There are a lots of strange and hard things may cause some inconveniences for expats when they choose to move to live in Vietnam. By using mobile apps, expats can plan everything easily. In this article, I will introduce you to the top popular free mobile apps in Vietnam that will help you get along with Vietnam’s lifestyle and culture.
Apps for booking rooms and flights
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor was founded by Stephen Kaufer, Langley Steinert, Nick Shanny, and Thomas Palka in February 2000 in a small office above a pizza shop called Kosta’s in Needham, Massachusetts.This app shows hotel and restaurant reviews, accommodation bookings and other travel-related content for travellers. TripAdvisor is now considered the world’s biggest online travel resource with more than 315 million users and about 500 million reviews of travel data.
TripAdvisor is not just about reviews – travellers can also compare the price and availability for hotels and soon will be able to book their stay without leaving the site. Travellers can post their own rates, reviews and photos to share more experiences about the places that they came to help other new travellers. The number of reviews on TripAdvisor keeps growing. At present, more than 200 new posts are uploaded to TripAdvisor every minute.
TripAdvisor shows hotel and restaurant reviews, accommodation bookings and other travel-related content for travellers
Link to download TripAdvisor for IOS and Android.
Traveloka
Traveloka was established in 2012 is known as an Indonesian unicorn company that provides airline ticketing and hotel booking services online expanding rapidly into South East Asia and Australia. It recently expanded to provide lifestyle products and services, such as attraction tickets, activities, car rental, and restaurant vouchers. Users can search information about interior or international flight schedules and prices with many attractive discounts from several airlines.
Currently, Traveloka has established partnerships with more than 70 domestic and international airlines, serving more than 100,000 different routes throughout Asia Pacific and Europe. The online booking platform has also listed more than 100,000 hotels worldwide and 10,000,000+ verified reviews from real hotel guests will help visters make their right decisions. Because Traveloka have office in Vietnam so users can enjoy the booking service that is available 24/7 to answer and solve any problems with just a call or an email text.
Traveloka provides airline ticketing and hotel booking services online
Link to download Traveloka for IOS and Android.
Apps for transportation
Grab
Grab is a Singaporean transportation network company offering services that include peer-to-peer ridesharing, ride service hailing and food deliveries. Being available in 8 Southeast Asian countries, specially in Viet Nam, Grab is one of the most popular apps for transportation
Users can choose the starting point, drop off point, time, and select whether their travel is for personal or business reasons. Users can also leave notes to the driver to specify what they will look like or where they will be. This is a list of Grab’s wide selection of services are now available in Vietnam:
- Justgrab: Get the nearest car or taxi at an affordable upfront fixed fare.
- GrabCar, GrabCar 6: Affordable everyday private car of luxury ride; ride solo or with a crew up to 3 or 6; book a single ride or rent by the hour.
- GrabBike: On-demand bike service; best choice to beat traffic quickly and safely in Vietnam.
- GrabTaxi: Get a taxi with an upfront fixed fare wherever you are, wherever you want.
- GrabFood: Order from your favourite restaurant and get meals delivered to your doorstep.
- GrabExpress: Affordable, fast and reliable courier service with insurance for your item.
- GrabPay by Moca: A safe and secure mobile wallet where you can easily pay for your rides, food delivery and at local merchants with just a few taps on the Grab app.
- GrabRewards: Earn rewards points for every dollar you spend and use them to redeem awesome deals in the GrabRewards catalouge.
Grab is a transportation network company offering services that include peer-to-peer ridesharing, ride service hailing and food deliveries
Link to download Grab for IOS and Android.
Goviet
Goviet is a multi-service app is invested by an Indonesia brand, GoJek and be designed for users to book a ride and deliver goods conveniently in seconds with affordable price. Goviet offers similar services to Grab for a much cheaper price, however only the motorbike option is available.
Goviet brings 2 type of services to users:
- GoBike: The online bike hailing service, convenient, fast and affordable to use.
- GoSend: The on-demand delivery transportation service – secure, safe and trustworthy.
