Posted on 12/26/2019 10:47:33 AM PST by DUMBGRUNT
After his military career, Rockhold worked as a defense contractor, operating mostly in Africa. He first returned to Vietnam in 1992 to work on a program to help economic refugees. He settled in Vietnam in 1995, the same year the United States and Vietnam normalized relations. He married a Vietnamese woman in 2009.
In fact, he liked it so much that he persuaded his mother to move to Vietnam from Santa Maria, Calif., also in 2009.
She came for the wedding, and decided to stay,” he said with a laugh. She lived in Vietnam until her death in 2015 at 94.
Vietnam has relaxed visa rules to lure American retirees like Rockhold, along with their savings.
Remarkably, he said, some of his friends are Americans who never served in Vietnam. “The cost of living is so low,” he said. “It’s a communist country, but if I blindfolded you and put you in downtown Saigon, you wouldn’t know it.”
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Battle fried or just stupid.
It’s all fine until it’s not.
I’d sure never want to live in a communist country.
It’s a risk but I guess everything is. We do the best we can.
Not the best for the money but beats Latin America by a long shot.
I agree.
I don’t know...his mom only lived 5 more years after moving there?
Stupid why?
A lot of people are retiring on social security alone - sometimes through no fault of their own. Yes there are risks living in Panama, or Vietnam or Thailand - but the upsides outweigh the downsides for many.
Vietnam may be a communist country, but the people are not.................
94!.........I should be so lucky!..................
long time, short time. number one girl.
I seldom give others the opportunity to shoot at me again. I’m just sayin’
VN, just like the Caribbean islands and Mexico are ok until the third-world dictator decides you are not welcome and kicks you out while keeping your bank account.
Yep, was being silly.
That’s the risk people run, when deciding to retire in another country. They have to hope that they don’t get caught up.in social/political instability, in exchange for that lower cost of living.
I am on disability so I know how hard it is to live off those benefits. Why would you leave this country? There is no better place to live than here, regardless of the hardships.
I actually kind of liked Hanoi the first time I was there last year. Sort of a throwback to an earlier time, and the communist propaganda is actually less pervasive there than it is in the South. Other than the language, it seemed very much like a part of China. Lot of people looked more Chinese than Vietnamese also. Vietnam has really bad air pollution though, it’s like it’s in a thick fog all the time.
I’ve heard that mixed ethnicity children are discriminated against in Asian countries such as Vietnam. Just an observation, that this man may have set up his children for difficult lives in such a society.
They have to hope that they don’t get caught up.in social/political instability, in exchange for that lower cost of living.
That’s true in about moving to another state in the U.S.
NatGeo documentary of the Vietnamese man who had 200lb tumor and the travails he encountered getting medical help, as an example of the bureaucratic medical care it Vietnam.
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