the private hospital system, which I recommend, is top notch.

Again, this is not advice. I suggest contacting an insurance professional or the insurance companies themselves. 

No, it's not worth it, but it is awesome.

What is it? When you land in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh, someone will meet you before Immigration and walk you over to a very short Priority Immigration line where you are processed through in very short order.

I used it yesterday coming in from Thailand. I skipped a line of maybe a dozen people. I was off the plane at 2pm and was waiting for my Grab ten minutes later. I used in once coming in from Bali. That one was closer to an hour saved.

It costs me $20 USD. But you need a visa guy (this is Vietnam - you always need a guy). You arrange a few days ahead. You send them the money on PayPal, and they need your flight number and time of arrival. Someone will wait for you with a sign with your name on it. It's very slick. Strong recommend for your parents when they come to visit. There's even a VIP version where they stay with you right up until you get your bags, apparently.

Not really but it's a gray area.

If you are doing some overseas work, it's probably okay. Especially something trivial like answering work emails for you job back in Toronto. If you are here on a tourist visa doing visa runs while putting in eight hours for your company back home, you are edging towards something a that might get sticky, but it's unlikely that you get audited.

If you are taking on Vietnamese clients or even working directly for a Vietnamese firm, you need a real work visa.

But it's the taxes that get you. You can be considered a Vietnamese tax resident by signing a lease on an apartment (or living here for 183 days or more per year). They can technically tax the money you earn back home, and while there are double-taxation rules in effect, they are not automatic.

And Vietnam is likely going to get more aggressive. The tourist visa runs are already getting tighter, and they may start cracking down on expats working here.

Yes, but it's harder than it looks. I needed a work permit, and they had to take biometric information (just a picture, but still). Also bring your passport when you apply. And they wouldn't let me put money in the account. I couldn't withdraw money from an ATM from my Canadian bank and then deposit it in my Vietnamese account. The money had to come either from my employer or a wire service like Wise.

If you are on a tourist visa, you will have to check around. The rules are in flux, so what is true this week may not be true the next. I would suggest starting with HSBC.

The real benefit of a Vietnamese bank account (apart from if you are getting paid by a Vietnamese company) is you get access to paying with a QR code. That's the most common way to pay. If you don't have that, you are stuck with mostly cash (credit cards are not as common here as in the West). I suggest carrying a lot of denominations, because even cash can be a problem if you don't have exact change. 

Vietnam is the ultimate "I got a guy" culture. It runs on individual relationships. For instance, I got a guy who gets me my electronics. He works at Hacom Computers, but I have his direct contact info on Zalo (which is Vietnamese WhatsApp). When my Mac Mini died, I texted him, he gave me options, I agreed to a price, and it was delivered on a scooter three hours later. Paid by QR code on delivery. Very smooth.

Even my doctor at Vinmec Smart City, which is a new posh hospital, gave me his direct Zalo contact info. So I don't call the switchboard if my pneumonia comes back. I just message him.

You collect "guys" and they all make your life easier. That's how I met Allison. She is my translator guy.

I have a visa guy. A computer guy. A translator. An insurance guy. The Shopee delivery guy downstairs knows me. I will contact my guys and see if they are taking on new people. I will add a section to the website if I can find enough of them.

You can certainly jump on Facebook (which is what they use here for apartment rentals) and start making appointments with individual listings. I had terrible luck with that. The language barrier is high, and you might find that a lot of landlords won't rent to foreigners.

I did better with an English speaking rental agent. If I am you, I am jumping on AI or Reddit and asking for reputable agents. The list does change. The top three right now are probably Vietnam Home, Hanoi Real Estate and Alpha Housing.

The real trick is clarity. When you go to the agent, have an idea of what neighborhood you want, your budget, your move-in date, and whether you have pets. Throw that information into an email when you approach them. I found that I had to send out five or six emails before I got an agent who wanted to help.

Credit cards work but not everywhere accepts them. And your bank will almost certainly give you grief over them being used in Asia too much. At least that was my experience with Canadian cards. A card would stop working and I would have to call the bank. And at least one bank won't reactivate until I physically return to Canada.

The ATMs work here with fees. Not extortionate but not free. They do cap you on how much you can take out. I get capped at 3,000,000 VND, which is $150 CAD.

The real answer is Wise. Once you get a bank account (which can be its own little drama - and you need a one-year work permit to get it), you can move money using Wise or similar services. Not free but certainly cheaper than getting money from the ATM. 

