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Americans are retiring to Vietnam

latimes.com

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Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#201

Post by dmitriz »

coconut_crab wrote: post #162
bane wrote: post #29

Something many people (especially Americans) forget to consider when selecting a place to retire is the almost guaranteed need for lots and lots of high quality medical care wherever you end up. I suspect many people here on HN will retire with large enough retirement savings (and other assets) to settle down like kings in many places in the world. But the distribution of high quality care for ahem people of advancin…

Health care in Vietnam is not not too bad, at least for the price. Surely you can't expect state of the art cancer treatments here but everything else is pretty affordable. My father just had an operation to fix his retinal detachment, everything costed less than 800 USD, and only 200 USD after insurance. Another guy I know had an operation for appendicitis, and he only needed to pay 200 USD for it. And both of them…

> Health care in Vietnam is not too bad, at least for the price.

Let us see...

My partner got what looked liked food poisoning when we arrived to Hue. Local hospital refused to take us, sent to a special hospital "for foreigners". She was put on a bed and kept waiting in pain for hours. The doctor didn't bother to do anything for her for hours, despite not too many other patients. We felt hungry, yet they refused to let us go. After several hours waiting and feeling more stomach pain from hunger, I said, we absolutely have to go and eat something. Yet the doctor told us to keep waiting, refusing to let us go. I started looking around for food and found a cafeteria on premises that was luckily still open (it was already late). After a verbal fight with the doctor, he finally allowed us to go to eat in that cafeteria. It was already late and dark and I had told the doctor, we would be leaving now unless he does something. After more verbal fights and repeated insistence, the doctor wrote a quick prescription without even checking and sent us to pay about USD 100! However, by the time he gave it to us, the hospital pharmacy was already closed. And no other pharmacy on the street would have that medicine. So we came back around midnight, with no medicine, wasted many hours, spent USD 100 on nothing.

Would I call it "not too bad"? Well, if it was any more serious, we would have to fear for our lives is all I can say.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#202

Post by dmitriz »

pixelperfect wrote: post #58
quaquaqua1 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my medical care in the USA I can assure you Asian doctors are, at the very least , at the same level as US doctors. It sounds like an insult to my ears.

I can tell you from experience that an average doctor in a backwater county of Arkansas is better than an average doctor in the capital city of Laos.

I can also tell from my own experience that an average doctor in Thailand's backwater is better than in the capital of Ireland.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#203

Post by bane »

refurb wrote: post #57
quaquaqua1 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my medical care in the USA I can assure you Asian doctors are, at the very least , at the same level as US doctors. It sounds like an insult to my ears.

The doctors might be at the same level, but do they have the same access to resources?

The resources can be better. I can't find it right now (and don't have the time to look for it), but there's some interesting studies that show at least in South Korea, there's something like 3-4x the number of medical imaging devices per capita than in the U.S.

Costs are fractions of U.S. costs. For an extraordinary number of medical situations, one could fly to Korea, get treated, stay in hotels or nice recovery centers (medical hotels), and fly back and still spend less money than in the U.S. with very competitive medical outcomes.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#204

Post by oarabbus_ »

echelon wrote: post #191
oarabbus_ wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This obsession with cheap places to live intrigues me. That's... pretty damn bizarre that you'd find it intriguing. >In Memphis, TN you can rent a decent apartment in a shitty part of town for $300 a month. Who _wants_ to live in the shitty part of town? You've deconstructed your own argument in a sentence. Also, with American money you can live in Vietnam like royalty, and in an area that looks like paradise. There…

> Who _wants_ to live in the shitty part of town? You've deconstructed your own argument in a sentence. Let's say you just quit your job to live your dream of creating an indie video game. You'll probably want as much runway as possible while you build. Startups tend to need rapid iteration and experimentation unless they're highly technical, which is why this plan is probably better for things you can do solo and co…

Sure, I don’t mean to suggest it’s a good idea for all or even most Americans to retire in Vietnam vs. a cheaper city in the USA. However I do think a sizeable amount (maybe some 5% of retirees?) would be a good match for that

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#205

Post by refurb »

bane wrote: post #203
refurb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The doctors might be at the same level, but do they have the same access to resources?

