If you’re feeling like a splurge this week, Expedia is happy to sell you a short-term apartment rental in central Vietnam at the bargain price of only 1.2 million USD per night. What is going on here?
Vietnam Apartment Selling For 1.2 million USD per night On Expedia
A friend of mine is traveling to Đà Nẵng in the north of Vietnam and while looking for accommodations, stumbled on a very special apartment at a very premium price: the Minh Anh Apartment in the city of Huế .
And look at the beautiful luxury amenities you receive:
- 431 square feet (wow, palatial…)
- City view (of beautiful Huế)
- Kitchen (because for that money, why would you want to go out to eat?)
- Soap
- Free local class
I’m booking a week!
Sorry, I could not resist.
The answer, to me, seems clear. No one is trying to rent out an apartment for over $1 MN/night. Instead, Expedia is pricing in USD when the apartment should be priced in Vietnamese dong. 1 Vietnamese dong equals 0.000038 United States dollars. Put another way, the 1,253,333 number when priced in dongs equates to 48 USD.
Suddenly it makes sense…
Not that I’d stay there or risk the problem correcting itself…I’d hate to book this on Expedia and have it try to charge my card over $1.2 MN!
These sorts of currency conversion problems are rare, but not unheard of. It was currency conversion issues that led to dirt-cheap tickets originating in Rangoon, Burma (or as some say, Yangon, Myanmar) over a decade ago…what fun days those were…an early battle with SWISS over cancelled tickets which prepared me for later battles.
I’m surprised Expedia does not have some sort of system in place to flag hotels or apartments that are so far outside any reasonable standard of deviation in a hotel market, but if you did decide to book the Minh Anh Apartment, I expect you’d ultimately be charged only $48…
Hat Tip: SINJim
I feel like people in Da Nang and Hue might resent being told they were from the North.
They still happen but it’s not as big of a “discount” or “mistake.” The most typical ones these days are currency mistakes with currency that is a “dollar” but typically the USD fare that didn’t get converted properly to CAD, SGD, or AUD, so it’s basically a 25% or so “discount.”
Let’s see : a “bargain” ? $ 48 ?
Yep , really a “bargain” for , among other things : being under commie law , having informers spying on you , various diseases endemic to the country , impure water , questionable health care .
You’ve obviously never been to Vietnam, and I know you’re just trolling, but if you replace “commie” with authoritarian, one might assume you were talking about the United States.
LOL If you actually visited Vietnam, or knew anything about it, you would know that comparing their communist, totalitarian system to the US is hilariously dumb.
Dude, you haven’t been outside DesMoines., except that one time you went to Branson
No actually it isn’t. What’s dumb is for you to state otherwise.
Your reasoning please? I’m in the mood for a laugh.
I’ll take a stab at it for Michael, as despite your assertion, I have in fact been to Vietnam. Many times.
While yes, their government does claim to be socialist, they’re certainly not communist. Land and enterprise ownership abounds, and burdensome regulations seem to be non-existent. Their banking is far more liberalized than most EU countries, also UK and AUS. Foreigners can easily reside and own businesses. Many Vietnamese themselves run multiple businesses.
Comparing Vietnam to the US, Trump has said it himself, he doesn’t like opposition. While Vietnam is a one-party state, it isn’t Myanmar, or even Laos, and ICE style raids aren’t a part of life at all.
Regarding a previous poster’s comment about diseases, water, and healthcare, I’m not sure what point is being made. Not all Americans have access to clean water (Flint), most don’t have access to sufficient healthcare, and let’s not forget anti-vaxers causing things like measles to emerge.
I know both of you are trolls and I shouldn’t engage, but VN and the US ain’t as different as they once were. Vietnam has a huge growing middle class and it’s just an odd country to choose to denigrate.
Well this is certainly amusing. You’ve utterly failed to make your point. Although you raise some valid facts about the people there being able to own businesses and property, you completely gloss over the totalitarianism of their state. Trump says he doesn’t like opposition, but neither does any politician. The difference is that in Vietnam there are no free elections, nor free speech, and criticizing the government can get you thrown in jail. The Vietnamese police, or “yelllow dogs” routinely extort bribes from the citizens and there is no recourse.
Also seriously? ICE raids? Do you know how dumb that sounds? A country conducting raids to arrest and deport ILLEGAL ALIENS is normal. You leftists have gotten so used to having a government that fails to enforce immigrations laws that it came as a surprise to you, but there’s a new sheriff in town so you’d better get used to it.
I like Vietnam, I’ve been there several times, I even got a bad case of the shits there once, but you’ve just proven that making any sort of comparison between their government and ours is the sort of thing only a dimwitted leftist could come up with.
QED
I disagree with you, but I’ll leave it at that.
Myanmar is the name of the country (hasn’t been Burma for years), but the people are referred to as Burmese. At least that’s what the Burmese people told me on my last trip there.
Was very glad I visited when I did. I hope to go back.
I certainly have enjoyed my visits to Vietnam and as a tourist never worried about whatever the politics may be there. However, your dig about ICE style raids makes no sense as who is trying to enter Vietnam illegally??
That is funny. Obviously a currency setting snafu.
But still- 1.2 million? That’s a lot of Dong
I would assume it is about to become a Trump branded property, and that is the discounted rate for ‘early booking’.
I saw on Fox News that Trump is going to hold peace talks with Putin in the building….
Ah, that brings memories of my youth when the firm favourite Alitalia got its INRs mixed up with IRRs and was selling £130 return business class tickets between DEL and LHR. I bought eight of them but really, really didn’t enjoy my first visit to India so I ended up doing three back-to-backs and cancelling the rest.
To make up for the miles on which I missed out as a result of those cancellations, the beloved airline was there for me a few years later with the CMB-NYC fares without routing restrictions that helped me visit places such as AKL and DKR (before it became DSS) for the first time in my life. That also gave me my first exposure to the County Court system, when Srilankan Airlines hired a specialist aviation firm in London to defend my claim, only to disappoint me by paying up in full a week before the court date. Invaluable experiences!
Going back on topic, $48 isn’t cheap for a provincial city in Vietnam. When I did the SAS challenge, I spent just over half that to stay in a 3* hotel in the centre of Hanoi – the taxi cost for an one-way trip between the airport and the city centre was easily 70% of the hotel rate.
You flew three round trips India to UK back-to-back? As in pretty much just turning round and heading straight back?
Wild!
I’d love to hear more about that…..
What I mean is that I went to India and back 3 times without exiting the airport on any of the three occasions. I didn’t do all 12 flights in one go!
It wasn’t very exciting, I was living in Leicester at the time and had to get to LHR for 04:00 as the MXP flight went at 06:10 or something. So I obviously didn’t get any sleep, and their long-haul business class didn’t have flat seats back then, all in all it was pretty tiring. It also got me a bit of questioning from the authorities both at DEL and MXP (the UK wasn’t bothered), but nothing extraordinary.
Mileage earning was rather generous so I ended up with a decent stash in my OK+ account (RIP).
it’s Million, typo
Expedia Offers “Luxury” Apartment In Vietnam For 1.2 Mlillion USD Per Night…
Yikes.