Vietnam: The Land of Smiles? Not Really.

First impressions being what they are, Vietnam has not made a good one. The people are very confrontational and Hanoi is littered in scams and copycat businesses. More on all this in a second...

Though they have some very fundamental differences, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos' similarities are much more striking. The countries are in varying states of disrepair but by and large the people operate on the same wavelength and share a similar amiable disposition. Though I had a hunch, I had no idea how different Vietnam was from its neighbors to the west.

This country's history is filled with war and conflict and its people show it. On my first day here I was ejected from a street side eatery for deciding not buy something after hearing the price and had a woman refuse to sell me an ice cream bar because even though I wanted chocolate (which was 3000D), apparently, I pointed at coffee which looked exactly the same but cost 1000D more. After the confusion was settled, she still wouldn't sell it to me and I had to leave ice cream-less. Some people seem to be exceptionally nice and helpful while others are just as rude so I'm still keeping an open mind and hoping that my first impressions are wrong.

The scams here are also really intense and one always has to be on top of things. I already saw one girl perish and this story is just too good not to tell. Knowing the cab from the airport to central Hanoi was going to be expensive, I decided to try to recruit some people to split it with me while I was on the plane. The first person in on this venture was the Canadian girl who got swallowed by Hanoi fresh off the flight.

After following some guy across the airport parking lot and over a highway to a cab that had just pulled up, we were safely on our way to Hanoi for less than it would have cost if the cab had picked us up from the terminal. I had read that for any business with a good reputation, there are countless establishments with identical names trying to capitalize off the success and that finding the one you want can be difficult. The Canadian girl told the cab driver that she wanted to go to a place called "The Hanoi Backpacker's Hostel" and he acted like he knew exactly what was going on. For the record, this place is one of the most popular hostels in town and every cab driver knows of it. In any event, he stopped a place called "Backpackers Hotel" which was clearly not the right place but he and the man that rushed out from the door tried to convince her otherwise. I made sure that she knew it wasn't the right spot but the Old Quarter is small and she should be able to walk to it without a problem. After asking her if she had a map and if she would be alright, we made plans to meet 2 hours later at the backpacker's hostel for a beer and the cab driver took me to my destination (although not really, he dropped me off about 2km away telling me it was just around the corner and trying to screw me out of an extra $2). I showed up right on time but she was no where to be found. The staff at the hostel hadn't seen her either and it was pretty clear that she never made it. Poor girl got owned by Hanoi on her first night.

My hotel wasn't exactly on the up and up either. Even though I made a reservation and paid a deposit through a hostel booking website for a dorm, they still didn't reserve it and had none available for me when I got there. After refusing to pay $15 (instead of 5) for a room to myself, they offered the room to me for the same price as the dorm which was so uncontrollably awesome that my head almost exploded. No really, after traveling in this region for almost 3 months, never in a million years would I have expected that offer. Things did turn sour though as soon as I moved into the dorm though. After begging them to turn the air conditioning on in accordance with their advertisement and description of the room, they finally relented with big smiles explaining that their number one priority is to make the customer happy (shoulda been my first tip off). Everything worked great till about 2:30am when I woke up in an oven because they decided to turn it off (presumably to save a buck on the power bill). After waking up completely soaked in sweat and pleading with the most uninterested night manager in history (who, by the way, elevates douchery to new heights), I was left with nothing else to do but just wait it out. That really sucked because I was beginning to get pretty sick and I had to leave early in the morning for an overnight boat trip in Halong Bay but hey, I was the one who babbled on and on about the hardship involved in travel right?

I'm not really bitter about it anymore but it is still nice to rant when someone finally succeeds in screwing you over after narrowly avoiding so much other chicanery (no idea where that word came from... just popped into my head the other day and after looking it up, it seemed to be a perfect fit). But anyways...

All of this considered, there is still a lot of really impressive scenery here and though the jury is still out on the people, I have barely left Hanoi so it is way to early to make any judgments. This is getting pretty long and I still have many thoughts about Vietnam but those will come later after I have been here awhile. I leave Hanoi tomorrow night for a town up in the mountains called Sapa with the sole purpose of summiting Mt. Fansipan in one day even though most people say I can't. If nothing else, it should make a good story.