Northern Viet Nam Day One: Scamz0red
This is day one of Arie's trip to Northern Vietnam.
Our flight landed fairly late at night. Hanoi's airport is about 25 miles north of the city, and the standard taxi fee is $10 for a trip into town. We climbed in, gave the driver the name and address of our hotel, the Viet Anh (we had made reservations online), and the taxi drove towards town on what is apparently the most modern road in Viet Nam, a two-lane superhighway. It was, um, nice. The drive took about an hour because of psychotic cab drivers cutting us off and very slow traffic in the passing lane. And by "very slow traffic" I do not mean people clogging the passing lane by driving 45 mph. I mean oxcarts and pedal-driven cyclos filled with straw.
At one point, the driver pulled over and took our guidebook to check the name and address of our hotel, the Viet Anh Hotel. He pulled out a pen and crossed out the address, which I thought was a little weird, but maybe he was just trying to underline it? We got back on the road, and he made a cell phone call (in Vietnamese), which I thought nothing of at the time.
We got our first look at Hanoi out the window of the cab. It looked more or less like what you would expect--Phnom Penh, only much wealthier. More electricity, nicer stores, more cars, but still full of kids in the streets playing "kick the thing", moto taxis, and people chopping up raw meat on the sidewalk.
We entered the old quarter. Hanoi is one thousand years old (they will be celebrating their millenium in 2010), and the old quarter has been around since the beginning. It's made up of twisty little streets that change their names every few feet, and the whole thing is less than a mile across. The streets are named for the types of stores that were on the block (so there's Pho Cha Ca ("roasted fish"), Pho Hang Be ("rafts"), Pho Hang Gai ("silk"), etc.), though of course now most of the quarter is dominated by hotels, tourism offices, and restaurants.
As our taxi drove, we followed along on the map. This was fortunate, because when our driver pulled up in front of a hotel and a man opened the door and tried to shake my hand and welcome us to the Viet Anh, we knew we were in the wrong place. He tried to help me out of the cab, but I explained that there was a mistake, that we were not at the Viet Anh. He pulled out a Viet Anh hotel business card and showed it to me, and told me that the Viet Anh had moved.
The Lonely Planet reports that this has become common--scammers set up hotels and then work in concert with taxi drivers to trick travelers into staying there. The hotel is then unreasonably expensive. We said we knew this was the wrong place and would not get out of the car, and finally the man got frustrated and slammed our car door, and the driver took us to the real Viet Anh. We didn't tip.
We had emailed the Viet Anh a week before to make a reservation, and they had sent us a confirmation. When we showed up, they (very politely) denied ever having received such an email and asked who sent us a confirmation. We tried to show them the email, but one of the employees insisted that it was not important who sent the confirmation, that the important thing was to find us a room. We're pretty sure it was that guy. Anyway, they were full for the night, but they made reservations for us at an equally nice place, Sunny Hotel, and reserved us a room at their hotel for the next night. They had someone take our luggage over, which was nice. Not once in the two weeks that I have been in Viet Nam has a hotel ever successfully managed to reserve a room for me. There's always something--either they give the reservation away, or they claim not to have received the email, or a giant bird ate the hotel, or something.
It's cold in Hanoi. At least, if you're coming from Cambodia's hot dry season, the 65 degree average temperature at this time feels pretty cold. It must feel cold to the people who live here too, because most of the people we saw were wearing giant parkas, gloves, and ski hats. The kids were all wearing scarves and mittens. It was really weird, or at least, it would have been really weird if we weren't freezing too, but we were, so we fled to our hotel and went to sleep.
My adventure continues here.
Our flight landed fairly late at night. Hanoi's airport is about 25 miles north of the city, and the standard taxi fee is $10 for a trip into town. We climbed in, gave the driver the name and address of our hotel, the Viet Anh (we had made reservations online), and the taxi drove towards town on what is apparently the most modern road in Viet Nam, a two-lane superhighway. It was, um, nice. The drive took about an hour because of psychotic cab drivers cutting us off and very slow traffic in the passing lane. And by "very slow traffic" I do not mean people clogging the passing lane by driving 45 mph. I mean oxcarts and pedal-driven cyclos filled with straw.
