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Head of the Vietnam National Administration of Tour-
ism, Nguyen Van Tuan, apologised in person to the Austral-
ian tourists.
Tran Thi Kim Hong, a tour guide of Indochina Travel Agent
who helped a group of French tourists get back their money
from a money exchanger, said that they had offered her a
sum of money to keep silent. “This will tarnish the image of
Vietnam,” she added.
It is undeniable that this has been happening for years
without an effective solution coming in to play.
Huong Viet was fined just VND12.5 million but kept their
business licence. Nhu Y restaurant had become notorious for
scams so simply changed its name to Thu Mai and continued
to cheat its customers. Despite the fact that the behaviour of
these establishments amounts to theft, in most cases they are
merely warned or penalized with a small fine.
Alongside simply forcing customers to pay an exorbitant
price, many taxi drivers use a rigged meter to cheat tourists.
There are 31 taxi firms in Ho Chi Minh City with 15,000 cars
and 117 firms in Hanoi with 17,000 cars. The suggestion
to merge all these small firms into a large one to more eas-
ily manage them was met with fierce opposition. Another
solution that has been suggested is ensuring all meters au-
tomatically print invoices containing information about the
firm and the ride, but again, this was not received well by
the operators.
Sam Son town in Thanh Hoa province has seen a large
number of complaints again this tourist season – this coastal
town has gained a reputation as a centre of overcharging and
cheating. Despite this, Trinh Huy Trieu, chairman of Sam Son
People’s Committee said: “… this is just the kind of negative
behaviour which happens everywhere in the tourism indus-
try.” In peak season, Sam Son welcomed 100,000 tourists, so
the chairman believes the issue is unavoidable: “It is a very
small part. And as for me this violation cases decrease 80 per
cent compared to the past.”
Vice chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Association, Vu
The Binh, disagrees with the fatalistic approach: “We have
proposed the use of a tourism police and many support our
idea – at present the police is a strong force, but they do not
protect tourists adequately.”
Tran Dang Khoa – a famous poet and a blogger, com-
mented: “Overcharging and cheating tourists can be called
a national humiliation and should be crackled down on with
thorough and determinative solutions. They should not be
limited to confiscating the business license, but also impose
huge fines - we need a strong, tough solution.”
29
timeout
Ilona Schultz and her two sons
took a cylco from the Ho Chi Minh
Mausoleum to Dinh Tien Hoang Street,
about 5km away. They negotiated a
price of VND70,000, but he ultimately
asked for VND1.3 million.