I touched down at Tan Son Nhat International Airport at about 1pm on Wednesday, 19-Jun-2019.
In this post I’ll share some photos and information from my first 24 hours (or so) in Vietnam, the world’s 15th-most populous nation.
It is written in chronological order, from touchdown at the airport to working on this very post while sitting at a cafe the following evening.
By the end of this piece you will know:
*How much the basic necessities cost in HCMC.
*How to avoid the major mistake I seem to have made.
*Why I’m already so happy that I decided to visit this place.
My previous post of this kind, ‘First 24 Hours in Kuching‘, was a mammoth piece at 5,000 words.
I hope and intend to keep this one far more concise…
NOTE: All costs are listed in USD or Vietnamese Dong unless otherwise stated.
Contents
1 – Why HCMC?
2 – Vietnam Visas
3 – Tan Son Nhat Airport (Bus to City)
4 – Air-BNB (Accommodation)
5 – Vietnamese Phone / Internet
6 – Coffee
7 – Grab Bikes (Transport)
8 – Fellow Travelers and Networking
9 – Food
10 – Gym
11 – Alcohol
12 – General Supplies
13 – Expected Cost of Living for One Month
14 – The Mistake I Made
15 – What Next?
1 – Why HCMC?
No good reason.
When I booked my ticket to HCMC, I was in Phuket, and my Thai visa waiver period was about to expire.
My original plan was to fly to Kuala Lumpur, where I knew I could easily get a three-month tourist visa for Thailand, and then I would return to the Land of Smiles for another three months.
Before flying from Phuket to KL, I decided to also book a ticket out of Malaysia, in case I was asked to provide ‘proof of onward travel’ in order to enter Malaysia in the first place.
However, I had no real intention of ever taking the onward flight. It was purely for insurance purposes: if Malaysian immigration were to ask for proof of onward travel, I could show them them my flight to the next country (Vietnam), and I’d be good to go.
You might wonder: ‘Well why not just book your return flight straight back to Thailand?’
Because I didn’t know how long I would want to remain in Malaysia.
My logic was that if I liked the country, I would stay for the full three months which Malaysia gives tourists on arrival. If I didn’t like Malaysia, I’d quickly book a ticket back to Thailand, and remain in KL only long enough to sort out the Thai visa at the Thai embassy (which I am reliably informed takes a day or two).
So there I was one afternoon, sitting at a cafe in Phuket, looking at a map of Asia and thinking, ‘is there any other place near Malaysia I might like to visit some time?’
AirAsia was having some kind of promotional sale and a ticket from KL to HCMC, including 20kg checked luggage, cost just USD $40.
Hmmm, Vietnam.
‘What do I know about Vietnam?’, I asked myself.
Here is what I could come up with:
i) I remembered my chemistry teacher in high school raving about the country, apparently he and his wife liked to visit for holidays regularly.
ii) I recalled a few people I met on exchange (when I was in South Africa in 2010) who loved Vietnam so much that they planned to go back there and teach English.
iii) There’s also a suburb of Melbourne, not far from where I grew up, which is well-known as an unofficial ‘little Vietnam’.
iv) Forrest Gump (1994) used to be one of my favourite films when I was young, I probably watched it dozens of times…
…can you see that I was clutching at straws?
In short: I knew jack about Vietnam.
But $40 for a ticket I’ll probably never use? Sure, why not.
‘If it gets me into Malaysia, that’s all that matters’, I thought.
And that, my friends, is why I’m sitting in a cafe in HCMC right now. Because of that AirAsia sale which I saw while sitting at a cafe in Phuket.
That is how much thought went into all of this…
2 – Vietnam Visas
Only after I purchased my ticket did I learn that you actually need a visa to enter Vietnam. Wtf?
With Thailand, you can rock up to an international airport and they’ll give you a month visa-waiver on arrival.
In the case of Malaysia, they give you three months visa-waiver on arrival, no questions asked!
Apparently I had just booked a ticket to a place where I would actually have to put in some effort to be allowed to enter the country.
That’s where the research began.
