Retired in Vietnam

Enjoyed reading your blog SB, know a little of the area you are living in. When working in VN I often had to travel to the Phu My port to oversee fabrication at the port plus the eventual outloading. This was steel for the Pilbara in Western Australia. The workshop involved was CS Wind.

Had lunch many times at the nearby Lesco resort and often thought then what a great place it would be to spend some retirement time, given that it was so well priced and comfortable.

Also loved Vung Tau, enjoyed staying at the Lan Rung resort with its superb outdoor garden canopy right on the seashore.
There is even a beachfront shop in VT where one can buy a great 'Aussie' style meat pie!

I will be back in VN for the Southern Hemisphere winter, may stay either at Bien Hoa or HCMC
E-mail is **, would love to exchange further with you

You may have heard or read that the new industrial zone, Phu My 3, is under development for Japanese investors. They are developing the area to cater to the Japanese investor. Have been to Lasco resort and  have had the pleasure to speak with the owner who also worked on the development of the port. My wife and I also enjoy traveling to VT but we usually end up at Davids Pizza as they have a very good pizza and a nice relaxing atmosphere as well as a nice view of the ocean.

Interesting subject! I am semi retired, married to a lovely Vietnamese lady and living in D9 Saigon.

I know the areas around Vung Tau, Ba Ria, Long Hai and Phu My, reasonably well because I was the project manager for the clearance of UXO and landmines from the gas pipeline which ran from the landfall at Long Hai up to Phu My - and included the gas terminal at Nam Con Son.

That was in 2000 and in those days things were very different to the way things are in Vietnam now. Getting money from the bank was a half day job, first filling in forms and providing copies of my passport, then standing line with my credit card for an hour or more. Having managed to get a fist full of dollars, I then had to stand in line again with a sheaf of papers and passport in hand to change the dollars in dong. There were charges for each transaction, of course.

I remember that there was a very nice restaurant in Ba Ria which we used to go to a couple of times a week for lunch.

One day on a day when work had ceased early for some reason, I asked my driver to take us north along the coast from the landfall at Long Hai. Close to a small town that I have forgotten the name of, there was a small lagoon separated from the sea by a spit of land and there was a tiny restaurant that had fresh sea food.

The lagoon was separated from the sea and the the restaurant owner had installed a channel to allow fresh seawater in to the lagoon, controlled by a kind of lock gate. The Sashimi was excellent with lovely fresh salads, crab (cua ranh me), served at small tables, each with its own grass roof.

To top it all, there was a tiny local brewery about a hundred yards away which sold freshly brewed bia hoi in liter bottles. The bia was very light in alcohol,  but very cold and refreshing.

I ended up going there once or twice a week for lunch, but never old anyone else about it.

My wife and I went to Vung Tau (which incidentally means "a safe place for ships" or in English "Cove") a couple of years ago and stayed at the Rex hotel. The Rex was notable for its barman, a really nice bloke called Hung (who still works there) and who always wears a bow tie and tux. One evening he arrived for word dressed as normal and someone remarked that he looked like James Bond.

Striking a Bond-like pose, Hung stuck his right-hand inside the left of lapel his jacket, as if reaching for a gun and remarked loudly to us bar flies: "The names Hung........... Well Hung..

Which brought the house down.

I went back to the small restaurant, hoping to have a quiet lunch and a bia hoi with my wife - and so we did. But the restaurant is now massive and caters for bus loads of tourists, the ambiance is lost.

The road in to Vung Tau is beautifully landscaped with shrubs and flowers now, whereas when I worked there it was little more than a track.

How things have changed......

If you happen to have more details on how to go to the restaurant and/or lagoon, please let me know as I would certainly like to try and find the restaurant you have so eloquently described in your post. My wife does not eat seafood in Vietnam as she is afraid she will get sick from improperly handled seafood; however, in Japan and Hawaii she devours the seafood - the expensive uni, salmon eggs, etc.

