An honest relocation guide · David Bunney · 42 Publishing
There is no retirement visa for Vietnam.
And yet thousands of Westerners are living their best years there — ninety days at a time. This is the book that tells you how, and tells you honestly whether you should.
Digital edition available now. Paperback to follow.
US$47 · instant download · full-colour PDF, read on phone, tablet or computer
30-day unconditional money-back guarantee. Keep the book either way.
Not ready to decide? Read Chapter 1 free — including what this move actually cost us →Every guide shows you the beaches.
None of them tells you what an ordinary Tuesday costs, why your permission to stay expires four times a year, or what happens when the 3 am call comes from home.
You have probably read a dozen blog posts by now. They all say Vietnam is cheap, the food is wonderful and the people are kind. All true. None of it helps you decide.
What you actually need to know is harder to find, because almost nobody selling you a dream wants to say it out loud:
- There is no retirement visa. There is a ninety-day rhythm, and a subscription fee attached to it.
- The gap between the local price and the foreigner price will move your budget more than any other decision you make.
- Most banks will not open an account for you. You need a life that works if the answer is no.
- The apartment you view and the apartment you live in are two different places, separated by about eight hours.
Where Vietnam is wonderful, this book says so plainly. Where it is complicated, it says exactly how.
What you get
Twenty-four chapters. Three years of mornings. No brochure language.
Written from Da Nang across three years of ninety-day stays, tested against hundreds of conversations with the people already living it — and fact-checked, chapter by chapter, in July 2026.
The book
156 pages, five parts
Decide, Prepare, Arrive, Settle, Thrive — structured the way the move actually happens. Full-colour PDF, yours the moment you pay.
Included free
Every checklist, printable
The 90/60/30 preparation checklist, budget worksheets, the apartment viewing checklist, an emergency card. Free to everyone — we don't hold them hostage.
Maintained
A living updates page
Visa rules move faster than books reprint. Every chapter carries a Last Fact Checked date and a link to the current version, reviewed quarterly.
Look inside
Three real pages, unretouched.
At US$47 you should see what you're getting before you pay. These are actual pages from the book — not a designer's impression of them.
Real numbers, datedThree complete budgets — lean, comfortable and premium — line by line, in dong and dollars. Undated prices are fiction, so every figure carries the month it was checked.
The living updates systemEvery chapter ends with a Last Fact Checked date and a QR code to the current version, followed by the checklist for that part of the move. This is the page that keeps the book from going stale.
Straight TalkThe honest downsides other guides skip, plus real patterns from years inside the expat community. On this page: why moving somewhere purely because it's cheap tends to send people home inside a year.
Not a brochure. A plan.
What you are actually buying is not cheap paradise. It is something better, and quieter: an ordinary life that works.
An apartment you chose carefully instead of in a hurry. A coffee place where they start your order when you turn the corner. A hospital you picked in month two rather than in an ambulance. Enough of the language to be treated as someone who lives here. And a plan for the rules that keep changing.
That life is entirely available. It is just not the one the brochures describe, and getting to it takes better information than they give you.
Inside the book
The structure follows the move itself.
Real appeal, real friction, real numbers, and the visa truth that shapes everything. Includes the wet-Tuesday test: an honest way to work out whether you would still be happy here in year three, on an ordinary, unglamorous, wet Tuesday. If Part 1 talks you out of it, the book has done its job.
The ninety days before you fly: paperwork, money, health, the garage, and the scouting trip that should come before all of it. With the 90/60/30 checklist that turns it into a sequence instead of a panic.
Your first thirty days, with a script for the ones where you are too tired to think. Landing, housing, transport, money on the ground, staying connected.
Months two to six: healthcare when you actually need it, the fifty phrases that separate two entirely different Vietnams, culture without the cringe, safety and scams, and the systems of an ordinary excellent week.
Building a life: finding your people, working and teaching legally, families and schooling, long-term legality — and the chapter almost no guide includes, on knowing when it isn't working and going home well.
Why this one
Three reasons this guide is different.
01
It dates its facts
Every chapter carries a Last Fact Checked date. Undated prices are fiction, and undated visa advice is worse than none.
02
It keeps checking
A living updates page, reviewed quarterly, so the book doesn't quietly go stale on your shelf while the rules change.
03
Lived first, then fact-checked
Three years of ninety-day stays came first; the verification came after. David publishes his own utility bill in Chapter 2, because that is what credibility costs.
Instant download · 30-day unconditional guarantee
On the price
US$47 against what this move actually costs.
This is not a US$9.99 book, and it is not pretending to be. Here is the honest comparison — every figure below is from the book, verified July 2026.
The immodest version: the wrong decision here costs a year of your life and a house sale you cannot easily undo. Part 1 exists to help you make that decision properly — including the possibility that the answer is no.
From Chapter 1
What it cost us
Every move has a line item that never appears in the budget. Ours was a dog.
Loki was eleven years old when we made the decision to go: a big-hearted male who had been part of our family for his entire life. Eleven years of beach mornings and food dropped under the table. And more than that: Loki had seen us through medical recoveries, the way dogs do, lying beside the bed through the slow weeks, appointing himself to the job no one asked him to do and doing it better than anyone. He wasn't a pet. He was family.
And we couldn't take him.
We looked at every option, the way you do: twice, three times, hoping the answer would change. The flights, the heat, the quarantine, his age. Every path led to the same place: bringing an eleven-year-old dog into the tropics for our dream was a decision for us, paid for by him. So we did the harder thing. We found him a new family — good people, a good yard, the kind of home you'd choose if you were choosing for yourself — and we said goodbye to our mate.
