Let me be clear about this right from the start: I am in no way encouraging anyone to intentionally break the law in Vietnam or any other country for that matter. I am merely pointing out a new product that helps to circumvent the rather strange motorbike laws that exist in this country.
Since most people can't afford a car and would be a damn fool to drive it even if they did have one, motorbikes are the obvious answer for getting around. Nearly everyone owns one although at times I feel as though it is rather pointless since motorbike taxis are so cheap that they may as well be free. I only even really dive my scooter if I am going to some sort of nature place that is outside of the city limits. For anything else, a couple of dollars gets you there so there really isn't much reason to try to brave the crazy traffic in this country.
Scooters are relatively safe here provided that you keep your head on a swivel and drive as if you were invisible. People here do NOT observe right of way laws or even the use of turn-signals the way that they do in the west. You just gotta be careful.
Things get a bit funny and weird though once we start talking about the restrictions, particularly when it comes to legally operating one. In order to operate a scooter in Vietnam, you have to have a license issued by Vietnam. They do not recognize international licenses or even high-level training in real motorcycles achieved with special licenses the likes of which we have in USA. If you do not have a Vietnamese license, you are technically breaking the law. However, this doesn't apply to scooters that are below a certain CC (cubic centimeter) rating as far as the engine size is involved. I don't remember what that threshold is, it might be 100 or even 75. That's kind of not the point here though because often when there is a police checkpoint they aren't really interested in enforcing the law, they are looking to issue monetary fines and it really isn't that much money. I've heard of people paying fines but the only time that I heard of someone having their bike taken off of them or impounded was when the guy was horribly drunk, driving like an asshole, and definitely needed to have his bike taken off of him and I am glad they did.
In the past people with really small scooters have just been waved through checkpoints provided they are wearing a helmet because nobody needs to have a license to operate them. The downside of these scooters was that they were really slow and other that puttering to and from some local location, they were basically useless.
Enter the Vinfast E-scooters, which are pictured above.
These electric scooters have a CC rating of ZERO because there is no internal combustion engine, just like all other e-scooters. Therefore, they do not have the restrictions that other motorbikes do. You do not need a license to drive them. They have a limited range of about 150km, but if you can find just any old electrical socket that someone will let you use, they take about an hour to reach a great enough charge to get you 50k's or so.
They top out at around 50 km/hour and I don't know if this is just as powerful as the engine is or if there is a governor of some sort on it. Just know that 50 km / hour is more than fast enough to do almost anything in Vietnam. You can certainly die at that speed, don't test it!
This isn't likely to stay license-free for very long because the laws were written when people didn't really have a concept of the fact that electric vehicles would at some point exist. However, in Vietnam laws change remarkably slowly so I believe that this little workaround will be the way that it is for at least another year. Note the date: You are probably going to be ok driving one of these without a Vietnamese license until the end of 2025, perhaps even longer.
They can be purchased for about $800 or you can rent them from a bunch of different places for about $40 a month. I already exchanged my petrol-burning bike for one of these and have been very happy with it. I no longer have to go to gas stations and my landlord has plugs in the garage for us to use. I am also not going to be exposed to potential corruption bribes at checkpoints in the near future. So that is a plus.
The bike functions just like a gasoline powered bike, but it is totally silent, which takes a little bit of getting used to and you also need to be aware of the fact that other people and other vehicles cannot hear you, so get your trigger finger on that horn!