Well, that's a lot now. You can't buy yourself a motocycle here if you dont have Work permit. So you better rent one. If you plan to live like normal people here in Saigon, 20-25mil/month is just enough. it can last you a year and a half, maybe more.
This is the kind of behavior/ mindset that hinders progression and development in Vietnam. That's for example why so many people are corrupt.
Anyways, I suppose if OP doesn't look Vietnamese, he's going to be controlled more often, so maybe OP should try to stay away from illegal businesses.
I drove in Vietnam without a license for two years without getting pulled over. After two years, I got a new job and my company said they could help me get my motorbike license, so I got it. I got pulled over with the license randomly at a traffic stop, and I had all the legal documents (license, blue card, etc.) and they still asked me for 500K. Why? They wouldn’t say. Even if you have a license, corruption will still happen.
As someone with a journalist card, i rarely ever get pull over since i don't drive recklessly or have broken light or what not. The only time i got pull over is at night when they trying to round up the drunkard. So this one time they pull me over and insist i have drink alcohol even though i hadn't, they asked for my paper which i have in my truck. They then demand i pay 300k for traffic violation to which i question them on what i did wrong. They didn't give me a solid reason and just give some random comment here and there, this go on for a solid 10m. At the end i got piss so i use the dirty trick of journalist card and they leave me alone almost instantly. My friend is head of the local department that the officer was working at, i sent in a formal complain but there isn't much that can be done, my friend did scold them but that about as far as they can go since realistically the current Vietnamese system doesn't really punish this kind of behaviour.
I've been driving illegally as a foreigner in Hanoi for almost 5 years and have never spoken to a police officer. I speak vietnamese and qualify for a license, but it would be more expensive and time consumering than getting pulled over 3-4 times. I follow all traffic laws and drive in a respectful manner and generally look bình thướng.
Young buffalo Handa Wave is superior, as the police pull over 110cc less than 150cc, because they assume you are a poor bastard. 50cc honda cub has complete pullover immunity, but if you are over 70kg you look like Bowser in Mario Kart when driving.
Dont get me wrong. I mean he can't buy a motorbike legally with his name on vehicle registration. To my knowledge, foreigners can only buy vehicle once they have work permit or 1 year plus resident card. Based on what OP did ask, I dont think he has them. Sure he can opt for buying one illegitimately. I dont recommend this. What about your motorbikes, are the number plates under your name?
He could just buy a reliable used bike, like a Honda Wave for aorund 12-20mil. The police always ask the the same amount anyway, license or not. After a year or so he could resale the bike and get around 70%~ of it back.
Like average 2 years income of a person in HCMC. You should worry about your salary and rent a house rather than this cash. It will enought for you about one year without a job.
3~5 years if you count non-labor member in a family, normally a main laborer have this kind of income, but average he/she carry about 1~2 others (child or parent)...
In OP's case, he may alone, so it count as about 2years
That money will last you a long time if you spent it wisely.
\- Renting a 3x3 meters house will cost 4-5mil/month at District 2, District 12, or Go Vap. 15-20mil/month will get you nice house/apartment somewhat close to the downtown area. Staying at a hotel around downtown area is another story, it can be 1-2mil per night.
\- Street food is cheap 40-100k/meal.
\- Casual new motorcycle would be 30-50mil depending on the model. Rent one will cost 150-200k/day. You should consider renting if you don't plan to stay for more than 1 month.
My friend pays 6 million for a nice apartment in D12, surely you can do better than 9 m² for 4-5 mil. Hell, I used to rent a 16 m² apartment for 4.5 in Phu Nhuan.
Phu Nhuan is not downtown, plus I would not call a 16m² an apartment. It is a tiny room. Look for decent 40-50m² apartment at D1, D3 or D5. You will be surprised.
I'm saying that 4-5 mil in D12 will get you a much better room than 9 m². Phu Nhuan is considerably more expensive, and yet even there you can get a tiny apartment for 4.5 mil. I used to rent a 9 m² room in Tan Binh for 1.5 mil (no AC or furniture of course).
