Vietnam is a country in South East Asia. The land looks like Japan but I think it's bigger. Recently Vietnam became a very popular must travel country, as you can see more and more backpacker is travel in Vietnam. Solo or non solo everyone loves there. From north Hanoi, Sapa, HaLongBay via mid point DaNang, HoiAn, NhaTrang then to the south HoChiMinh, PhuQuoc, sometimes you can also visit Cambodia. Today I am going to share how do my budget solo travel in Vietnam.
You need to set a budget first, how much you want to spend in this trip, and how long is this trip, so for me my budget is 350€ for entire trip included flight tickets, hostel, food, and other activities for 1 week in PhuQuoc. Visa part it cost me around 27€, hostel for 6 nights cost 28.85€, flight is around 160€, scooter rental is 5€/day, I rent 5 days so that will be 25€, total cost without food and activities is around 250€. so the rest of 100€ for food, drinks and activities, gas etc for one week, is more than enough.
Vietnam Visa-
Fisrt of all to fly to Veitnam you gotta have a travel visa, and how to apply Vietnam Visa Approval Letter? Here's some online website that most people use to apply the visa, Vietnam Visa Pro&Visado Vietnam 5usd, 5USD for online apply and then when you landed you go to landed visa apply area to wait it's another 25USD to pay total is 30USD=27€. It's very easy and there's a lots of website that teach you how to apply it as well, so I will not be teaching that here.
Vietnam Hostel-
I use the APP HostelWorld to search mostly where I want to stay. It's a very handful app, easy to use. The hostel I stay in PhuQuoc is called [9 Station Hostel Phu Quoc] It's a clean and huge, and believe me when I say it's clean it's really up to my standards kind of clean, and I for one person that couldn't stand messy and dirty, so it's a very clean hostel. Each bed has it's own curtain can close so you can have your own privacy, large lockers or storing bigger bags. Good working shower place that big enough don't need to wait for long time to shower. They also have scooters for you to rent, lots of restaurants around, it's in the central of the island, 20mins work to the night markets, 5 mins walk to the clubs and bars, walking distance to beach, although every night the lobby bar will turn up the music so the whole place become pub people can just hangout, play pool and games there, a great place for you to chill and relax and meet other travellers, in the end when you are leaving they will help to call taxi for you, even in 4am in the morning. I would say don't hesitate, just book it once when you get to this area. It's a place that everyone is highly recommend.
There's no direct flight you can only transfer from HCMC(Ho Chi Minh city), and I took cheap airline company so I only paid around 160€ for the return flight tickets from Singapore to PhuQuoc. When I do a self transfer I still need to go through the customs, as I already apply an online visa which I need to go to the landing visa area to wait for people to call your name, bring passport application and approval visa letter, two to three 4*6 Profile pictures and 25USD, once they call my name and pay the money they give me a visa on my passport, and I'm good to go through the customs. When I go out the airport lobby go direct SIM card sell place to buy the SIM card, the one I choose is Vietell. To book everything by yourself it's a massive work but it's definitely worth it once you pay the price is cheaper than travel agency.
Place to go in PhuQuoc-
Basically PhuQuoc isn't that big, if you choose your transportation with scooter it's quite easy to go anywhere. From north Starfish Beach,Ong Lang Beach, Zoo, Restaurants, Night Market, OCSEN Beach Bar&Club, Episode, Sunset Sanato Beach club, Sao Beach, Cable Car...etc.
When I arrived the PhuQuoc airport, first thing to do is call a taxi take me to my hostel, there's no Uber, because in SEA the app they use is call Grab, it's very similar to Uber and it's easy to use too. As soon as the driver drop me off to my hostel, I plan to just check-in and sleep, but because the check-in time is 2PM afternoon, it's only 8AM now , also I'm kind of hungry. So I decide to eat breakfast first.
After breakfast I decided to rent a scooter and drive around, didn't set the GPS just all the way to beach part. Till lunch time I went to Bun Quay Kien Day, it's a seafood pho place, price are reasonable like 3€ for one bow of seafood pho and one soda, even though the weather is pretty hot somehow I'm still okay to eat this giant bow of hot soup seafood pho.
After that, I drive direct to the Ong Lang Beannch, takes me like 30 mins, and with the google map is actually quite easy. On the way you will also pass by a restaurant call Family Inn.
The owner there is kind and cute, he is a almost 70 yrs old grandpa, great humour, and in the beach there is no shops at all, so you can buy water and eat some food there first before you go further to the beach. Ong Lang Beach is completely quiet, only an old couple are swimming, and one street dog chill under the tree, as for me, I decided to sit on the rock listen the wave sound, it's peaceful and I even do a little meditation.
