Something has shifted in the way Australians think about Vietnam. For a long time it was positioned as a destination for backpackers, gap year travellers, and people who wanted to stretch a modest budget as far as it would go. That reputation wasn’t wrong, exactly. But it was incomplete.
The Australia-Vietnam travel story in 2025 is a different one. Couples are going for food-focused long weekends in Hanoi. Families are spending school holidays on the beaches of Da Nang. Retirees are cruising Halong Bay. People who would previously have defaulted to Bali are quietly realising that Vietnam offers more variety, more culture, and in many cases better food, for a comparable price.
The numbers confirm what anyone who has been recently already knows. More than 276,000 Australian visitors travelled to Vietnam in the first half of 2025 alone. Early 2025 data showed Australian arrivals surging 54% compared to the same period in 2019, outpacing all other overseas destinations. That’s not a spike. That’s a trend with momentum.
So what’s actually driving it?
The Dollar Goes a Long Way
This is the most obvious part, but it still deserves to be said plainly. Vietnam is genuinely, consistently, pleasantly cheap for Australians. Not in a way that requires roughing it. In a way that lets you eat and drink extremely well, stay in comfortable hotels, and do real experiences without constantly watching the budget.
With the Australian dollar holding its value against the Vietnamese dong, a traditional Vietnamese meal costs roughly five Australian dollars, taxi rides are similarly priced, and even bottled water costs less than one dollar. These savings allow visitors to extend their trips, indulge in upscale dining, and enjoy a variety of experiences without financial strain.
For mid-range travellers, a daily budget of around $80 to $150 AUD covers three-star hotels, domestic flights, and guided tours. Budget travellers can manage on $40 to $60 per day with hostels, street food, and local transport. At the other end, a genuinely luxurious trip with boutique resorts, private transfers, and fine dining still runs well under $400 AUD per day.
To put that in perspective: the sort of hotel room and dinner that would cost $400 AUD in Sydney or $300 AUD in Bali might cost $120 AUD in Hoi An or Da Nang. The gap is real and it compounds across a week or two.
Flights Are More Accessible Than People Realise
The perception that getting to Vietnam is expensive or complicated has not kept pace with reality.
A return flight from Australia to Vietnam typically costs between $500 and $1,500 AUD, depending on the season, airline, and departure city. Budget and sale fares regularly undercut that significantly. During a promotion in mid-2025, VietJet was offering one-way fares from $199 including taxes and fees on six direct routes from Australia to Vietnam, covering Melbourne and Sydney to Hanoi, and Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth to Ho Chi Minh City.
There are direct flights from Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth, which removes the layover problem that made Southeast Asia feel more logistically complex than Europe in a previous era. You board in the evening, arrive in the morning, and you’re already somewhere worth being.
The Visa Is Straightforward
Australians need a visa to enter Vietnam, but the process is far easier than many people expect. The eVisa is the most popular option because it’s entirely online and usually approved within three to five working days. It allows a stay of up to 90 days with single or multiple entry options.
The government fee is US$25 for single entry or US$50 for multiple entry, and your Australian passport must be valid for at least six months beyond your entry date with at least two blank pages.
Apply online through the official Vietnam Immigration portal, keep the approval on your phone, and you’re done. There’s no embassy appointment, no waiting in queues, no uncertainty. It’s a genuinely simple process that takes maybe twenty minutes to complete.
One useful quirk worth knowing: Australian travellers entering and exiting Vietnam through Phu Quoc Island can enjoy a visa exemption for stays of up to 30 days, which is worth knowing if Phu Quoc is your primary destination.
The Food Is the Real Draw
Ask someone who has been to Vietnam what they remember most and the answer is almost always the food. Not a meal, not a restaurant. The food. The whole culture around it.
Vietnam’s culinary identity is regional, seasonal, intensely local, and unlike anything you can access at a Vietnamese restaurant in Australia no matter how good it is. Hanoi’s pho is different from Saigon’s. Hoi An has dishes that don’t really exist anywhere else. Bun bo Hue is its own thing entirely. The bánh mì you eat standing up outside a market at 7am for less than $2 is the kind of food memory that makes you book a return trip.
Vietnam and Japan are two destinations Australians are increasingly fond of, sharing many similarities, but Vietnam is more accessible and more affordable. The food comparison is apt. Both countries take eating seriously in a way that reshapes how you think about a meal. Vietnam just does it at a fraction of the price.