Most places you rent, they won't be shy about telling you where you can get your internet from. I had a card pushed under my door before I even moved in. Typically the newer buildings will have one provider (and the quality and price are absurd. I get 500 Mbps and 1 ms ping, and I pay under $12 USD).

If it is not clear who services your house, check with the landlord. If they don't know, the three big carriers are Viettel, VNPT, and FPT Telecom. I do suggest physically going to their store with Google Translate in hand. It's usually easier this way than to try to find an English speaker you can understand on the phone. Also take your full legal address and passport when you go.

Payment might be a bit tricky since you likely won't have QR set up yet. Credit card and cash might be your best options.

I don't skimp on air conditioning. I keep my room at 23 C (73 F) and the main apartment I keep around 26 C (79 F). I live in a new concrete building with modern AC units. It's a two-bedroom apartment. I don't get direct sun, and I keep the curtains drawn all day. And to the astonishment of my neighbors, I keep the AC on for the whole apartment, even during the day, and not just at night like normal people here. All of these are factors, so my number won't be that helpful.

That said: my bill goes up about $75 USD per month when the heat hits in May. And it stays hot here until October. And oddly, you will need heat in Hanoi for a few weeks around December and January. Not a ton, but I definitely used it last winter. 

I can give you the Hanoi numbers. All prices in USD.

You can get a small studio in a newly built building like Vinhomes Smart City for $400 including the building fee. A two-bedroom in the same building is $575. And this is a new, posh development in the Hanoi suburbs. You can find cheaper, but my feeling is that culture shock is enormous. Living in one of the expat-friendly developments at least for the first year is a good idea.

Electricity if you are running your AC a lot - which you will want to do - is close on $100 a month.

My mobile phone plan is $7 per month for 6GB a day in data and some voice calls.

Internet is $9 and I get a ping of 2 ms and 500 Mbps.

Health insurance for a Bao Viet plan costs me $900 per year, but that can go much lower or higher depending on your coverage levels. And I don't carry Evacuation Insurance, which some people insist on. That goes for $1,500 or more. Medical care in general is good and cheap. I can go to a doctor at a major private hospital and the consult fee is $15 to $30.

My gym is about $25 per month for a very good mainstream gym.

Food is the X factor. If you can eat like a Vietnamese, you can keep it under $8 per day, and that's with eating two restaurant meals. The second you start buying imported Western food, you are basically paying the same prices as home. A brick of imported Australian cheese is $5. A box of cereal is $4. KFC is about $4 a meal. But if you are even sort of careful, you can figure about $20 on the high side.

Transportation can be inexpensive but it's not a place where I would skimp. The bus system is okay and cheap, but when you first land, you will be relying on Grab, which is the local Uber. Grab starts around $2 per trip, and I rarely see it going over $7. Although the trip from the airport is $20.

If you pay for laundry (like if you don't have a machine), you are looking at $2 a load.

I have one, but I screwed up some paperwork on one of my visa runs, and had to spend ten days in Bangkok waiting on a visa renewal. There are worse punishments in the world.

I pay $85 USD, which includes the $25 USD single entry visa fee. So it's not free. And all you are buying is a guy in the country who can pick up the phone and make a call for you. But it saved my bacon once, so I am very happy to pay the extra.

They are also the ones to call if your e-visa hasn't come through and your flight is leaving the next day. Or if you forgot to get a visa.

So. Most people don't need one. But if you can get the number of a trustworthy one (and some of them aren't), I would have it on my phone.

Grab is the Uber for South East Asia. I strongly recommend you get good at using it. Although its competitors can be cheaper, like Xanh SM which is all electric, or Be which is the cheaper and smaller outfit - but it's a little less outsider friendly.

I suggest putting a credit card into Grab. It auto-charges your card and makes the end of the trip dead easy, which can be useful when you are getting out of the car somewhere crazy busy. The main issue with paying in cash is that the drivers may not be able to change your bigger bills. No one has change for a 500k VND note. Which is what the ATM will give you.

There is a decent bussing system, and it's cheap. The big drawback is the weather. When you land here, unless you are in the dead of winter, it will be hotter than the surface of the sun. You will be struggling to adapt. I would suggest budgeting for Grab for the first six months.

Important side note: double all suggested Google trip lengths. If Google says the school you teach at is 30 minutes away, it will take 60 minutes to get there. Google just likes to mess with you in Asia.

It's trickier than it should be.

If you want to teach in Vietnam, you need at least two documents "legalized" - your degree and your TESOL/ CELTA document. This is not notarization. This is not the Apostille process (but it may change soon - Vietnam might start accepting this in September 2026). This is a separate process.

