The problem with traveling to Vietnam just because it’s cheap

Tourists love the country because it’s cheap, but low costs come with risks.

Yet another travel list has named Vietnam among the must-visit places in the world because it’s cheap.

This time, it’s Emily Zemler, a writer from Refinery29, who describes Vietnam as one of the best “super cheap” destinations in the world.

“Asian destinations like Japan and Singapore can be pricy, but Vietnam is notably budget-friendly. The food, which is just as good from a street cart as it is from a sit-down restaurant, is cheap (usually less than 10 bucks a pop) and hotels are reasonable, with luxury properties averaging around $80 per night…

Don’t be afraid to sample the street food, which includes signature dishes like beef pho and bun cha, and make sure to spring for a countryside bicycle tour from Hoi An, which run $17 and up.”

To be fair, cost-based recommendations like these are what Vietnam, still an emerging travel destination, needs now.

It’s perfectly fine to love something when it doesn’t bankrupt you – it’s even better when that something is also good . “Cheap” is not a dirty word. We don’t need to avoid it and replace it with pretentious phrases like “budget-friendly” or “best value for your buck” when we promote a product or a travel destination.

But “cheap” does come with a connotation: some sort of compromises must be made and accepted.

For cheap travel, the biggest compromises are on quality and safety. In Vietnam, this can mean anything: drinking a beer that tastes like water, sleeping on a hostel bed with a dirty sheet, getting food poisoning after a meal at a delicious sidewalk joint, drinking toxic moonshine, or falling from a waterfall. And the list goes on.

Many travelers will take these risks without blinking an eye. Ask any backpacker in Saigon and they will tell you how happy they are when they only need a few hundred bucks to travel in Vietnam. Diarrhea and those serious travel safety warnings don’t faze them one bit.

VnExpress