Vietnamese car rental: how to get a driver’s license

By Alex Last updated May 3, 2022 2,668

Every year the number of tourists who prefer to travel around the world increases, without becoming attached to the programs and offers of travel agencies. The best option for them is to rent a motorbike or car and self-planning routes. However, it should be borne in mind that car rental in Vietnam has a number of features.

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Driver’s license

In 2014, Vietnam signed an international convention to join the list of countries that recognize international driving permits (IDPs).

In this way, The IDPs received in Russia are valid on the territory of Vietnam.

However, apparently, not all representatives of the local traffic police know about this and, in order to remove all questions from law enforcement officers, you can download the link below. Information Form 48/2014 of BGTVT dated October 15, 2014 on the recognition of the main forms of the IDP. Print or skip Yandex.Disk and carry it everywhere with you.

You can download it here: one, 2, 3.
In * .docx format: link.

One important detail: international laws are valid if you come on a tourist visa for up to 3 months. A longer visa period means that you must be registered as a resident, and therefore you are entitled to receive Vietnamese IDPs.

If you do not want to get acquainted with the Vietnamese sluggish bureaucratic machine, then you can solve the problem by renting a car with a driver.

Driver's license — Vietnamese driver’s license

Where to look for a rental car?

In hotels
In travel agencies
Ask the guide he should know
In Vkontakte groups (like “Nha Trang flea market”, where local Russians communicate with each other and share knowledge with pleasure)

In Nha Trang, you can easily find a company that provides such services. Moreover, you can arrange a rental directly at the hotel. As a rule, each guide cooperates with several companies and can recommend the best rental conditions. It is noteworthy that if you wish, you can find a car rental with a driver at a price comparable to a net car rental.

Documents for car rental

For registration of car rental in Vietnam, tourists must provide:

international passport
Vietnamese driver’s license
driving license (many companies do not require it)
credit card (in some cases you can get by with cash)

As a rule, the owners of rental offices are quite loyal to the absence of certain documents, they also want to earn.

Alternative travel arrangements

The most “crazy” tourists believe that on the Vietnamese roads it is quite possible to drive a car without a certificate, because the local police will not begin to check documents without much need. In this, in part, the truth. But such lovers of extreme rest should be prepared to pay fairly substantial fines. Therefore it is necessary to think carefully before embarking on such an adventure.

Another alternative to public transport is bike rental. These vehicles are rented with minimum formalities. Almost every self-respecting hotel has a scooter rental service. It is enough to leave in the office the coordinates of your place of residence and present a passport to get a motorbike. There you will receive helmets and a minimum of information about the features of behavior on the Vietnamese roads.

Ah, the roads

Numerous tourists note that renting a car in Vietnam, on the one hand, makes it possible to get the most positive impressions from the unmatched views of this country. On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that local roads are not European highways. Most of them do not have a hard coating. It is difficult to frighten our tourists with this fact, but, nevertheless, we should be ready for the minimally comfortable conditions of movement.

Another feature of traveling on Vietnamese roads is the specific behavior of participants in the movement. The bulk of vehicles in Vietnamese cities are motorbikes. Their owners are not shy about giving sound signals without reason. An unprepared driver, caught in a stream of constantly beeping and often ignoring motorcycle traffic rules, simply falls into a stupor and cannot immediately catch all the unwritten rules of the local “road code”.

For a beginner, the main thing is to “fit in” with a relatively large group of vehicles and move in a general rhythm. The speed of movement on city streets, as a rule, does not exceed 40 km / h, which allows you to quickly get used to the local rules, or rather, to their absence.

Prices

Rent a car in Vietnam is not a cheap pleasure. The minimum daily rental price: 25-30 dollars. The upper plank can fluctuate in rather large limits. Moreover, the difference in the cost of renting the same type of car in different offices may differ by 10-20 dollars.

On the positive side, there is no daily limit on mileage. By paying the rent, you can drive as much as you want. The main thing – do not forget to pour gasoline into the tank. Its cost, by the way, is comparable to Russian prices.

Motor scooters and mopeds in terms of rental prices look much more democratic. The daily cost of renting a bike is from 5 to 30 dollars. Such a rented unit consumes much less gas, and you can get to any point in Nha Trang and its surroundings much faster than by car.