How to get from Ho Chi Minh City to Vung Tau in 2026

The Biên Hòa – Vũng Tàu Expressway, CT.28 on the map, opened its first stretch on 29 April 2026 and the full 54 kilometres on 18 May. The date that actually matters is 6 June, when the last ramps of the Long Thanh interchange came into service. Only from that day can a car run continuously from central Saigon onto CT.28 without dropping down to the old national road.

Prices current as of August 2026. Rate used: $1 ≈ 26,000 VND.

One thing no English guide has caught up with: Ba Ria–Vung Tau Province no longer exists. On 1 July 2025 it was merged into Ho Chi Minh City along with Binh Duong, and districts were abolished nationwide in favour of wards. Vung Tau is now a cluster of wards inside a much larger Ho Chi Minh City. It changes nothing about how you travel, but it explains why the address on your bus ticket does not match the address on TripAdvisor. For the city itself, see the Ho Chi Minh City guide.

Every option at a glance

The cheapest way from Ho Chi Minh City to Vung Tau is a 16-seat minibus at 90,000-100,000 VND (~$3.50-4). The fastest is a car on the CT.28 expressway, 70 to 90 minutes. The Greenlines DP ferry sits in between at 320,000 VND (~$12) and two hours, with no traffic and a view of the Saigon River on the way out.

Tap a marker to see the point on the map and jump to the section that covers it.

• Bach Dang pier — ferry departure (Bến tàu Bạch Đằng): 10B Tôn Đức Thắng, Sai Gon ward — 600 m on foot from Opera House metro
• Ho May pier — ferry arrival (Bến tàu Hồ Mây): 1A Trần Phú, at the foot of the cable car — 200 m to the Front Beach promenade
• Mien Dong Moi bus station (Bến xe Miền Đông Mới): 501 Hoàng Hữu Nam, Long Binh ward — 18 km out, ~120,000 VND in a Grab
• Pham Ngu Lao — limousine pickup (Phạm Ngũ Lão): Hoa Mai, Anh Quoc and Vie collect here — Hotel pickup is included in the fare
• Vung Tau bus station (Bến xe Vũng Tàu): 192 Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa, next to Lotte Mart — Phuong Trang terminal and Toan Thang stand
• Long Thanh interchange — onto CT.28 (Nút giao Long Thành): Exit from HCMC – Long Thanh – Dau Giay — Fully open since 6 June 2026
• Ba Ria — where the expressway ends (Bà Rịa): The last ~15 km are ordinary road — City connector due by 30 June 2027
• Tan Son Nhat airport (Sân bay Tân Sơn Nhất): Hoa Mai office 1.5 km from Terminal 2 — Straight to Vung Tau in 2.5-3 hours
• Back Beach — Thuy Van seafront (Bãi Sau): The main hotel strip — GrabBike from the bus station: 30,000-40,000 VND
• Cau Da pier — Con Dao boats (Bến tàu Cầu Đá): Fast craft only, about 3.5 hours — The Saigon ferry does NOT dock here

The short version. Travelling alone: ferry or bus. A couple with two suitcases: a limousine. Three or four people: a 7-seat Grab, which works out cheaper per head than the ferry. A motorbike down the highway: only if you have already ridden in Vietnam for a couple of weeks.

The Greenlines DP ferry

The ferry runs from central Saigon to Front Beach in Vung Tau in about two hours and costs 320,000 VND (~$12) Monday to Friday, 350,000 VND (~$13) at weekends and on public holidays. Greenlines DP cut the fare by 30,000 VND on 1 July 2026 because fuel got cheaper. Children aged 6-11 and passengers over 63 pay 270,000 on weekdays and 300,000 at weekends; under-fives travel free on a lap.

This is the only scheduled boat on the route. The old Petro Express hydrofoils shut down in 2017 and nobody has replaced them, so Greenlines has the water to itself. The vessel is a catamaran with aircraft-style seats, air conditioning, a toilet, power at the seats and a bottle of water and a snack in the fare. On paper the route is Ho Chi Minh City – Cần Giờ – Vung Tau; in practice Cần Giờ is a brief stop you barely register.

The boat is the best part of the day, and that is not a backhanded compliment to Vung Tau. You leave from the middle of a city of nine million, slide past container terminals and mangrove, and come out into open sea. Several English-language writers have made the point that the crossing is more interesting than the beach at the other end, and they are not wrong.

