Saturday, February 11, 2006
Vietnam, cash up front please.
I've had it! Today is our last day here in Vietnam, and we are not unhappy about it.
We just had the magic calculator incident whilst paying our hotel bill. Not unique on this leg of the journey, but in this case just unusually blatant, especially as this particular hotel is highly recommended in many guide books. We are in Chau Doc, and the Hotel we are staying in has a calculator that rounds up in whole numbers. For example, if you are changing Dong to Dollars, then it makes some sense to round up or round down. But here it only rounds up. SO if your bill is say 22.05 dollars, it is suddenly 23 dollars. I fixed the calculator for the receptionist. I can't say that she was delighted. I also reduced her rate of exchange from 16000 to 15800 dong to the dollar, a more reasonable level, that every other hotel in the country we've been to uses. When she gave us our change in DOng she gave us the most forlorn, tattered, toilet papered 1000 dong note I have ever seen. We objected on the basis that not even a Buddhist Monk would accept that as an alm. So we got 2 x500 dong notes of similar quality. Service with a smile....
Its not the amount, every time the amount is a pittance, its just that it happens every single time. If the perpetrators were blatant, and say that as you are a foreigner therefore you will pay a different rate than locals (fair enough in many cases I believe) and then display those rates and prices, that is tolerable. But this little insidious greed that manifests itself in the way they try and extract money from you like milking a dry cow is infuriating. Everytime you ask how much, I watch the proverbial eye rolling as they imagine an impossibly large price, or a yacht, I'm not sure which, and then wait for the inevitable magic number. Its like a one armed bandit, pull the lever and see what happens. Except it is always jackpot for somebody else. And walking away doesn't work, even when you know the real price. In CHina, when you walked away, the price would drop pretty damn quick until you were back to talking in real money again. Not imaginary money like here...The fact that they dont drop the price when youy walk away (in general) is proof enough to me that most of these vendors, who are well used to dealing with foriegners, dont need to make the sale. Grrrrrrr. SO it is just pure profiteering.
These are the people we deal with every day and that most tourists have to, bus men on local buses, hotels travel agencies etc etc. And I fast believe that almost everyone of them have absolutley no dignity left in them.
Waiting for a bus yesterday, we had three chaps 'helping' us to flag down a bus. NO matter how much we insisted we didnt need them, there was no escape. They screwed up and had us waiting for two hours. Every bus they stopped for somebody they got a dollar kickback, no avoiding it, that is the deal. Even for Vietnamese passengers. They stopped several buses for us. A couple were full, several were Air conditioned (you pay a big supplement for this luxury and it isnt necessary at this time of year). We knew the fare should be 60,000 max each, in the end we paid 75,000 each, as it was getting late and we had a 7 hour journey on diffiult roads ahead. I gave the Tout 150,000, he gave one hundred to the driver of the minibus, and the 3 touts left on the road just fell into a huge dogfight over the 50,000 (a bit more than 3 US dollars) in his hand. We had been there so long that we had attracted the attention of every tout there was in a 5 km radius. All the rest of the people on the bus were Vietnamese, and they were visibly disgusted. I am sure that what is worse than us being treated like walking wallets everyday is watching a dignified people loose all sense of dignity in the name of pure greed.
The two Cyclo riders who brought us to this place to hail a bus were paid 15,000 each, which is a good price for them. However they did cycle 8km for it, with us and our back packs. Those limpwristed laggards on the side of the road earn it like, well, any travel agent I suppose. (sorry Jim!)
On the other side of the Vietnam story, we climbed Mt Sam today and I played football with a 2 year old with an excellent left foot. It was great, and just one of those glimpses of the real Vietnam under the crud that floats on the surface and greets most foreign 'tourists'. It takes a bit to escape it, but the real Vietnam is still there somewhere, but it is slowly being obliterated for anyone on the outside to see. I will write about all the good people we met here next post, but I just had to vent that one.
And the sad truth is, it is the tourists' own fault.
On to Cambodia! Watch out for those calculators. Phnom Pennh by slow boat, only 8 dollars, and we dont have to flag it down.
