Vietnam Travel Guide

Vietnam is one of the most rewarding short-trip destinations from India in 2026. The eVisa is straightforward, the food is exceptional, and a week-long trip from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City costs a fraction of equivalent European destinations.

The dong has many zeros. VND 100,000 sounds like a lot but is around ₹350. The simplest mental model: drop three zeros and divide by three to get the rough rupee equivalent.

The Dong, the Dollar, and the Rupee

The Vietnamese dong runs in big numbers. A bowl of pho costs around 50,000 dong. A mid-range hotel night runs into the millions. The trick most travellers miss on day one is dropping the last three zeros in your head, divide by a thousand and the number becomes manageable.

Vietnam has a soft dual-currency culture. Hotels, tour operators, dive shops, and high-end restaurants will quote in US dollars. Street food, taxis, markets, and most shops quote in dong. You will spend in both. USD is widely accepted in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, and the major resort towns, though paying in dong almost always gets a better effective rate.

Rates move every day. The number on Google is the live interbank rate, what authorised dealers use to trade with each other. It is not the rate most banks and forex providers actually sell at. They build a markup into their selling price, usually 2 to 4 percent, and it never appears as a separate line item on the bill. On a forex order of a couple of lakh rupees, that markup quietly adds up to thousands.

How Much Cash to Carry

Vietnam is a cash economy for everyday spending. Street food, taxis, markets, family-run guest houses, intercity buses, and most domestic experiences run on cash. Cards work at four-star and five-star hotels, large restaurants in Hanoi and Saigon, supermarket chains, and big tourist sites. Outside that, plan to pay cash.

There is one important constraint travellers should know. Vietnamese law restricts the export of large amounts of dong out of the country. The practical rule for a tourist is to convert the bulk of your forex on arrival in Vietnam, spend it, and avoid leaving with a wallet full of dong. Carry small leftover amounts back if you must, but do not stockpile dong in India before flying. The cleanest approach is to carry US dollars from India and convert on the ground, or load a forex card with USD.

A Sensible Cash Plan

Carry US dollars from India in clean, undamaged notes, torn, marked, or pre-2009 series notes are routinely refused at Vietnamese exchange counters. Convert in batches on arrival rather than all at once. Keep a forex card loaded with USD as backup, both for ATM withdrawals in Vietnam and for hotel and restaurant payments where cards are accepted.

Indian residents can carry up to USD 3,000 equivalent in foreign currency notes per trip to Vietnam. Anything beyond that goes on a forex card or as a wire transfer. Most leisure trips will not approach the ₹10 lakh per person per financial year TCS threshold, so no tax collection at source applies.

Where to Exchange Money

The cheapest forex you will buy is the USD you buy in India before flying. Indian airport counters and tourist-area money changers run a noticeable markup over the interbank rate. Hotel front desks run worse. Online forex providers selling at the live interbank rate are typically a few percent better than both.

Inside Vietnam, gold shops in Hanoi's Old Quarter and the Ben Thanh Market area in Saigon historically offer the best USD-to-dong rates, often better than banks. Major banks like Vietcombank, BIDV, and Sacombank are reliable and only slightly worse. Avoid airport exchange counters and hotel front desks, they run several percentage points off the mid-market rate.

The cleanest approach for an traveller: order USD for door delivery before flying, carry the bulk in cash, load some on a forex card as backup, and exchange in batches at gold shops or banks once on the ground.

Cards in Vietnam

Visa and Mastercard are accepted at four-star and five-star hotels, large restaurants, supermarket chains, big-name shops, and most established tour operators in Hanoi, Saigon, Da Nang, and Hoi An. Acceptance drops sharply outside those circles. American Express works at international hotel chains but not much else. JCB has decent acceptance through Japanese investment in the country. RuPay has effectively no acceptance.

Apple Pay and Google Pay work at most card terminals that accept contactless. Local QR wallets like MoMo, ZaloPay, and VNPay are everywhere on signs but do not accept foreign-issued cards for top-up. Travellers cannot use them.

Two Things Indian Cardholders Should Know

Online payments in Vietnam often trigger 3D Secure verification, which means an OTP to your registered Indian mobile number. Keep your Indian SIM active on roaming, or use an eSIM that keeps the number reachable. Otherwise online bookings, particularly for trains and domestic flights, fail at the OTP step.

At hotels and large restaurants, the card machine sometimes asks whether to charge in dong or in your home currency. Always pick dong. The home-currency option is dynamic currency conversion and adds a markup of several percent on top of whatever your card already takes.

ATMs in Vietnam

ATMs are everywhere in Hanoi, Saigon, Da Nang, and most tourist towns. The trick is choosing the right one. Foreign-card-friendly ATMs from HSBC, ANZ, Citibank, and Vietcombank tend to charge moderate fees and dispense reliably. Local-only ATMs sometimes refuse foreign cards or charge punitive fees.

Withdrawal limits per transaction tend to be lower than what travellers are used to, often capped at 2 to 5 million dong (a relatively small amount in real terms) per withdrawal. Plan multiple withdrawals if you need cash for a multi-day trip outside the cities.

Skip the airport ATMs in Hanoi and Saigon for anything beyond emergency cash. The fees are high and the rates are poor. Walk into the city, find a Vietcombank or HSBC branch, withdraw there.

What You Will Spend Each Day

On the ground, daily spending splits into three rough tiers.

Backpacker: dorm bed in a hostel, two pho or banh mi meals, one cheap restaurant dinner, local buses or grab bikes. Vietnam is one of the cheapest serious-travel destinations in Asia at this tier.

Mid-range, where most travellers land: a three-star hotel in the city centre, two restaurant meals a day, a private car for day trips, paid attractions and museums, a mid-range cooking class or boat tour every couple of days.

Premium: four-or-five-star hotel, fine-dining restaurants, private guides, helicopter or seaplane transfers, the high-end resort wings of Phu Quoc and Da Nang. Comfortable rather than extravagant by Indian premium standards.

A 7-day mid-range trip for two is one of the better-value Southeast Asian holidays you can plan. Flights and hotels are usually paid in India before departure and sit on top.

Two-input live converter: enter an amount in INR or VND, see the equivalent in the other currency.

Rate displayed: the live interbank rate (mid-market), with a small label "Live interbank rate. Updated [timestamp]."

Optional secondary line: "Most banks add a 2–4% markup to this rate."

Default amount on page load: ₹50,000 → VND equivalent.

Note for the dev team: VND figures will be very large, format with thousand separators clearly.

Data source: any reliable FX API. Cache rate for 5–15 minutes.

Getting Around

Domestic flights, sleeper trains, and tourist buses cover the long distances. The country is over 1,600 kilometres top to bottom, and trying to do it all by road is exhausting. Most itineraries fly between Hanoi, Da Nang, and Saigon, and use ground transport for shorter hops.

Inside the cities, Grab is the default for taxis and bike-taxis. Download it before flying. Pay through the app or in cash. Avoid hailing taxis off the street unless they are from established companies like Mai Linh or Vinasun, meter scams are common with independents.

Renting a motorbike is tempting and it is the genuine Vietnam experience for some travellers. It is also where most foreign tourist injuries happen. Indian licences are not technically valid for motorbikes in Vietnam, and rental scams over scratches and damage are common. Skip it unless you are an experienced rider and have read the trip reports.