Our arrival in Saigon already tells us a lot about the city. Whether in Hue taxi drivers were fighting to conquer us, here things work differently. The great number of foreigners and tourists do not make them feel the need to fight for get the run. When we ask one of them for the price to get to the city center he tells us 150.000 Dong. Good price, we accept but suddenly his boss come and ask for 250.000 pretending that the ticket for parking the taxi in the airport parking is costing 100.000 Dong. We don’t fall in the trap, these days in Vietnam taught us that it cannot cost more than 20.000 Dong. We deny expecting to start a negotiation but it does not happen: Saigon is the most visited city by tourists and foreigner businessmen, they will find someone else to fool with the price (still very low if compared with western standards).

We get to our hotel and fall into our beds, the Mekong River is waiting for us the morning later.  Continue reading “6 – Saigon & Mekong: money doesn’t stink.. fish does”