Chased to China by the Police! And two more cons!
We awoke the next morning to be told that some man up the road was accusing us of running across his roof breaking his tiles the previous night, amounting to damages worth 2,000,000 dong! (GBP67.) He alleged that he'd followed us back to our room and knew our room number because of it. Something didn't add up though - not just because neither of us are drunken climbers and we hadn't drunk that much and we recalled the walk home, but also because let's face it - if we had been climbing on roofs we'd have found it ridiculously funny, probably taken photos and definitely remembered it! Further backing us up was the fact that the accused were wearing sandals and shorts, but we had both been in trousers and I had been wearing trainers. Also wouldn't we have got a little dirty climbing on roofs?! All the while it was sounding more and more like Fred the Farmer had accidentally dropped a cow on his roof ten years ago and was still looking for a couple of westerners to function as his insurance company. The hotel owners however weren't quite so self-assured. When they got a phonecall from the Police asking where we were and saying that they were going to pay us a visit that afternoon the owners hurried us to pack our stuff, move it to an underground room and then told us to hide-out in the town until 13.30 when the minibus they'd arranged to take us to the Chinese border would turn up! At first we thought it was a bit of an overreaction, but on recounting the hassle we'd had in Nha Trang when all we needed was a police report we thought that trying to explain why we shouldn't spend a few nights in the cells and pay 2,000,000 in alleged damages might be a little beyond our abilities!
Until that day we had barely noticed any police presence in Sapa, but that day they were all over the place - I reckon the hunt was on for the evil roof-breakers! When we finally got on the minibus to China we managed to complete three laps of the town square to the Royal Hotel and back again, all the time we were spotting ever more police, including two which headed along the road to our hotel on a moto. Finally we left. Once we were about ten minutes out of town the minibus was pulled-over at a police roadblock! I've never had to try and look innocent and hide my face before but we thought we needed to here! Luck was on our side though - all that was happening in the traditional Vietnamese way was that one of the policemen was commandeering a ride on the minibus for his daughter!
After a quick recital of Sonny and exchanging our money we were ushered through the Vietnamese border to freedom! At the Chinese border we were suddenly greeted by the hard realisation that no-one spoke English - everything being done in sign language. Luckily we'd got the girl on the Vietnamese border to tell us where the bus station was so we made tracks. Through the town people pointed at our guitars and said things we didn't understand and we duly responded with a language they didn't understand. Maybe we should have taken some language classes.
Near the bus station we were picked up by a guy who spoke some English so we asked him if he could show us where the ATM was. After some chitter-chatter about how he only sleeps with prostitutes about 10% of the time and how they're more expensive in China than Vietnam and how his friend got them for $1 a go in Cambodia we reached an ATM and then a low-grade restaurant where he left us, reassuring us that the cups of tea were free.
An hour of tea-sipping later we were getting hungry and flummoxed with the struggle of using the guidebook to get across what we wanted to eat (there were no menus) we stupidly forgot to ask the price. And so what happened - we were overcharged again - though this time only to the tune of about GBP4 each. We later found this price to be fairly standard for a sizable meal in a nice Chinese restaurant in Kunming when it includes a beer each, but definitely a little excessive for a Chinese Greasy Spoon in Hekou, Yunnan!
Con 2 of China came when a man claiming to be the manager of the bus company tried to take us into his office. Refusing to go in he emerged with a receipt book claiming that we needed to pay another Y100 for for our "excessive heavy luggage"! Considering the tickets were Y109 each it was a bit ridiculous which we told him in no uncertain terms and asked to see the bus and bus driver to make sure he actually did have something to do with the bus company. Between his threats of "I get the police and they tell you, but then there be trouble for you" (they weren't exactly the first people we wanted to see that day) we managed to get "student discount" bringing the price down to Y20 each. Speaking to a Chinese girl outside the bus with a similar amount of luggage she didn't have to pay, but after trying that and various other ways of getting rid of him GBP1.33 each was seeming like a reasonable price to pay to put an end to his persistent whining. If only we'd waited another five minutes we could have probably gotten away without paying as the lady conductor of the bus told him to leave us alone and stop being so ridiculous. Upon inspecting the receipt book plenty of other English-speakers had been charged as much as Y150 and were not best-pleased going by the colourful language scrawled across it, so we didn't really feel too hard done by! Just before we paid, our English-speaking "friend" from earlier arrived, just in time to confirm that Y40 was a fair price. W**ker.
