A four-day Ha Giang Loop with an easy rider costs roughly 3,200,000 to 7,800,000 VND per person for the tour itself, usually split into a card deposit paid online and the balance paid in Ha Giang city on arrival. Add 1,500,000 to 2,500,000 VND for buses, fuel, drinks, the border permit and tips. Most operators and homestays accept QR payment.
Six and a half million dong. That is a realistic all-in figure for one person doing the classic four-day Ha Giang Loop in 2026, from the moment you board the night bus in Hanoi to the moment you hand the keys back.
The interesting part is not the total. It is how the total splits: a small slice payable online with a foreign card weeks in advance, and a much larger slice payable in person, in a town where the cash machines are run by banks you have never heard of and the nearest alternative is 150 kilometres of mountain road away.
The four-day loop, priced line by line
Motorbike tours out of Ha Giang city run from 3,200,000 VND to 7,800,000 VND per person depending on length, group size and whether you ride yourself or sit behind an easy rider. Budget operators advertise four-day packages from around 150 USD; the mid-range easy rider trips most travellers end up booking cluster around 3,200,000 to 4,500,000 VND. Jeep tours start higher, from roughly 4,850,000 VND and climbing past 30,000,000 VND for private multi-day charters.
The getting-there cost is separate. A sleeper bus from My Dinh station in Hanoi to Ha Giang runs about 300,000 to 450,000 VND each way, and a limousine van 450,000 to 600,000 VND. Call it 800,000 to 1,100,000 VND return.
Then the items nobody puts in the headline price. Foreigners riding through Dong Van and Meo Vac districts need a border-area permit, usually arranged by the operator and commonly priced around 230,000 VND per person. If you are self-riding, fuel for the full loop lands somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 VND. Beer at a homestay is 20,000 to 30,000 VND a can, and four evenings of that adds up faster than you expect. A customary tip for an easy rider driver is 200,000 to 500,000 VND at the end.
Add a damage contingency of at least 1,000,000 VND and the arithmetic looks like this: tour 3,200,000, buses 800,000, permit 230,000, drinks and snacks 600,000, tip 300,000, contingency 1,000,000. Total 6,130,000 VND. Of that, maybe 700,000 VND goes out as an online deposit on your Visa or Mastercard. The remaining 5,400,000 VND has to be settled on the ground.
Five things that go wrong with that 5,400,000
The first is simply not reading the booking email properly. Operators take deposits of 20 to 30 percent through PayPal or Stripe, and a good number also accept a direct bank transfer to a Vietnamese account — which is useless to you if you are on a 45-day exemption or a 90-day e-visa, because standard Vietnamese bank accounts require a long-term visa, work permit or Temporary Residence Card. The balance is then due on arrival. The tour price is the part you plan for; the part that catches people out is the 2,700,000 VND balance nobody mentioned would be due in cash in a Ha Giang car park.
The second is the cash machine itself. Ha Giang city has ATMs, and there are machines in the district towns of Yen Minh, Dong Van and Meo Vac, but they are heavily used by tour groups arriving on the same morning buses, and they run dry around Tet and public holidays. Withdrawal fees charged by the Vietnamese bank typically run 22,000 to 55,000 VND per transaction. If the machine caps you at 2,000,000 VND a go and you need 5,400,000, that is three withdrawals, 66,000 to 165,000 VND in local fees, plus your home bank's foreign transaction charge on top. On small withdrawals the combined cost regularly lands between 3 and 8 percent.
The third is damage. Drop the bike on the Ma Pi Leng pass and the rental shop will quote you anything from 500,000 VND for scraped plastics to 3,000,000 VND or more for a bent fork or broken engine casing. That bill arrives at the end of the trip, when your cash reserve is at its lowest and you are trying to catch an evening bus.
The fourth and fifth are mundane and constant. Rain gets into dry bags and soaks a brick of 500,000 VND notes, and groups collapse into IOUs because one person fronted the homestay bill at Du Gia and nobody can repay them without a Vietnamese bank account. Neither is a disaster on its own. Both are entirely avoidable.
Paying the balance without hauling cash up a mountain
Here is the thing most Ha Giang write-ups get wrong. Payment in the far north is not a cash-versus-card question, because card terminals barely exist outside a handful of hotels in Ha Giang city. It is a cash-versus-QR question, and QR has won. A homestay in Dong Van either takes electronic payment, which in Vietnam means a VietQR code propped up next to the till, or it is cash-only. Tour operators in Ha Giang city almost universally display one, because the owner banks with a Vietnamese bank and the code is free to generate.
The catch for a foreign visitor is that VietQR runs on the domestic NAPAS rails overseen by the State Bank of Vietnam, and your Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay or Google Pay cannot plug into it. MoMo needs a Vietnamese phone number and, since Circular 41/2025 brought in biometric verification for new e-wallet registrations, a verification process most tourists cannot complete. ZaloPay wants a Vietnamese ID document. None of that is realistic for someone in the country for three weeks.