Both Hanoi and Hue were recently listed among the 50 must-visit food cities in the world by international food publication TasteAtlas, which should put any lingering doubts to rest.
There Is Enormous Variety in a Single Trip
One of Vietnam’s genuine advantages over some regional competitors is how much the country changes as you move through it. The north, the centre, and the south are each distinct enough that a three-week trip covering all three feels like three different holidays stitched together.
Hanoi is the capital: historic, cooler in winter, full of lakes and French colonial architecture and some of the best street food on earth. Halong Bay is a short trip from there, which is genuinely one of the most spectacular seascapes in the world regardless of how many photos you’ve seen of it. The Sapa region, further north, is highland Vietnam, cooler still, terraced rice paddies, mountain trekking.
Move south through the centre and you hit Hue, the former imperial capital, and Da Nang, a beach city that has developed rapidly but still has some of the best coastline in the country. Hoi An sits thirty minutes from Da Nang and is one of the most photogenic towns in Southeast Asia: ancient trading port architecture, tailors and lanterns and river boats, excellent cycling and food in every direction.
The south brings you to Ho Chi Minh City, which is energetic and dense and endlessly stimulating in that particular way big Asian cities are, and the Mekong Delta, which is best seen by boat on a river that moves slowly enough to make you reconsider everything you know about pace.
The Booking Surge Is Real
The interest from Australians is not just showing up in arrival numbers. It’s showing up in booking platforms. Data from Klook showed a 250% increase in hotel reservations from Australian visitors between March and June 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. Activity bookings and destination searches also spiked significantly.
Vietnam is now expected to welcome approximately 550,000 Australian tourists in 2025, an increase of around 12% compared to 2024, and Australia has been elevated to one of Vietnam’s 16 key tourism markets.
This growth has a practical implication. Vietnam’s most popular destinations, particularly Hoi An and Halong Bay, are getting busier, and prices at the most sought-after hotels and cruise operators are creeping up accordingly. The window to experience Vietnam at genuinely outstanding value while infrastructure and service quality are high but prices have not yet caught up is not going to last indefinitely. People who know the destination well tend to say the same thing: go sooner rather than later.
What to Actually Budget For a Vietnam Trip
If you’re starting to think seriously about it, here’s a rough sense of what to plan for.
Flights: Budget $700 to $1,200 AUD return depending on the time of year and how flexible you are with dates. Sale fares drop lower. Booking three to four months ahead for popular travel periods (June-August and December) is worth doing.
Visa: Around $38 AUD for a single-entry eVisa or $76 AUD for multiple entry. Apply online, allow up to five working days.
Accommodation: A clean, well-reviewed three-star hotel in most cities runs $50 to $100 AUD per night. Boutique properties in Hoi An and Hanoi’s old quarter run $80 to $150 AUD. Genuinely luxurious beach resorts in Da Nang or Phu Quoc start around $200 AUD.
Food and drink: Budget $20 to $30 AUD per day for eating very well at local restaurants and mixing in a few nice dinners. Less if you’re eating street food regularly, which you should be doing regardless.
Activities: Halong Bay overnight cruises start around $150 AUD per person for a decent operator, with premium cruises running $400 plus. Cooking classes, day tours, bike hire, and most cultural experiences cost between $20 and $80 AUD.
A ten-night mid-range trip for two, including flights, can come in around $4,000 to $5,500 AUD all up. That is difficult to match in most other long-haul destinations, and essentially impossible to match while getting the quality and range of experiences Vietnam offers.
The Honest Word
Vietnam is not a perfect destination and it would be dishonest to suggest otherwise. Traffic in Ho Chi Minh City is intense in a way that surprises first-timers. Tourist scams exist, particularly around transport and gems, and require the usual vigilance. The heat in the south from March to May is serious. Halong Bay’s popularity has brought crowds that can undercut the serenity the photos suggest.
None of this changes the fundamental case. Vietnam is one of the most culturally rich, geographically diverse, culinarily extraordinary, and genuinely affordable destinations accessible from Australia. The growth in Australian visitor numbers isn’t hype. It’s a lot of people having a very good time and telling everyone they know.
If you’ve been considering it, this is probably the nudge.
