Outside of Korea, our first big trip was to Fiji. We mainly stuck to our resort, or boated out for day trips to remote and uninhabited islands, but we were fortunate enough to tour a couple of the local villages. While there, some of the villagers made an effort to display items for sale. The people in Fiji are famously laid back and seem to care none at all if you decline to purchase their painted seashells attached to a pieces of rope. Still, we weren't just going to stroll by their makeshift displays without buying at least one souvenir, or more for co-workers (this was before we found out that Koreans don't really give a shit if you bring them souvenirs and actually kind of think that you are a braggart if you do- like you are showing off for leaving the peninsula or something "Oooh you rich-ey!" Well, guess what. Stop spending thousands of dollars on cell phones and private academy tuition for your five year old and you can afford to leave the peninsula too).
Our next big trip was to Siem Reap, Cambodia where the kids selling magnets and postcards were so cute that we couldn't say no. I did draw the line when one little girl gave me a tiny little flower- like a budding dandelion picked from the grass. I said thank you and took it, thinking it a nice (if annoying) gesture, but of course she wanted compensation. "One dahwl-ah. One dahw-luh." I just ignored her punk ass. Kids are so stupid.
Shanghai was where I really learned to watch myself. It was there where we nearly got sucked in to a famous tea house scam- someone invites you to a tea house to drink tea and practice English, then they leave you to pay the bill which is exorbitantly high. We weren't so lucky later on when a paper cutter cut a picture of my profile and demanded payment.
I felt like a sucker after the paper cutting incident and vowed never to be played for fool again. Before our trip to southeast Asia, I read in some guidebook that the best way to handle street peddlers is to simply ignore their greetings entirely and refuse to make eye contact. This worked pretty well in Saigon and again in Phonm Penh where the people asking for a handout were often victims of landmines with missing limbs. It was heartbreaking to walk past them, but Sami reminded me that we were on the tightest of budgets, especially with that added knowledge that there would be a new addition to our family in August. Besides, the guidebook said that I would only be wasting their time by engaging in conversation with no intention of giving money.
In Hanoi things were different. We couldn't help but get the feeling that we were being looked at only as dollar signs. Everywhere we ate we had to negotiate a price beforehand and even then we were given incorrect change. In addition to the nightmarish motor scooter traffic, we couldn't move without being offered fruit or a photocopied addition of some guidebook or historical novel set in Vietnam. Every taxi and tuk-tuk driver was convinced we needed a ride and pegged us as crazies when we politely refused.
The final straw came the afternoon of our return from Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island. When we checked back into the hotel we were given cups of complimentary tea. The tea must have been loaded with caffeine because afterwards, I was in a great mood and bounced through the streets to meet up with our friends Tor and Becky. Along the way I was accosted by street peddlers, but I playfully danced around them and the hundreds of parked motor scooters, determined not to let them break my high. In fact one of them laughed along with me, amused by my cunning avoidance (or so I would like to believe).
I was still feeling good when we stopped to take a picture near a famous statue in front of Hoan Kiem Lake. It was then that a woman handed me a long stick with a basket of bananas on each end and placed a ubiquitous Vietnamese conical hat on my head. I gave her the camera and she took a picture. If you look at the picture you could tell I knew something was up but I didn't want to admit it. Afterward, I bounded off, but turned to see Sami, Tor and Becky shaking their heads. Sami was engaged in a heated discussion with my photographer. She was obligated to buy bananas. She reluctantly asked for only one, but was given a whole bushel and no change. My wife came storming at me, pissed off that I pissed away half of our scarce dinner allowance on bananas. I became frustrated because I wanted to believe the woman was just doing something nice and thought that it would be funny. I should have known better from all of our past experiences. I was played again.
My frustration turned into rage. I was mad at myself for being so stupid, annoyed with having to document how every penny was spent, and most of all, embarrassed in front of my wife and friends. Sami was yelling in my face like I had never experienced before, and I felt it to be a public dressing down of my manhood. Acting entirely on impulse, I snatched the bag of bananas and flung them as high as I could into the air. They plopped down with a dull thud in the middle of the road and were immediately squashed by scooters.
I couldn't even think straight afterwards. I didn't know how to proceed. We were supposed to buy tickets for the famous water puppet show down the street, but I wasn't sure if we had money for that and dinner. If there was a big enough hole, I gladly would have crawled in and died. All around us tourists and peddlers stared for a quick second and the banana hurling fool, and then went right on about their business of trying to feed their families or hold on to their dinner money.
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