I am dissapointed. Though Vietnam might rather be famous as a holiday destination for backbackers and the rather inconvetional tourist, a lot of things here are not right.
There is no feeling of warm and heartful Asian spirit, everything is about money and how to get it from the foreign visitors. There is no smile, no "hello" or other form of human interaction not attached to the question of a certain form of consumption. This has already left a bad impression on me here in Hanoi.
The past two days (I came back today) were spent on a 3 days two nights trip to Halong Bay. There are numerous cafes attached to hotels which act as travel agencies and offer this kind of packages. What I found out on the trip was that prices for 100% the same package differ for more then 100%. Depeding on where you booked you paid between 25 and 75 Us Dollars. Luckily for me, I booked at the lower end of the scale.
Everything seems to be arranged, but nothing works out. I got to know about 5 tourguides during the 3 days and was mixed with new people for every event I took part in(the latter is no problem, btw.), the tourguides' English is really poor, just enough for very basic communication. The general attitute of people working in the hospitality business here is. as described above, "rip the foreigners off". As long as you are of no use for them, they are unfriendly and simply not willing to offer something close to service. But as soon as it appears necessary for them to find an ally in you (some people actually decided to complain about the poor situation), the guides became nicer and tried to persuade you (with one bottle of free beer, instead of the booked and paid for night on the boat in the bay) not to complain at the agency.
Another example is that a Vietnamese salesman in lack of proper change, would always change negative for the customer and during the package trip there are for sure no free gifts or other extras. Instead things that were promised in the nice folders (scuba diving, going to the National Park) were simply not done.
Complain right there is of no use at all, the guides simply have no means or will to change anything to comfort the US dollar paying customers.
I have to add that according to travel mates, who have been travelling in the South of Vietnam, this is only a Northern phnenomena and the South must be totally different.
I already complained about the locals I met here (and I feel utterly sorry about having such a bad impression at all, but it gets renewed over and over again as I go on spending my time here) they really have no interest in anything but your money and no means to communicate with you (due to my not existing Vietnamese and there barely existing knowledge of English). But the down point of experiences with locals was an occasion on one of the islands in the Bay, where we spent our first night: Walking around a lake, we were greeted by a group of about 3 to 6 year old boys, we friendly shouted back "Hello, how are you, I am fine" and kept on walking. Suddenly we realised that the 7 man strong group was running behind us and coming closer, we did not expect anything to happen, but suddenly one of the "the kids" grabbed in the bag of my pants and tried to steal something or at least play. But there was nothing to find, I did not react except for a shock on my face, as he prepared for a bunch and hit me right in my balls, so hard and unexpected that my beloved camera fell on the ground (luckily it still works fine, great Japanese quality). Well, you can imagine, I was not pleased, but still did not react in a harsh, yet rather surprised way and told them to go away. What they did, just to get some little rocks to throw them at us. Nothing happened further, but I am really dissapointed about my experiences here so far.
The only reason until now to come to Vietnam I discovered so far is the beauty of nature.
PS: The travel agencies which cannot be recommended for booking packages in Hanoi for trips to for example Halong Bay are Sinh Cafe and Kim Travel. This is at least the experience of at least 20 travellers I talked to these past 3 days.
Well, this is actually another reason to come to Vietnam, you get to know a lot of nice and quite interesting backbackers and other travellers, mainly from Europe and Australia, but also from Korea.
My next trip (also booked at Kim Travel), as I wrote earlier, is about to start in 1 hour. Let's all cross our fingers that it will be a better experience in terms of the guiding. The destination this time is Sapa, about 380 km north of Hanoi, really close to the Chinese border.
Later more...
