Cheap Fares to Vietnam: Where To Find Them Online

Hunting down cheap fares to Vietnam is vital if you’re on a backpacking budget. Here’s a few tips for finding the lowest prices online.

Despite the internet becoming extremely popular for people booking their travel needs, booking flights and knowing you got the best price is still fraught with problems. No single website seems to have managed to bring together every possible airline and airfare to make life easy for customers – I always feel like I can never be sure I’m getting the best price.

For those planning to do several flights during their travels, there is a lot of excellent advice in Chris Guillebeau’s Frequent Flyer Master that shows you how to quickly accrue points and get free flights. Paying attention to points and rewards schemes is something I’ve only started to do in the last year and I am already wishing I had focussed on it years ago when I first started travelling. Chris’s advice will pay for the cost of his ebook many times over – check it out for yourself.

When I want to book cheap fares to Vietnam, I always check several different sites which cover much of the field.

1) Skyscanner

The first place I look is SkyScanner, which I’ve written about before. Skyscanner is an excellent aggregator of bargain priced flights from all over the world. I’ve found it particularly useful for finding cheap fares to Vietnam. The particularly clever thing about Skyscanner is that, if you have flexible dates, you can easily see the cheapest flight price within the days you can fly, so potentially making big savings.

2) Kayak

Kayak is the original aggregator but Skyscanner has stolen a lot of their thunder. Worth checking as a backup to Skyscanner to compare deals

3) OneTravel.com, Farecompare.com and Zuji.com

I like to compare the best Skyscanner fare with these three other flight aggregators. Onetravel.com has a very similar interface to Kayak. it might even be the same engine underneath both websites – and Farecompare.com is Yahoo’s travel offering. Zuji.com is a Singapore based flight aggregator who I like to check with for any flights with AustralAsia just in case they have some local specials that haven’t been picked up by the big American companies.

4) Doublecheck the fare direct on the airlines website

Once you find cheap fares to Vietnam that you like on a flight aggregator site, go to the specific airline’s official website and see if it’s any cheaper buyng it direct. It’s best to do all this as soon as you can, and grab the flight that’s cheapest either on the official site or the aggregator, as flight prices and availability change constantly.

5) I’m not so impressed with…

Fare.net, which used to be pretty good but just seems slow and clunky with not many airlines queried by its search process. I don’t usually bother using Fare.net anymore. TripAdvisor.com I love for their hotel reviews from previous guests, but their airline search always seems to be quite expensive because it uses the likes of Expedia.com for pricing.

6) Ask a real travel agent

As well as conducting your own internet search, you might want to email local travel agents with your flight route and dates and ask them to find you the best price they can. Some travel agents are very resourceful at finding the cheap fares to Vietnam for you, and also save you the irritation of sifting through lots of sites yourself. Here in Bangkok I regularly use Chawla Travel to do this. The flight quote is free and without obligation, and often Chawla comes up with a price that is marginally better than what I can find online, even including their own commission.

Cheap Fares to Vietnam with Vietnam Airlines

Take a Vacation with Cheap Fares to Vietnam (Vietnam Airlines)

Vietnam Airlines has long experience in flying their passengers from A to B efficiently, safely and comfortably. Long haul flights especially can be trying for people who are not used to sitting down for long periods with little to do. Vietnam Airlines recognises this and does its best to ensure that travelling to your destination is not an inconvenience but simply part of the holiday, an enjoyable experience in itself. That does not mean that Vietnam Airlines flights are expensive. As with other airlines you can buy superior class flight tickets that will give you more room, more choice in the catering services available and many other extras but the standard service is very comfortable indeed. If you are trying to keep within a strict budget then you will find Vietnam Airlines cheap fares to Vietnam.

About Vietnam Airlines

More and more people throughout the world take a flight once a year or more either for holiday or business and out of the thousands of flights available many people choose Vietnam Airlines flights to get to their destination. Companies such as Vietnam Airlines with a long history of dedicated passenger service will ensure that the passenger has a great business flight, weekend break or holiday. As life has become more hectic, so people need to get away and recharge their batteries. If you are looking for cheap fares to Vietnam, Vietnam Airlines will support you in planning your travel arrangements easier, faster and as cheap as possible. 

Cheap Vietnam Airlines: Getting around in Vietnam

In the early 1990's, when Vietnam first reopened its doors to foreign visitors, the transportation infrastructure was creaking at best and totally dysfunctional at worst. A product of a few generations of war followed by a punitive and punishing economic embargo, the nation's transport was unreliable, expensive and uncomfortable. The grandiose-sounding Highway One was dotted with rusted-out ferry crossings in place of bombed out bridges; the rail system was glacially-paced and expensive. Cheap Vietnam airlines were unheard of.

