If you’re a traveler headed to Vietnam, you’re in for a treat. This is not a country of natural superlatives unless you’re really into the food, but when it comes to value for your budget, it’s a dream.

These days Vietnam is on par with Thailand in some respects, cheaper in others. Overall, none of the prices are too outrageous so this one comes in squarely as one of the cheapest places to travel in the world. This is not some sad and downtrodden country anymore where a lot of people are struggling to get by though. It’s a thriving economy where motorbikes seem to sprout from the ground each time it rains. When you say “Everybody and his brother has one,” it’s really true. Nevertheless, you’ll find plenty of screaming bargains here and the budget hotels in Vietnam are some of the best for the price you’ll find anywhere in the world.

Our $57 Hanoi room, with full breakfast for three

Hotel and Hostel Prices in Vietnam

Ask people who have traveled for years where the best lodging values are and they’ll likely say Vietnam. Yes, there are plenty of countries with cheaper places to flop for the night, but what you get for your money here is impressive. Things a budget backpacker doesn’t usually get—like towels and a maid who will change the sheets—are common even at the bottom level. Note that the prices below nearly always include internet access and often a good breakfast.

Hostel bed: $6 – $10 (there aren’t many of these, especially outside big cities)
Cheap shared bath double room: $10 – $18
Basic double with private bath, A/C: $14 – $25
Mid-range 3* or 4* equivalent: $20 – $60
Best hotels in town: $75 – $200
Triples are often just a few dollars more than a double and lots of places have family-friendly rooms or suites.

Food & Drink Prices in Vietnam

Bia hoi! No that’s not a battle rallying cry. It’s the name of the cheap draft beer sold by the plastic pitcher on the street. Sometimes it comes out to as little as 30 cents a liter if you get the local price. But the bottled stuff is a bargain too.

There are supposedly 500 traditional Vietnamese dishes, generally variations of rice or noodles with vegetables, seafood, or meat, and a wide variety of soups. You usually use chopsticks and a spoon, often sitting on a small stool on a sidewalk. Vegetarian food is plentiful and cheaper, though it will usually have fish sauce used as a seasoning.

US 35 cents for a liter of beer

Ice cream cone: 30 – 75¢
Street stall dishes: 40¢ – $1.50
Cheap restaurant meals: 75¢ – $4
Nice restaurant meals in tourist places: $1 to $6, set menus with several courses $5 – $12.
You’d have to hit an international hotel or a restaurant catering to foreign business travelers to spend much more than $30 for two.

Sodas and coffee: 30 – 50¢
Fruit juice/shake: 40 – 80¢
Mineral water: 50¢ – $1 per liter-and-a-half
Two-liter pitcher of draft beer: 60¢ – $1
Large bottled beer in a restaurant: 50¢ – $1.25.
Name brand liquor cocktails: $2 (happy hour) – $5 (nice club)

Transportation Prices

Getting around in Vietnam can be a big chunk of your budget since this is such a long and skinny country. Go slowly and you’ll spend a lot less than someone trying to cover it top to bottom in two weeks.

Long bus trip (Hanoi to Hue): $8 – $15
Sleeper train same distance: $18 – $65
3-hour train trip (Danang to Hue): $3 – $5
Hop on/off bus Saigon to Hanoi or opposite: $50
Flight Saigon to Hanoi or opposite: $100 on Jetstar
Flight Saigon to Danang: $55 – $75
City taxi rides: 50¢ – $4
Airport taxi rides: $5 – $20
City bus rides: 15¢

Other Vietnam Traveler Prices

3-day tour of Halong Bay or Sapa: $60 – $90
Day tour of group sightseeing, A/C van: $8 – $10
Admission charges: 15¢ to $1.50 most, occasionally $4 (rare, like Hue royal tombs)
Cultural performances: $1.50 – $5
Manicure or pedicure: $1
Hour of internet access: $1 or less
SIM card for your mobile phone: $5

In the Old Quarter of Hanoi

So much information spins past us every day that it’s hard to take a break and process it, much less record it for later. So here are a few travel articles I wrote or I’m in that have appeared recently. Lots more to come as the year goes on, but I’ll continue to try to keep the broadcasting to a minimum.

Some of my recent travel writing

The Viator Blog published a piece I wrote on the Buda side of Budapest.

Global Traveler magazine published an article on my time in Hanoi this past summer with my family – Hanoi: Up to Speed

I also had one in there on Mexico City at Night and did a short web piece on the new Microsoft Windows tablets.

Over at Practical Travel Gear, where I’m editor, we all rounded up our picks for the best travel gear of the year in 2012.

Some shout-outs from others on The World’s Cheapest Destinations

Kara from The Vacation Gals was the first to put up a review of the new edition.

EuroCheapo asked me 4 Cheapo Travel Questions

This time last month I did an interview with Gadling on cheap travel destinations.

I had fun participating in this Round-the-world chat with Adam and Sean from BootnAll via Google+ and Twitter.

You can always keep up with me via the RSS feed here or by following me on Twitter – @TimLeffel.

Where do you go in Vietnam to see all the tribes in one place? The somewhat inconveniently located (but worth the trip) Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi.

Some cities you visit because of the wealth of cultural attractions and interesting sites. Few people would put Hanoi in that category. It’s a great place to visit for a lot of other good reasons instead: a historic quarter good for strolling and photos near a pretty lake, French Colonial buildings in another area, great food, and bargain prices for nearly everything. It’s also a great hopping-off base for exploring the north.

Before we got to Vietnam, a friend who used to live there said if we had a child with us, this museum should be at the top of the list. My guidebook concurred, though when we visited, there were surprisingly few foreigners there, especially compared to how many were in the crazy long line in the 38C/100F heat to see embalmed Ho Chi Minh looking waxy in his tomb.

