Who we are, and how we check the law
This site tells visitors what they may lawfully ride in Vietnam. That is worth nothing unless you can see where the answers come from and what happens when we get one wrong. Both are on this page.
How a legal claim gets onto this site
Primary sources, named in the text
A legal claim on this site is traced to the instrument it comes from — a decree, a circular, a law, a treaty — and the instrument is named where the claim is made. Decree 168/2024 for penalties, Decree 67/2023 for compulsory insurance, Circular 38/2024 for the speed cap on licence-free machines, Law 36/2024 and Decree 100/2019 for the licence-free electric class. Our guides link their legal claims to these sources. If you find a claim with no source behind it, tell us and we will add the source or take the claim down.
Treaty status read from the depositary, not from a summary
Which international driving permits Vietnam recognises is checked against the United Nations Treaty Collection itself, and against the treaty gazettes of the countries involved. Travel blogs and rental sites copy each other's mistakes for years; the depositary tables do not. This is how we found that the widely repeated claim about Korean permits stopped being true in July 2023.
Dated, and re-checked
Every guide carries the date it was last reviewed. Vietnamese road law changed substantially in 2024 and 2025 and is still moving, so a page without a date is a page you cannot trust. When a fact changes we change the page and add a line to the log below rather than quietly editing it.
What we are, plainly
We are a broker: when a hire goes ahead, the bike's owner is the lessor of record, not us. The bike's damage waiver is a contractual cap on what you would owe for damage to the bike, and it is not insurance — we will not call it insurance in any language. Nothing here is legal advice, and where a question needs a Vietnamese lawyer we say so instead of guessing.
Corrections
Where we published something wrong, it is listed here with the date and what changed. Newest first.
5 October 2026
The damage waiver was described as ours
Pages called the damage waiver “our Collision Damage Waiver”. It is a term of the bike’s owner, as the Terms already said: a contractual cap on what you owe for damage to the bike, and not insurance. Every page of this site now calls it the bike’s damage waiver.
Read the Terms →5 October 2026
hagiang.bike offered a licence-free electric scooter
On hagiang.bike the header, the bikes page, the how-it-works page and the summary for AI assistants offered a licence-free electric scooter to riders whose licence Vietnam does not recognise. An electric scooter cannot do the Ha Giang roads, as the Ha Giang page itself said, so those lines are gone from hagiang.bike.
See the bikes on hagiang.bike →23 September 2026
Services we could not provide were described as part of the rental
Pages promised a replacement bike on the day one broke down during a long stay, a free change of model, help at the roadside, a one-way drop-off in Hue, a signed and photographed record of the bike at handover, and an identity check by photo in place of a passport deposit. On hagiang.bike we offered to set up a pillion ride behind a local rider. Other pages described the bikes as checked and maintained, and the home pages said riders had come to us from 11 countries. We could not stand behind these statements, so all of them have been removed from every page of this site. The price rule, one day rate at any length with extra days at the same rate, was true and stays. (Wording of this entry shortened on 28 September 2026.)
See the price rule →23 September 2026
Two of the 12 September corrections had not reached every page
The entries below said the Korean permit and the Genki corrections were made everywhere. They were not. Several pages, the Terms among them, still said Vietnam recognises only the 1968 Vienna permit, and several guides still described Genki cover as conditional on riding legally. Both are now corrected on every page, and an automated check now flags either wording if it comes back.
Read the Korean permit guide →23 September 2026
The fine on rental businesses was cited to the wrong article
Pages cited the fine for renting to an unlicensed rider as Decree 336/2025, Article 15.10, or attributed it to Decree 168/2024, and gave one range of VND 28–60 million. The fine is in Decree 336/2025, Article 15.3: VND 28–30 million for a person or household business, VND 56–60 million for a company. The separate fine on a bike's owner who hands it over is VND 8–10 million under Decree 168/2024, Article 32.10. Both are now stated that way.
Read the fines guide →12 September 2026
Korean driving permits were listed as not recognised in Vietnam
Korea is not a party to the 1968 Vienna Convention, and we treated that as settling the question. It does not. The Vietnam–Korea Agreement on Mutual Recognition of International Driving Permits has been in force since 23 July 2023, and under it a Korean national whose permit carries the category A stamp may ride here. We had it wrong in 78 places and have corrected all of them.
Read the corrected guide →12 September 2026
Genki cover was described as conditional on riding legally
Genki waives the licence requirement for its light-motorcycle class, up to 125cc or 11 kW with a top speed of 110 km/h; the binding condition is a helmet. Our conclusion was usually right and our stated reason was wrong, which is worse, because a reader on a petrol 110cc would have concluded their cover was void when for Genki it is not. Vietnam's compulsory third-party cover and the mainstream travel insurers do require a licence, and that distinction is now kept separate everywhere.
Read the insurance guide →12 September 2026
A Yadea G5 was named as a licence-free scooter
The standard G5 has a design speed of 52 km/h, which puts it outside Vietnam's licence-free class. Only the G5 Lite, at 50 km/h, is inside it. The trim decides this, not the model name, and the same trap runs through the VinFast range. We now publish the manufacturers' own figures model by model.
See the model table →12 September 2026
The 40 km/h road cap on licence-free machines was missing
We told readers the licence-free class is built for 50 km/h or under and never told them what they may actually do with it. Circular 38/2024/TT-BGTVT caps that class at 40 km/h on ordinary roads, in force since 1 January 2025. It is now stated wherever the class is described.
Read the traffic rules →
Who operates this
- Registered name
- ORIGIN LAYERS COMPANY LIMITED · CÔNG TY TNHH ORIGIN LAYERS
- Enterprise code
- 0319386968
- Registered office
- Tầng 1, Tòa nhà HSC, số 162B, Đường Điện Biên Phủ, Phường Xuân Hòa, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Việt Nam
- Registered
- 28 January 2026, Ho Chi Minh City
Origin Layers Co., Ltd. — Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. We run seven city sites on the .bike domains — Da Nang, Nha Trang, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Phu Quoc, Mui Ne and Ha Giang — from one team and one set of standards. The footer of every page links to the others, and this page is the same page for all of them.
A rental shop hands you whatever is free on the lot. We do it the other way round: the legal check comes first, and only then does Kai match a machine to it.
Anyone can park bikes in a yard. Our work is the checking: your licence against the treaty tables, and each licence-free model's trim against the power and speed limits.
Found something on this site that looks wrong? Tell us and we will check it against the source and publish the outcome here. Write to privacy@danang.bike or message our WhatsApp business line.
Everything on this site is general information about Vietnamese road and insurance rules, not legal advice, and it describes the position as at the review date shown on each page.