Living Long-Term in Vietnam

Most people who travel seriously fall for somewhere and start doing the arithmetic on staying. In Southeast Asia that used to mean Thailand by default. Vietnam has been quietly taking that crowd for years, and the reasons are the ones you would expect: the cost, the food, the coastline, and a pace of change that makes it feel like somewhere things are happening.

Here is what it actually costs and what the rules actually are.

What it costs

Figures for a single person living reasonably, per month, as of 2026.

• Da Nang: roughly 900 to 1,300 dollars for a comfortable life. On a lean budget, eating mostly local food in a modest studio, 750 to 850 is enough.
• Hanoi: around 800 dollars and up.
• Ho Chi Minh City: 900 to 1,500, the most expensive of the three, mostly because of rent.
• Smaller places like Hoi An, Nha Trang and Vung Tau: 800 to 1,100 gets you a decent house, utilities, someone to clean it and eating out most days.

Below about 600 a month you are living very locally indeed. Above about 1,500 you are buying things you could buy anywhere.

The costs that catch people out are not rent. They are health insurance, flights home, and the visa runs described below.

Where the remote workers are

Da Nang is the clear centre of gravity and has been for several years. It has the beach, an airport with regional connections, coworking space, and it sits half an hour from Hoi An and three hours from Hue. It is noticeably cheaper than Saigon, particularly for an apartment.

Ho Chi Minh City is the one to pick if you want a city: the most work, the most people, the best restaurants, the worst traffic and air.

Hanoi is cheaper, older, colder in winter, and a more interesting place to live than to visit. It has a proper winter, which surprises people who think of Vietnam as uniformly tropical.

Hoi An and Nha Trang are pleasant and small. Nice for three months, limited after twelve.

The visa situation, which is the real constraint

Be clear about this before you make plans: Vietnam has no digital nomad visa. There is no legal category for sitting in the country working remotely for a foreign employer.

What there is: an e-visa, now open to every nationality, valid up to 90 days, single or multiple entry, 25 dollars or 50, from the government portal at evisa.gov.vn. Around thirty nationalities get 30 or 45 days visa free without applying at all.

Long stays are therefore assembled out of e-visas, extensions and trips out of the country. Depending on what you hold, that means leaving every three to twelve months. Visa runs are cheap, a round trip from Saigon to Bangkok is in the region of 100 dollars, and they are a recurring cost and a recurring hassle rather than a solved problem.

If you intend to work for a Vietnamese company, that is a different route entirely, with a work permit and a temporary residence card, and it needs an employer to sponsor it.

The rules here change more often than in most countries. Check the current position before you commit to anything, and use the official portal rather than agents.

Making money

Teaching English remains the standard entry point and there are jobs, particularly in the two big cities. A degree and a TEFL certificate are the usual asks, and the legal route means a work permit rather than working on a tourist visa, which people do and which carries real risk.

Otherwise it is remote work for clients elsewhere, which is what most of the foreigners you will meet in a Da Nang coworking space are doing.

The honest downsides

Air quality in Hanoi and Saigon is genuinely bad for parts of the year. Bureaucracy is slow and opaque. The language is hard, properly hard, and you will need some of it outside the two big cities. Foreigners cannot own land, and property ownership for non-citizens is limited.

None of that is a reason not to go. It is a reason to arrive with a return ticket and no fixed plan, and see how it feels after three months.

Photo credit