On the plus side the bus was a sleeper bus and we had 5 "beds" (each only about 30cm wide and 1.6m long) between the two of us across the back of the bus and we bought a huge bunch of bananas for Y2 (13.6p ) to get us through an incredibly bumpy bus journey. Windows provided the air-con and had to be kept open even in the cold due to the really considerate bedtime smoking habits of many of the Chinese.
Until that day we had barely noticed any police presence in Sapa, but that day they were all over the place - I reckon the hunt was on for the evil roof-breakers! When we finally got on the minibus to China we managed to complete three laps of the town square to the Royal Hotel and back again, all the time we were spotting ever more police, including two which headed along the road to our hotel on a moto. Finally we left. Once we were about ten minutes out of town the minibus was pulled-over at a police roadblock! I've never had to try and look innocent and hide my face before but we thought we needed to here! Luck was on our side though - all that was happening in the traditional Vietnamese way was that one of the policemen was commandeering a ride on the minibus for his daughter!
After a quick recital of Sonny and exchanging our money we were ushered through the Vietnamese border to freedom! At the Chinese border we were suddenly greeted by the hard realisation that no-one spoke English - everything being done in sign language. Luckily we'd got the girl on the Vietnamese border to tell us where the bus station was so we made tracks. Through the town people pointed at our guitars and said things we didn't understand and we duly responded with a language they didn't understand. Maybe we should have taken some language classes.
Near the bus station we were picked up by a guy who spoke some English so we asked him if he could show us where the ATM was. After some chitter-chatter about how he only sleeps with prostitutes about 10% of the time and how they're more expensive in China than Vietnam and how his friend got them for $1 a go in Cambodia we reached an ATM and then a low-grade restaurant where he left us, reassuring us that the cups of tea were free.
An hour of tea-sipping later we were getting hungry and flummoxed with the struggle of using the guidebook to get across what we wanted to eat (there were no menus) we stupidly forgot to ask the price. And so what happened - we were overcharged again - though this time only to the tune of about GBP4 each. We later found this price to be fairly standard for a sizable meal in a nice Chinese restaurant in Kunming when it includes a beer each, but definitely a little excessive for a Chinese Greasy Spoon in Hekou, Yunnan!
Con 2 of China came when a man claiming to be the manager of the bus company tried to take us into his office. Refusing to go in he emerged with a receipt book claiming that we needed to pay another Y100 for for our "excessive heavy luggage"! Considering the tickets were Y109 each it was a bit ridiculous which we told him in no uncertain terms and asked to see the bus and bus driver to make sure he actually did have something to do with the bus company. Between his threats of "I get the police and they tell you, but then there be trouble for you" (they weren't exactly the first people we wanted to see that day) we managed to get "student discount" bringing the price down to Y20 each. Speaking to a Chinese girl outside the bus with a similar amount of luggage she didn't have to pay, but after trying that and various other ways of getting rid of him GBP1.33 each was seeming like a reasonable price to pay to put an end to his persistent whining. If only we'd waited another five minutes we could have probably gotten away without paying as the lady conductor of the bus told him to leave us alone and stop being so ridiculous. Upon inspecting the receipt book plenty of other English-speakers had been charged as much as Y150 and were not best-pleased going by the colourful language scrawled across it, so we didn't really feel too hard done by! Just before we paid, our English-speaking "friend" from earlier arrived, just in time to confirm that Y40 was a fair price. W**ker.
On the plus side the bus was a sleeper bus and we had 5 "beds" (each only about 30cm wide and 1.6m long) between the two of us across the back of the bus and we bought a huge bunch of bananas for Y2 (13.6p ) to get us through an incredibly bumpy bus journey. Windows provided the air-con and had to be kept open even in the cold due to the really considerate bedtime smoking habits of many of the Chinese.
Labels: Vietnam
posted by Ian Matthias at
11/18/2006 01:39:00 pm
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