Eating well in Hanoi

A friend of mine from high school recently went to Vietnam with his wife, and they are planning to stay there for a few months or even over a year, just to feel out how living and working there pans out.

Many people call it a “digital nomad” visa, but Vietnam actually does not offer one. What it offers is a 90-day e-visa, which has become a standard option for digital nomads. Once it expires, the holder has to leave the country and apply for a new visa from abroad.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development describes a digital nomad as someone pursuing a “location-independent, technology-enabled lifestyle” and explains that digital nomads “earn active income from employment or self-employment abroad while working remotely.”

Like me, you might be wondering, why one would go to another Southeast Asian country when there are already digital nomads enjoying beach and mountain resort life in the Philippines while earning income from remote online and IT work?

Perhaps my friend simply needed a new place, a break from the monotony at home. But the other day, he sent our chat group perhaps the best reason to be in Vietnam --its capital city Hanoi in particular-- as a digital nomad: cheap, excellent food, and a generally low cost of living.

“Yep. Hanoi cheaper than Cebu by 30% to 50% sa food, transpo, basics,” he said, “Viet baguette everywhere at 9,800 dong = 23 pesos.”

“Oh wow, real cheap there. The veggie set, what’s the price range? And more choices also for you since they do veggie?” asked another friend. “Very cheap and aplenty! Fresh herbs, veggies. All plants and mushrooms. No meat. Even Grab food delivery – authentic, delicious, very affordable. PhP70 to PhP120 range,” our now Vietnam-based friend answered.

I would be quite skeptical about the “30% to 50% cheaper than Cebu” claim. Perhaps my friend was simply overwhelmed by the relative affordability of food in Hanoi. But the prices he was showing us painted a fairly clear picture: your income can go much further in Hanoi than it does back home in Cebu.

Then came the photographs. Bowls of noodles swimming in herbs, plates piled with fresh vegetables, tofu and mushrooms, rice meals, fried rolls, baguettes, and avocado drinks. My friend said these were simply part of the everyday food choices available to them. Indeed, he was eating well. His claim about Hanoi’s cost of living was becoming harder to dismiss.

This made me recall the research proposal another friend of mine made for her master’s studies over a year ago. She wrote about Mantalongon, Cebu’s own vegetable basket, where farmers have for years complained that while they shoulder the cost of seeds, fertilizer, labor, and harvesting, they have little say over the price ultimately paid for their produce.

She put the post-harvest situation in the country, particularly in places like Mantalongon, in stark terms. Our farmers remain heavily dependent on middlemen, while access to larger markets is constrained by logistics. We have also failed to develop strong post-harvest and marketing systems, leaving our poor farmers with little bargaining power.

A 2025 study by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies identifies high transportation costs, inadequate roads and seaports, limited cold-chain facilities and poor agricultural logistics as contributors to high food prices.

Somewhere between the farm and our dining table, we have made food expensive while those who produce it remain poor and disempowered. Meanwhile, in Carbon, the public market is being transformed under a commercial arrangement that contemplates raising rents and fees.