I then headed out to the local Chabad for some dinner. As I walked in I realized that I knew the rabbi quite well from my time in Israel as a bachur. It then came back to me that he had told me 10 years earlier that he was going to become the rabbi in Vietnam but I hadn’t put two and two together. Anyways, he’s a really nice guy and deserves a nice donation.
After dinner I decided to take a nice evening stroll and to get a look at the city. During my excursion, I took a ride on someone’s motorbike. Long story short, there was some sort of miscommunication and we got into a heated argument about I believe 300,000 Dong. After some intense back and forth, he pulled a screwdriver on me. It was at that point I realized I’d rather part with $15 than get killed or seriously injured.
I said, “OK here take the money” and he quickly put it in his pocket. He then said “now give me the rest.” I didn’t know what he was talking about and he proceeded to pull my money out of his pocket, only this time, instead of there being a 200,000 Dong bill, it was a 20,000 bill. Now, I had done my research to know about this popular scam. I was bigger than him and I assume stronger than him, the only advantage he had was that he seemed crazier than I. But enough was enough, no more Mr. Nice Guy. I made myself big (like what you are supposed to do when encountering a mountain lion) and starting yelling - I was ready to go. He realized the jig was up and took off.
The next morning I had enough from the previous night and decided to walk around. My first stop was the Ben Thanh market passing City Hall along the way. There wasn’t much to see/do there and I didn’t stay long. They did however have Kopi Luwak at a pretty cheap price (~$16/lb) and some interesting Pringles flavors.
City Hall
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