Schedule

Two sailings each way on a weekday, three or four at weekends, up to six a day in high season. The timetable moves with the weather and with demand, so check greenlines-dp.com the night before rather than trusting a schedule you screenshotted a month ago. In the rainy season, sailings get cancelled outright.

That timetable shapes a day trip more than you would expect. The 09:00 out and the 15:00 or 16:00 back gives you five or six hours in Vung Tau, which is enough for a swim, lunch and the Christ statue, and not enough for anything unhurried. If you want the evening on the beach, go by road and come back by road.

Where the ferry leaves from in Saigon

The pier is Bạch Đằng, 10B Tôn Đức Thắng, Sai Gon ward. That is the riverfront promenade in the old District 1, about 600 metres from the Opera House metro station on Line 1, ten minutes on foot down Nguyễn Huệ. From the backpacker streets around Pham Ngu Lao it is 1.5 km, walkable or 30,000 VND on a GrabBike.

Arrive thirty minutes early. Staff check the ticket and, for foreigners, your passport. Locals show an ID card, you show the actual document, and there is no way around it. Nobody mentions this when you book. Getting to the pier from wherever you are staying is covered in the Ho Chi Minh City transport guide.

Where the ferry arrives in Vung Tau

You land at the Hồ Mây passenger pier, 1A Trần Phú, at the foot of the cable car on Front Beach (Bãi Trước). The promenade is 200 metres away. Hotels on Back Beach (Bãi Sau) are 5-7 km, so 40,000 VND on a GrabBike or 70,000-100,000 in a GrabCar.

The pier itself is small. No exit formalities, no baggage hall, you step off and you are in town, with a couple of cafés to wait in if your car is a few minutes out.

Buying tickets, and the one scam to know about

Four ways to buy:

1. greenlines-dp.com — the operator, in Vietnamese and English. It takes Visa and Mastercard, but foreign-issued cards get declined unpredictably. Try a different card before you give up.
2. 12go.asia — in English, built for foreigners, and it reliably takes overseas cards. Markup is 5-10%, which is the price of the transaction going through.
3. Klook or Baolau — the same thing, occasionally cheaper on promotion.
4. The counter at the terminal, an hour or two before departure, if seats remain. At weekends they do not.

💬 "Tried to buy Saturday ferry tickets on the Friday evening and the whole boat was already gone. Ended up on an afternoon sailing back from Vung Tau on the Sunday, and barely got that." — TripAdvisor review, March 2026

What to bring

• Your passport. Non-negotiable.
• Motion sickness tablets if you are prone. The dry season, November to April, is calm; the wet season is not, particularly on the way out of the river mouth.
• A jacket or hoodie. The air conditioning is set to industrial.
• Snacks. The one on board is small.

The trade-offs

Vung Tau beaches: where you can actually swim · Vung Tau: the full city guide

Buses from Ho Chi Minh City to Vung Tau: who runs what

Buses are the cheap option: from 90,000 VND (~$3.50) and two and a half to three hours. Six large operators work the route plus a scattering of small limousine outfits. What you are actually choosing between is a 16 or 28-seat minibus and a 9-seat limousine, and the difference is bigger than it looks.

Fares by operator

The spread in journey times has nothing to do with drivers. It is the nine-seat rule. Limousines qualify for the expressway; 16-seat minibuses and full-size coaches do not, so they stay on QL51 through Biên Hòa behind the container trucks running to and from Cái Mép port. Nobody has said when the restriction lifts.

Which changes what you are actually paying for. The extra $3 for a limousine buys you thirty to sixty minutes, which is a much better argument for it than the leather seats.

Where buses leave from in Saigon

Miền Đông Mới bus station, 501 Hoàng Hữu Nam, Long Binh ward. This is the scheduled-coach terminal for FUTA, Toàn Thắng and Kumho, and it is 18 km out on the northeastern edge of the city — around 120,000 VND and forty minutes in a Grab with no traffic. The metro does not reach it.

Operator offices around town. Here is the thing to understand about FUTA: your ticket departs from Miền Đông Mới, but you check in at one of a dozen city offices (Pham Ngu Lao, Le Hong Phong, Dong Den, the old Mien Dong station, Hang Xanh, An Suong) and a free shuttle runs you out to the terminal. It is included, and it saves the Grab fare. The catch is that the time printed on your ticket is the shuttle pickup, not the coach departure. Miss the shuttle and you are paying for that 18 km yourself.

