Cambodia + Vietnam Trip Budget for Americans: Visas, Flights, and Daily Costs in USD

The combined visa cost — the smallest line on the page

Start with the part everyone overthinks. The total visa cost for an American doing both countries is under $115, and it covers three separate things: the Cambodia eVisa, the Vietnam eVisa, and the Cambodia e-Arrival Card. None of them is a surprise, and all of them are sorted online before you leave home.

The Cambodia Tourist eVisa is $80 USD all-in for Americans — one flat price, billed in US dollars, approved in 3 business days and delivered as a printable PDF by email. It is valid for 3 months from issue and gives you a single 30-day stay, which is plenty for the Cambodia leg of a two-week trip. The Vietnam eVisa runs about $25 USD for a single-entry, 90-day eVisa — a separate application on Vietnam’s own system, not something we file. If your route has you hopping back and forth, Vietnam also sells a multiple-entry eVisa for roughly $50 USD.

Then there is the Cambodia e-Arrival Card. It is not a visa — it is a mandatory arrival declaration for every air arrival into Cambodia, fourteen fields filed within 7 days before your flight, $5 USD verified through us. Vietnam has its own arrival formalities handled at immigration, so for budgeting purposes the e-Arrival Card is a Cambodia-only $5 line. Add it up: $80 + $25 + $5 = $110 per person for the full visa stack across both countries.

That $110 is genuinely the whole entry cost for one American across two Southeast Asian countries. To put it in perspective, our Cambodia vs Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos visa cost comparison shows how the Cambodia leg stacks up against its neighbors — Cambodia and Vietnam together still come in cheaper than a single Schengen-style visa run.

Flights — the single biggest cost in the budget

Your flight is the line that swings the whole budget, and it is worth more planning than the visas by a wide margin. A round-trip economy ticket from a major US hub into Southeast Asia runs roughly $900 to $1,400 per person in 2026. The low end shows up in the shoulder seasons (March–April, September–October) booked two to three months out from the West Coast; the high end is peak summer or holiday travel from the East Coast or a smaller origin city.

The efficient routing for this trip is an open-jaw: fly into one country and out of the other, so you never backtrack. A common shape is into Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City and out of Phnom Penh — or the reverse. Most US itineraries connect through a Northeast Asia or Gulf hub (Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Doha, or Singapore). There is no nonstop from the US to either country, so expect one or two stops each way and 20–24 hours of total travel time.

Inside the trip, you will need one regional flight to connect the two countries. A one-way Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh or Siem Reap hop is short and cheap — typically $60 to $130 booked ahead on a regional carrier. Note one thing this budget does not rely on: the Cambodia–Vietnam loop by air is the simple path, but the land border at Bavet is also open if you would rather take the bus and save the regional airfare.

On arrival in Cambodia, your flight almost certainly lands at Techo International Airport (KTI), which replaced the old Phnom Penh airport in September 2025. Build your visa timing around the flight, not the other way round: the Cambodia eVisa is valid for 3 months from issue, so you can apply as soon as your dates are firm. When you are ready, you can start your Cambodia eVisa application and have the PDF in hand long before you book seats.

Daily costs on the ground — hotels, food, and transport

Once you land, both Cambodia and Vietnam are inexpensive by US standards, and your daily spend is the part of the budget you fully control. For a mid-range traveler — a clean three-star hotel, a mix of street food and restaurant meals, the occasional taxi or tuk-tuk, and a couple of paid attractions — plan $40 to $80 per day per person across both countries. Vietnam runs slightly cheaper day to day than Cambodia, mostly because food and local transport are a touch lower.

Accommodation

A good three-star double room is roughly $25 to $50 per night in both countries, which works out to $12 to $25 per person when you share. Hostels and basic guesthouses drop that to $8 to $15 a night; boutique and four-star hotels climb to $80 to $150. Siem Reap and Hoi An have the widest range — you can find a $10 dorm bed or a $200 pool villa on the same street.

Food and drink

This is where Southeast Asia spoils Americans. A bowl of pho or a plate of Khmer amok from a street stall is $1.50 to $3. A sit-down meal at a tourist-facing restaurant is $6 to $12. A local beer is around $1. Eat like a local and $15 a day covers all your food; eat every meal in air-conditioned restaurants and you might reach $28. Either way it is a fraction of what the same days cost at home.

Local transport and attractions

Grab (the regional ride-hailing app) and tuk-tuks make city travel cheap — most rides are $1 to $4. A three-day Angkor Wat pass is $62, the single biggest attraction cost on the Cambodia side; Halong Bay cruises and Mekong Delta tours in Vietnam run $40 to $120 depending on length. Budget $10 to $20 a day for transport and entry tickets and you will rarely exceed it.

If you want the Cambodia leg costed out on its own — daily spend, Angkor pass, the Phnom Penh-to-Siem Reap leg, and the visa — our Cambodia trip budget guide for Americans breaks the single-country numbers down in the same line-by-line way.

The full 2-week budget, line by line

Here is the whole trip assembled into one mid-range estimate for a single American spending roughly seven days in each country. Numbers are per person and assume you share a hotel room with a travel partner; solo travelers should add 30–40% to the accommodation line.

Read the table top to bottom and the shape of the trip is obvious: the flight is more than half the budget, daily spending is the next chunk, and the entire visa stack — the part people stress about — is a rounding error against the airfare. If you want to cut the total, the levers are the flight (book early, fly shoulder season) and the daily spend (street food, guesthouses, buses), not the visas.

One detail that protects the budget: the Cambodia eVisa needs no return flight, no hotel booking, and no bank statement to apply, so you can lock in your $80 visa before you commit to any of the bookable lines above. That is one less thing to chase, and it is covered in full on our Cambodia visa hub for US citizens.

Where to save, where not to, and final totals

The smartest savings on this trip come from three places: booking the international flight two to three months out, traveling in shoulder season, and eating where locals eat. Those three moves alone can drop a mid-range budget by $400 to $600 without changing the quality of the trip at all. The dumbest place to try to save is the visa stack — it is already the smallest line, and cutting corners there is how Americans get bounced at the gate.

A couple of costs people forget to budget: travel insurance ($40–$80 for two weeks, worth it), a local SIM or eSIM ($5–$15 for the whole trip), and tips and small cash for tuk-tuk drivers and guides (about $40 over two weeks). None of them is large, but they are the difference between a budget that holds and one that quietly creeps over. Add them in now rather than discovering them on day three.

Put it all together and a careful mid-range American spends about $2,300–$2,800 per person for two weeks across Cambodia and Vietnam, with the flight as the giant and the $110 visa stack as the footnote. When your dates are firm, lock the Cambodia side first — apply for your Cambodia eVisa, then file the Vietnam eVisa separately, and you have the whole entry sorted for under $115 before you book a single hotel.

Next steps and related reading for Americans: apply for your Cambodia eVisa when your dates are set, bookmark our Cambodia visa hub for US citizens as the single canonical reference, sort the entry rules in the Cambodia + Vietnam visa combo guide, and map the route with the 2-week Vietnam–Cambodia itinerary.