…because they will take advantage of you.  Here are a few examples:

1. In Hanoi, Vietnam we purchased our train tickets from our hotel.  The man who sold us the tickets told us that transportation from the hotel to the train station was included.  When we left the hotel he put us in a cab and we saw him give cash to the driver and then he waved goodbye to us and told us that he had paid for the cab.  A few minutes later we pulled up to the train station, which we thought was rather fast, so we asked someone on the curb if we were at the same train station that was on our ticket and they said “yes”.  So we grabbed our bags from the taxi and started making our way towards the train station, then all of a sudden the taxi driver started yelling at us in Vietnamese and pointing towards his cab.  We said “no, you’ve already been paid” and kept walking.  Well he started screaming more and pulling on one of my bags, which really pissed me off because it was the bag that had my silky pillow in it.  I told Rana to take my other bag so I could use both hands to pull on my other bags and to chase him down and beat him if he got my bag away from me.  We kept yelling back and forth and playing tug-a-war with my bag…since we didn’t speak each others language, we were getting nowhere fast.  Because we were causing such a scene, soon about 20 people were crowded around us.  Luckily, a nice girl who spoke good English came over and said that the taxi driver was saying that we didn’t pay.  I told her that he was lying because we saw the taxi driver get paid by the guy at our hotel.  So she offered to call the hotel for us and as soon as Rana pulled our hotel’s business card out the taxi driver bolted.  We think he was hoping that we would go ahead and pay him again just to avoid the scene he was causing, but he’d obviously picked on the wrong girls!

2. When they say “yes”, they usually mean “no”, but for some reason if they don’t understand what you said, they’ll pretend like they do and tell you “yes” when they really have no idea what you are talking about.  For example, we’ve gotten into several cabs and we’ve asked the driver if they know how to get to such and such a place and they repeat the name of the place and say “yes, I know”.  Well after they drive us around for a while and run up the meter, we realize that they actually have no clue where they are going…it gets very frustrating.

3. Always negotiate the cab fare before you get in or make sure they turn on the meter, but even then be careful because in Ho Chi Minh City we got in a cab whose meter was about 4 times more expensive than the other cabs in the same city.  When we noticed how fast the meter was going up we asked hime to pull over and we walked the rest of the way.

4. Ask around and get the going rate of the Cyclos (they kind of look like a wheel chair that you sit in with a bike attached to the backand a guy drives you around in it).  Even though the drivers are cute little old men, they’ll still try to get as much as possible from you.  In Hanoi we agreed to pay a guy $5 USD for one hour (which later we found out is double the going rate).  We told him to go around the lake and end at our hotel, which we showed him on a map.  He said okay and that he knew where it was, but when the hour was up he kept circling around and couldn’t find the hotel and he had driven us around so much we had no idea where we were.   When we finally got to our hotel he tried to charge us $10 USD.  I smiled at him and said “no, we only agreed to one hour so we are paying for one hour”.  He smiled back since he knew I was right, but he must have figured that it was worth a shot.