Rental bikes introduced to Da Nang.... good!

I have always been a bit tempted to get a bicycle here in Da Nang because while I don't really like the idea of buying a scooters since taxis cost very little, I do like the idea of being able to move around a bit quicker than just walking locally. The other day I started noticing a lot of people that all had the same looking bicycle and I thought it was odd that so many folks had a blue beach cruiser style of bike. Then the other day I was walking along the riverfront road and saw this.

There was no announcement about this but that could be just because I don't look at the news and the Vietnamese don't really go out of their way to let foreigners know anything about what is going on. I've heard about these sort of rental bikes existing in other large cities around the world so I guess it is good that we have them now.

The system here consists of you setting up an account and then plugging in some sort of financial information to pay for it. After doing that you just use your phone anywhere that you see one of these bikes and scan the QR code and it will unlock the bike for you. Then you take the bike anywhere that you want and you have two options: You can drop it off at an approved parking place and it will charge you no additional fee if you do that, or you can just leave it anywhere that you want and you will be charged 50 cents for a restocking fee or something like that. Since I don't often see these bikes just sitting all over the place I would imagine they have a truck that goes by and picks it up and puts it back in one of the approved areas.

Setting up an account was a little bit of a pain in the ass on a phone because they want all sorts of information about you and I am not really keen on doing that on a tiny screen so I just went home and set up an account on a computer. The system will accept anything you put in there and you don't need to be accurate about any of it until you are entering credit / debit card information. If you are not keen on putting your personal information on a company's servers like this one, you can also go and pay cash at one of the many partner convenience stores that they have. This is what I did and I just put 100,000 VND on the account. This is about $4 and it is more than enough money to use the bikes for over a month.

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They use "points" here for some reason rather than VND but the points are equal to the value of VND. I can think of no good reason why they would do this but it's easy to figure out. Apparently they have electric scooters available as well but I've never seen one of those. Maybe it if for another city.

Inside the app it will also show you where all the bikes in your area are and all the restocking zones. There are quite a few of them all over the city and loads of them are in the tourist parts of town.

For me this could be very a very handy way to get to the other side of town and get a bit of exercise in the meantime. You also don't need to be concerned about theft because once you park the bike and scan the QR to re-lock the bike, you are no longer responsible for the bike in any capacity. All the tires are solid so you can't get a flat and while the bikes are quite heavy, they are built to last. The 4 or so that I have used up to now have been in pretty good shape.

You do have the ability to report a bike as broken or in need of maintenance and if you do that within 10 minutes of riding the bike it doesn't charge you anything. Also, and I have not yet encountered this, but a bike that is reported as being in need of service by a user will not unlock for the next person who attempts to use it. So far this company seems to be very responsive and responsible because now that I have a membership I am starting to notice more and more spaces that these bikes are parked.

There are a TON of places to pick up and drop off these bikes but like I said before, if you live somewhere further away or simply don't feel like parking the bike back at one of the "stations" you only have to pay 50 cents to just park it anywhere you feel like it. You aren't supposed to take the bikes into your own yard or garage though.

I hope that the community takes to this system because it is something that could be really good for the community. I would imagine that this was an absolutely massive investment on the part of the company, TNGo, so I hope it doesn't fail.