With precious few days left in our visit to Vietnam we signed up for a three-day tour to the awe inspiring karst limestone islands scattered across the waters of Halong Bay. The bus ride was bearable enough, having only to endure a brief stop to a tour company-owned compound to watch workers embroider vivid landscapes on canvas. We laughed at their attempts to sell them for ten times the price asked in the old quarter of Hanoi.

Six hours later our sail-less junk, with its powerful diesel engine, was plowing through the green ocean waters of the bay. We took turns spotting jellyfish lazily pulsating through the clear green water. A gray layer of clouds stretched as far as we could see. We stopped to visit a limestone cave carved from the rock over millions of years by water seeping down through the rock and we cringed at the pastel pink, green and yellow lights placed for tourists casting a circus-like atmosphere on the otherwise beautiful stalactites and stalagmites. By evening we had been delivered to the dock at Cat Ba Island where we weaved along an eroded gravel road in a rickety old bus to the harbor town filled with half constructed “Vietnamese-style” high-rise hotels. A fine misty drizzle began to fall as we lumbered up the steps to the hotel with our packs.

The next morning we were bussed to a local park where we were told langur monkeys lived. We hiked through the jungle to a peak overlooking the steep forested hills on the island. The clouds countered our offensive and lowered to obscure our vision over the landscape. With the langurs nowhere to be seen we retreated to the hotel where we watched updates of the War in Iraq on CNN and BBC. Late into the night the music from a disco above our sixth floor room pounded away with only empty bar stools as an audience.

The next morning we set the count down alarm on my watch, looking forward to the minute the landing gear from our plane would retract and we would be airborne bound for Thailand. We had had enough of Vietnam.

We ate prison-like breakfast rations and then our tour guide announced that the bus had arrived to take us to our boat for the journey back through Halong Bay to the mainland. That is when the excitement started.

I bent down to hoist my pack up onto my shoulder and as I lifted, the pack swung wide and knocked over one of the sterile looking laminated high-back chairs placed around the table. It fell backwards in slow motion and slapped hard against the cold tile floor. A small piece of the back broke away and skidded across the floor. Without much thought I picked up the piece and placed it on the table near the chair and calmly walked out of the hotel lobby. I carried my pack onto the bus and Lisa joined me across the aisle with her pack. We waited for the bus to pull away and deliver us to the dock. Little did we know at the time that this bus wouldn’t be leaving, at least not with us on it.

The tour guide jumped up the stairs, looked around and approached me asking if I had broken a chair. I redefined his question stating that a chair did in fact fall over as we were leaving. He said the manager would like to talk to me. I said OK have him come on the bus and I will talk to him. He smiled and walked away. In Asia, a smile is not always a warm thing. Within a minute several other Vietnamese came onto the bus and said that I had broke the chair and that I needed to get off the bus and talk to the manager. I was in a foul mood and I drove my stake into the ground. “I am not getting off the bus. But you can have the manager come speak to me.” They left smiling but visibly confused. Another minute passed and a woman entered the bus and walked to the back where we were sitting. I recall little of what she actually said but remember clearly the sparks and flames spewing from the dragon lady’s mouth. After several attempts at dismissing her by avoiding eye contact I made my first mistake. I apologized that the chair was broken; that I did not know how it happened; and that it was not my fault. With furious eyes she looked at me and screamed, “No sorry! You pay!” Her belligerence was ferocious. I dug down real deep for a reserve of calm and looked her straight in the eye and said, “No. It was not my fault. I will not pay”.

She repeated her demand, “No sorry!! You pay!” I suspecting she had many opportunities in the past to demonstrate such flawless tact.

A rule for traveling in poor countries is that if you have more money than your adversary or you are a tourist you pay regardless of who is at fault. She stormed off the bus. Her fury was unsettling. I cringed at the amount that might be demanded for such a cheap piece of furniture. The tour guide walked to the back of the bus where I was sitting and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level, “If you do not get off the bus and talk with the manager there will be big problem for me and big problem for you.” His warning was quite matter-of-fact and ominous.

As the few other tourists on the bus had turned in their seats to watch the drama unfold I suddenly realized the gravity of the situation. His comment, regardless of its true meaning, instantly brought images to my mind of police or military involvement. A moneymaking tour company like this must have its guardian angels in such a corrupt society. His personal plea to me softened my resolve and I exhaled half in defeat and half in sheer anger. I walked off the bus (my second and most fatal mistake) and walked into the hotel. Out of my ear range and sight, the bus driver revved the engine and started down the muddy roadway with my pack and my wife.

