Is tipping expected in Vietnam? A practical guide for travellers- What About Vietnam S6-E6

Tipping. It’s one of those topics travellers rarely ask out loud — but almost everyone wonders about.

·      Do you tip in Vietnam?

·      Is it expected?

·      How much is appropriate?

·      And where does it actually apply?

In this episode of One Question at a Time, I give context to the aspect of tipping many places miss: It’s a sign of thanks and appreciation for extra service. A little goes a long way and is very much appreciated, but NOT expected.

Vietnam is not a US-style tipping economy. There is no automatic 20% expectation. No hidden cultural rulebook. But — tourism has influenced certain sectors, and in some situations, tipping is appreciated.

In this practical guide, I explain:

• Where tipping most commonly applies (drivers, guides, cruises and hotels)
• Where it’s completely unnecessary (street food, taxis, local eateries)
• How much is appropriate in Vietnamese context
• Why over-tipping can sometimes do more harm than good
• How to approach tipping with cultural awareness rather than pressure

This episode is about travelling respectfully — understanding local norms, budgeting wisely, and avoiding awkward guesswork at the end of a tour or meal.

As always in Series 6, we focus on one question at a time — so you can travel confidently, not confused.

If you're planning a trip and want guidance beyond the brochures — from timing to logistics to cultural nuances like this — that’s exactly what I help travellers navigate every day.

Listen now and take tipping off your worry list.

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Transcript

Kerry Newsome: If you're new here, welcome to the What About Vietnam podcast. My name is Kerry Newsome, and I'm your host. If you're joining me again, it's really great to have you back. And here we are in 2026. It's been five years of conversations with travelers, locals, and people who know this country deeply. Recently, I was recognized in Vietnam with a National Multimedia Award. And, you know, after that and kind of the highs that came with that and just the spectacular year that it was, I've taken a moment just to sit back and pause and reflect on just what is the best way for me to serve you and give you the best advice I possibly can to help. You better understand Vietnam and help with your trip planning. Now, over the time, I've learned that your greatest experience in Vietnam is not going to come from doing more, you know, cramming everything in, trying to get as much in as possible in your time slot. It's actually built on getting a few key things right. And you'll be amazed just how important getting things right is for people. And when you start planning, you want to feel that you're doing this in a way that you feel confident because obviously you might be traveling with someone else or you might even be traveling on your own. But at the end of the day, you still want to feel that you're doing it in a knowledgeable, informed, educated way. And that's kind of where I hope I step in. The best way I know how to get to the heart of that is to focus on the questions. And they're the questions that travellers ask all the time. They're the ones that are kind of seen in all the groups and the chats and the various kind of Google questions that come up. They're consistent. And I know them in a much more intimate way because my travelers ask them. So for a while, 

I'm doing things a little different. I'm doing shorter, sharper episodes, one question at a time. Honest answers, real context, and when needed, voices from people on the ground who know their stuff. People I think will do you a great service by coming on and giving some extra information to support the answer and to make sure, let's face it, we're getting it as right as we can. So let's get started. Let's start building those blocks to your next trip to Vietnam, one question at a time. Welcome everyone to our next show in the What About Vietnam podcast series One Question at a Time. I'm delighted to be back here and tackling one of those questions that comes up just as kind of part of your trip planning really as you know tipping is something that people want to understand and appreciate. They want to make sure that they get it right. And because Vietnam is not culturally based a tipping economy. It's not like the US where you know gratuities are expected. It's more about showing your appreciation in a way that is meaningful to the person and you know is done in a fashion that they feel appreciated when you do hand over that tipping. So I don't want to make this complicated for you.