I'm not going to dress that up. It was the worst day of the whole move, worse than any airport, any paperwork, any wobble since.
I tell you this for two reasons. First, because this book promised you the real costs, and this was ours. The brochures count dollars; the true inventory includes a dog's face at a gate. Second, because whatever your version of Loki is — and you have one: a garden, a grandchild's Saturday sport, a mother in care, a workshop full of tools — you should name it now, out loud, at your own kitchen table.
Not to talk yourself out of the move. To make sure that if you go, you go having counted everything, so the cost never arrives disguised as regret.
Vietnam from Day One · Chapter 1
What is your Loki?
It is question five of the ten this book asks you to answer before you decide anything. Chapter 1 is free, and it contains all ten.
Read Chapter 1 free →What readers say
From people who made the move.
The apartment we nearly signed charged electricity at a flat rate per unit. We had no idea that was even a thing. We went back at nine on the Saturday night like the book says to and found a karaoke bar two doors down that we'd completely missed. Thank you so much for that one checklist item.
— Sue and Phil, Perth, WA
On my own, the thing I needed most was someone willing to tell me the hard parts, and nobody selling a dream does that. I read this book many times and I came knowing exactly what I'd signed up for, and the ninety-day rhythm has never once caught me by surprise.
— Kat, Oregon, USA
We'd read the blogs and watched a lot of YouTube, and all of it made this sound easy. This book tells it straight as it is, both the good and the challenges. I think everyone considering such an important relocation decision needs all the information first. We found the checklists a real bonus.
— Steven and Tracey, Chesterfield, UK
The honest guarantee
Find a topic it should have covered, and I'll refund you.
This book promises to tell you the truth about moving to Vietnam, including the parts that would talk you out of it. That is a big claim, so here is what stands behind it.
Read it. If you find a topic about relocating to Vietnam that this book should have covered and didn't — or if you simply don't believe you received US$47 of value — email me within 30 days and I'll refund you in full.
No form. No questions. No explanation required. You keep the book and every worksheet. I would rather you had them than have your money.
— David Bunney · mail@DavidBunney.com
Instant download · full-colour PDF · 30-day unconditional guarantee
About the author
David Bunney
International bestselling author, publisher and enrichment speaker. David writes about navigating change with confidence — from artificial intelligence to relocation to the decisions that reshape a life.
He and Sheridan have spent three years returning to Da Nang, ninety days at a time, travelling South-East Asia between stays. This book is the synthesis of that experience, hundreds of conversations inside the expat community, and Sheridan's journals of everyday Da Nang life.
It is not a memoir, and it is not a travel guide. It won't rank beaches. It is not legal or financial advice — where a decision belongs with a qualified professional, the book says so plainly and tells you which one to call.
Before you buy
Fair questions.
Is this only useful for Da Nang?
No. The mechanics — visas, banking, healthcare, housing, transport, tax, schooling — apply across Vietnam, and the book compares seven cities directly on cost and character. Da Nang is the city David and Sheridan return to, so it is the worked example used throughout, but Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Hoi An, Nha Trang, Vung Tau and Da Lat all get their own treatment.
I'm not Australian. Is it still relevant?
Mostly, yes. Vietnamese rules apply to everyone equally, and that's the bulk of the book. Where it's Australia-specific — consular contacts, the ATO residency question, a few home-country logistics — it's clearly flagged, and the underlying principle transfers. Readers from the UK, Canada, the US and Europe will find the visa, money, health and housing chapters apply without modification.
Vietnam changes constantly. Won't this be out of date?
Parts of it will, and the book says so on the page rather than pretending otherwise. Every chapter carries a Last Fact Checked date and names precisely which of its facts move. The living updates page is maintained and reviewed quarterly, so you always have the current version of the fast-moving material — visas, banking, fines, fees.
That's the honest answer to a real problem: no printed book about Vietnam can stay current on its own.
What format do I get, and how quickly?
A full-colour PDF, downloadable the moment you pay. Read it on a phone, tablet or computer, and print it if you'd rather. A paperback edition is in production and will follow.
Why US$47 when there are Vietnam books for ten dollars?
Because those books are not doing this job. This one is priced against the cost of the decision it helps you make, not against the shelf beside it. A single avoided rental mistake covers it several times over.
If you disagree once you've read it, the guarantee above is unconditional and it means exactly what it says.
What if the book convinces me not to go?
Then it has done its most valuable work, and it will have cost you US$47 instead of a year and a house sale. Part 1 is deliberately built to make that outcome possible. The author's stated promise: if by the end of Part 1 you've decided Vietnam isn't for you, the book has done its job just as well.
Are the checklists really free?
Yes — every checklist, worksheet and the emergency card, free to download and print, no email required. The book promises that in print and the promise is kept. You're paying for the book, not for access to its own appendices.
Decide properly. Either way.
Three years of mornings, hundreds of conversations, and every number dated. The honest version of a decision most people make on a feeling.
US$47 · instant download · full-colour PDF
30-day unconditional money-back guarantee · Every checklist free · Living updates maintained
Still deciding? Read Chapter 1 free, and answer the ten questions →
Vietnam from Day One — An Honest Relocation Guide by David Bunney.
Published by 42 Publishing (ABN 80 655 824 455), Perth, Western Australia. ISBN 978-0-6457239-8-4.
General information only — not legal, tax, medical or financial advice.