Stupidity fees

Pork and noodles and lots of other fun things. Delicious and fun. Until the payment confusion.
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We keep getting charged for being stupid foreigners!  And I have a bitter taste in my mouth from these experiences.  It's partly because we're not being careful enough, and it's partly due to a few trickster individuals that we encounter.

We got in late last night to the airport and we went to get a taxi to our hotel.  There were clear signs in English that said that the fee should be $12 for a cab from the airport to Central Hanoi.  Our encounter with this driver was a case when were smart, so we checked the price with him before getting into the car.  He tried to get us to pay $16.  When I told him, "no," pointed to the sign, and said "it's supposed to be $12," he tried to claim that it was a new car so it was more expensive.  We weren't buying that.  Then we showed him a map, pointing to where we wanted to go.  He didn't seem like he was looking at the map at all, and at one point, was even looking at the address and hotel name that we gave him upside down!  He also claimed that we wanted to go somewhere which was outside of the center of Hanoi, so it costs more.  But we are right smack in the center and I told him so.  He finally agreed to $12.  He also took on another passenger and dropped that person off first.  Normally, I wouldn't be bothered by that, but it was after midnight at that point and we were worried that the hotel would be closed by the time we got there.  (Our flight had been delayed.)  Then he took us to this place... it was the wrong street, there was no sign of our hotel's name anywhere.  He tried to convince us that this was our hotel when it was clearly not.  Then he changed his tactic and tried to say that this was a good deal.  The guy at the random commission giving hotel continued to try to convince us that this was our hotel by bringing us an old wrinkled business card for our hotel.  Eventually, we got to our hotel, really late!

I can feel really bitter after the fact, or I can be alert all the time - neither is fun

Dancing water puppet girls.
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Today, we had bun cha (I think that's how it's spelled if you remove all the little Vietnamese twiddles.)  It's rice noodles with meat and vegetables and herbs and crispy spring rolls.  We sat stuffed in with all these Vietnamese people eating their lunch.  It was a delicious and fun experience.  The staff at this place were pretty friendly.  I was telling Mark that it was so delicious that I could leave Vietnam right then and I'd be okay.  I should have actually done that.  We were charged a ridiculous amount for that meal... clearly a foreigner price.  The people sitting across from us gave a start when they heard the price that we were given and it was clear that they wouldn't be paying this same amount.  I'm not sure how we could have handled it better once we had already eaten.  We definitely should have checked the price beforehand.  We wound up paying the stupid foreigner rate, but it really ruined my experience there.

We also went to see a highly recommended water puppet show.  Worth seeing, and maybe when I encounter a USB port again, I can upload photos.  It was only a buck or two for admission.  But there was a "first class" and "second class" ticket.  In Lonely Planet, they suggested that the higher price got you better seats and a tape of the music from the performance.  A tape would have been really nice because the music was the best thing about the whole show.  There was no such tape.  It looked like there was no difference in seating.  We basically were charged more for nothing.  Also, there was a sign saying that if you want to take photos, you have to pay another buck.  I wanted to take photos, and a buck isn't a big deal, so I paid it so that I wouldn't get into trouble later.  It turns out, of course, that they weren't checking any of that at all.  People were taking videos and photos and no one was checking anything!  I also blame Lonely Planet - are they in on all these scams too?

With all these things (actually, not the taxi thing cause we apparently are smarter around midnight), it's only a dollar or so more than we'd otherwise pay.  But it winds up being double what the non-stupid local people pay.  In Thailand, what we paid was only maybe 25% more and the extra bit was only 12 cents or so.  Here, it's been 100% more and it winds up being a dollar.  I will admit that I can afford these extra dollars here and there, and these people could probably use it.  But I'd be so much happier giving the money knowingly rather than having it coerced out of me.  I don't want to have to assume that everyone is out to trick me, but as soon as I stop being wary and start thinking that people are nice and friendly, I get tricked.  So either, I can feel really bitter after the fact, or I can be alert all the time - neither is fun.  It's not really the money, it's the principle, mostly.

Another bit of poor advice from Lonely Planet... Cam Chi Street - supposed to have lots of cheap restaurants with a bunch of people ("cowboys") trying to compete with each other to get our attention by using clever tactics.  Really, it's a handful of expensive restaurants, most of them completely empty, the tactics involve showing you a menu, nothing like what Lonely Planet led me to believe.  This place was listed as a "can't miss" place in multiple books and I heartily disagree.  We wound up having pretty good hot pot, but the prices were pretty high.

Tomorrow, we are taking buses and boats and bikes through the countryside and I hope to feel less scammed and less stupid and gullible after tomorrow.