Archive for the 'Vietnam' Category
Vietnamese Corruption
The last time I traveled to Vietnam (about 8 years ago) was with my late father. Although my mother couldn’t join us, she warned us about her experience going through customs in Vietnam a few years earlier and how she was given a hard time because they thought she spoke Vietnamese; the customs officials wanted her to bribe them and pay them off so that they wouldn’t give her a difficult time just because.
My father refused to participate in such corruption and so when we went through customs and the officials started speaking to him in Vietnamese, he pretended not to understand. We were given a slightly difficult time, but passed through without needing to pay them off.
Just recently, I met someone who is also traveling to Vietnam in a less than a month and was told by a travel agent in San Jose, CA that his visa would cost $50 and his friend’s would cost $75. The reason? The guy’s last name could pass for Vietnamese while his friend’s could not.
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