30 Days in Hanoi - The REAL Cost of Living is Shocking!

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Imagine landing in a vibrant city where dinner out costs less than your morning coffee or where it's rumored that your rent for your accommodation could possibly cost you less than it does for a weekend getaway back home. Sounds a little unreal, right? Well, we just spent 30 days living in Hanoi, Vietnam, and we tracked everything from street food fees to accommodations to health care and all the surprise costs that come along with it. And the total cost might completely change the way you think about the cost of living in Southeast Asia. But here's a twist. It's probably more expensive than you think in some areas and then quite affordable in others. So, what does it cost to live for one month in Hanoi, Vietnam? Well, stick around because we are going to break down every single expense that we incurred throughout that month. And be sure to stick around to the end of this video because we're gonna give our honest review of what we thought about Hanoi, Vietnam.

[00:01:38]We are Jason and Melissa Travel. We sold everything so that we could live life to the fullest and travel the world full-time. And we typically spend one month or 30 days in each location. And at the end of that stay, we like to do a cost of living breakdown. So stick around. We're going to break down every single cost to help you if you are planning some slow travel, if you are doing some retirement planning, or you're just a digital nomad and you want to consider Hanoi for your next stop.

[00:02:08]When we do our cost of living videos, we break it down into six categories.

[00:02:13]However, there is one category that we do not include in our cost of living, and that is the travel into or out of the country. That just varies so differently between everybody from whatever situation, wherever you're coming from, the time of year, how you're getting in and out of the country. So, we just don't include that particular cost in our videos. So, right out the gate, the very first category is restaurants.

[00:02:37]We had so much fun in Hanoi. There was so many different dining experiences that we had the pleasure of of going through. Some of them were just back alleys on little tiny plastic stools with plastic tables. We felt like giant ogres sitting there at like a kindergarten set. It was so much fun.

[00:02:54]And >> what an experience.

[00:02:56]>> My goodness, that food was so good. It was so cool to see just an alley set up as a restaurant and then scooters, people coming for like takeaway or pickup and a scooter would just fly past you at the table. So, you never knew what kind of traffic was going to come into the restaurant.

[00:03:14]One of my other favorite things that I definitely could not get enough of is the fur. And it's plentiful in Vietnam, but there is just little variations everywhere you go. So, I made it my life's mission to go around and try them all. And man, was it so good. We wound up in somebody's little tiny living room as a restaurant. We ended up in an alley. We ended up sitting down at some really beautiful sitdown restaurants.

[00:03:44]But my goodness, the food was fabulous and so fresh. Pretty much every singlewhere we went, there was so many fresh vegetables and fresh fruits to choose from. So, I'm gonna have to cheat with this and hold my phone because there's several different costs that I definitely don't want to get these stats wrong. So, on average, the street food per person costs about 30,000 to 100,000 Vietnamese dong. Now, that sounds like a lot, but it's actually about$1 to3 US per person. The average cost for a sitdown restaurant per person was about 100 to 300 Vietnamese dong. about $3 to9 US per person.

[00:04:26]The average cost for a beer was about 15 to 30 uh Vietnamese dong which is only about 60 cents to maybe like a$120 US.

[00:04:37]And then the cocktails which we had several of was about a h 100,000 to 250,000 dong per person which is about $4 to $10 US. However, we got around this because we also found happy hours where it would be a buy one get one or two for the price of one type places.

[00:04:56]So, we had a couple of cocktails, but we also did it on a budget.

[00:05:01]>> Yeah, we one of our favorite places to go was like the old tiki well or something like that. So, Miss N, Miss Queen, just a little shout out to them.

[00:05:10]Amazing server, amazing bartender. If you're in the Hanoi area, it's right next to the main lake there uh by Oldtown, but it was called the Old Tiki Well Bar. Fantastic happy hour. Uh I think the each craft cocktail ended up working out to about $4 US during that time. We went often.

[00:05:31]>> There was also one more thing that we were very pleasantly surprised about in Hanoi. There are a ton of vegetarian and vegan options. Yeah, there are. So, while there is a lot of seafood and meat to be had, there are also a ton of other options.