Vietnam certainly has changed over the years. When I was in the Army I was stationed at Bien Hoa for a few months and the ride into Saigon was under triple canopy jungle; and, the road to Vung Tau was owned by the VC so we never went that way. Now, as you know, the road between Bien Hoa and Saigon is a freeway with no sign of a jungle, and there is a new four lane freeway between Bien Hoa and Vung Tau.

Hope that your life in Vietnam is all that you had expected and more, especially as we get older. It has been a pleasure reading your post!

Thanks for your kind response! Let me take a look on Google earth later today and try to locate the restaurant again.

One word of caution...... Beaches along that stretch of road north from Long Hai ..... We searched the landfall beach for the pipeline and found an M16 a/p mine and a booby trapped WP grenade. I don't know if any other beaches around there are similarly affected and whether or not they have been cleared effectively. The beaches are well used by locals, fishermen etc, but if you see something that you don't recognize as being part of the environment, give it the Spanish archer*.




*"Spanish archer" English slang meaning give it the "El Bow" (elbow) - meaning leave it alone.

My wife and I have gone to Ho Tram which is about 30 - 40 minutes north of Long Hai, and is where the Grand Hotel & Golf Course and a few other up scale Hotels are located. We often want to explore the beach along the way as they are uninhabited for the most part but with your good advise I guess we will stay on the road and admire the beach and ocean as we drive by. I do remember the construction of the gas line from Vung Tau to Ba Ria - quite a construction job. Looking forward to knowing more about the location of the restaurant.

saigonbuddy wrote:

My wife and I have gone to Ho Tram which is about 30 - 40 minutes north of Long Hai, and is where the Grand Hotel & Golf Course and a few other up scale Hotels are located. We often want to explore the beach along the way as they are uninhabited for the most part but with your good advise I guess we will stay on the road and admire the beach and ocean as we drive by. I do remember the construction of the gas line from Vung Tau to Ba Ria - quite a construction job. Looking forward to knowing more about the location of the restaurant.

The area has changed a great deal and the nearest I can get to it is what looks like a restaurant around a small man made lake. Unfortunately I can't send you a Google Earth screen shot as this website keeps asking for a URL when I try to post as a .png. Leave it with me and maybe I will upload to drop box and send it that way.

I wouldn't be too concerned about walking on the beaches, just don't pick anything up that you don't recognise!

Saigon buddy: The area has changed greatly and there is what looks like a new road along the coast too. Anyway. I have put a couple of screen shots of what I think may be the place - It doesn't look anything like it used to look - and the coordinates, in a drop box file here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jtw1tnh5dlrw … Tz0Ia?dl=0

Anyone can use the link.

Thank you. I tried to match the location with google earth but was not successful, I will try again later when I have more time. Again, thank you!

I read your great posts and noted you are retired in Vietnam. Given this, I was hoping to call on some of your experience with a question.

I live in the UK and am engaged to a lovely Vietnamese girl named My (Me). I am in the process of submitting a UK VAF4 Fiancé Application. The requirements and administration surrounding this process are significant and noteworthy. The UK has made the application process very difficult and seems to start with a high potential for rejecting applications if any mistakes are made along the way. Looking at what we can do if our application is not successful I am looking at Plan B.

I looked on the internet and explored what would be required for My and I to get married in HCM Vietnam. Posts indicated I would need to be a resident (with appropriate visa) in Vietnam. Getting a job at my age means residency through work is not an option. Having said this, my Fiancé My says it is easy to come to HCM on a three month tourist visa and get married. She says many people have done this/continue to do this.

Do you know if marriage for us in Vietnam possible if I come to HCM on a three month tourist visa?

Thank you
Gary

Hi SB, I read your great post and the replies you have received. Understanding you are retired in Vietnam and married to a Vietnamese girl I was hoping to call on your experience and ask a question.

I live in the UK and am engaged to a lovely Vietnamese girl named My (Me). I am in the process of submitting a UK VAF4 Fiancé Application. The requirements and administration surrounding this process are significant and noteworthy. The UK has made the application process very difficult and seems to start with a high potential for rejecting applications if any mistakes are made along the way. Looking at what we can do if our application is not successful I am looking at Plan B.

