So, last month we spent 28 days in Hanoi Vietnam, this was our cheapest month yet, here you’ll find our expense report, this is my 4th expense report so far, for my previous reports, see the following
Note: these prices are the total for 2 people, doing this trip solo would be half the prices, except for the accommodation.
Hanoi expense report
Hanoi Trip Expenses
- Visas £162
- Bus (from Nanning China to Hanoi) £36
- Accommodation + electricity £243.7
- Food, drinks, taxi, bus, cinema £274.82
Total £716.52
Cost per person £358.26
Cost per day (per person) £12.79
Cost per day per person excluding the now non required Visa £9.90
This was insanely cheap, at no time did we feel we were on a budget, we had a brilliant apartment over looking the water, the list of costs above doesn’t explain too much, so I’ve included a screen shot of our excel spreadsheet, we update this daily, it greatly helps us plan for future days a head. The spreadsheet is excluding the accommodation cost, we keep this in a separate sheet.
Hanoi traffic
The brilliant thing about only spending £716.52 for the month is that this is considerably less than our passive income, so in theory we could live in Hanoi forever, eat out every meal and never work a day again, I say “in theory” as we’d have trouble getting a permanent Visa.
After eating out every meal for a week, it becomes quite boring and you really crave a home cooked meal, and you actually crave simple things, this could be anything, a plain potato, a bowl of 2 minute noodles, a salad or a full on roast.
We started shopping roughly every second day, if you take a look at our spreadsheet you’ll see the days we shopped were our most expensive, followed by a much cheaper following day.
In Hanoi beers range anywhere from 7 for £1 to 1 for £1, if you drink and eat in a Bia Hoi you can manage 7 beers for £1 if you find a really cheap Bia hoi at 5,000 dong a beer, at the time the exchange rate hit £1 = 35,000 dong.
Hanoi West Lake
We’d go to a Bia Hoi almost every day, the beer is cold and low in alcohol, so it was very refreshing and the food is also very cheap and enjoyable. The service is brilliant, the staff watch your glass like a hawk, if it becomes empty there is already a new beer on your table.
Hanoi was always very hot and very humid, this was helped a little by having an apartment right on west lake, the wind off the lake provided a nice constant breeze. We also had the water park just a few hundred metres up the road.
I really enjoyed our time in Hanoi, the food was great, beers were cheap, fruit was plentiful and the Vietnamese great to drink with, we made friends with locals and expats, the area we lived had a lot of expats, on our final night our expat and Vietnamese friends all threw a party for us on our rooftop.
Hanoi rooftop party
Out of office, again 