We just had the magic calculator incident whilst paying our hotel bill. Not unique on this leg of the journey, but in this case just unusually blatant, especially as this particular hotel is highly recommended in many guide books. We are in Chau Doc, and the Hotel we are staying in has a calculator that rounds up in whole numbers. For example, if you are changing Dong to Dollars, then it makes some sense to round up or round down. But here it only rounds up. SO if your bill is say 22.05 dollars, it is suddenly 23 dollars. I fixed the calculator for the receptionist. I can't say that she was delighted. I also reduced her rate of exchange from 16000 to 15800 dong to the dollar, a more reasonable level, that every other hotel in the country we've been to uses. When she gave us our change in DOng she gave us the most forlorn, tattered, toilet papered 1000 dong note I have ever seen. We objected on the basis that not even a Buddhist Monk would accept that as an alm. So we got 2 x500 dong notes of similar quality. Service with a smile....
Its not the amount, every time the amount is a pittance, its just that it happens every single time. If the perpetrators were blatant, and say that as you are a foreigner therefore you will pay a different rate than locals (fair enough in many cases I believe) and then display those rates and prices, that is tolerable. But this little insidious greed that manifests itself in the way they try and extract money from you like milking a dry cow is infuriating. Everytime you ask how much, I watch the proverbial eye rolling as they imagine an impossibly large price, or a yacht, I'm not sure which, and then wait for the inevitable magic number. Its like a one armed bandit, pull the lever and see what happens. Except it is always jackpot for somebody else. And walking away doesn't work, even when you know the real price. In CHina, when you walked away, the price would drop pretty damn quick until you were back to talking in real money again. Not imaginary money like here...The fact that they dont drop the price when youy walk away (in general) is proof enough to me that most of these vendors, who are well used to dealing with foriegners, dont need to make the sale. Grrrrrrr. SO it is just pure profiteering.
These are the people we deal with every day and that most tourists have to, bus men on local buses, hotels travel agencies etc etc. And I fast believe that almost everyone of them have absolutley no dignity left in them.
Waiting for a bus yesterday, we had three chaps 'helping' us to flag down a bus. NO matter how much we insisted we didnt need them, there was no escape. They screwed up and had us waiting for two hours. Every bus they stopped for somebody they got a dollar kickback, no avoiding it, that is the deal. Even for Vietnamese passengers. They stopped several buses for us. A couple were full, several were Air conditioned (you pay a big supplement for this luxury and it isnt necessary at this time of year). We knew the fare should be 60,000 max each, in the end we paid 75,000 each, as it was getting late and we had a 7 hour journey on diffiult roads ahead. I gave the Tout 150,000, he gave one hundred to the driver of the minibus, and the 3 touts left on the road just fell into a huge dogfight over the 50,000 (a bit more than 3 US dollars) in his hand. We had been there so long that we had attracted the attention of every tout there was in a 5 km radius. All the rest of the people on the bus were Vietnamese, and they were visibly disgusted. I am sure that what is worse than us being treated like walking wallets everyday is watching a dignified people loose all sense of dignity in the name of pure greed.
The two Cyclo riders who brought us to this place to hail a bus were paid 15,000 each, which is a good price for them. However they did cycle 8km for it, with us and our back packs. Those limpwristed laggards on the side of the road earn it like, well, any travel agent I suppose. (sorry Jim!)
On the other side of the Vietnam story, we climbed Mt Sam today and I played football with a 2 year old with an excellent left foot. It was great, and just one of those glimpses of the real Vietnam under the crud that floats on the surface and greets most foreign 'tourists'. It takes a bit to escape it, but the real Vietnam is still there somewhere, but it is slowly being obliterated for anyone on the outside to see. I will write about all the good people we met here next post, but I just had to vent that one.
And the sad truth is, it is the tourists' own fault.
On to Cambodia! Watch out for those calculators. Phnom Pennh by slow boat, only 8 dollars, and we dont have to flag it down.
// posted by Dub @ Saturday, February 11, 2006 
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