Family, couple, or single though, it’s worth paying a few bucks for a taxi ride to this part of town to see the beautifully presented items from the 54 ethnic groups living within the country’s borders. If you head up north toward Sapa you see people from the Tay, Hmong, or Yao groups, but most visitors encounter only a fraction of the ethnic diversity. It it would be hard to catch them wearing some of the outfits on display too since some are just brought out during festivals.

The inside displays are arranged by ethnicity, generally including what’s unique about that culture’s customs, apparel, or utensils. Musical instruments and farming implements make appearances and some displays replicate the living quarters of a family. A favorite of mine was a Mekong Delta fisherman’s bicycle loaded up with more than 200 fish traps and baskets. Other displays include backpacks made from reeds and bamboo, ritual dolls, and a willow-looking tree loaded with messages to the ancestors.

There’s a whole separate outdoor section that’s more hands-on and—good for the kids—involves some climbing. The house at the very top is a traditional longhouse copied from one in the central highlands. The steps can be pulled up at night. Another communal house modeled after that of the Bahnar people was built on site here by 42 villagers from the central highlands. It stands 19 meters high and requires a steep hike up notched logs to walk around inside.

In the interest of keeping my site from getting blocked by libraries, I’ll pass on posting another naughty photo of the Giarai people’s tomb, which is surrounded by sexually explicit carvings meant to be symbols of fertility. Here’s a corner that’s tame, follow this link for one that’s not.

Of course we went to see the water puppets show by the old quarter of Hanoi, but if you time it right, they sometimes run the shows here as well. This is how the water puppets were traditionally presented, with the puppeteers standing in the hut part (in the water) behind curtains, the puppets extending out on rods.

The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology is one of the best screaming bargains I came across in my return to Southeast Asia this past summer. Admission is only $1.25 for adults and 25 cents for kids in the local currency. For more info, go to vme.org.vn. To get there, take a taxi to Nguyen Van Huyen Road, Cau Giay District. It’s about 10-20 minutes from most Hanoi hotels.

Note that another section is under construction that will cover ethnic groups in all of Southeast Asia, not just Vietnam. So by the time you visit, that may be open as well.

Much of the “traveler” vs. “tourist” division people have in their head really comes down to time and money. Do you have more time than money? You probably consider yourself a traveler and look down at those crazy tourists who blow so much money overspending on everything. If you don’t consider yourself a tourist but your budget is huge and you’re in a hurry, you’re going to be viewed as one, fair or not. But you may look at those shoestring backpackers as having no fun at all.

I’m not here to judge as I’ve been in both camps quite a lot. At times I’ve had all the time in the world. But last Saturday I drove to Orlando just for the day to take my birthday girl daughter and two of her friends to a water park. Like everyone else there, I was a tourist. No way around it. If there were any question about it, look what we paid to rent a locker—and we needed two of the big ones.

Since my wife, daughter, and I took advantage of cheap Southeast Asia this summer (see travel prices in Cambodia), we know a thing or two about what it costs a traveler with the time and means to get out of the USA or Europe. For that $20 we spent on two jammed-full lockers for five people, we could have eaten two good meals, taken 10 taxi rides, or gotten four one-hour massages. For what those lockers cost, one person can enter one of the great wonders of the world: Angkor Wat.

For what a beer costs at this park ($6.35 for a 16-ounce Yuengling—I passed), I could have gotten legless in Siem Reap with 12 drafts and a tip or six bottles. For what I spent on parking alone, you could get an air-conditioned hotel room with a private bath in Vietnam. See the post linked at the bottom for details, but when we went to a smaller water park in Mexico, parking was free and a locker was a dollar.

If you’ve been around the world, you’re used to traveler prices. If you only go on vacation for a week or two once a year, you’re used to tourist prices. That’s why most of your relatives think travel has to be expensive. It can be—especially if you’re headed to one of the 10 most popular foreign destinations for Americans—but not if you’re taking your time exploring The World’s Cheapest Destinations.

It’s not that one camp is smart and one is stupid though. They’re two different worlds that sometimes intersect in the town square. Many in one camp could never dream of being in the other, but both can be just as happy because the don’t even want to be on the other side.

Despite the hit to my wallet, I had a blast at that water park.

But…here’s what a simpler one costs in Merida, Mexico.

With an oddball assortment like that, you know it’s time for another issue of Perceptive Travel webzine. The September issue hits three continents and throws in reviews of new travel books and world music releases too.

James M. Dorsey returns with a strange tale of a strange religion. When you attend a black voodoo session in Benin, watch out for the Egun. See more here: Dancing with the Dead in Benin.

In The Threat of the Mariachi, regular contributor Luke Armstrong finds his home for years, Guatemala, can indeed be “the land of possibilities.” If you’re the money ower instead of the owee that is.

Was there once something like a Great Wall in Vietnam? Ben Keene sets off to find out. See Stories in Stone: Walking Vietnam’s Long Wall.

Bill Caverlee checks out three new travel books getting a lot of attention: Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day, Visit Sunny Chernobyl, and The New Granta Book of Travel.

And of course we toss in some good travel music from around the world. Graham Reid spins some Malawi roadside gospel, some mash-up flamenco music, and Sierra Leone psychedelia by way of Brooklyn.

Now, want a cool Eagle’s Nest Outfitters hammock? If you’re on our newsletter list or following Perceptive Travel on Facebook, watch for how to enter. We’ll be sending one, complete with straps, to a lucky reader in the U.S. or Canada.