Ha Long,
Has this been goin' on...?"
There are two photo album links within the body of this diary entry.
Jan 13th. We waited at the lobby of the nearest hotel on Lo Su street. The bus took an hour to arrive. All the other passengers had purchased a "two day, one night tour" from Hanoi. Instinct and experience kept me from doing the same thing. After an hour picking up all the different passengers (we were the last, at almost 9 a.m.), they spent four hours getting to their boats because of road construction, making a total of five hours. They'd all been told three hours by their hotel tour booking agents. One weird aspect of the trip: in spite of leaving late, they spent 25 minutes at a bathroom break which was actually a ploy to force them to hike through a high-end tourist mall like a very long warehouse. They were dropped at one door and picked up at the other end. I kept wondering, how many idiot millionaire tourists exist who will pay the $400 price on the picture frame price tags in this mall, and how will they drag them home? No-one ever does, I guess; what a waste of everybody's time. One of the Russian guys, Timor, said "When they look at us all they see is a large bag of money".
When I realized later how the overnight boats work, it all fell into place for me. The buses are intentionally late and arrive in time to board their passengers onto boats which have just disgorged their previous guests, who will climb aboard the same buses and return to Hanoi. There is only the pretense of a 3 hour trip to Bai Chay - they don't want to arrive too early and make the new crop of passengers have to wait, standing on the dock.
So these tourists would get four hours on the water today before it's too dark to see, sleep aboard, and start heading back to port by 10:30 the next morning in order to connect with the return buses. The day was also quite overcast, so I`m guessing they wouldn't "highly recommend" a tour to Ha Long Bay to their friends when they get home to their own countries. They'd have a slightly unpleasant taste in their mouths because of the "smoke and mirrors" practices of the tour companies.
It was pretty dead in Bai Chay on this day, even though it was winter in Europe and N. America, and there should have been more tourists here than there were. Deb and I relaxed overnight in a comfy hotel room for the bargain rate of $10, and decided to go on our six hour cruise the next day, having waited right until the evening to be sure of sunshine in the weather forecast. That's what Vu and Kim had done on their honeymoon, and the fact that they explained that to us is a perfect illustration of how important Couchsurfing hosts are as ambassadors and guides for their guests. It cost us a third of the price of a tour out of Hanoi, or less. We expected to be on the water by 8 a.m. and back by 2 p.m. when it would still be sunny and the temperature would have risen to a high of 20 degrees.
For a price that rivals high end tours in N. America, we could have slept overnight in a cabin on one of the larger junks, which I thought seemed rather a romantic notion. It's one of those "only do once" situations, so I almost went for it. It was the short time on the water and the risk of having to book a sail in advance that might take place in crummy weather that made me draw back. I didn't see any boats that looked big enough to have the fancy cabins we saw in the photos. If I could have seen them in real life, I might have agreed to pay the price and book that tour. But it seemed like a craps shoot either way, so we opted for the less expensive gamble.
None of the rather rundown day-tripper boats we saw when we walked the seawall looked like any of the ones in the photos at the tourist agencies in Hanoi. Our hotel manager says no-one is allowed to build new boats, because Ha Long Bay is already clogged with the ones it has. I was sure we'd see the bigger ones on the water, and it would be interesting to see if they also look old and tired, or if they're kept looking new. Apparently they spend every night at anchor in between the islands - they return to port by mid-day to pick up each new crop of arrivals and probably laundry and supplies for the galley.
For a price that rivals high end tours in N. America, we could have slept overnight in a cabin on one of the larger junks, which I thought seemed rather a romantic notion. It's one of those "only do once" situations, so I almost went for it. It was the short time on the water and the risk of having to book a sail in advance that might take place in crummy weather that made me draw back. I didn't see any boats that looked big enough to have the fancy cabins we saw in the photos. If I could have seen them in real life, I might have agreed to pay the price and book that tour. But it seemed like a craps shoot either way, so we opted for the less expensive gamble.
