No self respecting backpacker can survive without at least one story of being “scammed” on their travels. Here is ours. Starved of a newspaper for weeks, we decide to buy one as we were munching on yet another banana krispy outside the Cargo Club Café. A man in a Vietnamese wheelchair (yet another landmine victim, double amputee above the knee, using his arms to propel his chair) approached proferring the local English language one. So we bought it. It was a flimsy affair, very few pages, and mainly local news. He asked 30,000 dong for it (£1). We looked askance at this but with confidence, he showed us the price clearly printed on the front. We assumed there must be some big tax on newsprint or something, so paid up. He took our money and with a huge grin speeded away down the road, he was the fastest landmine victim in the East! The waitress looked at us kindly and kept saying thankyou, thankyou. All a bit strange but nonetheless we started to read away, reflecting on how expensive the news was here – compared to the Times at home for 75p, this was expensive. We read it and go back to the hotel. In reception there is a copy of the same newspaper. Ant picks it up and there, clearly on the top of the front page is printed the price 2,500 dong (8p). So we had been done for a few thousand dong! Looks like they manage to reprint the price on the top, and trusting people like us assume that as the price is printed, it must be right! No wonder he wheeled away with a big grin, we had just paid him the equivalent of one and a half days average salary…. But did we mind, no, we were impressed by his enterprise and it made us really laugh at his cheek. No wonder the waitress thanked us – I don’t think the landmine victims here get much help, so we had stepped into the breach – and it was good karma.