I looked on the internet and explored what would be required for My and I to get married in HCM Vietnam. Posts indicated I would need to be a resident (with appropriate visa) in Vietnam. Getting a job at my age means residency through work is not an option. Having said this, my Fiancé My says it is easy to come to HCM on a three month tourist visa and get married. She says many people have done this/continue to do this.

Do you know if marriage for us in Vietnam possible if I come to HCM on a three month tourist visa?

Thank you
Gary

Hi SB I read your great post and the replies you have received. Understanding you are retired in Vietnam and married to a Vietnamese girl I was hoping to call on your experience and ask a question.

I live in the UK and am engaged to a lovely Vietnamese girl named My (Me). I am in the process of submitting a UK VAF4 Fiancé Application. The requirements and administration surrounding this process are significant and noteworthy. The UK has made the application process very difficult and seems to start with a high potential for rejecting applications if any mistakes are made along the way. Looking at what we can do if our application is not successful I am looking at Plan B.

I looked on the internet and explored what would be required for My and I to get married in HCM Vietnam. Posts indicated I would need to be a resident (with appropriate visa) in Vietnam. Getting a job at my age means residency through work is not an option. Having said this, my Fiancé My says it is easy to come to HCM on a three month tourist visa and get married. She says many people have done this/continue to do this.

Do you know if marriage for us in Vietnam possible if I come to HCM on a three month tourist visa?

Thank you
Gary

My wife is Vietnamese but she acquired US citizenship via an earlier marriage; we were married in Hawaii; and, she has not attempted to reacquire her Vietnamese citizenship. I wish you the best but unfortunately I am not qualified to respond to your inquiry. I am sure that there is someone else who can provide you with the professional response that you require.  P.S. If all else fails I can make inquiries for you on this matter on your behalf.

Kytain, I married my Vietnamese wife 18 months ago and the process took more than three months - but that might have been due to our unique situation (as in everyone is different). First of all may I, with the best of intentions, ask you if you are sure of your g/f? I mean absolutely certain. You see it is not uncommon for a foreigner to marry a Vietnamese girl (or Thai girl for that matter) and then find themselves at the mercy of a money grabber and her family who will join forces and strip the unlucky bloke of everything. Sorry to raise that specter but it happens time and time again. In one case I know, a woman here in Saigon took off, having taken her husband to the cleaners, leaving him with a young daughter and an elderly and infirm mother in law.

I met my wife in 2008 and got married in 2014, so I was very sure of her and had also met her family several times.. On the last meeting her father, a senior retired army officer gifted us a very nice piece of land, sadly he died shortly afterwards.

If your situation is secure and you are certain of it, you will need to go through a series of hoops before ending up in your g/f's home town to sign papers that make you man and wife. The whole process is more complicated than, but just as interesting as, renewing a fishing license. It involves masses of paperwork (which people will offer do for you at a price - but don't go the way).

Oh and you will have to have a psychiatric examination (which you pay for - not expensive); you will be interviewed by a senior official at some stage as to why you want to marry a Vietnamese lady, what your intentions are and so on. My interrogation took over an hour. Your g/f will have to face a similar interview, my wifes interview was shorter than mine by 30 minutes.

We had to travel to her home town twice and in between visits our paperwork was sent to the Peoples Committee at her home town for their assent to our marriage.

Remember also that it is illegal for you to stay with your g/f under the same roof (in Vietnam) before you are married. This is not something that is rigidly enforced by the police, but they could if they wanted to and you could end up with a hefty fine, or the choice of making a donation.....

Having said all of the above, I can also say that my Vietnamese wife is a huge improvement on the two shrieking English harridans that I had been married to before.

No doubt someone will come along and offer more succinct advice on the matter and I will try to dig out my marriage paperwork and give you an idea of whats involved and the timescales.