None of the rather rundown day-tripper boats we saw when we walked the seawall looked like any of the ones in the photos at the tourist agencies in Hanoi. Our hotel manager says no-one is allowed to build new boats, because Ha Long Bay is already clogged with the ones it has. I was sure we'd see the bigger ones on the water, and it would be interesting to see if they also look old and tired, or if they're kept looking new. Apparently they spend every night at anchor in between the islands - they return to port by mid-day to pick up each new crop of arrivals and probably laundry and supplies for the galley.
I was a bit sad that our own boat would be less fancy, but it would be protected from the cool breeze on the crossing by big glass windows. We would have an open deck when we wanted to stand outside, and I'd be training my camera on the karst hills that rise out of the water, the "Amazing Cave", and other nicer looking boats than ours - one can't take a photo of one's own boat, which is why we got almost no photos of our own tour boat.
I did the math. We'd actually be on the water in the sunshine almost as long as the "2 day, 1 night" clients, who were paying close to $200 a pop. We paid $35 apiece, which included our seafood lunch and the Ha Long park entry fee of $12 each. We paid the bus $30 to bring us here, booked through a tourist agent, but our hotel manager said he could put us in two empty seats on a tour bus on the way home for $5 each, paid directly to the driver!
Jan 14th: We made absolutely the right decision, thank goodness. Our six hour cruise with lunch was perfect, and we saw everything that the "2 days, 1 night" people got to see. We had just as much time in the sunshine - we had a perfect sunny day. The floating hotels weren't that impressive up close, so I suspected that the cabins would have been a disappointment compared to the brochure photos, which were obviously taken when they were new, or at least newly renovated, except for perhaps the most expensive, high-end boats which will ask $500 a night. We saw the "Amazing Cave", hiked to the top of Ti Top Island hill for some excellent views, and had a decent lunch.
We had to pay an extra $12 for a lady to row us through some limestone arches - some people opted for kayaks, also an extra charge. Sadly, a young couple hadn't brought cash with them because none of us had been told in advance about this charge, but fortunately a boatwoman whispered at them that she'd take them out for the $8 that they had.
A much weirder situation was that there were three older English fellows on motorbikes who booked a four hour tour and hoped to get back to the dock to begin their six hour ride back to Hanoi before dark, but they put them on the same boat with us, with no explanation. We asked the guide and crew to explain before we even boarded the boat, and they evaded our question, as though they didn't understand what we were asking. We assumed perhaps a smaller boat would bring them back in time, but no - once out on the water, they were simply told there was no way for them to return, and by the way, would they like to purchase the lunch now? Also there would be an extra charge to climb Ti Top hill, which wasn't in their four hour price. Their alternative was to sit in the boat while the rest of us spent forty minutes on the Ti Top Island. They were simply shanghai'd, with no explanation and no apology. This is the dark side of tourism in Vietnam: the "shuck'n'jive", smoke-and-mirrors approach to offering you one thing and giving you something else, to convenience themselves rather than you, and to maximize their profits.
Afterward, five of us went out for beer and food, and had an odd experience of the sort we've read about and heard about from other tourists. The waitress quoted us a price, in writing, which we all saw, discussed with her and understood, and then when it came time to settle the bill, she tried to insist that she'd told us a price that was triple what she'd asked initially. She showed us the paper she'd written on, and she'd added a 1 to the 5 she'd written earlier. We had a difficult debate with her, with the mediation of one of the other Vietnamese costumers who could speak a little English, and ended up compromising on the price but not giving in completely to what she tried to pull on us. Not helping her cause was that the price printed on a poster on the wall was "10,000" while she was trying to charge us 15,000 after having altered the 5,000 she'd originally quoted. Fortunately there were five of us at the table, and we'd all seen and heard what she'd quoted. I was incensed by her blatant trickery, and became just as stubborn as she was, so I ended up agreeing to pay what was on the wall poster, and no more.
Food was also a problem in Bai Chay. I don't know who gets all the inexpensive seafood that is pulled out of the water; maybe the high-end hotels or the cruise ships. For us, menu prices were 25% to 65% higher than in every previous city we've visited, and when my seafood fried rice arrived there was barely a whiff of actual seafood in it, except for two very tiny shrimp. It was such a blatant rip-off that I actually called the waitress back: "Fried rice seafood? No seafood in it!" She took my plate back to the kitchen and added a few small pieces of squid and calamari, none too graciously. I think they're convinced that they can rip tourists off here with impunity, but their restaurants are almost empty so I don't think their get-rich-quick plan is working for them.
