We got a good deal on Nok Air, so we went to Hanoi for 3 days.
Having read so many horror stories about scams going on out there, I planned to have my guard up at all times.
Didn't help much, really.
We had booked a hotel (40 USD) and airport pick-up service (12 USD) well in advance. When we landed at Noi Bai airport as scheduled, there was no one to pick us up. After a while we decided to grab a taxi to the hotel ourselves.
The taxi we got from the airport agreed on 12 USD flat rate from the airport to the hotel. When the taxi passed a toll-booth looking thingy, we saw his company (yes, he had a company!) paid something like 10,000 VND to someone before reaching the booth. But didn’t pay anything at the booth.
He asked us how much we were paying the hotel, and one of us told him we hadn’t paid yet. And he asked again how much, so I lied and told him 29 USD. He exclaimed “Expensive!” and started going on about 10 USD hotels, etc etc. None of his business really if we wanted safety and comfort. He was on the phone quite often while driving into town.
And he finally parked in front of the hotel (I think it was), and before we could get out, a guy opened the taxi and said “You’ve booked a room right? Sorry, the hotel is full now. But I will tell the taxi driver to take you to the other hotel of us with the same quality and same price. It’s not too far. It’s also in town.”
I wasn’t too sure, but this hotel does have a second one.
And off we went.
The taxi driver dropped us at some sort of hotel (it’s actually a travel agent with rooms upstairs). When I gave him 12 USD, he started making a scene and showed me a almost-A4 size paper - all in Vietnamese language with “300,000 VND” on it. He demanded we paid this 300,000 VND also as it was “government fee”, referring to the toll-booth looking thingy.
Government fee my arse.
I asked him how come the toll booth fee was higher than the actual taxi fare. He didn’t answer, but started making a scene again that we had to pay. Then, we told him we would look at the room first and would come back to deal with him shortly.
The room was ok. And the hotel receptionist said “So that hotel charge you 29 USD right? We’ll charge the same rate.”
So, how come you knew they were charging us 29 USD then, you cheeky twat? And it wasn’t even the right amount!
We negotiated the price down, and done at 25 USD, including breakfast. And they confirmed they opened 24/7, e.g. not going to lock us out if we came back late.
And we went down to the taxi driver again. We decided to pay to end this hoo-ha as it’s a bloody waste of time. We gave him 300,000 VND with the “take it or leave it”
remark. He took it while still complaining and drove off. I suspect the 300,000 VND thingy was in fact the car tax for the whole year. So, if you are sure you are safe from them, tell your taxi driver to fuck off.
We got changed and came down stairs to ask about one day tour to Halong Bay that we wanted to go the next day. The same receptionist quoted us 25 USD for ordinary tour and lunch. We negotiated down to 23 USD and couldn’t be bothered to negotiate further.
It was a join tour (16 pax) and it shouldn’t cost you more than 20 USD. So, again, if you are sure you are safe from them, tell them to fuck off. Or go to another travel agent. Someone will definitely start from 20 USD and you can probably get it at 16 - 18 USD.
After paying yet another overpriced tour, we went out to explore the city. Only took us 3 and half hours to get all this shit done.
Hanoi was very noisy. There were many many motorbikes. And everyone seemed to be going at the car/bike horn all the time. Madness.
We walked around a bit, using "Walking Tour" in Lonely Planet as our guide.
Name tag, anyone?
While we were making our way back to the hotel, we spotted a pub we had walked past earlier. So we went in for a cold one. It’s called Le Pub.
My cold one (Bia Ha Noi) cost 16,000 VND (or 1 USD). Pho cost 20,000 VND here (7,000 VND on the street, but it wasn’t very comfortable to sit).
When we walked into the hotel, we saw the taxi driver there chatting away with the hotel boys.
Cheeky bastard.
Anyway… we got some rest as it was quite cold, it was a long day, and we had to get up early for the Halong Bay trip.