Now 70, he spends his mornings swimming off Doc Let Beach in Khanh Hoa Province, walking and drinking tea before returning to his rented accommodation overlooking the sea.
“I’ve been to many places around the world, but I’ve never seen a beachfront room as affordable as the one here,” he says.
Before retiring, he worked as a warehouse manager in Melbourne. He describes himself as an independent person who loves sports. For many years, he maintained a routine of running, swimming, and playing tennis.
However, his active lifestyle was interrupted by heart disease.
In 2006, he had a heart attack. Around 2020, he was diagnosed with ventricular tachycardia, and had a stent and a pacemaker implanted. “The doctor predicted that I only had about five years left to live, and advised me to retire and avoid traveling long distances,” he says.
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Steve Thompson, 70, swims in the sea off Doc Let Beach in Khanh Hoa Province. Photo courtesy of Thompson |
Thompson first came to Vietnam on a vacation in 2022. In May 2023, he returned alone, and spent a month traveling across the country. “I decided that this was where I wanted to spend the last years of my life,” he says.
After his second trip to Vietnam, he returned to Australia, sold off all his belongings, including his house for AU$520,000 (US$355,300), and moved back for good.
At first, he lived in Hoi An, a town with a slow pace of life, affordable cost of living, and many foreign retirees.
But while swimming at the beach last year, he was hit by a wave that broke his ribs, prompting him to move to Doc Let.
He says there are no golf courses, tennis courts, or entertainment facilities tailored to foreigners in Doc Let, and he has to travel 50 kilometers just to find a pickleball court, but this do not bother him.
Although his home country, Australia, has more than 15,000 kilometers of coastline, Vietnam’s ocean gives him exactly what he needs: an ideal salinity level that allows him to swim in the water for hours, whereas he could not stay in the water for in his native Queensland.
Because of his fear of the cold, he had long dreamed of a place where he could swim year-round.
“I spent sleepless nights asking myself where I wanted to retire. I wanted a place where I could wake up to the ocean and reach the sand in just a few minutes’ walk. Now I’m living that exact reality,” he explains.
Referring to the low the cost of living in Vietnam, he points out that a three-course duck meal for two people costs VND120,000 and servicing three air conditioners in the summer costs just VND480,000. “That is cheaper than a chicken parmesan at a pub in Australia,” he says.
He spends VND25–30 million a month in Vietnam, including VND10 million for rent at a homestay, including electricity and water.
With an AU$5,000 pension and the interest on his house sale, these costs do barely cause him any concern.
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Thompson takes a walk along Doc Let Beach on a morning in November 2026. Photo courtesy of Thompson |
Because of his pre-existing condition, Thompson initially bought travel insurance, but the premiums were expensive. Besides, in case of a serious emergency, the insurance only covered his flight back to Australia, where he would have to rely on the public healthcare system with long waiting lists.
He decided to pay out-of-pocket for check-ups and treatments in Vietnam for minor illnesses, while keeping a private health insurance plan back home as a backup.
The biggest challenge for him right now is the visa policy: Every 90 days, he must leave the country for about a week and apply for a new visa to return. This visa run costs him VND20–30 million per trip. “I came here without taking anything out of Vietnam. I only spend money and breathe the air,” he says.
Once a long-term retirement visa becomes available, “I will never leave Vietnam again.” In 2026, France-based website Retraite sans Frontières named Vietnam among the top 10 countries to retire in.
Many retirees from Europe, the U.S., and Australia currently live in Vietnam. Mai Tuyet Minh, owner of the homestay where Thompson has lived for the past year, says his welcoming lifestyle helped him integrate quickly, and everyone in the fishing village now knows “the westerner.”
Children often drop by to practice their English whenever they are free. Thompson’s favorite hobby, apart from swimming, is woodworking. “He just told me that all the tools and machinery, worth a small fortune, that he bought since moving to Vietnam will eventually be handed down to a local carpenter he’s very fond of,” Minh says.
The Australian is in his sixth year now since being told he had “at most 5 years left.”
He claims that he has never had to go to the emergency room during his time in Vietnam. Every time he calls his children and friends in Australia, he boasts about his living space filled with sunshine, breeze, and the soothing sound of waves.
“Sometimes, while I am soaking in the ocean, I wonder how my friends in the southern hemisphere are coping during those freezing winter days.”