Pham Ngu Lao. Almost every limousine operator collects here: Hoa Mai, Anh Quốc, Vie. Confirm the exact office address when you book, usually on Đề Thám or Le Thanh Ton.

Near the airport. Hoa Mai keeps an office on Hoàng Văn Thụ, useful if you have just landed and have no intention of going into the centre first.

Where buses drop you in Vung Tau

• Phương Trang — its own terminal at 192 Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa, next to Lotte Mart.
• Hoa Mai — office on Le Hong Phong, central.
• Toàn Thắng — beside the Vung Tau bus station.
• Limousines — nearly all of them run you to your hotel door, free or for 30,000-50,000 VND as a drop-off option.

From any of those, Back Beach is ten to fifteen minutes and 30,000-40,000 VND on a GrabBike. Which end of town you actually want is a question the Vung Tau hotels guide answers properly.

Booking

• Vexere — the big Vietnamese aggregator, with an app. Cards and Apple Pay.
• 12go.asia — in English, marginally more expensive, far fewer surprises with a foreign card.
• The FUTA Bus app — Phương Trang's own, 5-10% cheaper than agents.
• At the office counter, an hour or two ahead, if seats remain.

💬 "Booked Anh Quoc with pickup from the hostel in Pham Ngu Lao. They pulled up at 7:25 and we were moving by 7:30. Dropped at the hotel door on Thuy Van. 270,000 a head, two hours twenty." — traveller report, April 2026

Driving: Grab, transfers and the new CT.28 expressway

By car the trip now takes 70 to 90 minutes instead of two and a half hours. The reason is CT.28, 54 kilometres of expressway between Biên Hòa and Bà Rịa. The Long Thanh to Ba Ria section opened on 29 April 2026, the full line on 18 May, and the ribbon was formally cut on 18 June. The date that matters to a driver is 6 June, when the remaining ramps at the Long Thanh interchange opened and cars could finally move from one expressway to the other without exiting to the national road.

Three qualifications keep the seventy-minute number honest:

• only vehicles of nine seats or fewer are admitted, so no bikes, no trucks, no coaches;
• the speed limit is provisional, 80 km/h maximum, 60 minimum;
• the road stops at Bà Rịa, and the last 15 km into central Vung Tau are ordinary road. The connector that will run the expressway into the city, ending at the Cửa Lấp interchange, is under construction with a deadline of 30 June 2027.

The old QL51 route still works and remains the fallback. For anyone on two wheels it is the only option.

Old route and new

Old (QL51): Saigon → Cát Lái ferry → national road QL51 through Biên Hòa → Bà Rịa → Vung Tau. Around 95 km. Two hours on a weekday, three to four at weekends, thanks to the port traffic.

New (via CT.28):

1. Saigon → the HCMC – Long Thanh – Dau Giay expressway.
2. At the Long Thanh interchange, straight onto CT.28 signposted Vũng Tàu.
3. CT.28 → exit at Bà Rịa onto QL56.
4. Bà Rịa → about 15 km of ordinary road into town.

Seventy minutes of that is the expressway itself. Add the crawl out of Saigon at rush hour and you are at 90 to 100. Fuel for a small car is five or six litres, about 150,000 VND (~$6). The distance is roughly the same as the old way, incidentally — the expressway is not shorter, it is just faster.

What the tolls cost

The second line is the useful one. CT.28 is not collecting tolls yet. The road opened before its toll plazas were finished, and traffic has been running free since April. So you pay only for the stretch of HCMC – Long Thanh – Dau Giay, on the order of 70,000-90,000 VND (~$3), rather than the 200,000-plus that pre-opening estimates assumed.

Payment is by ETC transponder only, ePass or VETC. Vietnamese expressways stopped taking cash years ago, and without a sticker on the windscreen you do not get on. With a Grab, a transfer or a car with a driver this is not your problem, and the toll is inside the fare.

Grab, Xanh SM and private transfers

Drivers do decline these jobs. Not everyone wants a two-hour run out of the city. If a driver cancels, request again after five minutes, or use the Grab Inter-Province category, which exists precisely for this and behaves far better than a standard Grab Car request.

When to leave

With any flexibility at all, leave on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning and come back Monday afternoon. Vung Tau on a weekday is a different town from Vung Tau on a Saturday: quieter, cheaper, and the hotels price accordingly.