[00:05:46]Our total for restaurants for one month in Hanoi, Vietnam was $74681.

[00:05:55]>> All right, so moving on to the next category is groceries. Now, you'll notice that the restaurant uh amount was a little high. It was close to $750 for the entire month. But that's because it is similar to Thailand in the fact that it is cheaper most of the time to either order food to be delivered to your accommodation or just to go out to eat.

[00:06:20]Street food, sit-down restaurants. Most of that stuff is uh inexpensive and actually costs less than going to the grocery store, buying everything yourself, and then bringing it back to your apartment or your condo and making it. So, uh the amount that uh we did spend for groceries, most of that was, you know, picking up some fruit, some snacks for the apartment, and usually coffee and things like that. Although when you're in Vietnam, do yourself a favor and go out for coffee as much as you can. I'm just going to leave it right there. The coffee in Vietnam, buddy, it's good. So, with that being said, the total for groceries we spent was $19827.

[00:07:07]So, while our grocery budget was a little low this month, our transportation budget was also a little low. Thank goodness. We did a ton of walking, but we did have to pay for that cab ride to and from the airport to our Airbnb. We really didn't have a whole lot of transportation cost throughout the month while we were there. We did a boatload of walking. It is such a walkable city. It was so easy for us to get from one end to the other. There was very few days that we actually had to call a grab.

[00:07:36]>> Our transportation budget, all said and done for the month, was $67.89.

[00:07:42]Okay, so as Melissa mentioned that the walkability of Hanoi was pretty good.

[00:07:48]However, if you have some uh mobility issues and you require maybe a cane or a walker or something like that, it might be a bit challenging. A lot of the sidewalks are not even um in Vietnam. Uh they also use the sidewalks as like a secondary road. The scooters and stuff are all out there. So, you do need to pay attention to what you're doing. So, yes, it is highly walkable, but if you have some mobility issues, you might find it a bit challenging. So, just keep that in mind if you're planning a trip to Hanoi.

[00:08:20]>> Also, if you just like your toes, you might need to keep an eye on them so a scooter doesn't just come on by and scoot right over the top of them.

[00:08:29]>> All right, working our way through the next category. The next category is going to be entertainment. And in entertainment, it includes things like massages, mannies and petties, any of the different tickets that we uh that we purchased to go see things. And while we were there, we did purchase some tickets to go do a few different things. One of them was the skywalk, which Melissa was absolutely terrified uh because she walked out on a glass floor 65 uh stories up above the sea. She did it. If you would like to see that video, uh we'll link it at the very end of this one. Uh yeah, she was she was scared to death.

[00:09:07]>> Brave. I was so brave.

[00:09:09]>> But yeah, so we uh we purchased tickets.

[00:09:11]Two tickets to go up to the skywalk. And I'm going to cheat here really quick. Uh the two tickets going up to the skywalk uh were $4745 for two people to get up onto the skywalk. There was bars up there.

[00:09:25]Incredible scenery to be seen uh from the 65th floor. Definitely worth it. Uh we also went to the famous uh water puppet show. So we bought two tickets to go to the water puppet show and that cost us $22.78.

[00:09:41]So what we spent for entertainment was $2997.

[00:09:49]That included our tickets, that includes our Netflix, and I think we have Paramount Plus in there right now. But that is all of our entertainment. Moving on from the entertainment category, next one up is our health care costs. Now, we have two different costs uh incorporated into the total for health care. One of them is our life insurance policy that is personal. Uh but we also have our travel health insurance. Now, we do not feel comfortable leaving uh the United States without having some type of healthc care uh insurance. So, we go with a company called Safety Wing. Now, safety wing uh is travel insurance and medical insurance all wrapped up into one. And as you get a little bit older, the price increases with age. I'm not going to go into the specifics of the uh health insurance policies or anything like that. If you want to check that out, you can get on to Safety Wings website. I will show you what that website looks like. And I will also include a link. I think it gets you $20 off and you can choose any length of time that you would like to be covered, but it gets you $20 off of a uh health care uh policy and I'll put that down in the description of the video. So, the total that we spent for health care for one month was $33166.

