Hello Tuk-Tuk*

As a tourist in Asia, I can't walk more than a couple metres in a medium-sized city without having someone yell at me, 'Hello Tuk-Tuk*'. The vocabulary changes a bit depending on the country. In Laos and Thailand it's 'Hello Tuk-Tuk', but in India it changes to 'Hello Rickshaw'. From what I've deduced based on my first 5 minutes on the streets in Hanoi, in Vietnam, it's 'Hello Moto'.

Regardless of the country, my irritation is universal. The rational part of me knows they're just enterprising small businessmen trying to earn a living. But here's my perspective - I'm an adult, who, on a good day, can make my own decisions. So if I'm walking down a street I'm probably doing so with some vague purpose in mind, making my way from point A to point B, and I've most likely already worked out in my head my chosen mode of transport for this journey. So you yelling 'Hello Tuk-Tuk' at me as I walk with purpose away from you is not suddenly going to change my mind and create a fare for you. It's just going to irritate me, and then I get crusty, and then the whole world feels it, from the pissy look on my face.

My friend Lisa tried to experiment with the drivers in Vientiane on our last day in Laos. In response to 'Hello Tuk-Tuk' she replied cheekily, 'Hello, but no, my name is actually Lisa'. It's hard to make a point like this when the English comprehension is limited to the obnoxious 'Hello Tuk-Tuk' greeting and negotiating fares, so her attempt at humour was met with a blank stare. But I silently applauded the sentiment behind her efforts.

My first full day in Hanoi I ignored about a hundred invitations to jump on the back of a motorcycle, because, as I explained, I already had a plan. To attempt to orient myself to the maze that is the old quarter in Hanoi, where I'm staying this week, I deliberately followed a walking tour provided in my constant companion, the Lonely Planet guidebook. I was quite proud of myself upon completion of the tour - not one wrong turn in 3 hours. And given I usually abdicate map reading responsibility to whoever my companion is, this was a big deal.

I also admit, the suspicious part of my nature - the part that occasionally worries about the worst possible outcome in a scenario and then obsesses for a stupid amount of time till I start to lose sleep - yeah, that part of me, well it was more than a little skeptical about the casual nature of this motorcycle-taxi system in Hanoi. There are something like 3 million motorcycles/mopeds in the city of Hanoi for a population of about 3.5 million people. So there's thousands of random guys on corners ready to take you wherever you want to go, even if you don't want them to. And I find it all a bit too casual - what's stopping a complete psychopath with the knowledge of a few key phrases in English, the required moto and spare helmet, to pick up unsuspecting potential passengers - one preferably who has just arrived in the city and knows no landmarks - and zipping off to an alleyway somewhere and bludgeoning said tourist to death?

So with these thoughts running through my suspicious head, it took 24 hours for me to stop panicking, trust the universe, and take someone up on their offer. I actually find the offer of a helmet comforting - it says without words, and possibly, any sincerity, 'I'm at least conscious that I should be worried about your safety as we weave in amongst crazy speeding traffic'. It goes without saying that I was ripped off. In this area the Lonely Planet continually fails me - yes, I do suck at negotiating, but the price is always at least 30% more than the guidebook says it should be. After getting within 10,000 dong of the guidebook's estimate for my first ride, I donned a pink helmet and we took off for the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum complex, where Uncle Ho's body has been on display since his death in the early 1970s. Stupidly I didn't read the guidebook and failed to realize that he's only available for viewing for 2 hours in the morning, so we arrived 15 minutes too late. (I don't blame him - if my body had been pickled against my wishes, I'd be a bit ornery about being gawked at as well). My second ride with driver number two was frustrating, but educational. What I have to surrender to is my wishes are insignificant in the transaction. We decided on two destinations, the Temple of Literature, which was nearby, and the Museum of Ethnology, which was 7km out of central Hanoi, and barely on my guidebook map. My driver's vision of things was that he would wait for me at the museum, and then take me shopping, basically spending the whole day in my company for a ridiculously large fare. After a lengthy airing of my perspective he finally accepted that I wanted to be left at the museum. Clearly this wasn't what he wanted to hear, and decided to retaliate, because he dropped me off a couple blocks from the museum - translation - in the middle of nowhere - with the vague instruction that I just go up the street to buy the ticket. I recognize now that given I was paying him money I should have insisted on being dropped off right in front of the museum. But he'd sneakily dropped me at some other random tourist destination in the same vicinity, and I'd gullibley gone along with it. Yes, dense, very dense move on my part. About 2 seconds after he'd taken off I ascertained that I wasn't where I wanted to be, no one spoke English, and my crappy map was useless. But that's the thing in Hanoi, as I mentioned, you're always within spitting distance of another moto driver eager to take you somewhere, even if they don't know how to get there. That was the problem with driver #3 - he acted like he knew where he was going when we first started to mime at each other, but once we'd spent 15 minutes circling the same few blocks, it was clear he was lost. Panic sort of set in at this point, and while I didn't fear for my safety, I was very conscious of my stupidity and naivety - which is this case had combined to find me on the back of a motorcycle in a foreign city, with absolutely no idea where I was. Thankfully at an intersection my driver finally found someone who knew where the museum was and he quickly took me there - we'd passed the spot 10 minutes earlier from the wrong direction and hadn't seen the sign. We then argued about the fare - he wanted $3 U.S. dollars for a trip that should have taken about 30 seconds, and well, Heather was pissy and tired of being taken advantage of. So I mimed that he was crazy, and walked off, having paid him $1. A small victory, and for the next half hour I felt guilty about it, but I had to strike back at the Hanoi moto-taxi industry, no matter how feebly!

What am I doing tomorrow? Walking. And no one will convince me otherwise.