5000 Dong Bo La Detention Center

Bo La (Bò Lá) is a detention facility operated under the Ho Chi Minh City Police Department, and this note is a form of internal scrip — issued for use within the facility rather than in general circulation. Prison and detention center currencies of this type circulated in Vietnamese correctional facilities during the 1990s, allowing detainees to purchase goods from an internal canteen system under controlled conditions. The issuing authority is institutional rather than governmental in the monetary sense, which places this note firmly outside standard Vietnamese banknote series.

Surviving examples are rare simply because there was no reason to preserve them.