Saigon Scam

Asia wouldn't be asia without some haggling and scams! I'm quite glad that I managed to get out of a scam on my first full day in Saigon (and still suffering from jet lag).

At the Ben Thanh market (tourist central), I was interested in buying a t-shirt from a very aggressive stall owner. Although she attempted to sell me her entire stock of t-shirts with the promise of giving me 'good price', I was only interested in the one t-shirt and eventually extracted the price out of her - 180,000 dong. Now this equates to only £7 however the indian in me refused to pay the full price!

I offered her 40,000 dong and stuck by my price even with all her ranting. After some to'ing and fro'ing, she reluctantly agreed, and I handed her a 100,000 dong note.

Whilst waiting for my change (which she instructed her son to fetch) she attempted in vain to bargain the price up again (or sell me more t-shirts). I held my ground and said I only wanted the one t-shirt which she had placed into a black plastic bag, tying the top so as to hide the contents inside. She continued to shove other t-shirts in my face causing a bit of a ruckus.

During all this, Gwen was being distracted by her newly found 'friend'. However there is only so much you can say about where you are from, marriage status, your family, etc. before the conversation runs dry. When she turned to see what was taking so long, she was just in time to see the women putting a singlet into another black bag and swapping it for the first.

At this point, Gwen took decisive action, yelling out 'no buy!'. I grabbed my 100,000 dong from the still confused son and marched out of the stall with the satisfaction that they didn't get a dong from me! :-)

Note, I've since seen the shirt sold elsewhere for only 50,000 dong!