I want you to think about tipping in the sense of building it into part of your plan depending what your plan is. So for instance if you're going to be going to Vietnam and you're going to be lazy on the beach for a week and you know you're not going to be using lots of drivers or you know doing exploring or looking for a specialist guide, probably your tipping is mostly going to be at eateries. so that you might round up or just give an extra tip. But I guess the most important thing I want to share on this episode when we talk about tipping, is it expected and how much, is I really want to talk about that you gauge that for yourself. You know I think we all have common sense here and you know we're smart travelers, we're travelers where we kind of want to make sure when we're stepping into a new culture that we understand it as best we can and you know I think we all appreciate good service. So when you get good service then to give a small tip is very much appreciated in Vietnam. So I want to break it down if I may to kind of the areas where I feel tipping has the most significance and the most importance. From the get-go, you're not going to be tipping a taxi. If you get a taxi from the airport and you're going to your first city on arrival, you're not going to be tipping. They're metered and you wouldn't provide a tip in that situation. If you arrive at your hotel and you have a porter who takes your bag to your room, you're only there for the night etc or two nights maybe, you may not even see the same porter each time. I probably wouldn't be tipping there. If I was there for a week and I saw this person a lot and he kind of went out of his way to do something extra special then I probably would tip. You know, especially for my US travelers and listeners is that don't take that mindset with you that you have to be offering this tip everywhere you go. It's just not the story in Vietnam. As I said, you'll know yourself when someone is going out of their way to do something. We don't offer tips in Vietnam for people just doing their job. if in the case you're staying for a long duration at a hotel or you are engaging or booking a private driver. I think the area where you will tip the most will be drivers, guides and specialist guides, and I'll talk a bit more about that in the show, where there is expertise and they are tailor-making this experience to you. They are providing you a service that is above and beyond and they have a speciality and an education aspect to this that will enhance your experience of the activity. So in regard to staying at the hotel, probably you won't be tipping anywhere as much as you think. About the only place you might tip is if you go to a restaurant or a bar and you're ordering a meal or you know there's a family group together and you're ordering lots of drinks and things, you might round up the bill or you might offer the waiter a tip for good service, timely service, information. I mean I'm in particular love with those waiters that you know want to build a connection with try out their English with you, want to converse with you, can give you information about the food that you want to order, so they'll have a little bit more English under their belt. And, you know, they're just giving you the best of what they know to help you enjoy that meal. So, you know, they're kind of my first love and the ones that I would look at tipping the most. If you're talking about going out and doing activities and exploring Vietnam, there's obviously lots of handlers along the way here. So, you know, you've got your driver, you've got a guide possibly with you if you've got a private tour. And, you know, guides will come in various kind of packages. So you'll either have a guide that is just for you. So when I plan trips, I plan private trips for families and individuals. So that guide is just looking after them. So you know you're getting that attention, you're getting that focus, you're getting the benefit of his schooling and education of that particular area or that particular activity. So you know once again you're going to know just in a very meaningful way that this person deserves a tip. If the tip is kind of something other than money which is sometimes the case, sometimes it's nice to actually give a gift. I've got a great story to tell of one of my travelers who was traveling in the north and it got quite chilly, much chillier than we had expected. There was just kind of a drop in temperature and you know she was cold, the guide was cold as well and he hadn't kind of packed enough kind of woolies for himself. She had an extra jacket, it was a footie jacket and you know it could be worn by by males or females. So she offered the jacket for him to use for the duration of the trip. He was so so grateful. In the end she said to him you keep it, it looks better on you and he was absolutely delighted that he would be able to sport that jacket and tell everyone about this Australian traveler that he had that gave him the jacket. So I guess I'm telling you that story because I want you to appreciate the level of gratitude that the Vietnamese have for tipping or for gifts or you know offers of thanks and appreciation. I think when you are in the kind of remote areas of Vietnam, you're going to see a much greater opportunity for you to make a difference in those areas to give small tips. But don't overtip, don't feel like you've got to, you know, go overboard. That just makes it difficult for rationalizing in the industry so people don't think that, oh, if you work for that company, you get more and, you know, that kind of thing. I'll give you some amounts at the end of this episode just so you can kind of play with those. And once again, you know, when you start to look at the equivalents to your own country, you'll find that these very small amounts to us go a long way to a Vietnamese. And in these remote areas, make sure that you've been to the ATM, and I think I covered that in the previous episode about know getting yourself cashed up so that you've got free cash to be able to offer to the driver and the guide and things like that out in these areas because you're not going to be able to get to an ATM to bolster your cash flow to do that. So you don't feel awkward or you don't feel uncomfortable or you've got some amounts with you that are at that reasonable level they're not you know, where a tip should be about $300,000 and you give them a million, well, that kind of blows their head back. And, you know, not necessary but probably due to the fact that you haven't or I haven't kind of organized to have enough smaller cash to do it that way. But I think drivers, guides, you know Grab shares you know like car hire etc for short trips I tend to also use cash