Common Scams in Vietnam & How to Avoid Them (2026 Honest Guide)

Common Scams in Vietnam and How to Avoid Them

Let's get the important part out of the way first: Vietnam is a safe country. Violent crime against tourists is rare, you can walk around at night in most places without concern, and the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese people you meet will be warm, helpful, and completely honest with you.

What Vietnam does have is a well-developed ecosystem of overcharging — a handful of practised routines aimed at visitors who don't know what things cost. These aren't dangerous. They're annoying, they sting your pride more than your wallet, and almost all of them are preventable with about ten minutes of preparation.

The single most useful thing this guide can give you isn't a list of scams — it's the real prices, so you know instantly when a number is wrong. Here they are, along with the routines they come attached to.

The One Habit That Prevents Most of It

Before the list, the rule that handles the majority of transport scams in one move: use the ride-hailing apps.

Grab is the dominant one; Be and Xanh SM (the electric fleet) also work well. All of them show you the fare, the route, and the driver before you accept. There is no meter to rig, no negotiation, no "I meant dollars, not dong" at the end, and no mysterious detour. It removes the entire category.

If you need a street taxi instead, stick to the two reputable national brands: Mai Linh (green cars) and Vinasun (white cars). Anything else at an airport or outside a tourist landmark is a coin flip.

This one habit will do more for you than every other tip on this page combined. It does, of course, require your phone to be online the moment you land — booking that first ride out of Noi Bai or Tan Son Nhat is exactly when you're most exposed to the airport taxi routine, and it's worth arriving with data already working so you can open Grab in the arrivals hall rather than negotiating with whoever approaches you first.

Transport Scams

The airport taxi

The routine: A driver approaches you inside or just outside arrivals, offers a "fixed price," and either runs a rigged meter or delivers you somewhere while insisting the agreed number was in dollars.

The fix: Walk past everyone who approaches you. Book a Grab from the official pickup zone, or join the queue for Mai Linh/Vinasun. Never accept a ride from someone who approaches you — legitimate drivers wait to be hired.

Xe om (motorbike taxi) overcharging

The routine: Unofficial drivers loitering near bus stations, markets, and landmarks quote foreigners three to five times the fair rate for a short hop. Some turn pushy if you try to walk away.

The fix: GrabBike solves this entirely — the fare is calculated and shown before you accept. If you must use a street xe om, agree the full price out loud before you get on, and ask your hotel first what the journey should cost.

The cyclo ambush

The routine: A charming pedicab ride through the old streets, no price discussed, and a wildly inflated demand at the end — sometimes with an extra zero appended to the number you thought you agreed.

The fix: Agree the total price and the duration before you sit down, and have the number written or shown on a phone screen so there's no "misunderstanding" about zeros. Better still, book a cyclo tour through your hotel or a reputable agency.

The "your hotel is closed" detour

The routine: Mostly a Hanoi speciality. Your taxi driver tells you the hotel you booked is full, closed, or has moved — and helpfully knows a better one (that pays him commission).

The fix: Don't engage. Insist calmly on being taken to the address you gave. If they refuse, get out. Have your booking confirmation and the hotel's phone number saved so you can call the property directly.

Street Scams

Forced shoe shining

The routine: The most notorious one in Hanoi's Old Quarter and around Hoan Kiem Lake. Someone points at a mark on your shoe, and before you've responded, the shoe is off your foot and being worked on. Then comes the demand — often 200,000–500,000 VND, sometimes accompanied by an invented "repair" you didn't ask for.

The real price: A legitimate shoe shine costs 20,000–30,000 VND. A genuine sole repair should be no more than 60,000–70,000 VND. So the demand is typically ten to twenty times the fair rate.

The fix: Don't stop walking. This feels rude and isn't — the moment you stop, they have access to your shoe. A firm, friendly "khong, cam on" (no, thank you) without breaking stride is all it takes. They're persistent, not aggressive; they move on quickly if you don't slow down.

The conical hat photo

The routine: A friendly vendor places their shoulder pole and conical hat on you, encourages a photo, then demands payment for the "experience" and often for fruit you didn't want to buy.

The fix: If you'd genuinely like the photo, agree a price first — it's a fair enough transaction at 20,000–50,000 VND. If you wouldn't, don't let anything be placed on your shoulders in the first place.

Fruit, doughnut, and snack pressure

The routine: A vendor hands you a sample or starts bagging fruit before you've agreed to anything, then charges a price several times what a local would pay.

The fix: Ask the price before anything is handed over, and buy from stalls with visible prices or busy local queues. Don't accept anything placed in your hand as a "gift."