I married in Vietnam 14 years ago and it took over five months of paperwork, police signatures and several bribes to oil the process.  We got screwed around big time. Although the process is supposed to be easier now, in practice it is unlikely to be.  Too many people still want their bribes.  To avoid all the crap in VN, a American friend took his VN girlfriend to Thailand last year and married her there. I suggest you get married almost anywhere other than Vietnam. 

Because there are so many VN women who view foreigners as a ticket to leave VN forever, some of them willingly pay up to $30,000USD for a fake marriage. Therefore, Australian Immigration does NOT view a VN marriage certificate as proof of a geniune and long lasting relationship.  It is quite likely that British Immigration has the same view.

You should check about sponsoring your partner on a fiancée visa.

I will send you via PM some VN documents regarding VN marriage to a foreigner which I translated for an American friend two years ago. He read them, sponsored his girlfriend as his fiancee and married in USA instead.

@Kytain, you would be better off not hijacking a thread about a different subject. Instead create a new thread that more people will see. There is good advice to be had on this forum.

As far as getting married on a tourist visa, I know it is possible because I did it. I am American. We hired a Vietnamese lawyer because we had time pressure. It took exactly one month from the application to the license in Saigon. We laughed when we saw other couples who applied on the same day as us, picking up their licenses when we did, and they didn't use lawyers!

Caveats: We submitted our application in December 2015. Starting January 2016, the foreigner marriage law has changed from a federal procedure to a local government procedure. Since the lawyer could not predict how fast the new process would work, and who he would now have to nudge, we hurried to get our application submitted in December. So, you need to get advice from someone who started their marriage application in January. The newspaper said that the new process is simplified, e.g. the interview was scrapped, but who knows. If you were married before, be sure to bring a certified divorced/widowed document. You also need to get advice from others from the UK regarding your government's requirements for taking your wife back there, assuming that is your plan.
Good luck!

eodmatt - I am having a hard time matching up the location on your google earth map with my google earth map. Specifically, the coastal features around Long Hai do not match. This restaurant is close to Long Hai beach area, right? Sorry to be such a pain in the xxxx..

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and advise Matt. I am deeply grateful for the information members are sharing with me.

Your comments on potential scams with a girl (girlfriend, partner, fiancé) in Vietnam are understandable. I am very fortunate to have met an honest and faithful girl. My is 46 and special.

I will explore the United Kingdom's position on accepting a marriage certificate from Vietnam. I had not considered this.

I am most concerned about a requirement for residency with any marriage in Vietnam. This represents a challenge I can't foresee over coming at the moment. If there is away around this I am hopeful that a Plan B (marriage in Vietnam) may be possible.

Again thank you very much for taking the time to share your thoughts.

Kind Regards

Gary

Dear GOBOT, I sincerely respect and appreciate your comment on hijacking a thread on the forum we all share. Please accept my apology for having done this. I am a relatively new member and did foresee so much help from other members when I communicated on this thread. It will not happen again.

Your comment on having married on a tourist Visa brightened my hopes. I have been warned about using lawyers in Vietnam (given their potential for being black holes with fees). Given the outcome you achieved it would appear you were very fortunate with your choice. Would you be willing to share your lawyers contact information?  I plan to be in HCM in August this year and would very much like to meet with them.

As suggested I will make inquiries into the UK's acceptance of a Vietnamese marriage.

Again thank you GOBOT
Sincerely
Gary

I married my Wife 18 years ago, having been based in Vietnam for just over 20 years. Getting married in Vietnam was a nightmare process then and has not improved much since. For that reason we married in Bangkok, which took a couple of days to organise, involving visits to both the UK and Vietnamese Embassies to obtain the necessary paperwork.

Kytain wrote:

Dear GOBOT, I sincerely respect and appreciate your comment on hijacking a thread on the forum we all share. Please accept my apology for having done this. I am a relatively new member and did foresee so much help from other members when I communicated on this thread. It will not happen again.