and I will take that up so if the trips 32,000 I'll probably make it 40 and that's probably easier for me too because I've probably got two 20,000 notes. rather than carrying lots of ones and fives and twos and things like that. It gets really messy and having lots of notes and carrying around with them can get a bit painful. So just rounding it up for those grab share drivers etc. is a good thing. And as I said, basically it then comes down to, you know, your food and the hospitality and the expertise of who is providing that for you. So if you've got a specialist hostess that's doing a food tour with you and, you know, she's giving you the benefit of her local knowledge, she's teaching you a new skill to cook a Vietnamese dish, Likewise you'd want to show your appreciation and offer tipping. But the most important fact I want to get across here is that it's for appreciation, it's for gratitude, it's for thanks, it is not expected. And I think that's where the misconception comes in where people kind of get confused and you know having to give a driver you know an amount each day that just seems you know, unusual to them, you know, wasn't it included in the overall fee and that sort of thing. No, it wasn't because, you know, you can have one driver take you four or five hours drive and then the next trip you get a new driver and the difference can make a whole change to how you are experiencing that region and experiencing that trip. And let me tell you from experience that it's a big deal. Like you know you might have one driver who just doesn't understand no matter how many Google Translates you give them that you want them to slow down or that you want to make a special stop or you want to make a stop to do some photos, you need a bathroom stop, your child is feeling anxious or your mother needs to get out and do a stretch, that's me mostly, you know and they don't want to oblige, they think they're in a hurry, they need to get you there by a certain time and you say it doesn't matter but they just won't oblige, they just want to, they're stuck in some sort of regime of having to do it their way. The next time you go on a trip and the driver couldn't do enough for you like they are just so obliging. They've got water in the car, they've got you know stops that they tell you that they're going to do. They'll give you an indication of how much between A and B and when the stops are going to be, you know, are we hungry, you know, their English is fantastic. It changes the whole dynamic of a trip. So, you know, your guides and your drivers probably are at the top of my list of, you know, giving this appreciation and tipping. me let me break it down for you people. So don't hold me to this please but this is kind of my experience that's been acceptable over many years of travel but be your own guide. So for private drivers probably half a day four to five hours you're looking probably I don't know about a hundred, hundred and fifty, two hundred thousand. For a full day and you know that might be within the one city or it might be going from a place to another city. You know, you're looking probably around 300 to 500,000. At the lower end of the scale, probably 200,000. You know, if you're looking at a driver that's going to go over multiple days, you know, you're probably looking at a per day rate. So that would probably come in around about 300,000 per day. And as I said, don't jump to, oh my gosh, hundreds and thousands of dong just seems like a lot. You'll work out, it's somewhere between $2 and $10. So, you know, don't get heart palpitations about the zeros. You'll find that they're very small amounts but make a big difference. Tour guides, once again, similar kind of rates but depending on their speciality. Like if someone is specialized in a particular field like it might be caving or history, culture, war history, food, a particular cultural aspect of Vietnam, farming, bartering, you know understanding like if you're going to go the back back our markets and you wanted to understand how the markets work, you wanted to know more about the minority people, you know that kind of knowledge and that is worth something so you might up that. So once again you're probably looking at about four or five hundred thousand per day for that kind of expertise. For hotels, as I said, I probably wouldn't be tipping the porters unless they had done something exceptional, if they had helped me in any special way. Same for housekeeping, I probably wouldn't. But if I'm drinking at the bar And the prices are well-priced, the service is good. If I'm having a meal at a restaurant in the hotel, I might tip the waiter for the food. But it'll be more a case of whether or not they just took my order and they literally just took the order, delivered the food. But if they wanted to explain or ask me if I had any allergies or things like that, and they wanted to engage, then they're going to earn a greater tip. So that's probably around about the five to 10%. But just make sure when you do get the bill, the bill's correct, that sometimes, you know, they get mixed up with people and they put the wrong thing on your order. So always check your bill and make sure that there's not a service charge that's already included. some of the high-end restaurants now are doing that. And that's probably the biggest change I've seen over the years as more of the bigger chains have come into the accommodation space in Vietnam. But I think, you know, if I can just finish the show by talking about that appreciation, it's not a gratuity society if that's the best way to describe it, it's just not how they operate. So don't bring that tipping mentality with you if that's a thing in your country. Be generous when the service has genuinely enhanced your experience and you're going to know it. Instinctively you're going to know when these people are just doing their job or going above and beyond their job. I hope you found this helpful. It is something that's very personal, I think. It is a kind of a sensitive subject and, you know, I've never tried to encourage big tippers. I've tried to encourage, wherever I can, thoughtful and appreciative tippers, people that genuinely see the service for what it is and know when someone is going that extra mile and they want to appreciate them. And as I said, a very small amount goes a long way in Vietnam. Thank you for joining. And I look forward to future questions in the series six, one question at a time. All the best people till then.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening. Check out the episode notes for more information. What about Vietnam? Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review and stay tuned for more fun adventures in Vietnam. What about Vietnam?