Calling digital nomads. Local E-Sim in Vietnam - please talk me through it

[Thebigdigs]

We're off to Vietnam in a few weeks and our mobile provider has advised that they don't offer a package to Vietnam, the costs are breathtaking and our best bet is to use an esim that we can buy when we arrive - that's cheap and easy.
But I'm concerned how we get everything to run smoothly - all our accounts have two-factor authentiocation, our password banks, email addresses, bank accounts, apple pay and the authenticator is connected to our UK sim, we'll likely have to do a bit of work when we're away too (we work for ourselves) Dh thinks a mobile portable wifi hotspot is the solution - giving us a secure connection for wifi and we take a second phone for the local sim card. There's no cheap way to answer phone calls from the UK is there? We probably need a VPN too.
Am I over-thinking this, am I missing a solution - would be grateful for any advice.

Airolo do esims with data calls and texts.
£30 for 30 minutes calls 3GB data and 30 SMS texts. Lasts 30 days.

Depends how long you're going to be on the phone for.
The deals without calls are better...if you're working you might need more data.

I'm using one for the first time in the middle east next week....son says they are easy to use!! But think you will need WiFi to activate them so need to switch of your data roaming for when you arrive and find wifi

I'm ok with esims but it's everything else that is attached to my phone/sim card - the authenticating, the password bank, bank accounts, work email. And it occurred to me that even my booking.com sign in requires me to authenticate via my email, which requires me to authenticate via the authenticator on my phone or the text on my UK sim, it's so complicated, when we've travelled before we've been able to use our own sims or it's been before our phones became an extension of our lives.

What phone do you have?

Mine can do dual sim so I just set the eSIM for data and my usual sim for calls and texts. My provider doesn’t charge me for receiving texts abroad. Taking calls would have been charged but if you install the Skype app you can add a bit of credit for making calls to UK phone numbers.

I didn’t have any problem logging into anything and I use two-factor authentication.

Your ability to use two-factor authentication wouldn't be affected by using an esim, unless you're saying you authenticate via SMS/text message?

If you use your email account as the second factor, or the Microsoft Authenticator app, for example, both of these methods won't care what SIM you're using.

Also, I've not tried this so "your mileage might vary" but if you're an Android user and use Google Messages to handle your texts, apparently this workaround should let you get 2FA text messages:

"I just found a solution for this today on my galaxy s23 ultra. After I have Airalo's mobile data live, I go back, quickly turn on my primary sim (both sims active) but toggle to airplane mode immediately. I use Google messages, which require a number to use the RCS chat, and in the messages, it let's me toggle between the two sims to send over wifi. Confirming I recieved two-factor authentication texts this way without triggering going on a local network with my Verizon US number. Hope this helps!"

I authenticate using different methods it depends on the software, we often don’t get a choice - for some it’s email or text and then there’s 3 different authenticators. I have an iPhone 14 I might be able to load dual sim on my phone - otherwise I’m looking at taking a 5E as well as my 14 and the 5E is very slow

im going to Vietnam in a couple of months so will be interested to see how you get on. It all seems horribly complicated!

If you use a local sim for data, Viettel is a good one (Easy to get it at the airport or Viettel store in town).

There’s WiFi absolutely everywhere in Vietnam.

I just buy an esim through my revolute banking app, but you can use any of the apps like Airalo. Buy the esim and install it before you go, then just turn it on in settings and switch your mobile data to use the esim when you arrive.
Your regular sim will still receive text messages and email and authenticator will come through via the mobile data on your esim.

Yes I'm sure public wifi is widely available - but public wifi is not secure and is easily hacked - we will need to do odd bits of work while we travel - and using an insecure public network is not something we can do. We could use a VPN but we have been advised that although this is better than nothing and in an emergency we'd maybe risk it but it is not good enough for us to plan to use it.

This might work - both dh and I have phones that look like they take an esim - so hopefully they'll accept dual and brilliant that we can test it before we go - so we can leave the clunky and expensive mobile hotspot back to Amazon.

I just had an eSIM for travelling to Egypt and it was absolutely fine, no issues with authentication at all. I used Holafly, very easy to set up in advance and then you just activate it when you're there. Set my phone up as a family hotspot and then everyone connected to mine for the data. Also used expresss VPN which worked perfectly.

I think it's just a bit more challenging for us because in all likelihood we will need to work - we run our own (small) company so at no point can we walk away for a couple of weeks and hope that nothing crops up - it always does.
We are required by law and contractual agreements to protect personal and client information - so we need to make sure when we access software we do so in a secure environment - ie a private network.
However, everyone should be careful when using insecure public wifi networks - especially when booking things with your personal information and your credit card!

What do you do that a VPN is not secure enough?

We are required by some of our clients to go through Cyber security Certification - some have been targeted relentlessly by hackers. We have been advised by the company who took us through certification that using a VPN on an insecure network is not as good as using a private network (who am I to argue?). We'll always use the best security protocols available. I'm sure we can come up with a work around, so we can limit access to cloud software but it's often more clunky and time consuming and easier to look for a solution before we go - it's never been a problem before because our mobile phone provider has always offered us a deal.

The iPhone 14 supports dual SIM. Just get an eSIM. You’ll still have access to all your Authenticator apps and as long as you set texts and calls to your usual sim and mobile data to the eSIM, SMS authentication will still come through and things like WhatsApp will still work.

That’s amazing - so much better than our initial solution 😀 Thank you!

When we were there we bought one sim and then hotspotted other phones through it. That might work, especially if you have a spare phone at home.

We tried that with the spare phone at home - it's old and the hotspot speeds were too slow to be workable.

Ubigi do 50GB for £32 for 30 days validity. (20% Less with a referral code). Then on the days you absolutely have to have a phone number just switch your home phone number on and suck up the cost.
Ubigi are super easy to use.

If you have two phones. Use someone else's referral code for the first phone which gives you the 20% off then use that account to give a 20% discount referral code for the next phone. You will then get a 50% discount code for whenever you next buy a plan from them.

Back to update- took the eSIM option and bought it online the day before we travelled 5gb/day with Viettel. Switched off roaming on uks and kept it on for veittel - no need for second phone. Bought a text package separately for dh to chat with clients. Everything works as expected. Very easy. Thank you all!

That's good to hear.

My only gripe with using my phone abroad is how I get much better reception when I'm in the middle of nowhere in some far flung country than I do when I'm wandering around my local town.
It makes me realise how crap Three are.

We decided to split the risk We bought one sim through resolut, the other I bought online viettel sim through another random company. The revolut sim would not allow internet calling through WhatsApp and the network they pair up with were a bit shit - they suggested we call their help number but dh didn’t want the hassle or the big phone bill to call from Vietnam so we swallowed the cost and got him a sim from the same website I used.

I used Maaltalk when I was in Hanoi and it worked well for me. I bought the eSIM online before the flight because I did not want to deal with shops after landing.

They sent the QR instantly and it activated in about a minute once I turned on data. Since it keeps your original number, my WhatsApp and bank codes stayed the same. No need to swap physical SIMs or explain anything in local stores. It was just simple and out of the way.