Yeah, that's right... no need to adjust the settings on your monitor. Everybody wants your money in Vietnam. I was expecting people to be pushy, but what I wasn't expecting was to get 100 000 dong ripped off by a monk.
As Elise and I were making our way back to our hotel, two monks approached us with religious trinkets in hand. I was willing to give 50 000 d to help with the renovation of their temple, but one of them kept adding zeros to my amount. 500 000 d?!? Are you out of your mind??? Do I look like a walking moneybag??? During this exchange, the other monk kept trying to pull 100 000 d bills right out of my wallet. RIGHT OUT OF MY WALLET! This is inexcuseable behaviour, and from monks no less. I'm pretty anti-religious to begin with, but I always had some amount of respect for Buddhism (which I treated more as a philosophy than a religion), but it looks like this experience has just cemented my position. This is exactly the same as Benny Hinn scamming thousands of dollars from the ignorant masses.
I didn't think I'd be pulling out the Gonzo so soon, I had been coping well with the place so far.
Burned by monks... WTF?
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4 comments:
Wow... wtf...Thats messed up, i hope you didn't give him anything after a stunt like that. I mean.. i hate pushy people too... but i think i would have gotten big green and mean if they were that pushy.
Greed is such a powerful motivator, isn't it? The only time I've ever lost my cool with pushy religious (?) people was at the O'Hare airport Something about needing a lot of my money to subsidize their intellectual awakening (Hare Krishna). It didn't pan out so well and there was no physical contact but thinking back on it, so many years later, if it had happened on their turf and I had shoved (or worse) one of them (I was so close) I would have been in deep shit because of the perception of high moral ground on which they stand. So careful; best to not even give them a glimpse of the fortunes that may be avilable with a little more dare. So relax, enjoy the market this week-end, go say hi to Uncle Ho on my behalf and for God's sake, try to post some pictures: I;m a visual guy and I love pictures...
Je regardais tes très bonnes photos (merci!): Sur la route de My Son, t'as l'air d'un gars au bout de son rouleau!! Do you get enough sleep?
I lost 100 000 d out of it, which works out to about 7 dollars. Nothing too big, but still a piss off.
Yeah, I was getting pretty tired after My Son. I'm getting enough sleep, it was just about 35 degrees with 100% humidity.
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