The Cost Of Travel In Vietnam 2025 - Our Detailed Budget Breakdown
Vietnam was our second country we ever visited in Asia after Thailand.
It was quite the contrast.
Thailand to Vietnam is a relatively common route for people who are either backpacking or on an extended trip in South East Asia.
We naively thought Vietnam would be similar to Thailand.
Whilst there are certainly some similarities between the countries, there are also some very big differences.
You just can’t lump the two countries together. It’s like saying Spain and Germany are the same just because they are near each other.
Vietnam sometimes get a bad rap because people assume it will be the same as Thailand.
Some stats say the return visitor rate to Vietnam is around 5%, compared to Thailand’s 80%.
Whatever the actual return rate is, we will certainly be part of the statistic.
We love Thailand and we love Vietnam, for very different reasons.
Vietnam is more chaotic in many ways, but it can also be incredible peaceful and beautiful.
We also travelled more in Vietnam, and got to explore more of the country than Thailand.
We even spent longer in Vietnam than we thought we would, because we enjoyed it so much.
It’s also very affordable, and offers fantastic value for money.
We spent 38 days in Vietnam and spent 56,333,663.32 Vietnamese Dong.
Ummm, what?!
*Checks currency conversion again*
Uhhh, yeah, that comes out to 56 billion Vietnamese Dong.
I wasn’t going to convert the figure into the local currency because I knew it would look absolutely insane, and that for anyone who didn’t know how many dong was to the pound or dollar it would’ve looked like we’d purchased EVERYTHING in the country.
But just to reassure you (and myself, after checking this figure at least 5 times), there is roughly 30,000 dong to the pound/ dollar.
So this very high number is actually a much more reasonable £1738.93 or $2219.81. This works out at £45.76 or $58.42 per day.
Here is our exact breakdown of every single penny we spent in Vietnam during our 38 days in the country.
Prices are given in Vietnamese Dong, then converted to GBP (our currency) and USD. The conversion rate is more or less the same now in December 2024 as it was back in February, so I have converted Vietnamese Dong to GBP and USD using the current conversion rate.
All figures are for two people, as Joe would be pretty annoyed if I jetted off to Vietnam to eat Banh Mi without him.
Accommodation
We spent 20,335,035 Vietnamese Dong on our accommodation for 37 nights. This works out to be £627.71 or $801.06, or £16.97 / $21.65 per night.
We also had one night on the bus from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City, but I have included this in the transport section.
We were very happy with how much we spent on accommodation in Vietnam; we stayed in some lovely places and there is nowhere we wouldn’t recommend or stay at again! We always had our own bathroom, everywhere had a/c and the locations were decent.
Please keep in mind that we are actually in Vietnam during the Tet holiday, so prices were slightly higher for some of the places we stayed. See our post about visiting Vietnam during Tet here.
We also celebrated Joe’s 30th birthday in Vietnam, which is why we went a little off budget for our 3 night stay in the beautiful 5* Grand Sunrise Palace in Hoi An. This place was amazing; the breakfast was insane, they did a whole birthday thing for Joe and the rooms were beautiful. It was also an incredible (by Western standards) deal at just under £40 per night. If you either have a higher accommodation budget than us or if you are celebrating a special occasion, we would highly recommend this hotel.
We have our own set of rules for accommodation we book, like never staying in hostels. You can read about our accommodation checklist and why we have it in this post here.
This is how the overall cost is broken down:
1 night at The Sono Hanoi Hotel - 792,325 VND or £24.46/ $31.21 (included breakfast)
3 nights at an apartment in Hanoi (Airbnb) - 1,329,783 VND or £41.39/ $52.34
1 night at the Spoon Hotel in Hanoi - 586,980 VND or £18.27/ $23.10 (higher due to Tet)
6 nights at the Hotel La Perle in Hue - 3,115,183 VND or £96.96/ $122.60 (higher due to Tet)
3 nights at The Grand Sunrise Palace in Hoi An - 3,835,723 VND or £119.43/ $151.03 (included breakfast)
7 nights at a guesthouse in Hoi An (Airbnb) - 4,312,935 VND or £134.24/ $169.81 (included breakfast)
6 nights at a Loc Phat Homestay in Hoi An - 1,808,283 VND or £56.26/ $71.17
3 nights at a guesthouse in Da Nang (Airbnb) - 958,054 VND or £29.78/ $
3 nights at a guesthouse in Ho Chi Minh (Airbnb) - £54.67/ $37.72
3 nights at a hotel in Mui Ne - £44.76/ $
1 night at a hotel in Ho Chi Minh - £17.34/ $
The average cost per night of £16.97/ $21.65 per night is very good value for two people, particularly when you consider we were in Vietnam for the Tet holiday period and 11 of those nights included breakfast the next morning.
Vietnam was actually our second cheapest country for accommodation; that humble award goes to Sri Lanka.
You can see our budget breakdown for the month we spent driving a tuk tuk around Sri Lanka here.
Transport
Our transport breakdown covers all our transport within Vietnam, but doesn’t include the cost of travelling to the country, or travelling to Malaysia from Ho Chi Minh City.
We’ve included these figures in our full budget breakdown of our 7 month trip which can be seen here, where we have recorded every single expense for the whole 7 months.
Overall, we spent 9,049,180 or £281.44/ $356.48 for all our transport in Vietnam.
Our biggest expense in this category was the flight we took from Hanoi to Hue. This counted for half of our overall transport costs at 4,507,870 VND or £140.20/ $177.48 for our two tickets.
Please bear in mind that this flight was right before the Tet holiday, and we would’ve taken a train or bus but they were mostly sold out and very expensive! You could definitely find a better deal than this out of the holiday period and if you booked further in advance.