Mind you, the evening before we were invited to sit at an after-dark restaurant by a fellow who claimed to be a French guide on one of the boats, but who also told someone else in our group that he is a hotel manager. He eagerly treated us to grilled octopus and bought me a beer, which I thought was uncharacteristically generous; but then we could barely escape his sales pitch for a guided trip in Ninh Binh and/or a stay in his brother's hotel in Hanoi.
Anyway, odd carnival barker games like that aside, we enjoyed our short side trip to Bai Chay. We're pleased that we saw Ha Long Bay, and chose the right day and the right way to do it. The photos are great. Our hotel room was excellent - the hotels were the best deal in town. One of the guide books said it was because there were so many overnight sleep-aboard tour boats now. We saw them headed out as we were coming in - they had to time their loading before we returned to port and needed the dock space to disembark our day-trippers. A large number of the overnight boats didn't even haul anchor because they had no passengers, and they obviously couldn't fill them because their prices were too high - they didn't seem to understand the concept of adjusting your price between high season and low season, to match the actual market. As a result, however, the hotels were a bargain: the three English guys paid $8 for their room; Andrew from Vancouver paid $5 for his; but ours was well worth $10. It was spacious, clean and comfortable, with a soft mattress, clean sheets and comforter, and a hot shower. We looked forward to sleeping in a little the next day, and checking out at noon before being picked up at the door by a tourist bus returning us to Hanoi for a third of the price we paid to arrive.
Jan 15th: On the way to Bai Chay and back I indulged my pleasure at observing residential architecture, as I do in every country. These homes were monothematically tall, narrow buildings but with an infinite variety in window treatments, awnings, balconies, balustrades, pillars, tile work, symbols and accents, and they were painted a wide ranging pallet of fresh colours. They were extremely attractive houses, inexpensively built. They are simple brick and plaster, with fairly cheap labour and materials, and no need for insulation and heating systems. I’d be very comfortable trading my house for one of these – but not along the busy road where most of them are built. There was a constant strenuous blaring of horns from each vehicle passing the next - and every vehicle on the road was in a constant state of passing or being passed.
Our hotel manager, Mr. Hoang, met us at the docks when we arrived in Bai Chay, and in a calm, pleasant manner convinced us to let him tell the taxi driver to drop us at his hotel, The Ky Moi in Vuon Dao street. He told us exactly what to pay, put us in a metered taxi, and it turned out to be less. He offered us a $10 room, and showed us three to choose from. They were all excellent. He sold us the cheapest tour we could find, and it was the same tour that others on our boat paid more for. He steered us to the best cheap, honest restaurant on the block; when we tried another nearby, we got blatantly ripped off. Finally, he took care of us (and simultaneously several other customers) when we left, driving us to the terminal, and arranging a ride in a 14 seater tourist van back to Hanoi for even less than we’d originally already agreed to pay him, and that was already a third of what we’d paid to the tour agent to come here from Hanoi - Deborah handed him what he'd asked for, and he handed a bill back, saying "Discount, for you". He’s a good man, and even if he has to charge you more because it is high or shoulder season, I’m convinced that it will be a good price.
We'd had an interesting morning. First of all we had trouble locating a restaurant that would sell decent Vietnamese coffee for a normal price. We knew from the last two days that one place was terribly bitter, and two others had served us weak powdered coffee. At the second one, trying to cater specifically to Germans, we stood up and left in disgust after she fussed with it twice and made it no better, leaving the coffee still sitting on the table. We checked out a tour hotel but they wanted $3 a cup, which is three times the price that even tourists pay on the street. I wondered if we'd somehow stepped over the border and no-one knew how to make actual Vietnamese coffee.