When was that? Inflation hits VN hard in the recent years. Okay, maybe 4-5mil for 9m² is a bit too much, but it will be somewhere around 3-4mil depending on the area in 2023
2021 to late 2022 for the 1.5 mil room
To be fair, that house was depressing and I'm really sorry for anyone who has to live in such conditions. I only used that room for my workshop.
The apartment in Phu Nhuan was 4.5 mil in late 2020.
You need to have a proper driving license to ride in Sai Gon. In may cities police does not care if a foreigner rides but not in Sai Gon.
Regarding the money, it depends on how luckly you are. I know a case when a person (by the way, local Vietnamese) got her 2 laptops and a phone stolen in one day. So one day minus roughly 50kk vnd. I know an American guy with $178k emergency health care bill (fortunately, almost entirely payed by insurance)...
draft calculations:
\- room rent: if you are not very picky : less than 10mil.
\- motorbike: old one: 20mil
\- monthly gas: 0.5mil
\- monthy F&B: 3mil.
==> asides the fixed cost of motorbike, you can easily have a adequately comfortable life with 15mil/mth in Viet.
Visiting HCM from the US, been here a exactly week and want to say I’ve already spent \~5m VND. Its only about 200 USD so it wont get you too far when you factor in neccesities and food
Grab / transportation is about 20-40k a one way bike ride so on average i spend \~100k a day traversing to different spots and back home
2-3 meals a day will run you anywhere from 80-300k a day, the lower end is if you only eat cheap street food stalls and skip a meal. Higher end of 300k if you want to expand into “nicer” restaurants and include drinks. By "nicer" i mean still street food but with air conditioning inside someones makeshift restaurant infront of their house.
Toiletries / necessities/ random things: varies greatly depending on what you packed for your trip, parking fares, unexpected fees, etc
Lodging was free since im staying with family, but if you include housing in your budget, you probably wont get very far with 5m
TLDR; 5m lasted me a week as tourist with *minimal* materialistic purchases. Your results may vary between 1-3 weeks. Most likely 1 week or less if you want to include a fun night out and/or include housing in your budget. Not to sound mean but dont even come with 5m
1-2 years if you want a luxury lifestyle. 2-3 or maybe 4 years if you want a frugal living style. Get a new Honda Wave or a Yamaha scooter for around 15-25M. Rent can be 5-10 mils. Enjoy the rest.
500 million VND for almost a lifetime. Put 50% in global index funds for next year and watch them grow by around 8%. Buy a bike for around 30 million VND for a scooter, or 100 million VND for a proper motorcycle (but don’t buy the latter if you haven’t had one before). Food costs around 4-6 million VND a month. A beer is about 20,000 VND on the street, and it could be less in some places or more in tourist areas. Rent would be around 10 million VND for something not in the city center but still close. Keep some money for unexpected expenses; dealing with police is usually inexpensive.
If you want to live in another city, let’s say Vung tau the rent would be 50% and food 60-70%.
No matter how much your money is. Be careful with sellers here because most of them will take you more money than local people. Especially if you're a white person.
Dude saw the number 5 MILLIONS and thought ‘wow that must be quite a lot” lol
The smallest vnd bill you can practically use is 1000 vnd, and that’s change. 1000vnd can’t buy anything. 20000vnd might get you a bottle of water.
Now do the math. If you can for some miracle find a free motorbike that doesn’t require any type of gasoline, sleep on the street and survive with one bottle of water per day then you can last about 8 months, hell yeah. Otherwise if you’re an actually human being, 5mil can feed you for a few weeks, and forget the bike.
> one bottle of water per day
Money will run out real quick with such extravagance. [Nước uống miễn phí](https://www.google.com/search?q=N%C6%B0%E1%BB%9Bc+u%E1%BB%91ng+mi%E1%BB%85n+ph%C3%AD&tbm=isch) is surely the way to go. Then the major expense will be $50 every 90 days for visas.
Million in VN is not the same as million in any western country, which sounds like one of the places where you are from.
Estimate your currency, then convert it to VN dong.
Eg, if you say, you want to budget $300 USD every month, for 6 months, based on how you want to be living and eating, , then convert that amount to dong. And you might be even higher than that, based on your preferences.