I walked up the steps to the hotel and said, “Ok, where is the manager?” With many hotel employees gathered near the door I scanned their eyes for authority. I moved closer to the front desk and repeated my demand. The Vietnamese dragon lady who had come onto the bus had pulled her lips tight in anger and stood silently behind the counter with her arms crossed. I forced myself to soften my tone and asked, “What do you want me to do? Where is the manager?” She repeated her demand in a slow mocking tone that matched my cadence of speech, “No sorry! You pay!”

At that moment a commotion outside drew my attention. Lisa was dragging both our backpacks up the steps to the hotel and she looked pissed off. Surprised and confused I walked down the stairs to meet her. Her eyes were wild with anger, a rare state for my bride. She recounted the events in the few minutes that had passed, “After you got off the bus it started to leave. I yelled to the driver to stop the *@$#! bus. He stopped and I yelled at the tour guide that he should be in the hotel helping you solve this problem. I grabbed our packs and got off not wanting to get separated and the bus driver closed the door and just drove away. The tour guide wasn’t going to get off the bus but I made him.”

This changed the playing field. I pulled the tour guide aside and asked him to find the manager. He conversed with the staff in Vietnamese and broke the bad news. We had been hoodwinked. The manager was not here but his sister was in charge. And where might we find the manager’s sister? It was dragon-lady herself. Rapidly losing patience and worried that our boat would leave without us I felt the ground slipping beneath me. I asked the tour guide to ask them how much they wanted. He returned to our sidebar conversation with a figure. “They want you to pay for the chair.”

“I know that. How much do they want me to pay for the chair?” I snapped.

“Five hundred thousand dong.”

The fires stoked up and the steam turned the wheels in my head as I calculated the conversion to US dollars. They wanted a whole $33 for the cheap ugly chair. Now $33 US may not seem like a lot of money but we were traveling on a budget. I had convinced myself it was not my fault that the chair had been broken. This was a matter of principle and it was to be my last stand in Vietnam to fight back against the constant grinding pressure to manipulate and deceive us as a ploy to separate us from our money.

As the seconds ticked on my fear increased of the impending arrival of police or military to solve the dispute. (How much would that have cost us?) Lisa was fuming that they wanted us to pay for the entire chair when only a small piece had been broken off and could be easily have been glued back on. "They were trying to make a profit from an accident," she said as she clenched her fists. We both tried to calm down and look at the situation from a bigger perspective. We stood little to gain from holding our ground and risked far more serious consequences by further pressing our case. Still angry with the tour guide for his willingness to abandon us like rubbish, Lisa looked him firmly in the eye and told him, “You get the Vietnamese price for the chair. It is not worth 500,000 dong. We won’t pay it.” She was brilliant. We had learned that locals always paid about a third for the same items bought by tourists. It is a generally accepted truth in Vietnam.

So we put the tour guide to work for us. As we waited for the reply I went over the options in my mind. The outlook was grim. It was just a matter of negotiating a better price and we would be free and clear. Lisa and I agreed that if they made us purchase the chair at its full value we would take the chair with us just to spite them and foil their greedy moneymaking plan. The vision of us walking to the dock several miles away carrying our packs and a broken chair made us laugh. The situation had mushroomed out of control and we couldn’t help but laugh at how screwed we were. It had become a game.

He came back with 300,000 VND. We said we would only pay 200,000. He came back with 250,000. We said we wouldn’t pay it. He pleaded for some minutes on our behalf and returned with the good news that our offer had been accepted. We threw down two crisp one hundred thousand dong notes ($13) on the counter in front of dragon lady. I was so enraged at the situation and with her that a darker side of me arose from within and spoke his mind. I let loose a blast of profanity directly into the face of dragon lady and before she could respond we were out the door. We quickly detached from the crisis and headed out into the street to solve our next problem. How were we going to get to the dock before the boat left us?

Our tour guide was our hostage and we kept close tabs on him as he hailed several motorbike riders. He negotiated a fee and within seconds we each were mounted firmly behind drivers of the motorbikes. Lisa and I were wearing our backpacks as we fought through a headwind on a gray misty morning towards the docks of Cat Ba Island. It began to rain and several minutes later we rounded a corner to find the sail-less junk waiting for us. Relief flushed over us as we threw our packs aboard and climbed inside away from the rain.

As our junk carried us back toward the mainland, an occasional fishing boat would collide with us broadside and tie off ropes in hopes of selling us fresh seafood. We ignored them as we shared the rest of the story with our tour mates who truly empathized with us. If you want to instantly bond with fellow travelers in Vietnam just start sharing your stories of how shamelessly manipulative and scheming the North Vietnamese can be to separate you from your money. At least in Saigon they had a little tact.

I could only wonder who would be waiting for us on the docks if we had held our ground.
Sometimes it’s better to cut your losses than make a bad situation worse. As the tiny fishing boats pursued us like pirates after a royal treasure we counted the hours until we would be leaving Vietnam.

Enough was enough.

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