[00:11:11]We have a couple of reoccurring costs that always follow us no matter where we go. We both use eims for our cell phone plans. So instead of getting to the country and trying to figure out cell coverage, we actually use two different companies that do eims, we use heirlow and nomad. And I will leave those in the description so that I can give you guys a discount if you want to try them out.

[00:11:36]We also have a VPN, a virtual private network that we use for our internet. We use Surf Shark and I will also put that in the link in the description so that again you can save a little bit of money if you want to try that out for yourself. So for our month in Hanoi, our general reoccurring cost are $24.

[00:11:56]All right. And our final category, the one you've all been waiting for, are accommodations.

[00:12:02]Now, we had a spectacular location. We were really centrally located.

[00:12:06]>> Yeah, we did. I think the tradeoff for this particular Airbnb for us though was the cost. It was a little bit more than we typically budget for and I think it was a hair overpriced for what it was.

[00:12:17]>> Definitely.

[00:12:17]>> But we really did have a fabulous location that allowed us to walk to pretty much anything that we wanted to go to.

[00:12:25]>> While we really liked our Airbnb, it did allow for a little extra space in this particular apartment. We didn't love the Airbnb. Some of the things we could have done without. Um, we were up on a higher floor with no lift, so we had to carry all of our bags up and down, which is pretty typical in a lot of cities. It wasn't the quietest Airbnb. Our neighbors weren't super quiet, but like I said, the trade-off really was the location.

[00:12:54]So, while we did feel that this Airbnb was quite a bit overpriced, uh, it wasn't a great location, just keep in mind we slow travel. We only spend one month usually in each location. So if you are going to live in that location longer than one month, it is going to cost you substantially less for rent.

[00:13:13]You're not going to be spending the Airbnb prices when you're renting monthtomonth while you're living there.

[00:13:20]And our lovely located but slightly overpriced Airbnb total for Hanoi Vietnam came to $1,354.96.

[00:13:34]Before we drop the grand total of what it cost us for one month in Hanoi, Vietnam, we just wanted to share with you some of the best months to visit and some of the months that might be a bit more challenging because of the heat, humidity, and the rain. The best time to visit Hanoi, Vietnam, in our opinion, would be October to April. It is quite a bit cooler. The humidity is a lot lower, and you're going to be able to wander around Oldtown or wherever you want without melting into a sweaty puddle into the street. It does get pretty hot during the months of May through September. that heat cranks up, that humidity level cranks up, and there's a lot more rain and has the potential of getting uh some pretty bad storms coming in off of the ocean. We absolutely loved our one month in Hanoi, Vietnam, and I plan on going back. I think you do, too.

[00:14:29]I do. I hope so. I hope you come with me. But we plan on going back. We loved our time there. The people, the culture, the food, it's just absolutely phenomenal. Now just keep in mind there was one thing that uh I don't think one of you know that both of us were very crazy about and that was the traffic and crossing the streets. Now we mentioned they use sidewalks as like a secondary road. They do not stop for you when you cross a street. It is straight up like a game of Frogger. You just move forward, stop, move forward, stop, and you just kind of work your way through all the traffic to get the other side. Does it wake you up in the morning? Absolutely it does. Does it scare the crap out of you? Sometimes it does, but it's just something that you will get used to, which is crossing the road in Vietnam.

[00:15:18]>> All right, you waited all the way till the end of this video. Before I give you that grand total, I'm going to make you wait one more second. If you find these videos helpful and you like our content, please thumbs up, baby. It helps us out so much. And please subscribe. You do not want to miss what's coming up next.

[00:15:35]We are cranking out these videos. My god, we are having so much fun and we want to share all of this with you.

[00:15:40]>> I know. I absolutely love bringing you guys along with us.

[00:15:43]>> All right, you have waited all the way till the end. I am going to give you the grand total for two people in Hanoi, Vietnam for one month. It came out to $3,2316.

[00:15:56]That breaks down to $1,51158 per person for one month. So, if you missed any of our Hanoi video adventures, we're going to leave that right there for you. But you know what that means now? Jason and Melissa are >> on to the next one.

[00:16:30]>> HEY, HEY, HEY.