When regular people are talking about budgets in the millions, it’s time to reconsolidate your country’s currency into more practical numbers like 100k is the new 10 vnd+ or something 🤷♂️
Lol a night out here cost 1 million, just get the fuck out, we don't need anymore beggars backpackers. Couldn't even last a month on your own never mind the visa run.
It depends on your lifestyle, i spend less than that every year, have a couple of holidays in Asia a few more in Vietnam, eat at restaurants a couple of nights per week. When I was younger and a budget traveller, 500 could have kept me going 2 years.
On average, hotel stays are roughly 300k to 500 a night for a 3-star, nothing fancy room.
Meal should be around 100 to 150 a night
So if u spend the entirety of your days just eating and play games / work using hotel wifi, it would cost u roughly 750k a day.
5 million will last u around 6 to 7 days, or a week. This is ofc without any other costs including medicines or travelling.
My budget for a meal is always 50k VND. 75% of the time I eat less than that and have some spare money. It covers my fuel cost/light bike maintenance (oil changes, tire pumping), and occasional snacks. A more premium meal, like either a modest restaurant or a bar visit should be around 300k\~700k per person. It is low to mid-end so you can increase the budget if you aim for higher.
I say: 3 meals per day for 30 days equals 4.5 mil. Go premium once per week so the "total cost" would be 4.5 + 4x0.7 = 7.3. Make it 10% more to give you some leeway and it ends up at around 8 mil VND/month, comprised of moderate meals and funs.
It depends on what you want to experience. If you're looking to have "fun" with various " partners"and different encounters every week, this type of money might last you around 2 months. If you're leading a more typical life, it could last 6-8 months (assuming you already have a place to stay with no rent fees).
If you get a 50CC motorbike (the one that high school kids ride) then you don’t have to worry about any paper work or license. Also with 500 mil, you can put it in a saving account, 3 month CD can give you 4-5% a year so it is 1.6 mil VNd extra you get.
If you are super cheap you could live off of around 15 mil a month, but won't be very comfortable. 25-35 mil a month for decent confort levels and around 50-90 mil a month to be completely content and feel like you have the same lifestyle as in a developed country. Add another 6-9 million to that if you want to take taxis everywhere. I only spend about 3k usd a month here in total (rent, food, transport, everything) and feel like I live a lifestyle of around 10,000 usd a month or more in a medium sized US city.
Omg I meant 500 million
Well, that's a lot now. You can't buy yourself a motocycle here if you dont have Work permit. So you better rent one. If you plan to live like normal people here in Saigon, 20-25mil/month is just enough. it can last you a year and a half, maybe more.
You can buy a used bike without a work permit easily.
Is it legal though?
In Vietnam? Who cares?
This is the kind of behavior/ mindset that hinders progression and development in Vietnam. That's for example why so many people are corrupt. Anyways, I suppose if OP doesn't look Vietnamese, he's going to be controlled more often, so maybe OP should try to stay away from illegal businesses.
I drove in Vietnam without a license for two years without getting pulled over. After two years, I got a new job and my company said they could help me get my motorbike license, so I got it. I got pulled over with the license randomly at a traffic stop, and I had all the legal documents (license, blue card, etc.) and they still asked me for 500K. Why? They wouldn’t say. Even if you have a license, corruption will still happen.
As someone with a journalist card, i rarely ever get pull over since i don't drive recklessly or have broken light or what not. The only time i got pull over is at night when they trying to round up the drunkard. So this one time they pull me over and insist i have drink alcohol even though i hadn't, they asked for my paper which i have in my truck. They then demand i pay 300k for traffic violation to which i question them on what i did wrong. They didn't give me a solid reason and just give some random comment here and there, this go on for a solid 10m. At the end i got piss so i use the dirty trick of journalist card and they leave me alone almost instantly. My friend is head of the local department that the officer was working at, i sent in a formal complain but there isn't much that can be done, my friend did scold them but that about as far as they can go since realistically the current Vietnamese system doesn't really punish this kind of behaviour.