- GoFood: A leader in the food delivery segment.
Goviet offers similar services to Grab for a much cheaper price, however only the motorbike option is available
Link to download Goviet for IOS and Android.
Busmap.vn
Busmap.vn is built for users to take advantage of the 100 plus bus routes and 2,000 bus stops scattered around Ho Chi Minh City. With the app, you will be able to find all bus stops on the map, view waiting time for the next bus to arrive at the station, based on real-time GPS trackers placed on the buses at each bus stop and navigations route between 2 locations. Using Taxi and Grabcar for travel can make you watse a lot of money, so buses is a affordable solution if you are not in a hurry.
Note: Busmap.vn is only useful for those travelling within Ho Chi Minh City.
Link to download Busmap.vn for IOS and Android.
Apps for communication
Facebook is an American online social media and social networking service company based in Menlo Park, California. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his two classmates at the Harvard University Dormitory in February 2004. This is a website where every user can make their own registration and create account for free. By creating Facebook profile, the user not only can fill different information about themself and share content (text, pictures, music, video etc.) with others but also easily connect with friends, family and people who share the same interests as them.
Facebook is the most popular free app in Vienam with more than 67 millions users, representing 3% of the total of two billion Facebook members. Facebook is an extremely useful app for expats who want to move to live aboard in Vietnam because it has a large number of groups and fanpages for helping them to find suitable accommondations, stable jobs, interest entertainment places or some new friends here.
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service company
Link to download Facebook for IOS and Android.
Zalo
Zalo was created by the VNG corporation in 2012 with the intention of providing fast and reliable messaging that runs well on Vietnam’s unreliable 3G infrastructure and low-end phones that are widely used. Zalo not only is Vietnam’s premier chatting platform, with more than 100 million users worldwide but also is the new market-leading messaging app with amazing features:
- Message to all of your friends who has created their own account in a snap and receive notifications at the moment they reply back.
- Express your emotion with fun and cheerful emotions or stickers.
- Send voice messages to friendlist with high quality without any outside noises.
- Play game and relax after a hard working day with friends.
- High level of privacy.
- Easily connect and make friends with nearby people by GPS.
- High-quaility pictures and videos can be sent quickly.
Link to download Zalo for IOS and Android.
App for finding food
Foody
Founded in 2012, Foody now become the most famous food app in Vietnam with more than 38 milions unique visitors, 309.774 nationwide places and 9.287.286 photos uploaded. Although Foody has a huge interactions, its search engine works very fast. By searching with simple keywords, streetnames, locations or foodtypes, Foody will show you a list of hundred suitable places.
If you do not know what to eat? Don’t worry because Foody has its own location-based scanning feature, you can easily find a list of nearby locations and all you need to do is choosing the best one that you want to come! Foody also allows users to upload their reviews and pictures wherever they came and share to community.
Link to download Foody for IOS and Android.
App for online shopping
Shopee
Shopee is an e-commerce platform which serves Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam and Philippines users to buy and sell products online. Shopee now is one of the top 3 popular online shopping app in Vietnam with a wide selection of product categories ranging from consumer electronics to home & living, health & beauty, baby & toys, fashion and fitness equipment.
Shopee’s users are usually provided with a great number of benefits such as freeshipping fee for all orders under 4kg, fast express in 4 hours, shock deals from 1000 VND, up to 70% discount from hundreds of prestigious nationwide shops, etc. Shopee also allows buyers to communicate with sellers directly and vice versa by Chat feature, so that sellers can answer all of the shoppers’ questions and manage their expectations.
Shopee is an e-commerce platform which serves users to buy and sell products online
Link download Shopee for IOS and Android.
In addition, there are some same online shopping apps such as Lazada, Sendo, Tiki.vn, etc with similar benefits. Almost of these apps are extremely popular in Vietnam so that you can easily download, update and use them to get better life in Vietnam.
Furthermore, here the link to some Facebook group for expats that you will need. Click here if you want to know how to get a suitable English teaching job in Vietnam.