Dubai Bubble Dance

This ought to make it an interesting time to visit Dubai.  I'll be there in a little under three weeks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/world/middleeast/12dubai.html?_r=1&em

[travel] Blinky webpages in real life

Today I realized that Hanoi is basically the real-life equivalent of those webpages that have dozens of obnoxious banner ads that blink, shake, dance, and do whatever it takes to get your attention.  Every five seconds or so, somebody makes a noise or visible motion to get your attention.  There's an astonishing variety of noises, from "hey you", to whistles, to bird noises, to grunts, to the sort of sound that a gay man might make to cruise me.  The latter one is especially funny when a motorcycle taxi driver does it while patting the back seat of his motorbike.    I would love to transport one of those guys to the Castro in San Francisco and  watch him try to get some business.

The worst ones are the ones that physically get in your way.  Even old ladies carrying two baskets of bananas balanced on a long pole will purposefully move their baskets to block your way.   You wouldn't push an old lady... or at least, you wouldn't push the first one who tries it.   The second one, on the other hand...

I've made a rule of only buying from people who do not resort to extreme measures to get my attention.  It's positive reinforcement, though my ability to provide meaningful training of an entire country full of salespeople is limited.  If all the other tourists did it...   The trouble is that the loud sell probably works on average.   People who make their lives selling things probably have some idea what they're doing, even if they can't spot the right technique to use on me.

Yesterday as I was walking past a woman who was loudly trying to get me to buy replica watches, I suddenly turned to her and tried to sell her my bag of fruit.  I insisted that she look at them.  She laughed.  I laughed.  Maybe she got it.

Then there were the motorcycle taxi drivers who came into my sleeping compartment when I arrived by train into Hanoi at 5am.  They woke me up and asked for my hotel name and bag.  (A common scam involves motorcycle taxis taking you to a sham hotel with a similar name to yours.)  I told them "no" a few times in both my language and theirs, along with "go away".  They kept hovering.  I closed the door partially.  They reopened it.  I closed it and locked it.  They stayed outside for 5 minutes while I packed, occasionally banging on the door.  When I finally opened the door to the horde of them, they were blocking my way, shouting "Moto?  Where you go?".   I body-checked the first one hard against the side of the train compartment, and the rest left me alone.   I don't have much of an asshole side, but these people are working hard on nurturing it.

On the other hand, I've found the majority of Hanoi residents to be very nice. 

[travel] Perspectives on income differences.

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. 

[travel] I'm going to Laos!

I've heard so many good things about the city of Luang Prabang and the surrounding area that I've decided to add Laos to my itinerary.  Adding 4 days for Laos means dropping 2 from Thailand, 1 from Cambodia, and 1 from Vietnam.  My March 11 Turkey constraint kind of sucks. 

On the plus side, I appear to be successful in enticing more people to leave the US and join me.  If you've got the money, you should go for it. (Though it's also cheaper than you think... you can get from the US to almost any major city in the northern hemisphere for under $900) 

These kinds of new experiences are fantastically mind-opening.