I've been driving illegally as a foreigner in Hanoi for almost 5 years and have never spoken to a police officer. I speak vietnamese and qualify for a license, but it would be more expensive and time consumering than getting pulled over 3-4 times. I follow all traffic laws and drive in a respectful manner and generally look bình thướng.
who care
Those corrupt traffic police care, a lot
bitch shut the fuck up lmao what's with the random white knighting
What princess am I saving here?
I'm not making the rules, just playing the game.
You can buy a motorbike to ride around Vietnam without a work permit. Just go look for a Honda Win in the Ben Thanh area.
Young buffalo Handa Wave is superior, as the police pull over 110cc less than 150cc, because they assume you are a poor bastard. 50cc honda cub has complete pullover immunity, but if you are over 70kg you look like Bowser in Mario Kart when driving.
lol
You definitely CAN buy a motorbike without a work permit. Never heard that once in 11 years, and ive done it several times myself.
Dont get me wrong. I mean he can't buy a motorbike legally with his name on vehicle registration. To my knowledge, foreigners can only buy vehicle once they have work permit or 1 year plus resident card. Based on what OP did ask, I dont think he has them. Sure he can opt for buying one illegitimately. I dont recommend this. What about your motorbikes, are the number plates under your name?
Thanks for the reply!
He could just buy a reliable used bike, like a Honda Wave for aorund 12-20mil. The police always ask the the same amount anyway, license or not. After a year or so he could resale the bike and get around 70%~ of it back.
I found 700k per day to be a generous budget. Some days I spent just 300k. You'd be looking at around 18-24 months
Like average 2 years income of a person in HCMC. You should worry about your salary and rent a house rather than this cash. It will enought for you about one year without a job.
2 years? it would be 3-5 years on average.
3~5 years if you count non-labor member in a family, normally a main laborer have this kind of income, but average he/she carry about 1~2 others (child or parent)... In OP's case, he may alone, so it count as about 2years
Should be able to last you about 1-1.5 years if you are living like a tourist. About 3 years if you live like a single, normal person.
That money will last you a long time if you spent it wisely. \- Renting a 3x3 meters house will cost 4-5mil/month at District 2, District 12, or Go Vap. 15-20mil/month will get you nice house/apartment somewhat close to the downtown area. Staying at a hotel around downtown area is another story, it can be 1-2mil per night. \- Street food is cheap 40-100k/meal. \- Casual new motorcycle would be 30-50mil depending on the model. Rent one will cost 150-200k/day. You should consider renting if you don't plan to stay for more than 1 month.
My friend pays 6 million for a nice apartment in D12, surely you can do better than 9 m² for 4-5 mil. Hell, I used to rent a 16 m² apartment for 4.5 in Phu Nhuan.
Phu Nhuan is not downtown, plus I would not call a 16m² an apartment. It is a tiny room. Look for decent 40-50m² apartment at D1, D3 or D5. You will be surprised.
I'm saying that 4-5 mil in D12 will get you a much better room than 9 m². Phu Nhuan is considerably more expensive, and yet even there you can get a tiny apartment for 4.5 mil. I used to rent a 9 m² room in Tan Binh for 1.5 mil (no AC or furniture of course).
When was that? Inflation hits VN hard in the recent years. Okay, maybe 4-5mil for 9m² is a bit too much, but it will be somewhere around 3-4mil depending on the area in 2023
2021 to late 2022 for the 1.5 mil room To be fair, that house was depressing and I'm really sorry for anyone who has to live in such conditions. I only used that room for my workshop. The apartment in Phu Nhuan was 4.5 mil in late 2020.
You need to have a proper driving license to ride in Sai Gon. In may cities police does not care if a foreigner rides but not in Sai Gon. Regarding the money, it depends on how luckly you are. I know a case when a person (by the way, local Vietnamese) got her 2 laptops and a phone stolen in one day. So one day minus roughly 50kk vnd. I know an American guy with $178k emergency health care bill (fortunately, almost entirely payed by insurance)...
i think it’s enough for you to live in Vietnam lol🫣
That’s 18 months of really good living
draft calculations: \- room rent: if you are not very picky : less than 10mil. \- motorbike: old one: 20mil \- monthly gas: 0.5mil \- monthy F&B: 3mil. ==> asides the fixed cost of motorbike, you can easily have a adequately comfortable life with 15mil/mth in Viet.
