Vietnam from Australia: What a Fortnight Actually Costs

Vietnam is eight to nine hours from Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, about seven from Perth, and return fares typically run 450 to 830 AUD. Australians need a visa, which surprises people who are used to walking into Indonesia and Thailand. It is a 25 USD e-visa, online, valid up to 90 days. Two weeks costs roughly 2,200 to 4,400 AUD per person all in.

That last figure is the one that moves people. A fortnight in Vietnam lands under a fortnight in Bali for most travellers once accommodation and food are counted, and the flight is only two hours longer.

The visa is the part Australians get wrong

Vietnam does not give Australian passport holders visa-free entry. Not for a week, not for a weekend, not for a cruise stopover. There is no visa on arrival for tourists at the airport unless you already hold a pre-approval letter.

A bowl from a neighbourhood shop runs 26,000 to 52,000 dong, which is under three Australian dollars.

• What to get: the government e-visa, single or multiple entry, valid up to 90 days
• Cost: 25 USD single entry, 50 USD multiple entry, paid on the government site
• Processing: three to seven working days
• Passport: six months' validity from arrival, two blank pages
• Where to apply: evisa.gov.vn, the Immigration Department's own portal, accepted at 83 entry and exit points

The 30-day and 90-day e-visas cost the same, so take the 90-day one even for a fortnight. It costs nothing extra and it covers you if plans change. Every site that appears above evisa.gov.vn in a Google search is a reseller charging 40 to 90 AUD to type your details into the same form.

Which Australia to Vietnam routes are direct

There is no direct flight from Australia to Da Nang or Hue, which matters if central Vietnam is your target. Fly into Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi and connect on a domestic leg for 60 to 110 AUD, booked three or four weeks ahead. Singapore Airlines and Scoot route through Singapore to Da Nang and Hanoi if the timings suit better, and Scoot has been the cheapest option out of Sydney on recent searches.

The Hanoi to Dong Hoi overnight run is the leg most itineraries replace with a flight, and should not.

On fares: May tends to be the cheapest month out of Sydney, October the next cheapest. December and January are the worst, because that is when Australia goes on holiday and Vietnam goes into its northern winter at the same time.

Australian school holidays against Vietnamese weather

Vietnam has three climates stacked over 1,650km, and the southern hemisphere calendar hits them awkwardly. This is the most useful table here.

Most Australian itineraries stop at the show caves and never see the rest.

The pattern to take from that: the April break is the one that works everywhere and it is the shortest. The Christmas break works in the south and disappoints in the north, where people arrive expecting tropical and get fifteen degrees and drizzle. The September break floods central Vietnam, so if that is your only window, weight the trip to Hanoi and Saigon. The national picture is in the guide to the best time to visit Vietnam.

Book the Vietnam flight around the school holidays, not the weather. April and October are the two windows where the price and the conditions both work from Australia.

What a fortnight costs in Australian dollars

At September 2026 rates one Australian dollar buys about 18,500 dong. Prices checked September 2026.

The north is at its best in the Australian spring, which is also its cheapest.

Ground costs behind that: a dorm bed is 155,000 to 470,000 dong a night, a bowl of pho 26,000 to 52,000, a restaurant main 91,000 to 221,000, a motorbike 104,000 to 260,000 a day, an overnight sleeper bus 250,000 to 650,000. A guided cave day with a licensed operator in Phong Nha starts around 1,950,000 dong and runs to 4,500,000 for the full-day national park tours, which is where the spread in that last row comes from. Budget Phong Nha tours exist at the lower end.

There is no direct flight from Australia to Da Nang, so central Vietnam means one domestic leg.

The mistake in the standard Australian fortnight

The route most people copy is Hanoi, Halong Bay, a flight to Da Nang, Hoi An, then Ho Chi Minh City. It is a good route and it misses the only part of Vietnam that looks like nowhere else, because Phong Nha sits between Hanoi and Hue and the flight hops straight over it.

The fix costs two nights. Take the overnight train or bus from Hanoi to Dong Hoi instead of the flight to Da Nang, spend two days in the national park, then continue south by road. How many days in Phong Nha answers that properly, and Hoi An to Phong Nha covers the leg if you are running the route in reverse.

The rest arranges itself. Two nights on a Halong Bay cruise, a day in Hue, three or four in Hoi An. If you want more walking than that, trekking in Vietnam ranges from an afternoon to five days, and a tested fortnight sits in the 10-day Vietnam itinerary.

Register your trip and check current advice on Smartraveller before you go, particularly if you are travelling in the September to November storm season.