Expats! What are your jobs?

Mine is a bit of a combination, I will be relying on investment  here in Aus so that I can teach voluntarily in less privileged areas, the visit to the orphans and speaking with students in HCMc had an effect so while living the good life I can do some good

respect for you mr. Mark Stutley. 

I am an Explosive Ordnance Disposal engineer. I live in Saigon because I have a Vietnamese wife, but am rarely able to work in Vietnam, because the Vn army sees clearance work as "low hanging fruit" that they can charge for and they will not allow any form of QC on their work either. Luckily there is enough work for me in other countries and in the last couple of years I have worked in Thailand, Solomon Islands, Iran, Oman.

I have worked as a Client Representative for a couple of oil companies in Vietnam though, doing seismic survey over the east and west Mekong Delta. For both projects I was essentially the project manager for the clearance, but my job title was "customer satisfaction officer", so as not to be seen to be in any way managing or quality controlling the clearance - which is exactly what I was doing. Whilst working in the Delta I traveled every road in the eastern side and every river of the western side of the Delta. It was fascinating.

Ah revisiting what I wrote last year when I was in Canada. I've been in Vietnam since January and still sticking to my plans similar to MickeyMike.

Staying in Vietnam until her application is approved or not. If not willing to stay in Vietnam until we can find other avenues for her to come to Canada.

Have not looked for work since coming here. She keeps track of our spendings writing it down daily. We spend about $10 mil/mth.

khanh44 wrote:

Ah revisiting what I wrote last year when I was in Canada. I've been in Vietnam since January and still sticking to my plans similar to MickeyMike.

Staying in Vietnam until her application is approved or not. If not willing to stay in Vietnam until we can find other avenues for her to come to Canada.

Have not looked for work since coming here. She keeps track of our spendings writing it down daily. We spend about $10 mil/mth.

Interesting monthly spend that. We bought an apartment in a new building in D8, 6 years ago, but it wasn't finished until late last year because the construction company went bankrupt (more than once). And instead of walking into a completely new apartment, with all mod cons, we walked into an empty concrete shell and had to pay to have water, wiring, floors, ceilings, sinks, toilets (there's one en-suite and one gp shower/bog). It was all a bit of a nightmare. Having said that, what we have now is a small but very comfortable little apartment in a brand new modern block.

We have a couple of bits of land around Vietnam, but Her Indoors wants to build a house in Saigon. Land prices are astronomical though. I'd prefer to build a bungalow rather than the usual shoe box type house one sees so many of - or the villas which look nice but many of the ones I have been to are impractical.

Anyway, I need to be within reach of the airport so that I can bug out and do jobs abroad, so next year we'll be seriously looking for a bit of land on which to build.

But back to finances. Our electric bill is around 400KD a month - we have fans, aircon, microwave and washing machine, TV an electric shower in each bathroom - and three peeps living here. All of the lighting is latest generation LED which gives us significant savings over incandescent bulbs and fluorescent lights. I think the largest wattage single light we have is 9 watts, which gives a surprising amount of light.

Water is a couple of hundred thou D a month and the water quality is sierra hotel India tango. However, if you are Vietnamese and you are registered with the CA at your residence, you can apply for a discount off your water bill. Naturally enough the discount doesn't apply to foreigners.

We pay 6 months in advance for cable tv get 2 months free for around 200KD/month, fibre optic internet is about 180KD/month.

A 12 Kg bottle of gas for cooking costs about 300KD for a 12 kg bottle and lasts around 6/7 months.

So, yeah 10 MD a month is very doable.

A bottle of malt whisky knocks a hole in the budget though!

declare your worldwide income?   HUH?   Are you crazy?   Why would you do that?   You think  expat teachers declare the money back to their home country.

If you are paying taxes to Vietnam out of your salary you can claim that as a tax credit on your US taxes. You can't do that if you don't report your income.

I am a Software Engineer in an automotive company

I'm an EOD Engineer (bomb disposal) but I'm not allowed by law to work in Vietnam  because external Quality Management and Quality Control are illegal here. So I work in the rest of the world. I have worked on a couple of projects in Vietnam, as a QM/QC consultant, but my job title was Customer Satisfaction Officer 

There are a couple of demining NGO's working in Vietnam and I have worked as short term project manager for one of them - and actually turned down the job of country director, because the salary was rather low.