So let me boil it all down for you, and note that I am just some guy, and this is merely my understanding, based on what I have seen and read, but you should always do your own research, bla bla bla.
i) Getting a visa for Vietnam is what an old buddy of mine might refer to as ‘a piece of piss’, or in more gentlemanly terms, rather easy.
ii) You pay a small sum of money to an online agency, via a website like this, and they issue you with a visa pre-approval letter.
iii) This letter takes a few business days to arrive in your inbox, then you print it off, and bring it with you to the airport.
iv) When you arrive in Vietnam, you take the pre-approval letter, plus a filled-out application form (available online and at the airport), two passport photos, your passport (with at least six months validity), and some cash, to a visa office booth before you get to the immigration queue.
v) You hand in your documents, and some cash, wait for 10-30 minutes (they provide chairs), listen for you name to be called out, collect your passport with a smile and a ‘gam on’, proceed to immigration, and away you go.
That’s it. That’s the process.
How much does it cost?
My three-month, single-entry visa cost me USD $25 to apply for online, and then another USD $25 at the airport.
However, all I had on me at the airport was Vietnamese Dong, and they charged me 700,000, which is more like USD $30, but whatever.
PROTIP: Take your visa payment with you in USD if you want to save a few dollars.
So all up, for me to be allowed into Vietnam for three months, I paid about USD $55. The whole process was easy AF, and so long as you organise things a couple of weeks before you depart (to allow the pre-approval letter to arrive), you will have no problems whatsoever.
If you leave things until the last minute, maybe you will find yourself in some hot water, like the Chinese dudes in front of me at the HCMC airport visa office booth. It would appear that although Vietnam is not trying to discourage visitors (as Thailand seems to be doing), they still enforce some sort of rule system. So just be sensible and follow the rules, you’ll be sweet.
One more thing. On your visa pre-approval letter will be your details (name, nationality, dob, passport number), and the very same details for about a dozen other people. Which means, one might infer, that about a dozen other people around the world are getting your details on their document as well.
Anyway, Vietnam, here we come!
Visa: $55 ($25 online, another $25-$30 at the airport, three-month single-entry).
3 – Tan Son Nhat Airport (Bus to City)
I’ll be honest, before sitting down to write this post, I had no idea that ‘Tan Son Nhat’ is the name of the main airport here in HCMC — despite the fact that I touched down there yesterday.
Anyhow, it seems like a nice enough airport. By the time I got through visa issuance and immigration, my luggage had already been taken off the conveyor and left for me to collect from the floor. No worries.
I had foolishly forgotten to investigate how one is best advised to move from the airport to the city centre. My air-BNB was already booked (more on that later) so I knew where I needed to go, I just didn’t know how to get there…
Stuff it, I’ll just walk out to the front and see if I can find a bus. There’s one. Hey bro, does this go to District 1? Sweet.
As of Jun 2019, $1 USD is about 23,000 VND.
That’s right. One dollar for a bus — with wifi — from the airport to the centre of HCMC.
I knew Vietnam was supposed to be a fairly cheap country, I’d heard it was comparable with Malaysia, ‘maybe a little cheaper’.
Well I thought (and still think) the 12 rinngit bus from Kuala Lumpur’s international airport to KL Sentral is a bargain.
But this is next level cheap.
I began to think to myself, maybe Vietnam is even more affordable than I had anticipated.
But I didn’t want to get too excited just yet…
The bus is supposed to depart every thirty minutes, but I get the feeling that this is something of a loose schedule, because it seemed to take longer than that to finally get moving.
But what did I care? I had wifi to keep me occupied, and my air-BNB wasn’t meant to be ready until 3pm anyway.
Eventually the bus began moving and then, a minute later, stopped once again. This happened a few times.
‘Is this really an airport bus or just some regular schmo bus?’, I found myself wondering.
An old Vietnamese man jumped onto the bus via the exit door at an intersection, still breathing out his tobacco smoke, then had a quick chat with the ticket person, wandered down to the front of the bus as we traveled another few hundred metres, and departed via the entry door at the next ‘stop’.
Something about this country was already beginning to grow on me, for reasons I still can’t quite articulate.
Anyhow, next thing I knew, we were onto a major road, and here came the bikes I had heard so much about.
It was like being swarmed by bees. Loud, large, almost-chaotically-majestic bees.
In that moment, I kinda felt like a kid again, a child who has seen something in a book or on a TV but is finally experiencing it for himself ‘in real life’.
Why was I so happy, so amused, to see this onslaught of bikes swarming all over the road, surrounding our bus? I don’t know.