Finally we located the street that Hoang had originally indicated – we hadn`t realized that it split off from ours. We ended up at Bich Deo, a modest little storefront café where a cheerful lady served us wonderful, strong traditional Vietnamese coffee in the time-honoured way, in a bowl of hot water, and with a glass of hot extra water to dilute it to taste, without even having to be asked. We noticed photos of her on the wall, visiting Singapore, Dubai, Vancouver, and Los Angeles with her husband, and asked her about them, a little incredulous. "Oh yes," she explained, and showed us a photo of her two daughters, one in Saigon and the other in California or Canada, I can`t remember which. She couldn`t speak English, but she was a worldly and intuitive lady.
We decided to walk among the market stalls looking for breakfast, which became a fun and delicious scavenger hunt. We had half-moon fried dumplings with egg and glass noodles inside, and banh mi tr'ung, which is a delicious fresh baguette warmed in an oven, with a veggie omelet and chili sauce inside. We had fried squid in batter, which we almost turned down because we weren't sure what it was, but we met a girl who spoke English and she bought us two for what we were about to be charged for one. We had donuts; fried spring rolls; we located some roasted salted peanuts after everyone told us there were only raw ones available; and then we went to find some fruit.
We approached one lady to ask her how much she wanted for her jackfruit, which Deborah is very fond of, and she wanted 20K for 11 pieces, 450 grams, and proceeded to bag them without asking first if we agreed to her price. We're becoming used to being charged double and triple automatically by the vendors, and walking away from the ones who seem to be demanding extortionate tourist prices. I looked around for options. We're negotiating almost completely in Vietnamese by now, but I can't yet remember how to say “Stop”, as in “ cease”, or “wait” yet.
Jan 14th: We made absolutely the right decision, thank goodness. Our six hour cruise with lunch was perfect, and we saw everything that the "2 days, 1 night" people got to see. We had just as much time in the sunshine - we had a perfect sunny day. The floating hotels weren't that impressive up close, so I suspected that the cabins would have been a disappointment compared to the brochure photos, which were obviously taken when they were new, or at least newly renovated, except for perhaps the most expensive, high-end boats which will ask $500 a night. We saw the "Amazing Cave", hiked to the top of Ti Top Island hill for some excellent views, and had a decent lunch.
We had to pay an extra $12 for a lady to row us through some limestone arches - some people opted for kayaks, also an extra charge. Sadly, a young couple hadn't brought cash with them because none of us had been told in advance about this charge, but fortunately a boatwoman whispered at them that she'd take them out for the $8 that they had.
A much weirder situation was that there were three older English fellows on motorbikes who booked a four hour tour and hoped to get back to the dock to begin their six hour ride back to Hanoi before dark, but they put them on the same boat with us, with no explanation. We asked the guide and crew to explain before we even boarded the boat, and they evaded our question, as though they didn't understand what we were asking. We assumed perhaps a smaller boat would bring them back in time, but no - once out on the water, they were simply told there was no way for them to return, and by the way, would they like to purchase the lunch now? Also there would be an extra charge to climb Ti Top hill, which wasn't in their four hour price. Their alternative was to sit in the boat while the rest of us spent forty minutes on the Ti Top Island. They were simply shanghai'd, with no explanation and no apology. This is the dark side of tourism in Vietnam: the "shuck'n'jive", smoke-and-mirrors approach to offering you one thing and giving you something else, to convenience themselves rather than you, and to maximize their profits.
Afterward, five of us went out for beer and food, and had an odd experience of the sort we've read about and heard about from other tourists. The waitress quoted us a price, in writing, which we all saw, discussed with her and understood, and then when it came time to settle the bill, she tried to insist that she'd told us a price that was triple what she'd asked initially. She showed us the paper she'd written on, and she'd added a 1 to the 5 she'd written earlier. We had a difficult debate with her, with the mediation of one of the other Vietnamese costumers who could speak a little English, and ended up compromising on the price but not giving in completely to what she tried to pull on us. Not helping her cause was that the price printed on a poster on the wall was "10,000" while she was trying to charge us 15,000 after having altered the 5,000 she'd originally quoted. Fortunately there were five of us at the table, and we'd all seen and heard what she'd quoted. I was incensed by her blatant trickery, and became just as stubborn as she was, so I ended up agreeing to pay what was on the wall poster, and no more.
