This is something I always contemplate sharing because I believe my incident was a matter of bad luck, rather than a common occurrence in Vietnam. However, I also think it’s important to share it, so I can raise awareness and hopefully prevent someone else from having to face the same situation.
In this post, I will share the story of how I got scammed and robbed upon my arrival in Vietnam. During this trip, I was traveling solo.
My trip to Asia had been going extremely well up until this day. I arrived in Vietnam after a very early flight from Singapore. It was a very busy morning at the airport, and I had to wait about 3 hours at the immigration office to receive my visa on arrival.
Once I left the airport, I was looking to get a taxi to my hotel in Hanoi city center. A well dressed man approached me and offered a taxi ride for $20. Everything seemed normal until I noticed there was a different driver in the car. The guy that approached me was in the front passengers seat doing ‘paper work’. Having two people in the taxi seemed odd. At this point, I was unsure if this was a normal thing in Vietnam, so I chose to ignore it.
Once we got on to the motorway, the young man in the suit proceeds to ask if I have enough money for the cab ride. In that moment, I was trying to look into my purse and figure out how the currency works, as I could see really big numbers on the notes I had. He then convinced me that the notes were ‘too big‘ for him and he doesn’t have ‘enough change‘.
He made a stop at a small ATM on the side of the motorway (literally, in the middle of nowhere). He told me the ATM has to be in Vietnamese language, in order to withdraw a smaller amount. Once I changed the language to Vietnamese, he managed to knock my hand off the ATM and withdraw the ‘correct amount‘. Once I saw the pile of cash in his hand, I instantly got a bad feeling and tried to grab the money out of his hand. He suddenly became very rude and ignorant, giving me my ‘change‘ back from the taxi fare, while keeping the rest. This is when it really clicked, I knew I got robbed.
While all of this was happening at the ATM, another car with a completely different driver pulls in. Shortly after the cash incident, I was asked to change cars to a different one. The car was very old and did not look like a taxi. The driver seemed very casually dressed and could not speak English. At this point, I had no option but to follow their instructions.
At that moment, there was nothing I could have done to escape or leave. They chose a very isolated ATM along the motorway. I was surrounded by 3 men and 2 cars with no passers-by or any nearby buildings. I was furious and intimidated. I chose to pretend like I couldn’t read the situation and continued the trip, hoping they will drop me off at my hotel the least.
Thankfully, I made it to my hotel safely, only left with a sick feeling in my stomach…I immediately checked my account and noticed there was €150 missing…
Although I had the opportunity to report this to the police, I chose not to. Unfortunately, the police in Vietnam can be very corrupt. This is a major issue in many parts of Asia, mostly affecting tourists.
NOTE
Despite the situation, I do want to highlight – that this incident is not a common occurrence in Vietnam as I mentioned previously. It does not reflect bad upon Vietnamese people or their culture. For the rest of my trip in Vietnam, I received nothing but love and respect from the locals! Partially, I failed to read some early red flags and didn’t follow my initial instincts.
Vietnam is a perfectly safe country to visit whether traveling with friends or solo. In fact, many locals and backpackers were shocked by this story as it’s not commonly heard of.
I strongly suggest reading TRAVELING ASIA AS A SOLO FEMALE TRAVELER: THE TRUTH
If you want to learn more about the most common scams in Vietnam, I recommend reading Scams In Vietnam: Read Before You Visit by Backpackers Wanderlust! I found this article to be very insightful! Many of these scams are repeated throughout Southeast Asia, so you can use this as a general guide for visiting Asia.
