I think it’s pretty needless to say at this point that I love it here in country. And I particularly love it in Hanoi: the people, the food, the culture, the smell of motorbike exhaust in the morning. You smell that? Do you smell that? There’s nothing else in the world smells like that.
Having lived for quite some time in Tampa, which is a medium-ish sized city, and also for quite some time in NYC, which they don’t call the Big Apple for nuthin’, I have a good sense of what kind of city I like to live in, which is definitely more on the NYC side of things. The problem with NYC is that you have to be Jay-Z, or at least have Jay-Z’s kind of wealth, to be able to afford all the good times New York City has on offer. The more bohemian side of the city that your basic non-millionaire could afford to enjoy was long gone by the time I got there in 2007. And by the time we left mid-pandemic, whatever life New York still had left in it was . . . well, there was no life in New York when we left. I’ve seen doornails with more vigor.
Tampa is fine. And when we arrived in Tampa mid-pandemic, it was great. Although many of our friends were pretty paranoid about the COVID, we’d just come from ground zero and appreciated that Tampa was pretty much a lawless land. And so life in Tampa was good. We were relatively wealthy and could afford to treat our friends to some of the finer things in life—feasts and drinks and concerts and so on—and we had just about anything we could want in terms of material goods—trucks, guns, motorcycles, guitars, modest dream house in Old Seminole Heights.
The only problem is that Tampa can get a little boring if you’re me. To be honest, I saw this coming, and I concede that the boringness has more to do with me than the city itself. There is a lot of fun stuff to do in Tampa. And the culture there is pretty interesting and unique if you know where to find it. Except that if you’re me and you thrive in places where there are new experiences around every corner and dynamic and interesting people to meet pretty much everywhere, Tampa’s gonna be a bit of a letdown. Of course, someone could argue, “But what about such and such a place and such and such a thing?” But, trust me, if you really feel like you’re most alive in cities like New York and London, Tampa’s just not gonna git it.
And so Hanoi.
Hanoi, I’ve been told repeatedly by locals, is a pretty mellow city. By mellow, they mean compared to Ho Chi Minh City, which a lot of people still call Saigon. If Hanoi is mellow, Saigon must be mad, mad, mad, and I can’t wait to go there. The first thing that’s likely to strike you about Hanoi is just how full of life it is. “This place is fucking alive,” you might say to yourself pretty much as soon as you hit the streets, and your assessment would be right on. If you’re me, and I am, the aliveness of the city is inspiring: it breathes life into me.
And the good news is, Vietnam is happy to have us. All we have to do is leave the country every 30 days before our visas expire, turn right back around after crossing the border, and get a new 30-day tourist visa. This is known as the Vietnam Visa Run, and you can do it forever. No problem. You can do a lot in Vietnam on a tourist visa. You can, for example, rent an apartment, which is great because it’d be nice to have a long-term place in Hanoi to use as home base that costs less than AirBnBs while we travel the world. You cannot work in Vietnam on a tourist visa, but, frankly, what’s the point of the Southeast Asia Escape Plan if you’re gonna ruin everything by working? Fuck working. What’d working ever do for you, anyway?
And so we get this great idea: We’re gonna rent an apartment in Hanoi where we can keep our stuff, buy a sweet brand-new Honda CB500X adventure-style motorcycle (it’s really more like adventure-ish, but you don’t need a full-on, massive adventure bike in country), kitted out with panniers and a top case, and drive the length of Vietnam. It takes about 48 hours on the road to drive from Cà Mau Cape National Park in the south to Lũng Cú in the Đồng Văn District near where Vietnam borders China in the north. Since we’re free people and can do whatever we want except for overstay our visas, the idea was to make the trip north over 30 days, drive over into China for some hot pot, then head on back to home base in Hanoi.
This plan would be all aces if there weren’t a hitch.
Here’s the hitch: We discovered, by which I mean Gina discovered, because she’s detail oriented and I’m more of an idea guy, that there are all sorts of requirements to buy and register and insure a motorcycle in country. These include stuff like having a Vietnamese driver’s license, a temporary resident’s card, and a work or investor’s visa. Plus there are all sorts of other hoops to jump through that we’re not gonna be able to jump through. And so it looked like our dream to motorcycle across Vietnam that we’d just come up with today and which is the only thing we’ve ever wanted was crushed before it even really had a chance to take shape. This is a shame because, as I said, I love Hanoi. In fact, the only thing I love more than living in Hanoi at this moment (besides, I think it goes without saying, my wife who still loves me) is, it turns out, motorcycles. So we pivot.
And if you’re gonna pivot, you can do worse than pivot toward Thailand.
Whereas Vietnam does not have a such a thing as a retirement visa because apparently they want foreigners to live useful, productive lives in country, Thailand has no such scruples. It’s pretty clear that they don’t give a fuck. Not one. This should give you some idea of what I’m talking about: Before the pivot, we spent about an hour this morning researching some way to legally buy and register and insure a motorcycle in Vietnam. We did so over coffee at the trendy cafe on our block where the young and stylish and well-to-do Vietnamese people go to hang out and be young and stylish and well-to-do. This research was not very illuminating or fun. In fact, there’s more illumination and fun to be had reading Kafka, if I’m honest. Post pivot, it took less than ten minutes to determine that buying and registering and insuring a motorcycle in Thailand that we could legally drive pretty much all over Southeast Asia would be no problem, easy-peasy, piece of cake, veritable tit on a plate. Because Thailand does have a such a thing as a retirement visa. And it’s easy to get.
I’m more of an idea guy—Gina’s really the detail-oriented half of this dynamic duo—so none of the requirements I’m about to mention for a retirement visa in Thailand are accurate. But they’re not supposed to be accurate. Rather, they’re supposed to convey the gist. So here’s the gist:
- You have to be over 50.
- You have to have a little Baht in the bank. Not much. Just enough to live on for a year in Thailand.
- You have to have some sort of income, which is no problem if you have invested wisely. VTSAX and relax, bitches!
- You have to have a pulse.
It’s obviously super important to the government of Thailand that you understand that your retirement visa by no means entitles you to work in Thailand. They put this part in bold, which I appreciate. If you’ve got all that going for you, Thailand says, “Come on in. Stay a while. Have a massage. Buy a motorcycle. How do you feel about ladyboys?” And once you’ve retired in Thailand and have the ownership papers and registration and insurance for your sweet new adventure-ish Honda CB500X motorcycle, there’s no problem driving it over the border, through Cambodia or Laos, and back to Vietnam for your cross-country adventure.
Phuc yeah!