Renting a car and driving yourself

Realistically, no. Self-drive rental in Vietnam requires a Vietnamese licence or a recognised international permit plus the nerve to drive here, and rental companies are not keen. What foreigners actually do:

• Car with driver, $50-80 a day, arranged through a hotel or on Klook.
• A one-off transfer, which is the same thing priced by the trip.

If you have an accident as a foreign driver, the practical outcome tends not to favour you regardless of who was at fault. Hire the driver.

Getting around Ho Chi Minh City · Day trips out of Saigon

Riding a motorbike there: probably don't

Short answer: not unless you have already ridden in Vietnam for two solid weeks. It is 95 km of national road, three to four hours each way, shared with container trucks running to Cái Mép port, and badly lit after dark. You cannot escape onto the new expressway either — motorbikes are banned from CT.28, so the entire two-wheeled flow stays on the old road.

Hiring in Saigon

Never leave your passport as a deposit if you can leave cash instead. Reputable shops in Saigon (Tigit Motorbikes, Style Motorbikes, the cluster around Pham Ngu Lao) will take money.

The sensible version: hire in Vung Tau

If what you want is a bike to explore Vung Tau on, hire it there. That removes the highway entirely and still gives you the run along the coast road, which is the good part.

Hidden Land Travel, Tigit with delivery, and the street shops along Back Beach all rent. Plenty of hotels quietly rent out a bike through reception.

Licences and fines

The fine has also moved. Since 1 January 2025, under Decree 168/2024, riding a bike up to 125cc without a valid licence costs 2,000,000-4,000,000 VND (~$77-153) and the bike normally goes to the pound. Guides still quoting "$50 to $100" are running on pre-2025 numbers.

The rest of the checklist is short: a proper helmet rather than the plastic bowl the rental gives you, and headlights on at all times, day included, because that is the law.

Straight from Tan Son Nhat to Vung Tau

If you land at Tan Son Nhat and have no business in Saigon, you can go directly. After a long flight there is a lot to be said for waking up by the sea rather than in the traffic-choked blocks around the airport.

Hoa Mai, the easy option

Hoa Mai has an office on Hoàng Văn Thụ, 1.5 km from Terminal 2. Five minutes and 25,000 VND on a GrabBike.

• Fare: 140,000-250,000 VND (~$5-10) depending on the vehicle.
• Journey: 2.5-3 hours, closer to 2 in a limousine on CT.28.
• Departures every 10-15 minutes, 04:30 to 21:00.
• Booking ahead is optional midweek, sensible at weekends.

Private transfer

Booked in advance, driver waiting in arrivals with a sign. This is the one to take with children, or after a red-eye when you have no appetite for working out local apps.

• Price: $50-70 for the car.
• Time: two hours on CT.28.
• Book through Klook or GetYourGuide.

Grab or Xanh SM from arrivals

Order from the terminal. The arrivals hall has free Wi-Fi, which matters if your eSIM has not activated yet.

• Price: 1,700,000-2,000,000 VND (~$65-77).
• Time: 1.5-2 hours.
• Expect to request two or three times. Grab Inter-Province is the reliable category for this distance.

What about Long Thanh airport?

Commercial flights from the new Long Thành International Airport (LTI) are promised from 1 December 2026. It sits halfway between Saigon and Vung Tau, right beside the Long Thanh interchange, which would put the beach 50 to 60 minutes from arrivals. As of August 2026 nothing scheduled operates there and every international flight still goes to Tan Son Nhat. The opening date has already moved several times, so do not build a trip around it.

Getting around Vung Tau

Grab and Xanh SM both work in Vung Tau, but there are five to ten times fewer cars than in Saigon. In high season a GrabCar takes five to fifteen minutes to arrive; at night or in the rain, up to half an hour. What residents actually use is a rented motorbike at $40-60 a month. A bicycle is lovely along the promenade. The city bus exists and you will probably never need it.

Grab and Xanh SM fares in town

Bus station to Back Beach runs 60,000-80,000 VND. Front Beach to the Christ statue, 40,000. End to end along the Thuy Van seafront, 25,000-35,000.

Metered taxis

Mai Linh, Vinasun and Vung Tau Taxi run meters. Flagfall 12,000-15,000 VND, then from 12,000 a kilometre, so bus station to Back Beach comes to 70,000-100,000.

Cash only in practice; cards are rarely accepted. Grab is almost always cheaper and removes the negotiation, and taxis at the ferry terminal have a long-standing reputation for creative pricing with foreigners. Keep them as the backup for a dead phone.

