[travel] Perspectives on income differences.

[mattbell]

Most Vietnamese vendors sell things for a much higher price to tourists than to locals.  Since supermarkets are more or less nonexistent, almost everythinng you buy has no price label.  Thus, it's easy to have discriminatory  pricing.

The average annual income in Vietnam is around $500/yr.  I don't know the average income of an American tourist in Vietnam, but I'm guessing it's around $50000/yr.  So there's about a 100-to-1 difference in salary. 

Let's look at things from the perspective of the Vietnamese street vendor, but translate things into American prices.

Suppose you own a small fruit smoothie stand in the US.  It's a relatively tough life... you make $20,000 on a good year, and nearly all of that goes to expenses.  You sell smoothies to the locals for $5.  Then these funny-looking people from a country called Richlandia show up.  You know they have a lot of money.  So you make up a price for them.  You say $50.  They smile and buy it, stoked at the great deal they're getting.  You raise your price to $200.  Most of them still buy it.  Sometimes they get confused and give you a $2000 bill instead of a $200 bill.  All the money looks alike to them.   They walk around with cameras worth $30,000 dangling from their wrists.  When they open their wallets, you see that some of them have over $100,000 in Richlandia currency in there.  You have to feed your  family.  Do you cheat the foreigners?  You can legally cheat them by a significant amount and most of them won't even know.  You could commit a crime and end up with a year's worth of income in a few seconds.  What do you do?

If you're very motivated and want to stay on the ethical side of things, you could learn English and become a tour guide, or start a stand that sells items catering to foreigners (like hand sanitizer, which they all seem to be obsessed with. 

Comments

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

the nice thing is, you know you are making their lives better. the annoying thing is, they are very pushy because the money from your business means so much, even a slight chance of getting it is worth a lot. and id guess they compete brutally with each other. makes it surprising there isnt more crime. robbing a tourist helps u and hurts everyone else, so presumably the police crack down on it hard, since it affects the revenue stream for the area.