Todd and Lisa's RTW trip

We think this story deserves its own entry. (Please excuse all vulgarity)

While Todd was in the shower, the bathroom sink fell off the wall. Literally, it just fell! It crashed down and broke all over the floor. Within seconds, the ladies from downstairs ran into the room to see what happened (mind you T was still naked), and then ran back out (not because of T being naked!). We finished getting ready, packed up and went downstairs to tell them what happened. They immediatly told us we had to pay. It went back and forth “we didn’t do it, old sink” and bad english “you pay, you pay”. Amazingly this same woman who spoke a little English yesterday spoke no english today. We agreed to pay half the cost. Then the cost kept going up until we refused (we would still pay the original 1/2). It was a principle thing, not a money issue.

In Vietnam when you check into a hotel they take your passport, so the bitch had some leverage! Lisa knew this and without the woman looking jumped behind the counter, grabbed the passports and shoved ’em down her pants. They saw us frantically grabbing our stuff and freaked out at us vietnamese style….. this is when shit hit the fan!! We had a pulling and shoving match with our bags. During this time they locked us in and called the police. They were really mad that we got our passports!!! We calmed down and decided to pay the money, but we would not give the money until they unlocked the gate. They unlocked the gate and we handed them the money, but for some reason it ended up on the floor and not in her hand. At this point, the old hag proceeded to smack Lisa on the back of the head and pull her hair. Really, like a 65 year old bitch did this! The cops showed up at this point, but of course they would never say they saw the hag hit Lisa. Lots of vietnamese later, we end up at the police station (if you can even call it that).

We sat at this dingy, dirty, hole of a place with not even a telephone and no one who spoke english while the old bitch accused Lisa of beating her. Really the words that were translated to us we “you beat her”. Obviously (and honestly) it was completely fabricated. Lisa is not Layla Ali (Muhammad Ali’s daughter). Through all this frustration, Lisa still had the passports down her pants. Little did we know that the stress of it caused her period to come early. The passports reamined clean but the jokes about it were very dirty…. we say no more (sorry we know it is gross, but it adds an element of humor to the story).
Finally someone came who spoke english, but it turned out to be her grandson. So we still sat quietly while the old lady ranted on and on and filled out police reports. She shouted and screamed and pointed her finger at us. In between this all everyone from the street was coming in and she was smiling and laughing, not to mention she bought the cops cold cokes. We would have done this but they wouldn’t let us leave. It was a moment that we wished we still smoked so that we could at least give them cig’s. Two hours later, another vietnamese man came, but this one not related to the old hag. He informed us that we had beaten this woman. (Vietnamese Law states we must pay her) Obviously, no one cared to listen to us and we refused to pay her any more money. Eventually we started negotiating our bribe with the corrupt assholes. Just like the sink, once we agreed to a price, the price suddenly went up. Mind you that the interpreter’s english was so poor, all of the negotiating was done with pen and paper. Finally, we agreed on 300,000 VND (only $20 ,nothing for us, but plenty for them, but it is the principle thing again). As we put on our packs, about to hand them the money, our “interpreter” told us “oh, that money is for her, now you must pay for the police report.” WE FLIPPED OUR LIDS!! How could we pay for something we did not even fill out or could we read it or did we sign it. This dumbfounded them. Then they wanted us to sign the police report. We refused. They agreed to let Lisa write in english that she had given the bitch $$$$. She added in that we would not pay any more money to anyone!!!! 3 hours later, and really only out $20, we left the station. It was not at all a scary situation, more like the kinda situation one could describe as…. being bent over and screwed!

We hope you enjoyed this story… it cost us $20!

Anyways we leave Vietnam tomorrow. We do not believe that this is a good time for us to reflect on our time here in Vietnam. We will do that when our asses are healed!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.