According to the draft which has been recently posted on the ministry’s web portal, foreign travelers may bring cars and motorbikes into Vietnam but their vehicles would be allowed for use in Vietnam only for up to 30 days. Besides, they must move in groups following guiding cars arranged by local travel agencies.
Visitors would be also required to produce driver licenses, technical safety and environmental protection certificates, vehicle registration certificates, temporary import documents, and civil liability insurance certificates.
To apply for a license to organize a caravan tour, a travel company would submit a dossier to the Ministry of Transport, specifying names of foreign drivers and companions as well as detailed information on vehicles such as type, color, chassis number, engine number and plate number. The Ministry of Transport would examine the dossier and grant a license within five working days.
According to the ministry, several road tourism services such as auto and motorbike self-driving tours across ASEAN countries, including Vietnam, have developed. Therefore, the decree would help develop the country’s tourism sector.
While complaining that the proposed conditions for foreigners to bring vehicles into the country are still stricter than in other neighboring countries, Tran Xuan Hung, director of Viking Travel and Media Company, highly appreciated the tentative rule as it does not require diplomatic notes from embassies of countries of which tourists bringing vehicles into Vietnam are nationals.
At the moment, both travelers and tourism firms are required to ask embassies of their resident nations to send diplomatic notes to the Ministry of Transport for getting approval on a case-by-case basis.