But after a couple of days of being a little bit melancholic, perhaps even borderline cranky (with myself) as my time in Malaysia came to an end, suddenly I felt a positive energy at that moment, when I first saw the bike swarm with my own eyes.
Bro, we’re in Vietnam!
That was a lovely bus ride. I didn’t take any videos or photos, I just sat there and enjoyed the moment. It was a moment I hope I can remember well into the future.
Protip: You can save yourself some time and take a taxi from the airport. I was offered a ride to District 1 for 25,000 VND ($1). Will they try to charge you more once you get in the cab, or take you to overpriced stores along the way, as part of some kind of scam? I don’t know. I took the bus. But if the taxis are legit then they are probably a smarter option than the bus, because they can take you straight to your accommodation, whereas I had to walk a fair distance from the bus stop, with all of my luggage, in very warm conditions.
Bus transport from airport: 20k ($1).
4 – Air-BNB (Accommodation)
I’ll let this video do the talking:
That’s right. $420 for my own place in District 1, the whole top floor to myself, including my own little balcony.
It goes without saying that I already knew the price I would be paying for this place before arriving in Vietnam.
In fact, I had already paid it.
What I didn’t realise was just how awesome the location is. I’m within walking distance of countless restaurants, cafes and bars.
District 1 is apparently the place to be in HCMC.
After my colossal ****-up with my air-BNB in Kuching (more on that another time), I was rather pleased with myself when I realised that my air-BNB in HCMC is right in the thick of the action.
Accommodation: USD $420 for 28 days (Secure complex with locked gate in District 1).
(The Numbers Follow Me)
I saw this building on the way to / from the electronics store and could not help but take a photo.
Follow this blog for long enough, and you’ll come to see why I find this stuff so interesting.
I kinda touched on it in my first ever post for this site.
(But if you want to know more now, just email me, I’ll explain).
5 – Vietnamese Phone / Internet
Vietnam made a good first impression on me. The visa process was easy. The immigration dude was quick and efficient. The bus ride was cheap and a lot of fun. The locals I saw on the bus were inherently likeable despite speaking practically zero English. The air-BNB was better than I had expected.
Things were going well.
What happened next will still with me for a long, long time.
After checking into my air-BNB, I walked into the first electronics shop I could find. I asked the lady inside, ‘Do you speak English?’
‘Some’
‘Do you have phone sim cards?’
She said ‘no’ and then pointed to a store down the road with a smile.
So I walked into that store.
‘Do you speak English?’
This lady pointed me to another lady sitting at a desk.
Within minutes, the customer service person was handing over a sim card and asking for 69,000 VND ($3).
‘One month, 4GB per day’.
To cut a long story short, I had to go over this several times with the lady.
‘Is this 69,000 dong each day, or for the whole month?’
Even as I type this, I still can’t get over it: 69,000 dong for the month. 4GB of data per day for the entire month. 38,000 dong ($2) to recharge in one month’s time.
Are you kidding me?
That is practically free.
No passport required, no questions asked. Just $3 and you have 4G internet for the month. 4GB of data per day.
Stay another month and recharge, and you’ll be looking at $2, for another 4GB per day, for another entire month.
I was paying the equivalent of USD $30/month for 8GB of data per month in Australia.
That’s
$30 for 8GB per month for in Australia, vs
$3 for 4GB per day in Vietnam.
Outrageous.
Phone / internet sim: 69k ($3) for first month, then 38k ($2) per month to recharge each month.
(So far, Vietnam seemed too good to be true)
Bus rides which are practically free. Sim cards with internet which are practically free (with no questions asked). Entire apartments (with balcony) in District 1 for the same amount I had been paying for a single room in a mediocre house in a mediocre suburb in Brisbane.
When was my little bubble going to burst?
6 – Coffee
At the end of my street is a coffee place called Amazing Coffee. Naturally I wanted to check it out on the first day of my stay.
I’ll try to come back and update this post with photos of the exterior, because on google maps the place looks like this:
Apparently the building is relatively new, then. Which makes sense, because it looks and feels modern.
Here is a photo of the banana smoothie I bought.
50,000 ($2) for the smoothie.
Pretty cool place, but boy do they blast the music in there. Probably not an ideal solution for my long-term cafe needs, but a good indication of what I can expect to pay coffee-wise while in Saigon, if I plan to sit and work at the more ‘up market’ venues.