Your comment on having married on a tourist Visa brightened my hopes. I have been warned about using lawyers in Vietnam (given their potential for being black holes with fees). Given the outcome you achieved it would appear you were very fortunate with your choice. Would you be willing to share your lawyers contact information?  I plan to be in HCM in August this year and would very much like to meet with them.

As suggested I will make inquiries into the UK's acceptance of a Vietnamese marriage.

Again thank you GOBOT
Sincerely
Gary

Just sticking in a couple of points:

Getting married here in Vn is certainly possible, I did it 18 months ago. it was a bit frustrating but there were no real obstacles other than bureaucracy and the need to travel to my wifes place of birth to do the necessary.

To get acceptance of your vietnamese marriage in the UK you will have to provide such things as your email, Skype, viber, face pest, etc communications going back a couple of years or more. Pictures of you together at dates over a year apart and so on.

I said I would try to recover the procedure we went through to get married - I have a spread sheet somewhere - I'll have a look on my other laptop this arvo.

saigonbuddy wrote:

eodmatt - I am having a hard time matching up the location on your google earth map with my google earth map. Specifically, the coastal features around Long Hai do not match. This restaurant is close to Long Hai beach area, right? Sorry to be such a pain in the xxxx..

It is 14.3km (approx 8 miles) from the roundabout on the road just the east of Long Hai beach. I have posted a map with the route marked out as a white line, at the same drop box link. Let me know if the place is still good?

Cheers

M

Kytain wrote:

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and advise Matt. I am deeply grateful for the information members are sharing with me.

Your comments on potential scams with a girl (girlfriend, partner, fiancé) in Vietnam are understandable. I am very fortunate to have met an honest and faithful girl. My is 46 and special.

I will explore the United Kingdom's position on accepting a marriage certificate from Vietnam. I had not considered this.

I am most concerned about a requirement for residency with any marriage in Vietnam. This represents a challenge I can't foresee over coming at the moment. If there is away around this I am hopeful that a Plan B (marriage in Vietnam) may be possible.

Again thank you very much for taking the time to share your thoughts.

Kind Regards

Gary

Sorry but I can't find the file I had on the marriage process, I am in the middle of changing computers from Windows - W8 was a disaster - to MacAir so it may have been deleted along with some of the garbage that Windows machines collect for unknown reasons. Sorry about that.

Tell you what, get your g/f to to a marriage route map for you i.e a plan of the stages  you will go through  and documents you will need need to have ready to begin the process. For example, I had to provide a notarised copy of my decree absolute recording my divorce from the horror that I was married to before. I was already here in Vietnam so I used a UK company that specializes in getting such documents, they got the doc from the court and mailed it to me, it cost 60 quid.

I then had to get the decree notarised at the UK consulate in Saigon - a bit of a PITA that, you have to contact the embassy in Hanoi, fill in a form and email it to them. They then send you an appointment to attend the UK consulate in Saigon. They tell you that they will confirm the appointment by email (they did, 2 weeks after the date of the appointment). When we arrived at the consulate at the appointed time and date, there was no one there except a Vietnamese girl who'd didn't speak English at all well. In the end my gf had to translate for her what we wanted and the poor girl spent a couple of hours running up and down the stairs to some arrogant rectum who couldn't lower himself to come to the appointment window him/herself.

A sticking point came when the invisible waster upstairs noticed that the court stamp on my decree nisi was in black  - and court stamps should be in red. So I had to explain to my wife who translated for the girl, who then ran upstairs again and tried to explain in broken English to the invisible, arrogant presence there, that divorce court stamps were red until December 2013, but had been changed to black after that date. The process of getting the doc notarised at the consulate took over 3 hours - a process that should have taken 20 minutes at most, since all the work had already been done at the embassy in Hanoi.

Then you will have to get a notarised copy of your passport....

So as I say, get your g/f to outline the steps and the papers required on a rough date/timeline so that you can see approximately how long the whole thing will take.

