Ripped off! (not)
VIETNAM | Saturday, 14 January 2006 | Views [443]
"We paid 50,000 dong for a motorbike for a day but we got ripped off." drifted up from the back of the bus. I confess, many years ago I probably had the same attitude, but $3 for a day? That's just a cup of coffee back at home mate. I find I am ambivilent to the attitudes of travellers since they can be a powerful force for good .. or bad. On the one hand, independent travellers generally get off-the-beaten track a little more than most and thus provide a pretty good mechanism to distribute wealth among those who might not normally get it. Yet on the other hand the behaviour of some people you see on the street makes you want to disappear.
"Piss off! Just piss off!." isn't an acceptable response, even to the touts who hassle you on the street. Even they have families to feed and are just earning some cash to get by. We heard of one young woman who had said this to a group of boys trying to flog her something. Later that night, the same boys cruised past her while she was eating at a restaurant and laughed ... then there was a loud bang as a firecracker that they had flicked under her table expoded. Whilst it might be harmless fun on their part, the message was clear, and who could blame them?
We find travelling with children has its advantages as well as restrictions. One of the great losses is that we used to really enjoy simply getting lost and wandering among local villages: no great sights to see, just local life. This isn't possible, so far at least, with children in tow. Having said that, we find that the attitude of people is SO different with children. Tonight I actually managed to wander around the markets while the kids took an afternoon nap, and I was pretty much ignored or simply treated as they would any other tourist. But later, as we wandered around the same market and ate with the kids in the market food stalls, everyone was interested, wanted to know boy or girl and how old and introduce their own families and touch them and play with them.
Today up at Mai son there was a large school group of perhaps 50 teenage kids. They all wanted to touch Riu and Kai and have photos with them. Riu pretends to be shy of all the attention, but it doesn't seem to do him any harm.
A family here is a very real introduction where they barely even say hello to the other tourists.
Tags: on the road, attitudes, travellers, responsibility, sharing, wealth
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