To start: you need an original document. Then you need it authenticated by your province - and every province has a slightly different process (and God help you if you are not in the province where you got the cert - my TESOL was out of Ontario and I was in BC). And then you need to take the authenticated original down to the Vietnamese embassy. There is one embassy in Vancouver and one in Ottawa. Or you mail it in. They legalize it by putting a big sticker on the back of the doc.

It's an annoying and unreliable process. I would suggest your timeline to get this done is two months. Do not try to get it done in a week. You can however get it done in Hanoi. It's just a more cumbersome process, if you can believe it.

First, as an expat, you don't have a strong hand here. It's going to be a gamble wherever you go. Look for someone operating on the up and up. I have found that Vietnamese are honest and easy to do business with, but that is not everyone's experience.

Second, the payment structure was not what I was used to. I paid for the first three months plus a damage deposit before I could move in. And I pay for three months' rent at at time, not monthly. The landlord can raise the rent as much as they want when the lease renews. And there was a building fee that I was responsible for over and above the rental amount (which covered water and electricity, but also paid for building maintenance. My rent is $494 USD and the fee was another $100 USD. So not nothing.

Third, the landlord has to report you to the government (and any overnight guests, believe it or not - so if you pick up at the bar and they stay over, you are supposed to tell your landlord, who relays that to the police station - Vietnam has some weird rules). So confirm that your landlord understands the reporting and that they plan to do it. If the landlord is not reporting the rental income, they may not want to do this. Which is a big fine for them and could be a big hassle for you (when you leave, they may not have a record of where you stayed - which could trip you up when you leave the country.)

Four options. The first and most common is the 90-day visa loop. It's a tourist visa and you can't work while you are here. You go to the government web site (https://evisa.gov.vn), and pay the fee ($25 USD for single entry, and $50 if you want a multiple entry visa - which is good if you plan on leaving and coming back, like if you want to pop over to Thailand for the weekend). The visa is usually processed in 24 hours, but can also take up to a week. I get mine through a visa agent here so it happens faster.

The catch is that you have to physically leave and come back to the country every 90 days. I fly to Thailand, and it costs me about $300 USD for airfare and hotel. You can catch a bus to the border, where the cost runs from $90 USD to $140 USD. And you have to do it every three months. If you forget or get otherwise delayed, a visa overstay can result in a fine and possible banishment. You literally can't get back in. Hope you didn't like the stuff you left at your apartment. So this plan has real risk.

The second way is the Work Permit leading into the Temporary Residence Card. This is what you get when you teach English (which is really the only job they let foreigners do here). You get a job, they sponsor you, there are some hoops to jump through with criminal record checks etc, and then you get your Temporary Residence Card (TRC). Good for one to three years. No visa runs required.

And the last two are the Investor Visa (invest about $120,000 USD and they will give you a one-year visa that is renewable); or you can marry into the country and get a TT visa. Good for three years. But marriage here is serious business. Just an FYI.

It's the backbone of communication in Vietnam. It's WhatsApp but built from the ground up for the Vietnamese language. It will be where you negotiate your lease (and it has a built-in translator so that is huge), and where your boss will contact you for shifts. Download it when you arrive.

The wrinkle? You need a real Vietnamese phone number. A lot of the SIMs they sell to tourists won't let you get a Zalo account. If you have one of those numbers, you can usually just take your passport down to the carrier office. They will take a copy of your passport and a picture of you. And then you might need to go down again a few months later. I just had to go and reregister my passport with Viettel.

The short answer is as close to your job as you can. Commuting in this city is tough. The traffic is bad and the heat is astounding. An hour in traffic here is a penance.

But if you are a digital nomad, or are just living on your savings, my recommendation is to live in one of the big expat-focused developments outside of central Hanoi. I live in Vinhomes Smart City, which is in a western suburb. It's safe, modern, comfortable, cheap, and has ridiculously nice amenities. Indoor pool. Outdoor pool. Gym. Sauna. Steam room. Tennis courts. Beautifully landscaped with dozens of little stores and restaurants in walking distance. Is it authentic Hanoi? Nope. It is the new Hanoi, where the aspirational new middle class wants to live.

A two-bedroom apartment on the 25th floor of a new building costs about $500 USD per month.

Other versions of this are the Ocean Park Developments (there are three of them) and Eco Park. And there are other developments like Mulberry Lane that you can look at.

You can also try the Tay Ho neighborhood, which is the major expat area. I don't know it very well, but I hear it is where you can buy western food easily. It just costs twice as much. Apartments there are more in the $1,000 USD range. You are closer to the Old Quarter though.