This is where LocalPay is the straightforward answer. It is a non-custodial wallet that pays any VietQR merchant in Vietnam, and it needs no Vietnamese bank account, no local SIM and no residency card — you top it up with the Visa or Mastercard already in your wallet, or Apple Pay or Google Pay, and scan the operator's code to settle the balance. Stablecoin top-ups are there too if that is how you hold money. It is on the iOS App Store and Google Play, and it is backed by Colosseum.
Cash still wins in specific places, and pretending otherwise would be silly. The 10,000 VND toilet stop at a viewpoint, petrol poured from a glass bottle in a village with no pump, the tip you press into your driver's hand on the last morning — all cash. Carry 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 VND in 10k, 20k, 50k and 100k notes, keep it dry, and let QR handle everything above 200,000 VND. That way an empty ATM in Ha Giang city becomes an inconvenience rather than the reason you cannot start the tour.
“The tour price is the part you plan for; the part that catches people out is the 2,700,000 VND balance nobody mentioned would be due in cash in a Ha Giang car park.”
Six numbers to settle before you get on the night bus
- Confirm the exact deposit figure and what currency it clears in. Operators typically take 20 to 30 percent through PayPal or Stripe, which for a 3,200,000 VND tour is 640,000 to 960,000 VND.
- Ask in writing how the remaining balance is payable. The two realistic answers in Ha Giang city are cash and QR, and you want to know which before you arrive, not at the handover briefing.
- Pull your cash float in Hanoi, not Ha Giang. Fees of 22,000 to 55,000 VND per withdrawal apply either way, but Hanoi machines are restocked daily and far less likely to be empty on a Saturday morning.
- Set aside a damage contingency of 1,000,000 VND minimum, and more if you are self-riding a manual bike for the first time. Repair quotes from Ha Giang rental shops commonly land between 500,000 and 3,000,000 VND.
- Budget the border permit separately at around 230,000 VND per person for Dong Van and Meo Vac districts, and check whether your operator has already folded it into the quoted price.
- Agree inside your group who pays each homestay and how they get repaid. One person covering a 1,200,000 VND dinner bill is fine if everyone can settle up by QR that night, and a headache if they cannot.
The honest summary of a Ha Giang Loop budget is that roughly 90 percent of the money changes hands after you arrive, in a town with limited banking infrastructure, over four days during which you are rarely near a working cash machine. The 6,000,000 VND total is predictable. The logistics of handing it over are what go wrong.
Sort the payment method before the night bus, not after. Download LocalPay, top it up from the card you already carry, and you arrive in Ha Giang able to settle the tour balance, the homestay bills and an unexpected repair quote by scanning a code — keeping your cash float for the glass-bottle petrol stops and the tip at the end, which is all it was ever really needed for.
Frequently asked questions
You can usually pay the deposit by credit card, because most Ha Giang operators run online bookings through PayPal or Stripe and accept Visa and Mastercard for the 20 to 30 percent upfront portion. The balance is a different matter: card terminals are rare in Ha Giang city and effectively absent in Dong Van and Meo Vac, so the remainder is settled in cash or by QR code on arrival.
Yes. Ha Giang city has several, and there are machines in the district towns of Yen Minh, Dong Van and Meo Vac, with Agribank the most widespread network in the mountain districts. Withdrawal fees charged by Vietnamese banks typically run 22,000 to 55,000 VND per transaction, and machines in the smaller towns can run empty during holidays and busy weekends, so do not plan on topping up mid-loop.
Carry 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 VND per person in small notes for a four-day loop, split across 10k, 20k, 50k and 100k denominations. That covers roadside drinks, viewpoint and toilet fees, bottled petrol in villages without a pump, and the end-of-trip tip for an easy rider driver, which customarily runs 200,000 to 500,000 VND. Anything larger is easier to pay by QR.
The ones that accept electronic payment at all take QR, because the national standard managed by NAPAS and the State Bank of Vietnam is what every Vietnamese bank issues to merchants. QR adoption across Vietnam rose 150 percent in 2025 according to the State Bank of Vietnam. A homestay that does not display a code is cash-only, not card-only — nobody in the far north runs a card machine.
Use a wallet that can pay a Vietnamese QR code without a local account. LocalPay is a non-custodial wallet that tops up with a Visa or Mastercard, Apple Pay or Google Pay and pays any VietQR merchant in Vietnam, with no Vietnamese bank account, SIM card or Temporary Residence Card required. That matters in Ha Giang because tourists on 45-day exemptions or 90-day e-visas cannot open a standard Vietnamese bank account, and MoMo and ZaloPay both require a Vietnamese phone number.