Food was also a problem in Bai Chay. I don't know who gets all the inexpensive seafood that is pulled out of the water; maybe the high-end hotels or the cruise ships. For us, menu prices were 25% to 65% higher than in every previous city we've visited, and when my seafood fried rice arrived there was barely a whiff of actual seafood in it, except for two very tiny shrimp. It was such a blatant rip-off that I actually called the waitress back: "Fried rice seafood? No seafood in it!" She took my plate back to the kitchen and added a few small pieces of squid and calamari, none too graciously. I think they're convinced that they can rip tourists off here with impunity, but their restaurants are almost empty so I don't think their get-rich-quick plan is working for them.
Mind you, the evening before we were invited to sit at an after-dark restaurant by a fellow who claimed to be a French guide on one of the boats, but who also told someone else in our group that he is a hotel manager. He eagerly treated us to grilled octopus and bought me a beer, which I thought was uncharacteristically generous; but then we could barely escape his sales pitch for a guided trip in Ninh Binh and/or a stay in his brother's hotel in Hanoi.
Anyway, odd carnival barker games like that aside, we enjoyed our short side trip to Bai Chay. We're pleased that we saw Ha Long Bay, and chose the right day and the right way to do it. The photos are great. Our hotel room was excellent - the hotels were the best deal in town. One of the guide books said it was because there were so many overnight sleep-aboard tour boats now. We saw them headed out as we were coming in - they had to time their loading before we returned to port and needed the dock space to disembark our day-trippers. A large number of the overnight boats didn't even haul anchor because they had no passengers, and they obviously couldn't fill them because their prices were too high - they didn't seem to understand the concept of adjusting your price between high season and low season, to match the actual market. As a result, however, the hotels were a bargain: the three English guys paid $8 for their room; Andrew from Vancouver paid $5 for his; but ours was well worth $10. It was spacious, clean and comfortable, with a soft mattress, clean sheets and comforter, and a hot shower. We looked forward to sleeping in a little the next day, and checking out at noon before being picked up at the door by a tourist bus returning us to Hanoi for a third of the price we paid to arrive.
Jan 15th: On the way to Bai Chay and back I indulged my pleasure at observing residential architecture, as I do in every country. These homes were monothematically tall, narrow buildings but with an infinite variety in window treatments, awnings, balconies, balustrades, pillars, tile work, symbols and accents, and they were painted a wide ranging pallet of fresh colours. They were extremely attractive houses, inexpensively built. They are simple brick and plaster, with fairly cheap labour and materials, and no need for insulation and heating systems. I’d be very comfortable trading my house for one of these – but not along the busy road where most of them are built. There was a constant strenuous blaring of horns from each vehicle passing the next - and every vehicle on the road was in a constant state of passing or being passed.
Our hotel manager, Mr. Hoang, met us at the docks when we arrived in Bai Chay, and in a calm, pleasant manner convinced us to let him tell the taxi driver to drop us at his hotel, The Ky Moi in Vuon Dao street. He told us exactly what to pay, put us in a metered taxi, and it turned out to be less. He offered us a $10 room, and showed us three to choose from. They were all excellent. He sold us the cheapest tour we could find, and it was the same tour that others on our boat paid more for. He steered us to the best cheap, honest restaurant on the block; when we tried another nearby, we got blatantly ripped off. Finally, he took care of us (and simultaneously several other customers) when we left, driving us to the terminal, and arranging a ride in a 14 seater tourist van back to Hanoi for even less than we’d originally already agreed to pay him, and that was already a third of what we’d paid to the tour agent to come here from Hanoi - Deborah handed him what he'd asked for, and he handed a bill back, saying "Discount, for you". He’s a good man, and even if he has to charge you more because it is high or shoulder season, I’m convinced that it will be a good price.
We'd had an interesting morning. First of all we had trouble locating a restaurant that would sell decent Vietnamese coffee for a normal price. We knew from the last two days that one place was terribly bitter, and two others had served us weak powdered coffee. At the second one, trying to cater specifically to Germans, we stood up and left in disgust after she fussed with it twice and made it no better, leaving the coffee still sitting on the table. We checked out a tour hotel but they wanted $3 a cup, which is three times the price that even tourists pay on the street. I wondered if we'd somehow stepped over the border and no-one knew how to make actual Vietnamese coffee.