If your g/f was born in Saigon, so much the better. My wife was born in Da Lat, so we had to go there twice by bus, each visit taking 3 days - could prolly have done it in less, but we did a days sight seeing on each occasion.

Incidentally, I am incensed by the UK govt attitude to spouses coming into the UK from foreign places, when they let terrorists in wholesale and even give them houses to live in and pay them and their several wives benefits. A good friend of mine was an immigration officer at Theifrow airport, she told me that she had seen so many fa ke passports and travel documents from India, Pakistan and the Middle East thats she requested a transfer to Southampton, because every time she raised an objection to false documents, her superiors told her to just forget it.

Unfortunately Brit immigration reeks of abuse and discrimination.

In my previous post I said that I got married in Thailand to escape the hassle of doing so in Vietnam. The only hassle we had in Bangkok was at the UK Embassy where I was treated like a criminal. In many years working in diverse places like South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Trinidad, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia the attitudes of those working in UK Consular Offices has been abyssmal. Any effort is considered an interruption to their cossetted lives.

Vietpete1947 wrote:

In my previous post I said that I got married in Thailand to escape the hassle of doing so in Vietnam. The only hassle we had in Bangkok was at the UK Embassy where I was treated like a criminal. In many years working in diverse places like South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Trinidad, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia the attitudes of those working in UK Consular Offices has been abyssmal. Any effort is considered an interruption to their cossetted lives.

yes, they are a real piece of work. A couple of years ago I was at the UK embassy in Kabul, not a pleasant place to be at the time we were there. I was there as a member of an official European Commission Mission. After being made to wait for half an hour for no discernible reason the local chap behind the grill requested our passports. Having glanced at them cursorily he then said that we should provide the embassy with photocopies. I asked where we should get photocopies from and he replied,  with a disinterested wave of his hand in the general direction of Kabul city centre, from which could be heard the occasional burst of gunfire, "you can find somewhere".

Now, I had been a Warrant Officer and a Sergeant Major during my time in the army, so I advised the idle bugger behind the grill reasonably firmly that, as a UK citizen, the Embassy belonged to me and that he was being employed on my behalf. So under those circumstances he could get off his backside and photocopy our passports using the large and expensive photocopier, bought at my expense, 4 feet behind him. Furthermore, I advised him that I would be meeting the ambassador that very evening at a reception at the UN building and would advise the ambassador of his off-handed idleness.

He made the photocopies with a speed which belied his earlier slothfulness. But the attitude of British diplomats to those who pay them is abysmal - and it rubs off on the local staff - with ambassadors being the exception..

So its not just me ! Great to hear of your experiences

Vietpete1947 wrote:

So its not just me ! Great to hear of your experiences

No, it's not just you. And I have to say that my g/f, now my wife, was appalled and remarked that the many Vietnamese  official offices with which we had dealings during the marriage process were much better organised and the staff were more helpful and polite.

She told me that she thought that a country as  democratic and well established as the UK would have a far slicker and more helpful consulate than was our experience.

I told her that living in the UK nowadays is full of pitfalls with petty officials laying in wait to issue fines for e.g. putting the wrong things in dustbins, or reporting people for trivial and contrived "offences".

I am reminded of one bloke in England who lived by the seaside. One day a couple of years ago a large incoming wave deposited several tons of sand and shingle from the beach on his garden. He was busy putting it back on the beach where it belonged with a wheelbarrow when along came a council official who ordered him to "stop depositing litter on the beach" on pain of a court summons.

I'm glad I live in Vietnam now.

OK, found the location on the map, many thanks. My wife and I will venture out there this week, we go to Long Hai quite frequently as it is only about 15 minutes away from where we usually have lunch.

Hi Gary,
Marry in HCM Vietnam is not a good choice. You might want to consider Singapore to register your marriage. Very simple and fast process.

Terry

saigonbuddy wrote:

OK, found the location on the map, many thanks. My wife and I will venture out there this week, we go to Long Hai quite frequently as it is only about 15 minutes away from where we usually have lunch.

OK, well have a good visit and please let us know how it was?