This Shall Not Stand!

Many times on our journey, we have been prey to minor tourist scams. The official name of the country Laos is Lao PDR. PDR stands for Peoples Democratic Republic (there are a lot of communist symbols and socialist politics). PDR is commonly also understood as “Please Don’t Rush” in reference to the slow, not always goal-oriented pace of things in Lao. I coined a new meaning in reference to the frequent little scams, “Profit Does Rule”. The other day, I hit my scam limit.

We took the very scenic, six-hour slow boat from Nong Khiaw in northern Laos to Luang Prabang. The fifteen of us on the boat had bonded in the mysterious 1.5-hour process of arranging a boat at the seemingly straight-forward boat landing ticket stand. The first three hours of the trip went almost uneventfully, except for two stops where the two boat operators pulled over to the river bank and went up to the road with gas cans to get fuel. One time took five minutes and the other took 30 minutes and involved a motorbike…

Just as we were settling in to the second half of the voyage, the boat pulled over to a sand bar again. The engine had been running strong. They turned off the engine, one of the men ran up to the road and returned two minutes later. Then he went to the stern of the boat and “tried” to start the engine. It turned over strongly, but this time the other man did not advance the throttle from the front. After one minute of trying and without any examination of the engine (and these Lao men are very handy), they pronounced that the engine would not start. They told us a minivan was there (what a coincidence!) to take us the rest of the way to Luang Prabang. I was 95% sure it was a scam , and having taken a bit of a leadership role in organizing the tickets earlier, I thought about taking a stand then, Yet all of us felt powerless, like we had to go along with it.  And we did.

The minivan turned into a songthaew (open air pretty uncomfortable small truck) when we got to the road, and the fifteen of us crammed into it. After an hour and a half bumpy ride, we arrived, not at the boat dock or in town, but at the bus station outside of town. The driver said we had to all get out and pay for a different songthaew into town. I led the group in saying “no”. We then had about 10 minutes of stalemate, with us refusing to get out of the songthaew, and the driver and songthaew mafia bosses telling us about the rules that require use of local songthaews to take you from the bus station to town. Of course, that is usually in the context of arriving by bus, not when you are already in a songthaew. Also, of course, we had bought tickets to take us all the way into town to the boat dock. Isaac said, “I have a limit of being scammed once a day.” Having been scammed by the boat drivers in cahoots with the songthaew driver, we were not eager to go along with being scammed again. It felt like a moment to stand up for tourist rights and to teach the driver that tourists will not always go along with every scam. After another five minutes, we lost a few passengers who decided to just pay for a songthaew into town. The driver showed no signs of giving in and walked away from us.

In an empowered moment, I reached in the driver’s window, turned off the songthaew’s engine, and took the keys. For about 10 minutes, I offered to trade the driver the keys for either money for songthaews into town or for him to take us into town. There were many other drivers and station personnel quite interested in our situation but not intervening much. Finally, the driver agreed to take us into town and I gave him the keys. I wasn’t sure how the others passengers would feel about my methods, but I was greeted like a hero by the 10 passengers who had hung in there. It was not about money; it was about the principle of fair commerce. When we got off the songthaew in town, the driver smiled at me and patted me on the arm in what seemed like a gesture of respect. Score one for the tourists that day!

(late blog entry from a December 28 adventure)