Finally we located the street that Hoang had originally indicated – we hadn`t realized that it split off from ours. We ended up at Bich Deo, a modest little storefront café where a cheerful lady served us wonderful, strong traditional Vietnamese coffee in the time-honoured way, in a bowl of hot water, and with a glass of hot extra water to dilute it to taste, without even having to be asked. We noticed photos of her on the wall, visiting Singapore, Dubai, Vancouver, and Los Angeles with her husband, and asked her about them, a little incredulous. "Oh yes," she explained, and showed us a photo of her two daughters, one in Saigon and the other in California or Canada, I can`t remember which. She couldn`t speak English, but she was a worldly and intuitive lady.
We decided to walk among the market stalls looking for breakfast, which became a fun and delicious scavenger hunt. We had half-moon fried dumplings with egg and glass noodles inside, and banh mi tr'ung, which is a delicious fresh baguette warmed in an oven, with a veggie omelet and chili sauce inside. We had fried squid in batter, which we almost turned down because we weren't sure what it was, but we met a girl who spoke English and she bought us two for what we were about to be charged for one. We had donuts; fried spring rolls; we located some roasted salted peanuts after everyone told us there were only raw ones available; and then we went to find some fruit.
We approached one lady to ask her how much she wanted for her jackfruit, which Deborah is very fond of, and she wanted 20K for 11 pieces, 450 grams, and proceeded to bag them without asking first if we agreed to her price. We're becoming used to being charged double and triple automatically by the vendors, and walking away from the ones who seem to be demanding extortionate tourist prices. I looked around for options. We're negotiating almost completely in Vietnamese by now, but I can't yet remember how to say “Stop”, as in “ cease”, or “wait” yet.
I said to Deborah, “Come over here, this lady’s jackfruit look more orange, riper and sweeter. Let’s ask her how much she wants for hers.” I had to draw her away – Deborah’s too much of a softie for effective bargaining. The second lady was very eager to sell us hers, but her price kept shifting: 20K a kilogram was agreed to but when she passed me the bag it felt light so I put it on he scale myself, suspecting she'd used her finger to make it look like more than it was. Sure enough it was only 500 grams. Suddenly she said, “20K per half kilogram”. It was still a little more for less than the previous lady, so I reluctantly agreed - she'd already snatched the 20K out of Deb's hand. Suddenly the numbers coming out of her mouth changed – she was holding Deborah’s 20K note against her cheek and asking for another 5K. We said no and tried to hand back the bag of jackfruit, but she pushed it back and wouldn't return the 20K, so Deborah insisted that she’d take the 20K as agreed, or nothing. Finally she agreed. In the meantime the first girl had been sitting watching all this, sulking and scowling. Suddenly a vendor between the two ladies jumped up in a fury, grabbed at my pocket (there was nothing in it so she didn't get anything) and began yelling and swearing at me, although it was obvious the lady we’d purchased from was happy with her price. I had to be angry with the intervenor and wag my finger at her as if I’d be perfectly willing to trade blows, if it came to that, to make her back down, although I was still in mild shock over her behaviour.
What had happened, I asked myself? Did we really pay too little, did I accidentally cheat this woman, or is there something else going on here? I thought villagers in every continent understood how market negotiations work, and that the customer tries to get the best price. By the time I got back to my hotel room I’d realized that perhaps the first lady had “lost face” by losing the sale to her neighbour. I asked Hoang what a Vietnamese person would pay for a kilo of jackfruit, and showed him what they were because he didn’t know the English name. “Oh, those”, he said. “20K per kilogram.” So it wasn’t really a price issue at all, we actually did pay double what we should have; both ladies were just engaged in a theatrical game of “Fleece the stupid tourist”, and the first lady was a sore loser. The only other thing I could imagine is that she didn't realize Deborah and I worked as a team, and she thought I'd butted in and scuttled her sale.