Coffee: 35k – 60k VND ($1.50 to $2.50).
7 – Grab Bikes (Transport)
HCMC is a city of bikes. They’re everywhere.
And you can use the ride-share service Grab to book a bike to take you wherever you want to go.
I was determined to begin networking ASAP and found a meetup which piqued my interest, scheduled for about 7pm in the evening.
One problem: the meetup was being held at bar a fair distance away from me: a little over 3 miles (five kilometres).
Twenty minutes by bike, according to google maps.
Well, time to try out Grab Bike for the first time in my life.
When I booked the bike on the app, the driver was already at the end of my street. These guys are everywhere.
About twenty minutes later, after a thrilling ride through HCMC in peak hour style traffic, I was at my destination.
Total cost? 25k VND ($1).
That’s right. A twenty minute ride through the seemingly-chaotic roads of HCMC on the back of a stranger’s bike will cost about about $1.
In peak hour.
Okay, I get it: grab bike rides are also practically free in this city.
Book the ride, put on the helmet the Grab dude hands you when he arrives, jump on the back of the bike, enjoy the sights, you’ll soon be wherever you want to be, and it will cost you practically nothing.
Grab bike rides: practically free.
8 – Fellow Travelers and Networking
I made the mistake of not spending enough time trying to network with people during my time in Kuala Lumpur. I only went to a few meetups, didn’t contact anybody on reddit, and of course I don’t have facebook. I spent most of my time in KL alone, in cafes, doing work…
…or drinking in pubs with locals, which is fun, but not exactly productive or healthy.
Then in Kuching I tried to network with people, but there is almost nobody there to network with (more on that in another post).
So upon arriving in HCMC, I was keen to begin trying to meet people — expats and English-speaking locals — as soon as possible.
At the meetup I attended on my first night in HCMC, I met:
*A mid-thirties dude who brought up the term ‘digital nomad’ before I did, and who I would later learn has been blogging about DNism for years.
*A 40yo gentleman who grew up not far from me in Melbourne but has been living overseas most of his life, and personally knows some of the people whose travel/DN podcasts I used to listen to for inspiration.
*A late-thirties (?) individual who claimed to have had personal involvement with a DN youtuber whose videos I used to watch regularly.
*A local who speaks terrific English and can hold a more interesting conversation than most people I know.
*A mid-thirties (?) fellow who has lived in HCMC for years and is actively engaged in the DN scene.
I also met a couple of younger guys working on a startup in HCMC, and there were other people present who I didn’t even get a chance to speak with.
Wow, within hours of arriving in HCMC I had met more of the type of people I am trying to meet than in three months in Malaysia.
And that isn’t Malaysia’s fault: I ought to have put more effort into networking in Malaysia, but I was still very early into my journey when I arrived.
With that said, by the end of my first night in HCMC, I had already begun to infer that it may be the kind of DN hub I had originally envisioned immersing myself in, when the DN dream was still just a dream, and I was toiling away on my little online business while living in Brisbane, Australia.
Non-alcoholic drinking at a trendy bar: Two cokes @ 50k ($2) each.
9 – Food
In the days leading up to my flight I had begun doing some light reading about Vietnam, and stumbled upon this post by a blogger named Bren, who had written the following:
Everybody comes to Vietnam and then raves about the food. You know what they generally don’t do? Go home and eat it all the time. And what food do they eat here? Banh Mi (sandwich), Pho, and maybe Bun Cha.
And these are all delicious. But that’s 3 dishes out of a thousand. There are another 3–5 other dishes that aren’t too bad. Where did the other 992 go? Not in your mouth.
Most Vietnamese food is just weird tasting. Some of it is outright horrifying… Other stuff is merely terrible.
I had also read elsewhere that some DNs prefer Thai food over Vietnamese food because the former tends to contain more meat, whereas the latter is typically noodle / vegetables / water-based (i.e. ‘not enough protein’).
So I came here not knowing what to expect, and without any high hopes.
I didn’t get my first meal until fairly late on the first night. There’s a restaurant near my apartment which was still open when I got home from the meetup.
I ordered something from the menu. It turned out like this:
60k VND ($2.50).
Less-fancy street food vendors appear to offer the same kind of meal for around 40,000 VND, but for the price I paid at this place, I’m not complaining. With a basic option this close to my apartment, and with many better/cheaper options also in short walking distance, I’m a happy man.