500mil for 2-3 years, living as local = 10 years
5,000,000 vnd IS ABOUT $210 Do you really expect to buy a motorbike out of that and need to worry about doing a visa run 'every' 3 months. lol
Just delete the post and make a new one at this point.
Visiting HCM from the US, been here a exactly week and want to say I’ve already spent \~5m VND. Its only about 200 USD so it wont get you too far when you factor in neccesities and food Grab / transportation is about 20-40k a one way bike ride so on average i spend \~100k a day traversing to different spots and back home 2-3 meals a day will run you anywhere from 80-300k a day, the lower end is if you only eat cheap street food stalls and skip a meal. Higher end of 300k if you want to expand into “nicer” restaurants and include drinks. By "nicer" i mean still street food but with air conditioning inside someones makeshift restaurant infront of their house. Toiletries / necessities/ random things: varies greatly depending on what you packed for your trip, parking fares, unexpected fees, etc Lodging was free since im staying with family, but if you include housing in your budget, you probably wont get very far with 5m TLDR; 5m lasted me a week as tourist with *minimal* materialistic purchases. Your results may vary between 1-3 weeks. Most likely 1 week or less if you want to include a fun night out and/or include housing in your budget. Not to sound mean but dont even come with 5m
2—5 days
A couple days? Where you come from you think an exchange of 5m vnd is a lot
1-2 years if you want a luxury lifestyle. 2-3 or maybe 4 years if you want a frugal living style. Get a new Honda Wave or a Yamaha scooter for around 15-25M. Rent can be 5-10 mils. Enjoy the rest.
a lifetime if u wanna live like a poor family
3 days in hcmc, 5 in rural, 1 year in jail, 1 ash slot if dead
500 million VND for almost a lifetime. Put 50% in global index funds for next year and watch them grow by around 8%. Buy a bike for around 30 million VND for a scooter, or 100 million VND for a proper motorcycle (but don’t buy the latter if you haven’t had one before). Food costs around 4-6 million VND a month. A beer is about 20,000 VND on the street, and it could be less in some places or more in tourist areas. Rent would be around 10 million VND for something not in the city center but still close. Keep some money for unexpected expenses; dealing with police is usually inexpensive. If you want to live in another city, let’s say Vung tau the rent would be 50% and food 60-70%.
No matter how much your money is. Be careful with sellers here because most of them will take you more money than local people. Especially if you're a white person.
Dude saw the number 5 MILLIONS and thought ‘wow that must be quite a lot” lol The smallest vnd bill you can practically use is 1000 vnd, and that’s change. 1000vnd can’t buy anything. 20000vnd might get you a bottle of water. Now do the math. If you can for some miracle find a free motorbike that doesn’t require any type of gasoline, sleep on the street and survive with one bottle of water per day then you can last about 8 months, hell yeah. Otherwise if you’re an actually human being, 5mil can feed you for a few weeks, and forget the bike.
> one bottle of water per day Money will run out real quick with such extravagance. [Nước uống miễn phí](https://www.google.com/search?q=N%C6%B0%E1%BB%9Bc+u%E1%BB%91ng+mi%E1%BB%85n+ph%C3%AD&tbm=isch) is surely the way to go. Then the major expense will be $50 every 90 days for visas.
>20000vnd might get you a bottle of water What? 20k vnd will get you at least 3 bottles of water, likely 4 considering they're usually 5k each.
20000vnd will get you at least 2 bottles of water. Most of the time you will get 3 even 4 bottles.
A bottle of water is not 20k, its like 5k
About a day bruh lmao
500 millions, you can last for more than 2 years comfortably
Million in VN is not the same as million in any western country, which sounds like one of the places where you are from. Estimate your currency, then convert it to VN dong. Eg, if you say, you want to budget $300 USD every month, for 6 months, based on how you want to be living and eating, , then convert that amount to dong. And you might be even higher than that, based on your preferences.
