Ill-met in Hanoi

It took me a couple of days to get used to Hanoi. It's busy and noisy and well... the humbug...

We haven't really seen much poverty in Vietnam. People seem to get by on small street stalls and motorbike taxis, which make everything run.

In Phu Quoc, I'd leaned my cheap shoe against the exhaust pipe of a Xe Om (motorcycle taxi) and caused the cheap rubber sole to melt a little bit. This made the shoe a little unbalanced and quite ugly.

While crossing a road and telling the fiftieth person that i didn't want a ride/pineapple/t-shirt/lighter, a man grabbed me by the shoes and began to glue the sole into a more fashionable shape. Oh crap..

The Lonely Planet guide specifically warns against the shoe-shone guys. They start before you can say no. They never set a price before they start and they always, always overcharge.

So the guy rebuilds part of my heal using some leather and glue and foam. The end result is functional if quite ugly and takes about 15 minutes. I wait for the hit. This should be about 20,000 Dong (about a dollar), with the obvious mark-up it'll probably be 100,000 Dong ($5 or a good meal in a fancy restaurant, he and his buddies will eat well tonight).

He types out the number on a pocket calculator: 900,000 Dong.

Jesus.

900,000 Dong is $30. It's last night's hotel budget. It's what I paid for these shoes, brand-new, two weeks ago.

So I start ranting and trying to bargain. Eventually, Emma points out that he doesn't understand that much English and my points about failing business models are probably not getting through.

I settle for 550,000 largely because that is everything I have in my wallet. By being quite gruff I manage to talk him out of following me to an ATM to get the rest.

Sigh.

Most of the city is actually quite lovely, with parkland and cute cafes and anything you could want to buy. I'll post photos later.

But my first impression of Hanoi - city of scams.

Photos later.