A friend recently sent me a viral post about Phu Quoc and asked:
“Is it actually possible to live here for €600 a month?”
I’ve been on the island for a while now, and the short answer is no. The longer answer is more interesting and has very little to do with numbers pulled out of thin air.
What immediately caught my eye in that post were the internal contradictions. On the one hand, it claims that Russians are massively wintering here, flights are regular, infrastructure is developing fast. On the other hand, it insists that Phu Quoc is still not a mass tourist destination and that there are “almost no people”. Those things don’t really coexist in real life.
Accommodation is usually the first place where the myth starts to crack. There’s a claim floating around that even the most expensive apartments here cost next to nothing. That hasn’t been my experience at all. A perfectly normal, comfortable hotel comes out at around €650 for two weeks. A slightly better option is closer to €950 for two weeks, and that’s still far from luxury — just a good, clean place where you don’t feel like compromising every day. These are prices with booking discounts included. You can go cheaper, of course, but then you’re making very conscious trade-offs.
The same applies to transport. Monthly scooter rentals are often advertised at laughably low prices, but in reality a normal, usable bike will cost around €140–150 per month. Anything significantly cheaper usually comes with surprises.
There’s also this idea of Phu Quoc as a hyper-modern island full of skyscrapers, free electric buses, amusement parks, cable cars and nightly fireworks. That image mostly comes from two very specific areas — Sunset Town and the so-called “Venice” development. Outside of those zones, the island looks very different. Sunset Town itself feels strangely artificial, almost like a movie set. A large portion of the buildings are simply empty, entire floors with no life in them, which creates a slightly uncanny atmosphere once the initial visual effect wears off.
Food prices are another point where expectations often don’t match reality. Eating for a couple of euros sounds great on paper, but in practice that usually means something extremely basic. In normal restaurants, a realistic average meal comes out closer to €8–9. Tourist areas push it higher, local places can be cheaper, but there’s no magic loophole here.
Massage prices are a good example of how location changes everything. In Sunset Town, a massage easily reaches €25–30, which feels closer to Europe than Southeast Asia. Move away from tourist hotspots, and prices drop to around €10, much more in line with Thailand.
Day-to-day life isn’t expensive in every aspect, though. I go to a small local gym mostly used by locals, and a day pass costs about €1.50, which feels refreshingly reasonable.
I initially stayed in Sunset Town, and for a short visit it’s fine. But spending more time here made something clear: the better experience is probably renting a place somewhere more remote, closer to the jungle or the beach, and using a scooter to get around. Riding here is a stress test at first, but you adapt quickly, and honestly it feels less aggressive than Phuket traffic.
Climate-wise, Phu Quoc feels slightly cooler than Phuket, which I personally appreciate. Culturally, it’s very different from Thailand. Different rhythm, different people, and overall I’ve found the locals noticeably more friendly.
The tourist mix is also interesting. There are some Europeans, though not many. I haven’t really seen Americans or Brits. There are quite a few wealthy Indian travelers, a lot of Chinese and Koreans, plenty of Russians, and surprisingly many visitors from Kazakhstan. At one point I met a couple from Almaty whose scooter died near a pagoda — they ended up refueling it from a plastic bag, helped by a Vietnamese grandmother. One of those moments that feels very specific to Southeast Asia.
So, can you live on Phu Quoc for €600 a month? Not in any realistic, comfortable sense. This island isn’t cheap in the way people like to imagine. It’s uneven, sometimes artificial, sometimes surprisingly raw, and definitely more expensive than the hype suggests.
That said, it’s still worth experiencing, just not for the fantasy of “almost free living”, but for the fact that it’s a very different version of Southeast Asia, one that doesn’t try too hard to be Thailand.
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