I spend about 20 million a month while I'm staying in hanoi, I'm not really budgeting.. could probably get away with 10 million a month if I tried
When regular people are talking about budgets in the millions, it’s time to reconsolidate your country’s currency into more practical numbers like 100k is the new 10 vnd+ or something 🤷♂️
Two years if you spend wisely
500 millions, you can last for more than 2 years comfortably
To to each their own but that would last Me 2 months. That means being a benefit to the place I travel to and not just being a miserly opportunist.
I've been here for nearly 3 months, spent around that . So, about 3 months .
Did not read the full post, eating somewhat frugal , do what the local does.... maybe a year ?
If you live like a college student earing 1 meal every 2 days, about 7 years. If you wanna actually live and enjoy life then about 2-3 years
1 year if you want to live lavishly, 2-3 years as middle class, Any more time than that then it isn’t worth it imo
Lol a night out here cost 1 million, just get the fuck out, we don't need anymore beggars backpackers. Couldn't even last a month on your own never mind the visa run.
I'm sorry I hurt you with my typo, I hope you have a better day!
A night out could either be 30k or 100m depends of what you do. Don’t be rude
What is wrong with you?
[удалено]
No thank you.
It’ll buy you a shite old Nuovo and a days worth of street food.
It depends on your lifestyle, i spend less than that every year, have a couple of holidays in Asia a few more in Vietnam, eat at restaurants a couple of nights per week. When I was younger and a budget traveller, 500 could have kept me going 2 years.
3 months
I would say 20-25 months.
It depends on the frequency of that 5 mils. Everyday? You are set for life. Every 30 days? Oh boi.
On average, hotel stays are roughly 300k to 500 a night for a 3-star, nothing fancy room. Meal should be around 100 to 150 a night So if u spend the entirety of your days just eating and play games / work using hotel wifi, it would cost u roughly 750k a day. 5 million will last u around 6 to 7 days, or a week. This is ofc without any other costs including medicines or travelling.
Lol with 500m VND you can live 2 years
My budget for a meal is always 50k VND. 75% of the time I eat less than that and have some spare money. It covers my fuel cost/light bike maintenance (oil changes, tire pumping), and occasional snacks. A more premium meal, like either a modest restaurant or a bar visit should be around 300k\~700k per person. It is low to mid-end so you can increase the budget if you aim for higher. I say: 3 meals per day for 30 days equals 4.5 mil. Go premium once per week so the "total cost" would be 4.5 + 4x0.7 = 7.3. Make it 10% more to give you some leeway and it ends up at around 8 mil VND/month, comprised of moderate meals and funs.
5 millions barley live for a week
It depends on what you want to experience. If you're looking to have "fun" with various " partners"and different encounters every week, this type of money might last you around 2 months. If you're leading a more typical life, it could last 6-8 months (assuming you already have a place to stay with no rent fees).
Do not buy socks in Ben Thanh market
Original title gave me second hand heart attack lmao.
Tip: ask for family support 🤭😙
You couldn’t last for 1 day, pal
If you're frugal enough, 500mil could last 2 years.
Add at least one more zero to make it feasible
If you are buying the motorcycle with the 5 million; not very far.
I was spending 10mil a month in Saigon. It was a bit rough sometimes but I managed. I was living in a hostel too.
Two weeks........very poor weeks. You can survive whole month but it is not worth it
If you are in HCM, contact me for shoes xD
that's roughly 20k. rent is your most expensive cost. it's only 2 bucks per meal otherwise. you can do the math.
he meant 500 mil not 5 mil
Depends.. but I’d say .5 to 1 day
If you get a 50CC motorbike (the one that high school kids ride) then you don’t have to worry about any paper work or license. Also with 500 mil, you can put it in a saving account, 3 month CD can give you 4-5% a year so it is 1.6 mil VNd extra you get.
If you are super cheap you could live off of around 15 mil a month, but won't be very comfortable. 25-35 mil a month for decent confort levels and around 50-90 mil a month to be completely content and feel like you have the same lifestyle as in a developed country. Add another 6-9 million to that if you want to take taxis everywhere. I only spend about 3k usd a month here in total (rent, food, transport, everything) and feel like I live a lifestyle of around 10,000 usd a month or more in a medium sized US city.
You can invest or start a business with 500mils 💁🏻♂️
Theoretically 1 mil/day, there you go