The resources can be better. I can't find it right now (and don't have the time to look for it), but there's some interesting studies that show at least in South Korea, there's something like 3-4x the number of medical imaging devices per capita than in the U.S. Costs are fractions of U.S. costs. For an extraordinary number of medical situations, one could fly to Korea, get treated, stay in hotels or nice recovery ce…

That’s entirely believable for developed Asian nations like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan.

For developing countries, you can have very capable doctors, but limited access to technologies.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#206

Post by raindeer3 »

baddox wrote: post #165
spodek wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't get much colder or wintery than Finland, Denmark, and Norway, but > For the second year in a row, the world's happiest country is... Finland! > Finland topped the list of 156 countries, which were ranked in the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network's 2019 World Happiness Report. The report ranks countries on several well-being variables including income, freedom, trust, healthy life expectanc…

So perhaps the answer to “who would want to live somewhere that cold?” is “people who were born there and lived their whole lives there.” This is based on my understanding that those countries have very low rates of immigration.

Well, Sweden is 7th on the list and over 20% of the ppl here have foreign background (individuals either born abroad or having both parents born abroad). Canada is 9th.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#207

Post by raindeer3 »

baddox wrote: post #165
spodek wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't get much colder or wintery than Finland, Denmark, and Norway, but > For the second year in a row, the world's happiest country is... Finland! > Finland topped the list of 156 countries, which were ranked in the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network's 2019 World Happiness Report. The report ranks countries on several well-being variables including income, freedom, trust, healthy life expectanc…

So perhaps the answer to “who would want to live somewhere that cold?” is “people who were born there and lived their whole lives there.” This is based on my understanding that those countries have very low rates of immigration.

Think it is more about living in a society that takes care of it's citizens.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#208

Post by scythe »

wruza wrote: post #124
tempsy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dynamic is that these old white men aren’t actually that rich by Western standards but are by SE Asian ones, so they don’t have the status or wealth to attract a young attractive western woman but do in SEA. If they were actually rich they wouldn’t need to retire overseas to stretch out their retirement.

Personality arguments aside: if we assume that “buying” an asian wife is an uncomfortable stereotype, doesn’t “status or wealth to attract a young attractive western woman” fall into the same category? What’s the difference (except life cost multiplier/divisor) that makes one uncomfortable and the other comfortable?

The reason it’s easy for Western men to impress women in third-world countries has to do with the inequality between those countries which is itself linked to an ugly legacy of colonialism.

Exploiting the income gap between America and Vietnam is, in a real sense, getting laid because of colonial history. And that is bad.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#209

Post by elfexec »

raindeer3 wrote: post #206
baddox wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So perhaps the answer to “who would want to live somewhere that cold?” is “people who were born there and lived their whole lives there.” This is based on my understanding that those countries have very low rates of immigration.

Well, Sweden is 7th on the list and over 20% of the ppl here have foreign background (individuals either born abroad or having both parents born abroad). Canada is 9th.

People immigrate to sweden and canada for jobs, opportunities and generous welfare, not because they want to live there. It's mostly the poor and desperate who immigrate to these countries.

How many wealthy native born canadians visit sweden? Hardly any. How many wealthy native born swedes visit canada? Hardly any. I bet more swedes visit thailand in one day than they visit canada in a whole year.

Re: Americans are retiring to Vietnam

#210

Post by JCharante »

vzttzv2 wrote: post #173
JCharante wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live part time in Tây Hồ (fly back to the States for each semester of school) and I just want to say that I've never gotten sick from the food. I'll eat street food on plastic chairs, restaurants with and without AC, and places that would be expensive even for foreigners. Of course I'll also eat what cô cooks sometimes and it's delicious. I'm not denying that you've gotten sick, but I'm just saying that it's differ…

Any where the To Lich flow. Quan hoa is one example

Wait that canal is sewage? I drive on that road everyday, never noticed it was anything other than a cute waterway.
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