The tea, not weed

The routine: Marijuana is illegal in Vietnam, and the drivers loitering outside hostels who offer it will happily let you smell the real thing during negotiation, then hand over a bag of tea leaves once you've paid. There is, needless to say, no complaints department.

The fix: Obvious, but worth stating plainly — buying illegal drugs from a stranger in a country where they're illegal has no good outcomes, whichever way the transaction goes.

Money Scams

The note switch

The routine: Vietnamese banknotes are similar in colour and heavy with zeros — the 500,000 and 20,000 notes look alike at a glance, as do 50,000 and 200,000. A driver or vendor swaps the note you handed over for a lower one and claims you underpaid.

The fix: Learn the notes before you arrive — spend five minutes with a picture of the banknote set. Count change slowly and without embarrassment. Where possible, pay with smaller notes and keep large ones separate. Say the amount out loud as you hand it over.

ATM and money changer traps

The fix: Use ATMs attached to reputable banks (Vietcombank, BIDV, Techcombank) inside branches or hotels, decline the machine's own currency-conversion offer, and avoid unofficial street money changers entirely.

Booking and Shopping Scams

The cheap Halong Bay cruise

The routine: Street agencies clustered around Hanoi's Old Quarter and Beer Street sell suspiciously cheap tours; the boat, the itinerary, or the standard bear no relation to what was described, and "extras" appear throughout.

The fix: Book cruises and multi-day tours through operators with a real, reviewable online presence — not a street counter and a laminated photo album. Read what's not included: entrance fees, drinks, transfers, and "mandatory tips" are the usual hidden add-ons.

Cloned hotel pages

The routine: Scammers build near-identical Facebook pages and websites impersonating well-known hotels, using stolen photos and a slightly altered name, then take direct "deposits."

The fix: Book through established platforms, or navigate to the hotel's site yourself rather than through a link someone sent you. Be sceptical of any property asking for a bank transfer deposit to a personal account.

Fake leather and tailoring shortcuts

The routine: Hoi An and Saigon are famous for handmade leather goods and bespoke tailoring. The display items are usually genuine; what gets made or bagged for you sometimes isn't.

The fix: Use tailors and leather shops with a long trail of independent reviews, inspect the actual item before paying, and be sceptical of prices that seem impossible for genuine materials. For tailoring, allow time for a proper fitting rather than a 12-hour rush job.

Motorbike rental damage claims

The routine: You return the bike and are shown "damage" that was already there, or a bike is swapped for a worse one of the same model. Some shops hold your passport hostage over the dispute.

The fix: Photograph and video the entire bike before you ride off — every scratch, both sides, the mirrors, the seat. Rent from shops with strong reviews. And never leave your passport as a deposit; offer a cash deposit or a photocopy instead. Wear a helmet — it's the law, and it matters far more than any scam on this page.

The Highest-Risk Areas

Scams cluster where tourists cluster. Be slightly more alert in:

Hanoi's Old Quarter and around Hoan Kiem Lake — shoe shiners, street tour "guides," cheap cruise sellers, and fruit-pole photos.

Around Ben Thanh Market and Nguyen Hue in Ho Chi Minh City — cyclo and xe om overcharging, aggressive shoe shiners, and motorbike bag-snatching.

Airport arrivals halls, everywhere — taxi touts working the exhausted-new-arrival window.

On bag-snatching specifically: this is the one with genuine injury risk, because people get dragged when they hold on. Keep bags on the side away from traffic, wear straps across your body, don't walk along a road with your phone held out, and if it ever happens, let go.

How to Say No Without Feeling Rude

A lot of travellers get caught not because they're gullible but because they're polite. Vietnamese street commerce is persistent by nature, and a Western instinct to engage, explain, or apologise is read as an opening.

The whole toolkit is: "khong, cam on" (no, thank you), a small smile, and continuing to walk. No explanation, no eye contact held too long, no stopping. It isn't rude here — it's the normal, expected response, and the vendor moves on without a second thought. Practise it once and you'll use it fifty times a day.

Don't Overcorrect Into Paranoia

Here's the part that matters as much as the list. Read enough scam articles and you'll arrive in Vietnam treating every person who speaks to you as a threat — and that would be a genuine loss, because Vietnamese hospitality is one of the best things about the country.

The realistic picture: over a two-week trip you might encounter two or three attempted overcharges, each worth a few dollars, all of them easily deflected. Meanwhile you'll be helped by strangers who go far out of their way for you, fed generously by people who barely speak your language, and looked after in a hundred small ways.

Use Grab, know the notes, ask the price first, don't stop for your shoes. Then relax and enjoy the country — the odds are overwhelmingly in your favour.