We also spent 964,551 VND or £30/ $37.98 on an overnight bus from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City. This bus took around 21 hours, we were the only non-locals and the bus crashed right as we were coming into Ho Chi Minh City (everyone was fine!) You can read all about our experience of the Vietnamese night buses here.
The airport bus from Noi Bai (Hanoi) Airport to the centre cost us 90,000 VND or £2.80/ $3.54. You can read our post on Hanoi here which goes into depth about everything we did in the capital and how much it cost.
Overall, we spent 587,000 VND or £18.30/ $23.10 on Grab taxis.
We mostly prefer to walk where we can or get local transport, but taxis are very affordable in Vietnam so if the journey was a long walk we would get a Grab. We definitely got more Grabs as we got further South and the weather became hotter and more humid.
Our average taxi cost was around 50,000 VND which would generally get us from our accommodation to wherever we needed to go. We paid 35,000 VND (£1.09 or $1.38) for example to take us from one accommodation in Hoi An to another, which was a distance of 2km.
We took one train in Vietnam, from Hue to Da Nang. Vietnam’s train system is pretty well developed, but trains can be slow. We found them somewhat expensive when comparing them with other countries in the region. It cost us 503,075 VND or £15.68/ $19.80 for our tickets. This was just after the Tet holiday though, so the costs were likely to be higher.
Entrance Fees and Activities
This is one of the categories where spending can wildly vary.
We are pretty budget conscious travellers, however we don’t see the point in travelling to another country to sit and do nothing (although this is something we have struggled with, see this post).
We also don’t feel the need to see and do absolutely everything, just because the internet and social media tell us we need to.
Like for example, even though we’ve been to Florence twice now, we still haven’t been to the Ufizzi. And you know what? We’ll probably never go.
It has taken us a long time to get to a place where we don’t feel we have to run round, ticking things off a list that someone else online has created for us.
Saying that, there are things we are interested in and love doing, so we prioritise these experiences when travelling.
We love churches and temples, we both have degrees in History and we love animals. We also love a good view and enjoy hiking. So anything that incorporates one or more of these things always piques our interest.
We spent 3,623,234 VND or £112.92/ $142.60 on entrance fees and activities.
Our highest cost in this category came from our day trip to Ninh Binh from Hanoi. We spent £78.96 on this, which was probably too much, but we had Airbnb vouchers still to use from our wedding.
We really liked this experience, but had some very irritating people in our group who didn’t seem to care about being on time for anything so we were delayed constantly (one of the main reasons we don’t like doing tours, you can’t choose who will be with you!) We would probably go by ourselves next time and spend more time exploring the region.
The best value was 80,000 VND or for the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, which is a fantastic museum. If you go, prepare to need a little bit of time afterwards. Some of the photos are very haunting.
In Hanoi we paid 100,000 VND or for the Den Ngoc Son Temple and 140,000 VND or for the Temple of Literature.
The Hue Imperial Citadel cost us 400,000 VND or which was a little steep in my opinion, but it was impressive. If you go, don’t do what we did and go during Tet. The place was heaving.
Food & Drink
This is another category where you can go wild or be incredibly reserved.
We like to think of ourselves as mid range budget travellers within this category.
We love trying new food when we are travelling, as in our opinion it’s one of the best ways to explore a new culture.
Vietnam has some pretty fantastic food.
In 38 days we spent 19,253,062 VND or £600.35/ $757.95.
This works out to be 506,970 VND or £15.80/ $19.95 per day.
This was for two people, and included all our meals, Circle K and Winmart shops (of which there were more than I care to admit), two bags of locally sourced coffee beans (one of these being weasel poo coffee - don’t knock it until you try it), going to markets for fruit, alcohol, all our drinks including drinking water.
I don’t think that’s too bad.
We tend to eat local food when travelling and in Vietnam ate mostly in local restaurants. We were also partial to street food when we saw something we liked the look of (which was often)!
We ate the occasional Western meal and ate way too much cake at this fantastic place called Lagom Bakery in Hoi An (the carrot is the best). We also had Vietnamese coffee out roughly every other day.
This also counts the slightly pricier meal we had for Joe’s birthday that came in at 651,000 VND or £20/ $25 but was so worth the price. If you find yourself in Hoi An you must go to the Red Dragon Restaurant (and if you stay in the Grand Sunrise Palace it’s right next door!)
Our average dinner spend came in at around 180,000 VND. Our dinners usually consisted of a Vietnamese meal like Cao Lau, Pho Bo or some sort of meat or fish in claypot with rice each, a drink (usually a local beer or Vietnamese coffee) and a side to share.
Miscellaneous
You will always need to account for random expenses when on a trip. Sometimes these small expenses actually add up more than you might think, so make sure you have room in your budget for them.
Our miscellaneous spending included buying a sim card,
Miscellaneous spends vary when we’re away, much the same as when we’re at home so this is one category where it might be hard to judge how much you will spend. You might need to buy something one month (like toiletries or clothing) that you then won’t purchase for a while.
Some expenses you will most likely have in this category is a sim card and ATM fees. You may also want to do some shopping or purchase some souvenirs.
Ultimately, when it comes to haggling it comes down to how much you are happy to spend whilst considering whether it is worth haggling over a really small amount.
A successful haggle should leave both the customer and the shop owner feeling content with the exchange.
The Final Figure
So, that’s how we reached the grand total of 64,593 THB or £1499.10/ $1917.36, which comes out to £59.96 or $76.72 per day for two people. This was for 25 days, with 7 days in Bangkok and the rest of the time in Chiang Mai.
We will have new budget breakdowns coming out next year
Have you been to Vietnam recently? Was your spending what you expected? Share your experiences below!
