How Much Does It ACTUALLY Cost to LIVE WELL in VIETNAM Ho Chi Minh City.

Vietnam is considered the cheapest country to live in the world and you can definitely live here on a very low budget. What does it actually cost to live here and have some of the luxuries of a western lifestyle? In this video we'll take you on a journey to explore the best of Ho Chi Minh City's expat and digital nomad lifestyle. From delicious food options, the best way to get around this vast city, the best areas to live and of course our luxury accommodation. We're going to show you why you should consider living here and all of our monthly costs. By the end of this video you'll know if Ho Chi Minh City is going to be your next destination. Ho Chi Minh City is up to 70% less expensive than places like the US, the UK, Canada and Australia according to global cost of living indexes. Living a local lifestyle is certainly cheap with food and Let's have a look at what the costs are actually like to live a more of a western expat lifestyle here in Ho Chi Minh City. One of the best things about Vietnam is the food. There's such a variety of tasty fresh food here. There are so many different options starting with cafes and bakeries. You've got to absolutely come to Charon Bakery. It's the best artisan bread, the best pastries that I've ever tasted and we've made great friends with the owner It Thai and not only has he welcomed us to the cafe here but shared some really really good business insights as well. So come down and have an amazing welcome. Everyone is welcome. Thank you so much. I appreciate it yeah and look forward to seeing everyone. Another option for food are the street food markets. You can get really good quality local food at really reasonable pricings. You could also try some of the local street food if you're brave enough. Only a couple of dollars for a meal. There are also lots of high quality restaurants to choose from. Our favorite one was Quang Bui Garden in Thao Dien. The food was just fantastic. It tasted amazing. We ate out a lot because it was affordable and really good quality. Local beer is really cheap only about $1.20 for a bottle of beer and an imported bottle was about $2.40. Wine's more expensive. You could get that for about $5 a glass or starting from $25 a bottle in a restaurant. Ho Chi Minh City has some amazing rooftop bars and we went to Social Club rooftop bar and had some fantastic cocktails and we chose to go happy hour so we paid $7.50 for the designer cocktails which were pretty funky and tasty and an amazing beer. So the total cost for us for the last month for eating and drinking out was $800 and that was for the two of us. Well after eating all that tasty food it's time to hit the gym. We've been coming along to Hustle here in Thao Dien District 2 and it's been really really good. They offer functional classes, really high energy, really enjoyed it. They had an introductory offer which was $39 for 10 classes which Thao Dien and I both did. Their monthly membership costs $150 but if you join up for a year that monthly cost comes down to $100. We love to play paddle and found Fiat Paddle in Thao Dien District 2. The club has a great vibe, a really strong community of paddle players here. A 90-minute game costs $8 so in total for the month on paddle we spent $240 between the two of us. Another activity we'd recommend is doing a fish soup with catfish in it and prawns and you can add all sorts of goodies to it too. Everything looks really fresh and I love the little kind of cafes that are set up, the little tables and chairs. I'd say they're the most comfortable to sit alone. The food tour was fantastic and only cost us $27 each. One of the things that Vietnam is famous for is its coffee and you can have coffee in so many different ways. Sweet condensed milk, lots of different iced coffees but what I've gone for is a very traditional egg coffee. So coffee at the bottom and then the foam is made up of an egg that's whisked up. Give it a try. That's really unusual, I really like it. It's sweet and really creamy. We also bought some bags of coffee beans from a local cafe and the cost of that was $12 for half a kilo. So in total for coffee for the month we spent $92 for the two of us. Having mobile data is like super important for Google Maps, for all of the online apps that you need to use to get around like Grab for instance. So we buy eSIM cards usually from Airolo and we popped a link in the description below. This month Tylee and I both got a 5 gigabyte plan and that was $12.50 US. So in total we paid $25 US for the month. There are lots of very good supermarket options. We found Winmart and Topps markets really good. Our total grocery spend for the whole month was $280. That includes all sorts of household items as well as food. Pampering is very affordable in Vietnam so we treated ourselves to pedicures, massages and a hairdresser and spent a total of $85 on us for the month. So they have a metro to get around. So for us we're staying in District 2. Super easy to get into the centre of District 1. Takes about 20 minutes and costs next to nothing. Grab bikes and cars are a cheap and easy way to get around. So in total on transport we spent $82. We're going to show you around our accommodation now but if you're interested in knowing more about what it's like living around the world, what the costs are, what the vibe is like, how you can find community then just remember to subscribe, hit the like button and the bell for notifications so that YouTube knows to show you our future videos. And if you do have any questions then just drop a comment below as well. Let's go and check out our accommodation. We're staying in the Masteri complexes which we've really enjoyed. We particularly love this pool. It has a very luxurious feel staying here. In the Masteri complex there's a little gym as well. We've used that quite often. It's been good to kind of fill in between some of the exercise classes that we've been doing. Come on in. We're going to the floor 12B because there's no 13 or 14. I don't know why. No 4 either. So instead of 14 we're 12B. It's pretty crazy isn't it? Come see our carpet. We have a quite spacious two-bedroom apartment in one of the five blocks. We like this one tower one because it's closer to everything we want to go to. We love to have a place with a balcony. Come and check out this view. You can see all of Taodian which is lovely and leafy. This is the third apartment we've had in this complex and all of them have had amazing views. We've got a great spacious kitchen with pretty much everything you need to cook. Actually there's also a rice cooker which we've had in every apartment. We just don't use it and of course every apartment needs a bed. So the cost of accommodation varies really vastly depending upon the location you're staying and also the length of time. We're staying in Taodian which is district two. We love it. Yeah. It's where lots of expats happen to live too. Yeah it's probably the the most popular expat location. They often refer to it as western town but it's got a real kind of leafy feel to it. Almost kind of a village feel. It's not as crazy and chaotic as a lot of the other districts particularly district one, three, five, seven. There's smaller streets as well and not so many high-rise buildings. You can walk around. Yeah. Try and ride yourself. Has lots of modern cafes, lots of choices for restaurants and bars as well and you know we've made lots of friends here. We've been able to find a really good friendly community. Yeah. So if you look at longer term rentals you can rent something for like a service department in a building that has a pool and a gym and cleaning for about a thousand dollars a month if it's long term or something smaller like a one bedroom for about five hundred dollars a month and if you just want to rent a room in a shared accommodation where you share a kitchen, bathroom etc it's only two hundred dollars a month. District one of course is another option if you want to be right in the center of you know all of the vibrancy, craziness and chaos but many people do choose to go to district one as well. For shorter term rentals like this one through Airbnb you're paying a much greater premium because but that also includes electricity, internet, cleaning and all of that sort of thing and and that has cost us about twelve hundred dollars for the month. One of the costs to factor in is the cost of your e-visa and an e-visa can be valid up to 90 days and that costs 25 US dollars each for that period. So having a look at the totals for the entire month you can live in Ho Chi Minh City for as little as eleven hundred to twelve hundred dollars for the month and for us we had a lot of fun, a lot of discretionary spend and also a shorter term accommodation with Airbnb which always costs more and so our total was around three thousand dollars for the month obviously for both of us. We've really loved living here in Ho Chi Minh City particularly in Thao Dien district too and I think we both come back for sure. Absolutely it's been fun, I love the weather, the food's amazing, there's so much to do. Yeah well we're shortly off to explore more of Vietnam so stay tuned for the next one.