The big three: scooter, Grab, and walking
Every expat in Vietnam ends up on a spectrum between three options, and most people mix all three. A rented or owned scooter (xe máy) gives you total freedom and the lowest per-trip cost, at the price of learning to ride in some of the world's densest traffic. Grab — the Southeast Asian super-app that swallowed Uber years ago — lets you summon a motorbike taxi (GrabBike) or a car (GrabCar) in two taps, no licence, no risk, helmet provided. And walking, dismissed by newcomers, is quietly the best way to get around a surprising number of neighbourhoods. The mistake people make is treating this as a single lifetime decision. It isn't. Most settled expats own a scooter for daily errands, take a GrabBike when it's raining or they've had a beer, grab a GrabCar when it's pouring or they're in a suit, and walk for anything under a few hundred metres. Your job in the first month is to figure out which mix fits your city and your comfort level — not to be a hero on day one.
Renting a scooter: your first, low-commitment move
For most newcomers, renting is the right first step. A monthly rental of a basic automatic — a Honda Vision, Yamaha Janus, or the workhorse Honda Wave (technically semi-automatic) — costs a modest flat fee per month, far less than daily tourist rates, and someone else handles maintenance and breakdowns. Skip the random guesthouse bikes with bald tyres. Expat-facing shops cost a little more but give you serviced machines and English support: DC Motorbikes and Tigit are the names you'll hear again and again, with branches in Thảo Điền (District 2) and Phú Mỹ Hưng (District 7) in Ho Chi Minh City and outposts in Đà Nẵng and Hà Nội. Get an automatic (xe ga) if you've never ridden — no clutch, no gears, just twist and go. Renting also means you can hand the thing back and walk away if you decide two weeks in that daily riding isn't for you. Nobody will judge you. Plenty of long-term expats never ride at all.
Buying a bike: worth it only if you're staying
If you're here for a year or more, buying makes financial sense — a decent used semi-automatic (Honda Wave, Yamaha Sirius) sells in the range of a few months' rent, and you get most of it back when you leave. The document that matters is the blue card (giấy đăng ký xe) — the registration slip listing the chassis number, engine number, plate, and owner's name. A clean blue card is everything: it proves the bike isn't stolen and makes reselling painless. Foreigners buy and sell bikes here every single day; you don't need residency or a long visa to do it, though the plate will usually stay in the previous Vietnamese owner's name, which is normal and generally fine in practice. The resale market runs on Facebook expat groups, hostel noticeboards, and word of mouth in backpacker areas like Phạm Ngũ Lão. A well-kept bike with clean paperwork sells fast; a rough one with murky documents will sit. Buy in that spirit and sell in it too.
The licence reality nobody tells you honestly
Here is the part the rental shops mumble through. Legally, to ride anything over 50cc in Vietnam you need either a Vietnamese licence or a home licence plus an International Driving Permit — but only an IDP issued under the 1968 Vienna Convention. That's the catch that traps most Western expats: the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and others issue IDPs under the older 1949 Geneva Convention, which Vietnam does not recognise. Your 'valid international permit' may be worthless the moment you cross the border. Under Decree 168, in force since January 2025, enforcement and fines have jumped hard — riding without a recognised licence now runs into the millions of dong, and the bike can be impounded. Worse than the fine: riding unlicensed voids your travel and medical insurance, so a serious crash leaves you personally liable for hospital bills that can be genuinely ruinous. The grown-up move is to convert your home licence to a Vietnamese one (an A1 licence covers bikes up to 175cc, which is every scooter you'll ever rent). It takes some paperwork and patience, but it makes you legal, insured, and calm at checkpoints. Do it if you plan to ride regularly. If you don't want the hassle, that's a completely valid reason to just use Grab.
