We've been so lucky with all the people we've met and trusted on this trip.
Our luck ran out this morning. Seriously. Can you even imagine a crazy knife-weilding Vietnamese dude with his top lip cut off wearing a communist soldier's hat? He even sounds like a character from a bad novel.
Reading the description, you might think that we would have avoided the crazy knife guy. But no, we decided to get a ride on his motor bike to the Ethnographic Museum in Hanoi for $2. As you do.
The first fishy thing was that we stopped at the wrong museum. About 5 kms from where we paid to get to. Once the crazy knife guy realised that we knew it was the wrong museum, he said it was 'just a photo stop'. Hmm.
Then we were treated to a death defying ride to the correct museum. Crazy knife guy said he would wait for us and take us home at the end. I value my life, so said we would be fine to get home ourselves and that we would just pay him now.
Money note: the fare we arranged was 30,000 Dong. About $2 and pretty standard rates for rides in the city.
When we tried to pay him, he said we'd agreed to pay 30 US dollars, not 30 thousand dong. Thinking he was joking, I laughed and said not to be ridiculous, and handed over 30 thousand dong.
That's where he started to be the crazy knife guy. He stood right in my face (and reminded me of a sulky Boys' High student) and shouted at me, yelling, "30 dollars!" We said no, 30 thousand dong is what we agreed. You can take it or leave it. There was no way we were paying $30 US. That's just plain crazy. Just like the crazy knife guy.
Coz then he showed us his huge butcher's knife concealed under the seat of his motorbike and said we would pay him. He would wait outside for us and would call the mafia.
Which sounds ridiculous now, but at the time, when a crazy shouting guy with a knife whips out his cell phone and makes several short calls in Vietnamese, and you just start wondering why his top lip was missing anyway.... So I was pretty scared. I had visions of being tailed by all these motorbike mafia guys back to our guest house and getting chopped up with a butcher's knife when we went out for dinner in some dark back street...
When he started grabbing James and pulling his clothes, I marched up to the ticket counter to explain the situation (would have helped if the ticket lady spoke english). Somehow, after many attempts at shoving our money away from us, crazy knife guy got the 30 thousand dong in his hand, so we moved inside the museum gates. Crazy guy followed us, shouting about how we'd cheated him and shoving James' arms and chest. The ticket lady must have realised what was going on, and so the security guard started coming over.
Thank goodness the crazy knife guy kicked me in the leg. It hurt, but it made the security guy understand that he was a crazy guy, and I think he must have sent him on his way.
I didn't know that at the time, and spent the whole time in the museum wondering how long it would take to get on NZ news about the slaughter of two young travellers in Vietnam. James emptied his wallet and put everything in the moneybelt, just in case. Not much good if you're sliced to pieces, but it made me feel a bit better.
I was SO RELIEVED that the knife guy wasn't waiting for us when we came out of the museum. Even so, we took a taxi home instead of a motorbike, and I kept checking to see if we were being followed.
It's a shame that we encountered such a prick, but it taught us a good lesson about being more cautious. And about appreciating all the kind, wonderful people we've met. And about how putting your laundry in to be washed and it coming back dirty is not such a big problem.
Love from a very alive Catherine and James (who are about to walk home by themselves at night, always on the lookout for guys wearing soldier's hats with missing top lips)