Useful phrases for a driver

Renting a bike in town

Prices are in the section above. The essentials: 130,000-200,000 VND a day, $40-100 a month, deposit is your passport or 3-5 million VND in cash, and you can rent from Hidden Land Travel, Tigit by delivery, your hotel reception or any of the street shops near Back Beach.

Fuel stations are everywhere, Petrolimex and PV Oil mostly. RON95 runs about 24,000 VND a litre (~$0.92) and a Wave or Vision takes three or four litres.

Bicycles

Front Beach and the Thuy Van seafront are both good rides, best early, 06:00 to 08:00, or after 17:00 when the heat drops. Rental is 50,000-80,000 VND a day (~$2-3) from hotels, seafront cafés and the shops near Front Beach. Take sun cream, a cap and water.

Do not attempt the Christ statue by bicycle. There are 800 steps at the end of it.

The city bus

Route 4 runs the length of Front Beach to Back Beach past most of the hotels.

• Fare: 10,000-15,000 VND (~$0.40-0.60).
• Runs 05:30 to 18:30, every 20-40 minutes.
• Slow and infrequent. Grab is simpler, and this is one of the rare Vietnamese cities where that is true even for the budget-minded.

When you actually want to be on the beach rather than moving between them is a separate question. The Vung Tau weather guide has the month by month version.

Onward from Vung Tau

Boats and helicopters to Con Dao

Everything to Côn Đảo is now fast craft; the slow overnight ferries on this route are gone. Departures are from the Cầu Đá pier at Front Beach and the crossing takes about three and a half hours.

There is also a helicopter, which few visitors know about. It flies from Vung Tau's airfield twice a week, an hour in the air, 22 seats. Book a month or two out, because that is how fast they go.

Sailings shift with weather, season and tide, and get cancelled in storms. Book through 12go, condao.express or at the pier.

Nha Trang, Da Lat, Hue

No direct services. Everything runs back through Saigon:

1. Vung Tau → Ho Chi Minh City, 2.5 hours by coach.
2. Ho Chi Minh City (Miền Đông Mới) → Nha Trang, 10-12 hours on a sleeper; Da Lat, 7-8 hours; Da Nang, 24 hours; Hue, 28 hours.

For anything past Nha Trang, fly. Vietjet, Bamboo and Vietnam Airlines out of Tan Son Nhat beat the coach on both time and, once you have counted a night in a bunk, often on money. If you are weighing up the central coast, the Quy Nhon guide and our Hue write-up cover what you would be going for.

Cambodia

Also via Saigon. Giant Ibis and Mekong Express run from Pham Ngu Lao to Phnom Penh in six to eight hours for $15-20, or to Sihanoukville in ten to twelve. Most Western passport holders get a Cambodian visa on arrival at the land border, but it is worth checking your own nationality before you commit to a bus.

More options for a day out of the city are in our Ho Chi Minh City day trips guide.

Six mistakes people keep making

1. Leaving the return ferry ticket until Vung Tau. The window says sold out, a helpful stranger appears with a private agency selling the same seat at triple. This is a deliberate operation aimed at foreigners. Buy the return in Saigon, or book it online the minute you land.

2. Turning up at the FUTA office and finding the bus goes from Miền Đông Mới. The office is a collection point; a free shuttle takes you the 18 km to the terminal. The time on your ticket is the shuttle, not the coach. Miss it and the taxi is on you.

3. Assuming the expressway makes the bus faster. It does not, unless the bus is a nine-seater. Coaches are barred from CT.28 and still take the old road with the container traffic.

4. Driving out on a Friday evening. All of Saigon is doing the same thing. Sunday afternoon in the other direction is nearly as bad, with four hours a common outcome. Tuesday and Wednesday exist.

5. Landing at night and expecting to travel on. Hoa Mai's last departure is 21:00 and limousines mostly stop by 22:00. Either sleep near the airport and leave in the morning, or book a private transfer a day ahead.

6. Renting a bike on a 1949 permit. If your international permit came from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan or Ireland, it is not valid in Vietnam. That is 2,000,000-4,000,000 VND if you are stopped, the bike impounded, and no insurance cover if anything worse happens.

FAQ

Current as of August 2026. Expressway sections, the start of tolling on CT.28 and ferry timetables all move, so check with the operators before you book.