So, lesson learned: try not to play one vendor off against another, and learn the words for “stop” and “wait”. We did better with our final purchase, a bunch of bananas, for which we had some experience with the price. I asked in Vietnamese, very simply, “How much?” She said “20 thousand”. I said quietly in Vietnamese, “No”, and turned to walk away. “Wait, wait”, said her neighbour, and the banana lady very quickly offered to sell them to us for 10 thousand. I agreed, still not showing much pleasure over the price because they try to read my face intently when I negotiate. Both ladies laughed and cheerfully congratulated us on knowing our prices, and happily said goodbye. It was shocking to me to note how differently these two exchanges went!
Back in Hanoi, Kim and Vu were an antidote to any negative experiences we'd had with Vietnamese vendors and businesspeople. When we were in the south, the people there told us that the northerners are cold, stern, unsmiling people. There is some evidence of that, and they do seem to be more hot-tempered and fractious than in the south - we've seen slapping fights break out on the street. But on the whole they seem to be industrious, confident and dignified, and we've met many charming people here.
Jan 16th: we had a pleasant day visiting the Temple of Literature, which is a fine temple to Confucius and other important teachers, with multiple gates and buildings, and stele listing over 1300 scholars who'd been granted scholarships through a series of 82 sets of examinations. This is a university which existed 1100 years ago and was cultured and rigorous in its administration and its curriculum. At the Temple we spent time with Vinh, "Vince", who works for the American Chamber of Commerce in Saigon, not far from the Canadian one. We exchanged contact details and agreed to look him up when we get back to Saigon.
We looked for a taxi to go meet Joe's friend "Bonnie". I refused a cab that pulled up, and said that I was waiting for a Mai Linh taxi - the only one we trust to use a meter in Hanoi. The driver convinced me that he was just as good and just as honest. He asked how much we expected to pay Mai Linh, and I said we'd paid 24K to come to the Temple, and wanted to return to the same place. "I can take you back for seventeen," he said, holding up seven fingers. We repeated "Seventeen? Not seventy?" several times, then repeated the same numbers in Vietnamese, just to be sure. He assured us we were correct. He didn't put on the meter. After we arrived at our address, he insisted he'd said "Seventy". We absolutely refused to pay more than the twenty that Deb had been holding for him since we got in the cab, and repeated what he had agreed to in Vietnamese. It's the exact game so many other tourists have told us they've been caught in, so I wasn't completely taken off guard. But he knew we were strong in our conviction and we were on a very public street in the tourist zone. Anyone else who got involved would agree that his price was ridiculous from the Temple of Literature back to that street corner. He moaned, almost took off with nothing, but finally accepted his 20K and sped away with no further complaint.
We met with Thu Nguyen, aka Ha, aka Bonnie, a petite girl who looks barely out of high school but who has travelled on her own to Japan where her fiancé is studying nanotechnology engineering. They will get married next month and move to Houston to continue their studies. We were finally able to deliver the present to her from Truong that I have been carrying in my backpack for a month in order to deliver in person - he didn't want to mail it. We had a great coffee with her, a delicious sweet "egg coffee", and a long, interesting chat.
In the evening we invited Kim and Vu, his family members and staff to join us in a hot pot - we paid for the ingredients which they purchased at Vietnamese prices and cooked in the restaurant, which worked out fine for all concerned. We let them decide their favourite hotpot ingredients, too. A hotpot is like a big fondue where you throw stuff into boiling soup base in a deep electric skillet - in this case it was a clam base - and eat it freshly boiled. Then you throw in more, and continue this process for about an hour. We had a big feast of shrimp, clams, squid and octopus, beef and pork, and lots of straw mushrooms and other mushrooms and vegetables.
What had happened, I asked myself? Did we really pay too little, did I accidentally cheat this woman, or is there something else going on here? I thought villagers in every continent understood how market negotiations work, and that the customer tries to get the best price. By the time I got back to my hotel room I’d realized that perhaps the first lady had “lost face” by losing the sale to her neighbour. I asked Hoang what a Vietnamese person would pay for a kilo of jackfruit, and showed him what they were because he didn’t know the English name. “Oh, those”, he said. “20K per kilogram.” So it wasn’t really a price issue at all, we actually did pay double what we should have; both ladies were just engaged in a theatrical game of “Fleece the stupid tourist”, and the first lady was a sore loser. The only other thing I could imagine is that she didn't realize Deborah and I worked as a team, and she thought I'd butted in and scuttled her sale.
