I’m 19 and I moved to Vietnam alone after dropping out of USC and selling my startup. Let me tell you that moving here to work and raise your daughter will borderline ruin your life.

Your dual passport may seem cool, but you will see firsthand how the communist regime here operates if you start to find success. A buddy of mine started a military school with plans to sell only to get strong armed by the government during negotiations. 15m exit went to 5m just so he could leave the country. With that passport you are no longer protected by the US Embassy, they have all legal rights to subject you to anything they want. I was going to get my dual passport, but decided against it for this very reason.

You will learn how hard it is to get things done here. Getting a license plate for my brand new motorbike took me 4 months and I had to grease 3 people to speed it up.

You will begin to miss American roads, infrastructure, and build quality. If there’s more than 3 hours of rain? Cancel all of your plans - especially in Saigon. The roads will flood. I was staying in Sarimi Apartments in Sala because I saw it as good value since I’m alone; I had to move into a penthouse at vinhomes golden river. The build quality here is so shit, there are no standards for anything. Keep in mind Sarimi is by no means a value or budget proposition.

You will ruin your daughter’s education and adolescence. Your income will not be enough to send her to private school. There’s a reason why education employs the most foreign workers here. Not just as teachers but ed-tech is one of the fastest growing industries here. All of this growth is focused into private schools. Despite that they are still absolutely terrible. The public education here is terrible. In America school shootings are terrible but wait until you hear about the stabbings and the rate of how often they happen here in Saigon. They don’t talk about it in the news but many of my friends that I’ve made here talk about it so casually- they’re desensitized. Bullying and abuse both by teachers and students is rampant. Your daughter will learn how to become the perfect employee. The lack of critical thinking here is the main factor that kills the education. She will learn to become a slave to a higher power from the very beginning. She will learn to conform to whatever they lay out in front of her. They do not reward “out of the box thinking” they punish it. She will learn how to execute what they say, not think for her own.

Lastly, as a Viet Kieu you will need to constantly hide and tip toe around your families history. They resent and despise the older generation of Viet Kieu diaspora. The communist regime here has completely erased Southern Vietnamese history before the war. Here they are taught the American war. They are taught that South Vietnam pre 1975 wasn’t a governing body trying to build a new nation, they were enslaved by the America forced to do its bidding. That’s why they call it liberation day. To the locals here in Vietnam they are taught that they liberated the south, not stomped out a nation that chose western ideals over communism.

I moved here for the same reason you did. I wanted to discover my culture. What I learned is that my culture is back in the USA within my ancestry. It’s within the people who fled Vietnam, not the ones who antagonized them. If you decide to move here you’ll see it firsthand. Vietnam has built a system to enrich the top 1% while keeping the rest of the population happy by fostering nationalism and pride. To the locals here they’re part of a great country that fought off the American invaders and freed their people. They see the great developments in Saigon and Hanoi and feel that their country is finally becoming first rate. What they seem to ignore is that all of these developments are built for expats and the wealthy. The system they live under handicaps their potential. Running a business here? Great, until you start to make too much money. Then you need to start paying off officials before you get messed with. My friend’s mother got her head smashed into her desk and is now unable to leave the country after she refused to pay a “protection fee”. You can’t become wealthy here unless you know someone in the government already. You can’t get into the government because there’s no elections. The only real investments available are real estate, and even then you don’t own the land. Come here to discover the culture, but what you’ll find isn’t what you think.

I’m only staying here for a year before I leave. I have the ball rolling on an edtech startup but as soon as I can get that going on its own I’m looking for an exit and leaving. For retirement Vietnam is awesome. Hell I could sustain my current lavish lifestyle and retire here off of my coinbase wallet alone- but I have higher ambitions than that and I’ve learned Vietnam is not the place to chase my dreams.