Cheap Vietnam airlines

How things change. Today's traveller has a far better range of options than in the early 90's - read on to find out all about them.

Plane

Vietnam Airlines and Jetstar are the two main cheap Vietnam airlines. Fares are very reasonable and the frequency of flights to main hubs are good. Flights can be a handy way to lop off a day of travel for not as many dong as you may expect -- Hanoi to Dien Bien Phu and Saigon to Phu Quoc Island are both popular time-savers. Note it is often cheaper to buy domestic tickets once in Vietnam rather than buying them from online brokers like Kayak.com.

Train

Vietnam's train system is a lot better than is used to be, and while it's not all that cheap, it's comfortable, exceedingly scenic in places, and an overall very interesting and fun way to travel.

If you're travelling in high season or especially over Tet, book as far in advance as possible. On the downside it serves only the Vietnamese coastline along with a couple of spurs out af Hanoi (most notably northwest to Sapa). The coastal line serves many of the key destinations in Vietnam, notable exceptions are Hoi An (alight at Da Nang), Qui Nhon (alight at Dieu Tri) and Mui Ne (alight at Muong Man).

The Railways Vietnam website has comprehensive and accurate timetable and price information. Travelfish members can also avail themselves of the PDF timetable and pricelist we put together after fighting our way through the Vietnam Railways website. You can download it from the resources section of the Member Centre.

You can read a very detailed story on Vietnam's rail network here.

Automobile

Rental cars for long distance travel are yet to be much popularised in Vietnam, and seeing the state of the traffic it's easy to see why. Most who opt for self-drive transport do it via motorcycle rather than car.

Open Tours

The Open Tour runs through the length of Vietnam (and the reverse), commencing at Hanoi, the service stops at Hue, Hoi An, Nha Trang, Da Lat or Mui Ne and terminates Saigon (obviously it runs in the reverse as well). There's spurs off into the Mekong Delta and Tay Ninh in the south (ex Saigon) and Ha Long Bay and Sapa in the north (ex Hanoi).

The ticket price is dependent on where you choose to stop, and once you buy the ticket, you're locked into that route -- unless you buy a new ticket. The cost is low, very low -- as little as US$24 for a non-stop epic from Hanoi to Saigon. The Open Tour system works for thousands of visitors to Vietnam -- particularly first time visitors who may be intimidated by the local bus system or who are looking for more creature comforts.

Local buses and minibuses

These take about as long as Open Tours but can be overloaded to outrageous degrees. On the upside -- you'll be the only foreigner on board -- on the downside, it won't take too long to figure out why. Local buses and minibuses are fine for trips under three to four hours, but longer than that can be a bit gruelling.

One disadvantage of the local bus system is that the bus stations they operate from are often on the outskirts of town and the transport to and from the bus station (mainly xe oms) will gouge you heartlessly given the opportunity, thus reducing your saving in travelling this way.

Motobike

Grab a minsk and hit the road. These bikes can be purchased for as little as a few hundred US dollars and you'll often not have too many troubles selling the bike off to another traveller when the time comes to leave Vietnam. The bikes are only semi-reliable, but just about any local with a screwdriver should be able to fix it up should you have minor ailments. If you don't want to listen to us, listen to your Mum -- invest in a helmet -- easily purchased in both Hanoi and Saigon. For more information, read our feature story on exploring Vietnam by motorcycle.

Bicycle

Long, with a scenic flat coastline, Vietnam can be a great destination for cyclists. The only really gruelling part is the northern mountains -- even the Central Highlands are not really all that hilly. Most nearly every town in Vietnam will have some lodgings, so you shouldn't struggle for a room. Things to pack -- a good supply of inner tubes and patch kits -- and of course, your bike -- but you probably knew that already. Vietnamese bikes are not of a very high standard, so BYO bike is a very good idea. The country has a pretty good network of secondary roads which are far preferable to cycling on the main road, where cyclists rank just above chickens in the pecking order ... get it ;-) -- you will be expected to yield to all larger vehicles.

Boat

This is only really an option in the Mekong Delta, where you can travel in both tourist boats for short haul trips and take freighters for longer trips. The former are comfortable, the latter can sometimes be comfortable, other times less so. Boat transport is slow -- figure on two days for a trip from My Tho to Chau Doc on the Cambodian border. The most popular tourist service are the ferries from Saigon to Vung Tao, and the boats from Chau Doc to Phnom Penh. Boat travel generally works out as being more expensive than bus travel over a similar route.

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