Travelling Vietnam alone, and the two things it costs you

Solo travel in Vietnam is easier than in most of Asia, and the reasons are practical rather than romantic. The route between the four big stops is worn smooth. Buses and trains leave all day. Most of the food is built to be eaten by one person at a counter in fifteen minutes.

Travelling alone costs you two things: the price of a room, and the two meals that need a table.

Is Vietnam a good place to travel alone?

Yes, and it is a good first solo country rather than only a good solo country. Cheap transport, dense hostels, English along the tourist route and food sold in single portions are what make solo travel in Vietnam easy. They are also what make any first trip here easy, which the first trip guide covers in its own right.

The country is also long, and that shape decides more about a solo trip than anything else. Every transfer is yours to arrange when you travel alone, so fewer stops is better advice here than almost anywhere.

What does travelling alone cost?

More per night than sharing, and the same for everything else. Hotels price a room rather than a bed, so accommodation is the only line that moves.

The trip cost guide has the full week. The honest adjustment for solo travel in Vietnam is to add the room difference and change nothing else. The tiers themselves are in the accommodation guide.

Where is solo travel easiest?

Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hoi An and the Ha Giang loop, in that order. All four have hostels with common rooms and day trips that leave at a fixed hour. All four hold enough people travelling alone that nobody notices another one.

Ha Giang is the outlier worth naming. Groups ride the loop over three or four days, which puts strangers on the same route with the same drivers. Arrive alone on Monday and you leave on Thursday with eight phone numbers. The four-day route is how it usually runs.

Where is it hardest?

The islands and the resort towns. Phu Quoc and the Nha Trang seafront are built around couples and families. The rooms are priced for two, and no hostel common room exists to walk into.

Hot pot is the other wall. Lau means a table of four around one bubbling pot, and so does the family-style spread of shared plates that a Vietnamese dinner usually is. Everything else — pho, banh mi, com tam, bun cha — comes as a single portion at a counter.

Is it safe to travel Vietnam alone?

The risks are the ones the country has for everybody, and the road is the real one. Traffic, not crime, is what injures visitors here. The safety guide sets out the numbers, along with the everyday theft and overcharging that make up most of the rest.

Two adjustments are worth making alone rather than in company. Arrive somewhere new in daylight when you can: the first walk out of a bus station is where a trip goes wrong. And pick accommodation with a staffed desk at night. It costs little and solves the whole class of problem that starts with a sleeper bus arriving at two in the morning.

How do you meet people without trying?

Book something with a start time. A cooking class, a dive course, a boat trip and a loop tour each put you with the same people for hours. That does the work sitting in a bar does not.

The hostel common room does the rest in the four big stops. The cooking classes guide covers which classes are worth the morning. Beyond that, people here talk to you, particularly off the tourist streets and particularly when you are visibly alone.

What should a solo trip do differently?

Move less. Every transfer alone is yours to solve, and the urge to see the whole country is what turns a fortnight into a series of bus stations.

Two or three bases with the long hops flown is the shape that works, and the two-week route is built on the same advice. Book the first two nights, leave the rest open, and let the loop or a cooking class decide where the next week goes.