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Vietnam: Tourists on the Trot
"Hello ladies and gentlemen! I know the journey was hard. I know the roads are horrible. I know you're knackered. But you still have a beautiful smile on your face." The young man had a clownish face, and when he smiled the sides of his mouth turned up. His left arm was chopped below the elbow, and he missed the fingers of his right hand. He was delivering the usual introductory speech at the arrival to the destination - the overnight journey on the private tourist bus had taken twelve hours. The bus was full of British and Australian tourists wearing the T-shirts one found in souvenir shops; they had "Good Morning Vietnam" emblazoned in gold letters on the red background of the Vietnamese flag. The man continued: "It's my duty to warn you: there has been several attacks on foreigners. Some were mugged on the beach. Others had their bags snatched as they walked down the street. And there is a new trick: men dress as women and sweetly lure you to a secluded part of the beach, into an ambush. These thieves are clever; they even know you have a money belt underneath your T-shirt. I advise you to leave all your valuables in the hotel safe and only take out enough money to get pissed."
His self-cheering voice emphasised certain words like `pissed' and `knackered' and `money belt' - British slangs and traveller's jargon that he had picked up from the British tourists that visit Nah Trang on the central Vietnam coast for a beach holiday. He was speaking like one of us, as an insider, bidding for our confidence: this was also what his giddy laughter and self-cheer wanted to impart. "If you stay at our hotel, we have earned such respect here that restaurants will give you meals on credit - you just need to tell them which room you're staying in. On our tours we'll always watch your belongings. With us at TM Brother's Caf‚ you'll be safe!" The butts of his hands wriggled in a flurry of impassioned expression, like the feet of an insect on its back.
"Is this it? Have we arrived?" The person who had spoken had an Australian accent, and her voice was impatient.
"Yes."
"Thank you." She got out of her seat, shouldered on her rucksack and shoved past the orator standing at the aisle, almost knocking him. Lonely Planet in hand, she swaggered down the street. You could see she was annoyed at the man's speech being subtly dissuasive of doing things independently, or the way he was trying to persuade us into the folds of his hotel, manipulating us by making a fuss about the supposed crimes Westerners were subjected to. How much was he exaggerating? The Australian backpacker obviously detested the organised nature of travel in Vietnam, especially the way tourists were whisked from place to place in private tourist-buses operated by tour operators. Her allegiance to the guidebook in hand suggested that she might have thought organised travel was a detraction and corruption of the spirit of independent discovery. Then again, wasn't an adherence to Lonely Planet another form of organised and standardised travel?
Yet I shared the Australian woman's idea of travel. My assumption had always been that being taken to restaurants and hotels where tour operators had a business interest meant you got an inferior deal, and being bundled with a conspicuous and gawking and camera-toting group of Westerners is the anti-thesis of immersion travel. But it's not easy being an independent traveller in Vietnam, where the tourist infrastructure, which caters for some 4 million visitors annually, is extensive and efficient. There are tours of everything. There are private buses that shuttle between all the places tourists might want to visit, timed conveniently for tourists - they normally travel at night, knowing that backpackers prefer to travel overnight to save a night's accommodation. The successful tour agencies, like TM Brother's Caf‚, had created a web of operations that covered the whole country; each local office ran local services (tours, hotels, restaurants, Internet joints, flights, buses, and so on), and it was possible to see the whole country and never use a service other than TM Brother's Caf‚. Other businesses came together in cartels running an elaborate network of services that provided everything you might need, so that at any time and any place you were in the care of the businesses that formed part of the alliance. And there was no impartial advice to be found in Vietnam: the government tourist board is just another tour operator, providing government-run tourist services as an alternative to private tour operators.
Virtually every backpacker we spoke to had lamented about the fact that independent travel in Vietnam was difficult, even an anomaly, and the government seemed eager to keep natives and visitors apart. You could, in theory, take local scheduled buses, but it would be more difficult and, all things considered, it would end up costing you the same or more. We could have taken local transport from Hoi An to Nah Trang for example, but we would have had to spend an afternoon researching ways to get there, and then change buses in strange towns, and take a taxi to the bus station - so why subject ourselves to this hardship when we could book a bus at our hotel, be picked up from our hotel, be driven directly to our destination, and be dropped off at a hotel in the destination? Sure, there was no discovery or eventfulness in tour-operator-spoon-fed services, but it was certainly swift and easy.
After the Australian woman had almost knocked him over, the clownish, handless man tilted his body from leg to leg in a slight hopping dance that might have been belligerence or embarrassment. Then he recovered, and smiled, and said: "I don't want to make this a long speech, but those of you who thought the driving was good, please clap." There was a brisk clap of hands, and when the clapping subsided, he said, "Here at TM Brother's Caf‚ our motto is: it's great to serve you." Meanwhile, the hotel staff were poised to receive the busload of tourists. The hotel had thrown its doors wide open; three women receptionists paced across the lobby expectantly; and three porters waited outside the bus near the luggage booths.
At first, like the Australian woman, we had resisted even checking the hotels we were driven too: we were suspicious, and unwieldy in our notion that since we hadn't found the hotel independently, and since it catered for spontaneously assembled package tourists, it had to be a more expensive and inferior deal that what could be found by traipsing around town looking at hotels independently. Yet, each time, the tour operators had made it clear that we were under no obligation or pressure to check into their hotel. They just wanted us to check them out, give them a chance to prove themselves, and if we didn't like their hotel, they offered to drive us to any hotel of our choice.
Ultimately, it was the fact that we were short on time or worn out from long journeys that dissuaded us to check the hotels we were driven to. We had found a hotel in Hue in this manner, and it proved to be a good deal - a better one, in fact, than what other travellers had found independently. Then, in Hoi An, we also checked into the hotel that the private bus arranged at our hotel in Hue had taken us. We had an airy and spacious room, with two double beds, white sheets and curtains, bedside tables, TV, wardrobe, carpeted floor, a lush bathroom, and friendly staff that cleaned our room and changed our sheets and towels every day - all for US$6 nightly. Still, I assumed that I could find a better deal independently, and one morning I went around town looking at other hotels. I saw six, and I was surprised to realise that ours' was indeed the best deal in town. It was a realisation that didn't completely change my belief of independent travel as immersion travel, but I had to concede that I couldn't cling to my predilection - which had initially made me gruff and dismissive, like the Australian woman on the bus - as if it was an uncompromising religious principle, because it didn't apply every time and any place. Maybe one day the Australian woman would come to the same realisation.
© Victor Paul Borg
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