Grab (and Xanh SM): the no-licence, no-stress option
Grab is the great equaliser. Open the app, set your destination, see the fixed price before you commit — no haggling, no meter games, no getting lost in translation. GrabBike puts you on the back of a motorbike taxi (they provide a helmet; use the grab handle behind the seat rather than clutching the driver) and is the fastest way through gridlocked cities. GrabCar is your rainy-day, airport-run, dressed-for-a-meeting choice. Prices are low by Western standards, and for many expats the maths of Grab-everywhere beats the risk and hassle of owning a bike. There's now a serious rival worth knowing: Xanh SM, the silent electric-taxi fleet of VinFast cars (and increasingly e-bikes), strong in Hà Nội and Hồ Chí Minh City — clean, quiet, and often the same price or cheaper. Keep both apps installed and price both; whichever is nearer and cheaper wins. For metered street taxis, stick to the reputable names — Vinasun (white cars) and Mai Linh (green) — and always make sure the meter is running, but honestly the apps have made flagging taxis mostly unnecessary.
When to just walk — and where it's a bad idea
Walking is underrated and, in the right neighbourhood, genuinely the best option. Central District 1 in Hồ Chí Minh City — around Bến Thành Market, the Independence Palace, and the War Remnants Museum — is walkable, as is Hà Nội's Old Quarter and the loop around Hoàn Kiếm Lake, which is even closed to traffic on weekends. Đà Nẵng's beach promenade and Nha Trang's seafront are made for strolling. Two honest caveats. First, the heat and humidity are real; a ten-minute walk at midday will leave you soaked, so time your walks for morning and evening. Second, the pavements are an obstacle course — parked scooters, food stalls, and the occasional bike riding on the sidewalk to skip a jam mean you'll often be walking in the road. Cross streets like a local: pick your moment, walk slowly and predictably, and let the traffic flow around you. Do not stop, do not sprint, do not trust a green light to protect you. It feels insane for a week and then becomes second nature.
City by city: the traffic changes everything
Where you live decides your whole transport strategy. Hồ Chí Minh City is a wide, sprawling, relentless grid — the traffic is fast and heavy but flows in a broadly logical direction, and the brand-new Metro Line 1 (open since December 2024) now links Bến Thành to the eastern suburbs through Thảo Điền, a genuine game-changer for that expat-heavy district. Hà Nội is, if anything, scarier: the Old Quarter's tangle of unmarked intersections has scooters converging from every direction at once with barely a traffic light in sight, and the etiquette is more improvised. Đà Nẵng is the sweet spot many expats settle for — wide clean roads, calmer traffic, and short distances make it the one big city where learning to ride is actually reasonable. And the beach towns — Nha Trang, Mũi Né, Phú Quốc, Hội An — are a different world entirely: slow, low-stakes, and forgiving. In Nha Trang the long-term Russian-speaking community clusters in the north of the city, where a scooter is close to essential because the buses are thin and Grab coverage patchier than downtown. As a rule: the smaller and beachier the town, the more a scooter makes sense and the safer it is to learn; the bigger the city, the more Grab earns its keep.
Gear, safety, and advice for people who have never ridden
If you are going to ride, start where it's quiet — a beach town, a residential lane, or Đà Nẵng — never in Saigon or Hanoi rush hour on day one. Every experienced expat says the same thing: do not learn to ride in central-city traffic. Practice in an empty lot, get comfortable with the throttle and brakes, then build up. On gear, the helmet is where people cut corners and shouldn't. A 2025 test found the majority of cheap Vietnamese 'fashion helmets' failed basic impact tests despite carrying safety stickers — they exist to satisfy the law, not your skull. Spend a little more on a real brand (Royal, or an imported LS2) or bring a good full-face helmet from home; most injuries happen at low speed, so this is not the place to save. Air quality is the other quiet hazard: on bad days Hà Nội and Hồ Chí Minh City hit unhealthy pollution levels, and a thin surgical mask won't help against exhaust — a washable N95/N99 mesh mask is a worthwhile buy if you ride daily. Beyond that: mirrors are for looking, horns are for communicating not scolding, everyone flows and nobody stops suddenly, and the golden rule is to be smooth and predictable so the river can move around you. Ride within yourself, and when in doubt, close the app and open Grab. There is no shame in it — only in ending your trip in a Vietnamese emergency room.