How long can I live off of 1,000 USD (15,975,000.00 VND) in Ho Chi Minh?

Question

Need hotel accomodations

Answer 1

$30 a day and you can eat well , sleep in a clean safe place, and have a few dollars left for souveniers and local travel[moto taxies, cabs].. so about 4-6 weeks.

Answer 2

3 months if you live a basic life

Answer 3

Depends on the kind of lifestyle you want to live.  For me, I would estimate $25 a day.... so that would equate to 40 days.

Answer 4

You need to give more info of how you planning to spend time there and what life style do you want.

** Basic:  

- Food: 15kDong/per meal on avg = 45kD/day = $3   example of prices: soda cost 50cent, sandwich 33cent, a bowl of pho or other bowls 60-75cent

- Cheap hotel (something equal to Motel 6, Super 8)= $15/day

- Transportation around town = $3    you can walk to most places in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, take the metered taxi if you need to go somewhere further than your feet can endure. Do look into the bus system if you want to ecomonize, public transportation is getting much better. Will cost ~3kD per ride = 20 cent

- Misc. spending = $5

So $1000 will last you about 38 days with basic living.

** Moderate:

- Meal = $5

- Hotel = $20 (equal to Days Inn)

- Transportation = $5

- Misc. spending = $10

Total daily spending = $40. With this bugdet, you will last 25days.

I was there on vacation 2 yrs ago, my sister and I spent about $1k each traveling South thru North. We didn't ecomonize either. Just go with the flow. Someday we stayed in $10 hotel, some $25. Eat sandwich for breakfast (20cent) or eat sushi for $20/person, though mostly street food - they're better tasting and cheaper than fancy restaurants. some day jsut sight seeing, other shopped $50.

Answer 5

As others mentioned, it depends on the lifestyle you want to live. For example:

When I was living in Ha Noi for a couple months, I had a very hard time spending more than $500/month. That is because I lived as a native and not as a tourist. I lived very well on about $500/month in Vietnam.

On the other hand, my wife and I blew through $3,000 in about a month while on our honeymoon. That lifestyle included five plane trips, three bus tours, eating out all the time, living in hotel rooms for a month, numerous water taxi shuttles and one train trip on the 5-Star Express. We lived and traveled like royalty at a discount price.  

Perhaps a better way to access how far $1,000 will go is base it on the cost of living index. Generally speaking, how much does it cost to live in Vietnam compared to the U.S. The cost of living index between Vietnam and the U.S. is around 8:1, which means $1 in the U.S. can afford about $8 worth of living in Vietnam or your $1,000 will feel like you have $8,000 in Vietnam. This is one of the reasons why Vietnam has become one of the hottest tourist destinations in the world.

Have fun!