At one point, the driver pulled over and took our guidebook to check the name and address of our hotel, the Viet Anh Hotel. He pulled out a pen and crossed out the address, which I thought was a little weird, but maybe he was just trying to underline it? We got back on the road, and he made a cell phone call (in Vietnamese), which I thought nothing of at the time.
We got our first look at Hanoi out the window of the cab. It looked more or less like what you would expect--Phnom Penh, only much wealthier. More electricity, nicer stores, more cars, but still full of kids in the streets playing "kick the thing", moto taxis, and people chopping up raw meat on the sidewalk.
We entered the old quarter. Hanoi is one thousand years old (they will be celebrating their millenium in 2010), and the old quarter has been around since the beginning. It's made up of twisty little streets that change their names every few feet, and the whole thing is less than a mile across. The streets are named for the types of stores that were on the block (so there's Pho Cha Ca ("roasted fish"), Pho Hang Be ("rafts"), Pho Hang Gai ("silk"), etc.), though of course now most of the quarter is dominated by hotels, tourism offices, and restaurants.
As our taxi drove, we followed along on the map. This was fortunate, because when our driver pulled up in front of a hotel and a man opened the door and tried to shake my hand and welcome us to the Viet Anh, we knew we were in the wrong place. He tried to help me out of the cab, but I explained that there was a mistake, that we were not at the Viet Anh. He pulled out a Viet Anh hotel business card and showed it to me, and told me that the Viet Anh had moved.
The Lonely Planet reports that this has become common--scammers set up hotels and then work in concert with taxi drivers to trick travelers into staying there. The hotel is then unreasonably expensive. We said we knew this was the wrong place and would not get out of the car, and finally the man got frustrated and slammed our car door, and the driver took us to the real Viet Anh. We didn't tip.
We had emailed the Viet Anh a week before to make a reservation, and they had sent us a confirmation. When we showed up, they (very politely) denied ever having received such an email and asked who sent us a confirmation. We tried to show them the email, but one of the employees insisted that it was not important who sent the confirmation, that the important thing was to find us a room. We're pretty sure it was that guy. Anyway, they were full for the night, but they made reservations for us at an equally nice place, Sunny Hotel, and reserved us a room at their hotel for the next night. They had someone take our luggage over, which was nice. Not once in the two weeks that I have been in Viet Nam has a hotel ever successfully managed to reserve a room for me. There's always something--either they give the reservation away, or they claim not to have received the email, or a giant bird ate the hotel, or something.
It's cold in Hanoi. At least, if you're coming from Cambodia's hot dry season, the 65 degree average temperature at this time feels pretty cold. It must feel cold to the people who live here too, because most of the people we saw were wearing giant parkas, gloves, and ski hats. The kids were all wearing scarves and mittens. It was really weird, or at least, it would have been really weird if we weren't freezing too, but we were, so we fled to our hotel and went to sleep.
My adventure continues here.
posted by arie at 12:02 PM
1 Comments:
I really enjoy your blog. Keep it up. I traveled to Saigon last year, and we had a better experience with our hotel. Here's my surprisingly positive story:
We arrived on time at the airport, the hotel driver picked us up and drove us to the Bi Saigon. Our room was not ready yet. We waited downstairs and ate lunch and drank beer in the dark because of a power outage. The manager was very apologetic about our hour wait - and the dark, and comped our beverages. She ended up giving us rooms on the top floor of their sister hotel next door (the "Bee" Saigon...) - a much nicer place we thought.
They discounted the room price because the 5th floor walkup was deemed an exhausting stairway climb. We loved it up there on the top floor. It all worked out great, and the family who ran the place were the best - friendly and hospitable. Sounds like an advertisement for them, but really it's just the truth; we were thrilled with our rooms and the restaurant downstairs. Seems like when traveling there are lots of opportunities for things to go wrong, and rarely do things go very right, so we were thankful.
We traveled to Thailand and Cambodia before Vietnam, and interestingly, Saigon was somewhat of a relief from all of the scammers we had encountered before...
I look forward to the rest of your entries. Good luck and be safe.
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