Why did I move to Việt Nam?

It wasn't for the culture

This Substack is about life in Việt Nam from the viewpoint of a 10-year expat who spent his first 60 years in a low-context culture.

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When I first told friends I was moving to Vietnam, everyone asked the same question,

I had what seemed to be a good life, a big, beautiful house, a nice car, a few really wonderful friends, and enough disposable income to travel overseas at least once a year. The real question seemed to be,

If it’s not broken, why are you fixing it?

Although I couldn’t put it into words at the time, it was broken. There was a hole in my life that I could not fill and, in reality, couldn’t even define. All I knew was that I wasn’t physically or mentally where I was supposed to be.

If you keep doing the same thing, you’re gonna keep getting the same results.

I knew I needed to change what I was doing. The question was, “to what?” When I want/need change, it’s much better to get away from my comfortable day-to-day existence to figure it out. As with most people, it’s too easy to put things off and keep doing what you’re doing if everything around you is the same as always.

It was Autumn 2013, and was time for another trip. I’d already been to all 50 US states, five Canadian provinces, a bit of Western Europe, Oceana, Cuba, Hong Kong, Guangzhou (China), and northern and central South America.

I needed something different.

One place that interested me and which I had not yet explored was Southeast Asia. Africa was also a possibility, especially Morocco, but it didn’t “call to me”. I chose SE Asia, and specifically Vietnam, with planned side trips into Lao, Cambodia, and possibly Thailand.

I arrived in Saigon in early December and, about 10 days later, left on an extended solo motorcycle trip. The plan was to take about three weeks to get to Hanoi; spend a few days there; visit Ha Long Bay via motorcoach and boat; take the train to SaPa; and then return to Hanoi to start my Lao, Cambodia, Thailand trip by motorcycle.

Break time just north of Mui Ne

About a week out of Saigon,¹ I starting having pretty intense back pain about the lower-middle of my spine. It got so bad that I had to limit how long I could ride each day, and nightly massages (when I could find a legitimate one) weren’t doing much to help. By the time I got to Hanoi, I was a mess. After a couple days in the hotel, it wasn’t getting any better, so I very sadly sold the bike and cancelled the rest of the riding part of the trip.²

Since I had six weeks left before my return flight to the US, I went to Ha Long Bay and Sapa as planned, and hung out in Hanoi for another week. Then I flew back to Saigon, checked into a “local” hotel. Except for a four-day trip to Siem Riep and many of the temples in the area, I just hung out in Saigon, ate Vietnamese food, met a lot of locals and a few expats, and generally enjoyed life. It was a great month!

On the flight home, I began calculating how long it would be before I could retire if I moved to Vietnam. I knew that if I stayed in the US, I would probably never be able to afford to retire, so I had to have a plan.

When I got back home to Olympia, a friend asked if I’d be able to collect Social Security if I lived in Vietnam³. I hadn’t yet added Social Security to my calculations, and when I did, I realized that I could retire the following year instead of in five or six years.

So I did.

I’d spent one night in Dalat during my motorcycle trip and only remembered that we hadn’t been able to find “Crazy House”⁴. Many people told me it was a great small city with weather and topography similar to the Pacific NW, so I went back to VN in June to check it out. They were right. I decided Dalat was where I’d live.

Upon my return to the US, I sold almost everything I owned⁵, threw the rest in nine large suitcases, and 368 days after first arriving in Vietnam as a tourist, arrived in Saigon as an expat — 10 years ago last week.

The short answer to “Why Vietnam?” is that it was a knee-jerk reaction to my wonderful experience here as a tourist. Had I thought it through, I probably would’ve gone to Columbia or Ecuador or Mexico; I already speak passable Español, and it’s much easier to travel back to the US for major medical care when needed.

That said, if I had it to do again, I’d still come to Việt Nam because meeting the little girl who is now my daughter changed my life in so many positive ways that I would never give up.

I still get the occasional,

Why did you move to Vietnam?

and now I just say, “Because it’s where I would meet my daughter.”

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1. The official name (since the invading US military left) is Ho Chi Minh City, but most people in the south still call it by its previous name.

2. Very soon after returning to the US, doctors diagnosed the cause of my back pain as a collapsed L1 vertebrae. They performed a kyphoplasty and the pain disappeared.

3. Yes, I can.

4. Think what a house would look like if Antoni Gaudí and Salvador Dalí got together and designed it while on acid. My daughter and I went there so much in 2015-2019, that instead of greeting us with the usual “Welcome to Crazy House”, we got, “Welcome BACK to Crazy House”.

5. The $7500 I got from a huge Estate Sale over Labor Day weekend was the seed money for my “Helmets for Children” initiative during which I gave away over 700 motorbike helmets to poor Dalat school children.