Street / cheap meals: 30k to 70k ($1.20 – $3).
10 – Gym
The next morning I went in search of a gym.
I’ve learned the hard way that it is important for me to do this as soon as I arrive in a new place, otherwise my entire life-routine goes out the door, and it isn’t long before bad things begin happening in my mind…
I found this gym not too far from me.
Because it was packed in there, I didn’t take any photos. But here is the price structure:
A day pass is 70k VND ($3), a month pass is 500k ($22).
It’s a decent gym. One squat rack, three free-weight benches, a heap of machine weights, but no stretching area, no air conditioning, and pretty cramped overall.
I would later learn that the price structure for this gym is typical of those in the area i.e. this is what you can expect to pay anywhere around here.
Gym: 500k VND ($22) per month.
11 – Alcohol
I’m trying not to drink too much while in Vietnam, on account of the fact that I’m a raging alcoholic.
But as the Nomad Skeptic it is my job to investigate the living costs of the cities I visit, and for many people (including my former and likely future self), alcoholism is a part of living. A very important part.
So I took these photos as I walked around the streets near my apartment in District 1.
All you can drink beer: 180k ($8).
700 ml of cheap vodka from a convenience store: 135k ($6).
That should give you some idea of how much alcohol costs in this city.
Alcohol: Very cheap.
12 – General Supplies
Water bottles at convenience stores: About 8k – 11k (50c) for 1.5 litres.
(It goes without saying that if / when I find a proper grocery store or supermarket, I will be able to purchase my water for a lot cheaper than this.)
Toothpaste and toothbrush from convenience store: 32k ($1.50).
That should give you a rough idea of what general nick-nacks might cost in this city.
13 – Expected living costs for the month (summary)
Necessities
Accommodation: $420
For a decent place (self-contained, double bed) in an excellent location.
Food: $300 ($10/day)
Several cheap / street meals or a couple of decent meals per day.
Coffee: $150 ($5/day)
Two coffees per day at a nice place (where I do my work — hence ‘necessity’).
Transport: $50
The average grab ride is about $1 (or less). So about 50 rides for the month is a fair estimate.
Water: $30
A couple of litres per day.
Gym: $25
Decent gym, proper lifting equipment, but no air con.
Phone / Internet: $5
Practically free.
Alcohol: $0
I’m not planning to drink, but if you do, it is very cheap here. Very, very cheap.
Sub-total: About $1,000.
Other costs
Visa to get in: $55
Three-month single-entry.
Insurance: $40/m
SafetyWing (I don’t get money from them, this is not an ad).
Sub-total: About $100.
Total
Expected costs for first month in Vietnam: $1,100
Notes
i) This budget does not include spending on partying, drinking, or doing anything touristy.
I’m not a tourist, and I’m trying to cut back on drinking. For my socialising, I like to attend meetups and get meals and coffee with people, that kind of thing. But if you plan to party and do touristy stuff, it goes without saying that you will need to budget for that.
ii) This budget does not include the other minor costs which tend to arise.
Some paper towel here, an umbrella there, these things add up. Not to very much, but worth bearing in mind.
iii) You could easily find a crappier place to stay for less, much less, than $420.
But I <3 District 1. And I want a decent place of my own. So I pay more than necessary.
iv) You could easily spend less on food and coffee. A bare-bones DN could find cheaper options if they really wanted to.
I will probably spend less than $300 on food but this is one item I always try to over-budget, so if I feel like eating more and/or better food, it is already accounted for.
As for coffee, there is no law saying you have to buy $X of coffee to sit in a cafe for hours at a time, but a couple of coffees per visit is fair imho.
14 – The Mistake I Made
Not coming to Saigon sooner.
Also, I really ought to have gotten a motorbike license before leaving Australia. Especially for places like HCMC which is a bike city.
And facebook. Not having a facebook account is a genuine problem for a DN. Everything is on facebook these days. Cheap apartments, cheap bikes, social events, you name it.
15 – What Next?
I will come back and write an update post, based on more time spent in this amazing city, at some point in the near future.
Be sure to subscribe to the Nomad Skeptic YouTube channel and join the mailing list (on the right-hand side of the main page of this site).
If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email: johnlebon123 — shift-2 — gmail
Written (mostly) 20-Jun-2019. Published 28-Jun-2019. 4,500 words.