So, lesson learned: try not to play one vendor off against another, and learn the words for “stop” and “wait”. We did better with our final purchase, a bunch of bananas, for which we had some experience with the price. I asked in Vietnamese, very simply, “How much?” She said “20 thousand”. I said quietly in Vietnamese, “No”, and turned to walk away. “Wait, wait”, said her neighbour, and the banana lady very quickly offered to sell them to us for 10 thousand. I agreed, still not showing much pleasure over the price because they try to read my face intently when I negotiate. Both ladies laughed and cheerfully congratulated us on knowing our prices, and happily said goodbye. It was shocking to me to note how differently these two exchanges went!
Back in Hanoi, Kim and Vu were an antidote to any negative experiences we'd had with Vietnamese vendors and businesspeople. When we were in the south, the people there told us that the northerners are cold, stern, unsmiling people. There is some evidence of that, and they do seem to be more hot-tempered and fractious than in the south - we've seen slapping fights break out on the street. But on the whole they seem to be industrious, confident and dignified, and we've met many charming people here.
Jan 16th: we had a pleasant day visiting the Temple of Literature, which is a fine temple to Confucius and other important teachers, with multiple gates and buildings, and stele listing over 1300 scholars who'd been granted scholarships through a series of 82 sets of examinations. This is a university which existed 1100 years ago and was cultured and rigorous in its administration and its curriculum. At the Temple we spent time with Vinh, "Vince", who works for the American Chamber of Commerce in Saigon, not far from the Canadian one. We exchanged contact details and agreed to look him up when we get back to Saigon.
We looked for a taxi to go meet Joe's friend "Bonnie". I refused a cab that pulled up, and said that I was waiting for a Mai Linh taxi - the only one we trust to use a meter in Hanoi. The driver convinced me that he was just as good and just as honest. He asked how much we expected to pay Mai Linh, and I said we'd paid 24K to come to the Temple, and wanted to return to the same place. "I can take you back for seventeen," he said, holding up seven fingers. We repeated "Seventeen? Not seventy?" several times, then repeated the same numbers in Vietnamese, just to be sure. He assured us we were correct. He didn't put on the meter. After we arrived at our address, he insisted he'd said "Seventy". We absolutely refused to pay more than the twenty that Deb had been holding for him since we got in the cab, and repeated what he had agreed to in Vietnamese. It's the exact game so many other tourists have told us they've been caught in, so I wasn't completely taken off guard. But he knew we were strong in our conviction and we were on a very public street in the tourist zone. Anyone else who got involved would agree that his price was ridiculous from the Temple of Literature back to that street corner. He moaned, almost took off with nothing, but finally accepted his 20K and sped away with no further complaint.
We met with Thu Nguyen, aka Ha, aka Bonnie, a petite girl who looks barely out of high school but who has travelled on her own to Japan where her fiancé is studying nanotechnology engineering. They will get married next month and move to Houston to continue their studies. We were finally able to deliver the present to her from Truong that I have been carrying in my backpack for a month in order to deliver in person - he didn't want to mail it. We had a great coffee with her, a delicious sweet "egg coffee", and a long, interesting chat.
In the evening we invited Kim and Vu, his family members and staff to join us in a hot pot - we paid for the ingredients which they purchased at Vietnamese prices and cooked in the restaurant, which worked out fine for all concerned. We let them decide their favourite hotpot ingredients, too. A hotpot is like a big fondue where you throw stuff into boiling soup base in a deep electric skillet - in this case it was a clam base - and eat it freshly boiled. Then you throw in more, and continue this process for about an hour. We had a big feast of shrimp, clams, squid and octopus, beef and pork, and lots of straw mushrooms and other mushrooms and vegetables.
Next destination: Da Nang
Love the way to get down to story telling...superb style, informative and delicious!
ReplyDeleteSo glad to have met you both and have had the opportunity to share with you. Look forward to some more outings, or simple breakfast or afternoon chats! Sometimes I am sorry that I turn into a pumpkin at 6 pm by catching that last bus....looking forward to more posts to read here and more visits while you are here in Nha Trang!
Cheers to you Steve and Deb!
Vicki OBrien