ripped off!
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008by Someone Who Is Now Wiser
Luang Prabang, Laos
How do you know if someone is bona fide or if they’re ripping you off? Short answer is you don’t! Especially if you are in a hurry.
As we were racing up the hill at Houay Sai, our landing point in Laos, and the place from which the slowboat would leave in quarter of an hour, a lady called out, offering us boat tickets. She assures you there will be time to get to the boat pier and she will organise a tuktuk taxi. You don’t have time to see if there are any other options and you don’t even know where the pier is. So you negotiate a price. We paid 8,500baht, which sounds a lot of money in any currency, because it is a lot of money! (NZ$425) We hoped it wasn’t a scam; all we would have had to show for our gullibility would have been ten tiny luminous green stickers declaring SLOW BOAT.
Near the pier everyone had to hand in their passports to be taken for a police check. Having already been checked three times since arriving, this seemed somewhat excessive, but it was obvious we were going nowhere without completing this formality, and so everyone reluctantly, uncomfortably parted with their documents. At least we were all in the same metaphorical boat. And soon we were all in the same literal boat too, with our safely returned passports and a real ticket.
As we were settling ourselves onto the benches, a lady came on board with a small problem. According to her records we had underpaid. That much we understood. After some discussion and pointing at lists and showing of receipt (which actually had no amount written on it – we hadn’t thought to check it!), it became apparent we had been overcharged!!!! At this point the lady disappeared, and with her, the small problem.
Fast forward to the end of the first day.
Darkness has just fallen and you’re still standing at the river’s edge with five children and eight bags. Rach has gone on ahead to nab a room before the boat empties completely and there are no cheap rooms left in “town”. Two guys grab a backpack each and you tell them not to. They are most insistent and you do not fancy wrestling the bags off their backs. Besides, you fleetingly think perhaps you had seen them on the boat and they are part of the service. If the day had been shorter, you might have been thinking more clearly, you might have recognised them for what they were. But for the moment you don’t mind the help up the hill. However, these guys hang around after dropping the bags, they just won’t leave. Their body language and gesturing indicate they expect to be paid. Duh, of course they do! What was I thinking? Nothing….
“How much did you agree to pay them?” Rachael asks.
“Nothing. I told them not to pick up anything, but I couldn’t stop them”
They demand more money than we are carrying! We settle on a much lower, but still excessive, price. They will eat well for a few days!
Fast forward another day. Same time, same darkness falling, another new place.
We hadn’t copied out a map of Luang Prabang, so we were at the mercy of a tuktuk driver to take us to the guest house we had made a tentative booking at. “Vanvisa guest house, yes… very far, no can walk!” he stated, sadly shaking his head. All we could do was believe him. Let’s just say he was paid handsomely for a less than 1km ride! It took longer to load our packs on top of the tuktuk than the trip itself! And that included having to stop so that the father who was hanging off the back like a monkey keeping an eye on the bags up top, could run back up the road to retrieve a shoe that had flown off the foot of a hissy-fitting-ER2!
Ripped off.
It was looking to us like we were not going to enjoy Laos (oh yes, add to the rip-offs of the previous two days the fact that the guesthouse had put its prices up and our dollar had fallen making our stay double what we had budgetted)…….then we went looking for dinner options. It all looked pricey. We finally settled on an outdoor riverside eatery opposite an expensive restaurant. Imagine our delight upon discovering the waiters carrying our plates of curry out from the restaurant!! And at a quarter of the price of eating inside! Things started looking up……
rayres