I stay there till almost check-in time, drive back to the hostel, check-in the room, put down my stuffs, and go to the backyard pool decided to chill there for couple hours, turns out I fall asleep, and it's a awesome nap.
By the time I wake up it's already dark, so I just went to the restaurant across the street, order a curry rice, and go back to hostel drink one drink and just went to sleep.
Second day I decided to go to Starfish Beach, for my personal opinion it's very tourist place, and it's very rough ride to get there, in the end there's also 20mins ride that is full of mud and dirt, I even had a little accident, although when you finally get to the place the ocean is very clean and lots of starfish you can just see right through it, but there's too many tourists if you just want to chill.
The seafood restaurant above the sea is quite cool and price are cheap, if you happen to be hungry, order a fried rice and a beer it's perfect with the view.
After all I am eating above the sea, how cool is that. I spend half day there, drive to a beach club call OCSEN Beach Club, this place is very special, first it got a tree house there, second it's the place that every one came for sit and chill while sunset, before sun down there's basically not much customers there, but when it's sunset time, everyone no matter is locals or tourists they all came here to watch sunset view. And it's beautiful view here, I get it why everyone came here just to watch sunset, it defnetly got the best view.
I also take the local tour, spend my whole day fishing and go to two different island for snorkelling. they send a bus to pick me up in the hostel and bring me back in the end of the day too, surprisedly a lot of Vietnamese join the tour. Driver drop off every one in the harbour, everyone on board and we to to fishing first, though there's no fish at all it just waste time stand there, I am pretty sure the captain got all the fish, lunch on the boat after first round snorkelling, it's nothing fancy but it's fair price I would say, and get me full. Then we go to second island where you can choose to go on the island to walk around or stay in ocean to continue snorkelling. the tour like this is 500,000VND, around 20€, It is the most worth 20€ I ever spend.
Whole day was awesome, meet two friends from The Netherlands, at evening we decided to eat their famous sea food at the night market, the eating price at night market is a bit higher than other places, because every tourist came here, but if you share with 2/3 people it's actually nothing, which means the more people you share the less you pay.
Mango Bay The Rock Restaurant is one of the nice restaurants I tried there, the restaurant attached with the resort, but you don't have to stay in the resort in order to eat there, especially at sunset time the Mango Bay Rock restaurant ill be fully booked, make sure you make the reservations before if you want to eat at evening with sunset view. Normally I'd recommended call to make a reservation one or two days before. But if you are not eating in only particular time it is fine if you didn't make reservation.
Episode and Sunset Sanato Beach club they are just next to each other, so from my hostel ride scooter around 15 mins you will find the place. Techno music with beer at the beach is absolutely a luxury way to spend your night, dance all night and meet locals and other travellers, the party at Episode is absolutely mad.
Cable Car ride is at the south, if you decided to go there, after the ride can also drive to Sao beach to enjoy the rest of the day. The tickets to get on Cable Car is 300,000VND/person, it is the longest cross ocean cable ride in the world, if you into photography that is the place where you can get best view of whole PhuQuoc.
It will cross two island, and you can choose to stay at the island, but because I joined the tour I have been to those island already, so I just take the ride go and didn't stop continue ride back.
If you don't plan to stay in the island like me, when you finished the cable car you can drive to Sao Beach to chill the whole day, I wouldn't recommend the restaurants there, because it's set for tourists, price are expensive and the food aren't that good anyway, but if you see those local people walking around alone and trying to sell you the snacks or fruits, you can actually buy from them, it's cheaper and so much better than the food in restaurant.
Many people will say if it's dangerous if a women travel solo, I'd say it's pretty dangerous wherever you travel solo not just for females, for males too, but you just need to look out for yourself. So here's some APP you can use if you're solo travel like me.
For Safety
TripWhistle Global SOS- This is an APP with more than 200 countries emergency contact info, after download open the APP, it will auto located your location and shows you all emergency info contact in the country you are at.
For Map
Maps.me- This is the map for you to use even when you don't have the internet, nowadays we depends on Google map a lot but without internet it's useless, so this map is perfectly for you to use when your internet is runs out, or when you are at the place that has no wifi and the connection is poor.
For Stay
Hostelworld- Anywhere, everywhere in the would you can search for your budget of hostel and it has millions of options.
For Social
Meet up, Eat with, Solo traveller/ Backpackr- Those are the APPs for you to meet new people and locals, also you can know what are the events and activities on going.
Tourline- If you are a girl and afraid stranger harassing you, you can choose use this APP, female only.
For Travel Tips
Spice- Spice Travel app can help you with money-saving travel tips shared by experts, discover unique travel itineraries with interactive games, and easily search for the cheapest recent air tickets. Very practical use.
I hope you enjoy PhuQuoc as much as I did, Leave a comment if this article is useful and helped you.
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