Transportation with Kids?

Basically your left one option.. motorcycle..  or taxi.. and that would get expensive also

I hire a private driver. Cost me between 550,000 dongs to 700,000 dongs to go Bien Hoa to Ho Chi Minh city and back. My daughter has never been on a bus.

When we go downtown Bien Hoa also private driver.

Only when she goes to school does she get on a motorbike sandwiched between my wife and I. We enquired about a private driver but he said it wouldn't work. I think the proximity of the school being only 2 kms away might have to do with it.

If I lived in Ho Chi Minh city there's so much cheap options. Uber or Grab car or moto are cheaper than taxis, transparent of their fare and has gps tracking.

And they won't block your phone because you want to go short distance to school.  Where we are taxis our only options and they won't do short trips.

Thanks Kahnh for the detail, especially the estimated budget.
I am doing current budget if I were to move to HCM to work and live with my family.
Basically, for your work, it is a budget of 14,000,000VND per month.
And only option to bring kids to school , as mentioned by Wald0 also, in HCM, would be taxi, or Uber.

I am a bit afraid of the sandwich transportation by motorbike. I saw that everyone is doing that but i am not sure about safety ;~S

By the way, why do you live in Bien Hoa instead of HCM if you work in HCM? Is it linked to the school of your kid?

thanks

How old are your kids? I see school kids riding around on electric bikes all the time and in groups without their lights on at night. They're the most dangerous people on the road.

khanh44: If you got your passport back... dual citizenship. Wouldn't you be allowed to import a car tax free?

There is something like that but like most things so ambiguous and for a reason. I think it's a good opportunity for someone to seize your car and hold it for ransom.

I'm not getting Vietnamese citizenship anytime soon. Not that I'd do anything illegal but I rather not be treated as a Vietnamese citizen should the police be involved.

I don't work and haven't worked the last 3 years in Vietnam. My daughter (18 months) goes to school in Bien Hoa. We take her to Ho Chi Minh city every month for her immunization shots and whenever she's not feeling well.

If you're going to import a car better do it before September. They are closing the loop hole because only 10% of the people importing 'used' cars are actually the owners of those cars in Vietnam.

Car jacking in Vietnam by 5 feet (1.5 meter) 48 kgs (100 lbs) conservative Vietnameses? I feel safer in Vietnam from violence than in Canada.

khanh44 wrote:

I'm not getting Vietnamese citizenship anytime soon. Not that I'd do anything illegal but I rather not be treated as a Vietnamese citizen should the police be involved.

My thoughts exactly. Plus you get the protection of your country's embassy.

khanh44 wrote:

Car jacking in Vietnam by 5 feet (1.5 meter) 48 kgs (100 lbs) conservative Vietnameses? I feel safer in Vietnam from violence than in Canada.

No I meant with customs deliberately finding fault with paperwork and withholding what is most peoples second most valuable asset after their houses.

I don't plan on ever getting citizenship back but I was just curious as to whether anyone on here has done it and imported a car. It would probably be one of the only reasons to get citizenship back.

Hi Phikachu,

My son is 3 y-o.

If my understanding is correct,, if you are Vietnamese, you can import tax-free used cars?

The government is dropping the tax free system and cars will be very expensive to import.

https://m.vietnambreakingnews.com/2016/ … r-imports/

kinn wrote:

If my understanding is correct,, if you are Vietnamese, you can import tax-free used cars?

If you are former Vietnamese and repatriate. It's an ambigious rule mainly for those who fled as refugees. I don't know if it is repatriation since technically many were stateless and former citizens of the Republic of Vietnam. But then the majority fled the following years after 1975 after becoming citizens of the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

They can get citizenship, a passport and it says somewhere they can import a used car that is more than 6 months old tax free. But I read somewhere before that only something like 200 or so people out of millions who fled got their citizenship back. It wasn't a popular thing to do so they extended the dates and seemed to have made more incentives to do so.

What I read from others that got their Vietnamese citizenship most said it was surprisingly an easy and fast process that took couple weeks.

They did open a window of time few years back to claim Vietnamese citizenship. But after that window I heard some people were still able to re-claim their Vietnamese citizenship.

I guess it's the fear of dealing with Vietnamese government that makes people think it's a hard process.

colinoscapee wrote:

The government is dropping the tax free system and cars will be very expensive to import.

https://m.vietnambreakingnews.com/2016/ … r-imports/

If they are just charging a duty fee of $1500-$2000 for used cars it still makes importing cars attractive.

Take the Honda Accord for example. It cost 1.6 trillon dongs or about $70,000 USD brand new.

A brand new accord in United States is $22,000 USD or 500 millon dongs and you can get a used for much less even at $10,000 USD you'd still get a almost new Honda Accord.

Import duty of $2000 is 44 millon dongs so you'd still make a killing close to a trillon dongs.

khanh44 wrote:

What I read from others that got their Vietnamese citizenship most said it was surprisingly an easy and fast process that took couple weeks.

I assume you mean the citizenship itself and not importing a car. Do you know anyone who has successfully got a car over?

I know a couple of people who got citizenship back but they have businesses and family here. They visit Vietnam often but don't stay long enough to warrant a car. The big tax, 100-150% is special consumption that's paid on purchase in Vietnam. If you bought the car in a foreign country you'd pay the tax there, so in the UK we'd pay 20% VAT so there is only import tax that is exempt and yeah it's still a lot cheaper.

This whole car tax thing is ridiculous. Many people can afford cars now in Vietnam but don't because of it. The idea of paying more than double for the same vehicle as citizens of a wealthier country do is hard to swallow.

yeah I just worked out $70,000 USD is $92,000 Canadian dollar. That's for a Honda Accord in Vietnam.

Insane. My last 2 cars I bought were $500 each and lasted for years without much maintenance repairs needed.

Even more insane is the average Vietnamese monthly wage is about $200/mth.

Well I guess living with his parents until 50 years old and finally marrying someone 20 years younger than him paid off.