04/02: 1 Asshole makes the difference

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Decided to take a rest day in Can Tho. A bit bigger city, seemed fairly nice at first sight & we felt the urge of 'visiting' something...biking from A to B doesn't really count as visiting...So after sleeping out we headed into town looking for breakfast. Strolling the river front you get hassled by a lot of people for a boatride on the mekong & what you hear is correct. Vietnamese touting can be a real bitch. They just won't stop & go away, basically your first response has to be quite agressive to our standards so they get it immediately (even then....) or just totally ignore them, but really totally, if you even only give them a brisk moment of attention it's over.

So it seems baguette is also popular in Vietnam. So far we only had the paté, veggies & chili stuffing version and its good. And cheap 5-10k dong (0,25 - 0,5 USD) it just depends who you ask it to...Unfortunately we also managed to have the first shit experience!

Breakfast at some roadside terras, 15k dong for a noodlesoup (sort of a standard price) and when your finished eating it's 50k dong...the dude could speak a bit of english so we didn't asked him to show us the price in bills...and yes, 15 & 50 sounds similar...asshole. We paid not wanting to discuss about it too long, but this is clearly the shit, ****** bad stories you get from others tourists. And this 1 guy is enough to fuck up the feeling you get from vietnam, even if yesterday we met really nice people all day long. Bad sticks a lot harder then good unfortunately. Anyway, learned our lesson. If they speak a bit of english take double care! Always ask to see the bills or pay in advance or discuss & fight about the bill when they try to rip you off. And 100% sure he didn't say 50k & it doesn't cost 50k...all our other soups so far cost 15k. So the hour or so after breakfast we walked around frustrated before letting it be, but nobody likes to get ripped off. I even don't mind paying 50k for it if that's what he said in advance & I agreed to it! This way you just really get ripped! Anyway, from what I hear it seems it's a bit of a cultural thing in Vietnam to rip people off, not just tourists or whatever, the guy will probably try to rip off locals too if he can. Really a shame, cause if you have 5 guys like him on a 4 week trip through Vietnam (& a 1000 nice guys) it leaves a bad after taste. Especially if nobody in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore & Cambodia tried this kind of shit. Well, learned our lesson. Try to fuck me over, I'll fuck you over. Similar mentality as in traffic....?? Is there something in communism that makes the vietnamese wanna overcompensate their individualism/personal gain/...?

And we just don't learn it, but we don't really like 'visiting' all that much...after 1h strolling through town we got bored out of our mind & headed back to our hotel for some star movies & clothes washing in the shower. Next time lets just stick to biking :-)

Compensated lunch with a nice dinner & mama's got a pair of new shades.