October 04, 2004 Hanoi, Vietnam
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Two of the bad things people have told me about Vietnam are proving to be true. The first is that it's impossible to go anywhere on your own. Nobody's stopping you from getting on a public bus, it's just that the buses don't go to the sites of interest to tourists.
Thus, the Old City is full of travel agents selling package tours to the same places. I wanted to avoid this by taking a motorbike into the remote Northwest. Unfortunately, befriending an English-speaking moto driver is not an option here like it is in Phnom Penh, so you have to hire a guide and bike from a travel agent at about $50 a day, and the trip takes five days. It's too much money and time for me.
I figured I can't fight the system, so I booked a series of tours to the standard placed everybody goes to, which got me to thinking about why I consider this a problem. I did the exact same thing in Australia and New Zealand, and had fun. But in those countries, practically everyone else is white, so you blend in. I guess in Asia, where you stick out like a sore thumb, some of us want to have the experience of going where no Westerner has gone before, so get mad whenever we see another white person and ignore them.
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The other negative thing I was told about Vietnam is that the people all want your money. No tourist is able to make that statement, because we only have contact with service providers: vendors, motorcycle/cyclo drivers, and travel agents, all people trying to sell stuff, and the worst of the worst anywhere you go. But so far the Vietnamese service providers are the worst I've met. I've only been here a couple of days, and have been ripped of numerous times.
They will let you get into ambiguous situations where they claim you owe them more money than you expect, then won't take no for an answer. A favorite tactic of motorcycle drivers is to agree on a number in dong like 5,000, a fair price, then when it's time to pay, demand $5, a fifteen-fold increase. I've had to resort to carrying a pen and paper so I can write out numbers.