Hanoi Headaches
Trying to cross the street in Hanoi is a practice in pure faith.
I motioned for the waitress to bring us the check and when it came I reached to grab my wallet. My hand hit the bottom of my and and I searched around. I took my hand out and frowned at my friend. Then I tried again. No luck, my wallet wasn’t in my purse. My wallet was gone.
My wallet was gone.
It was my first day in Hanoi.
My wallet was gone.
I had 8 more days of travel ahead of me.
My wallet was gone.
All my credit cards. My debit card. All my cash (foreign and local). My Driver’s license.
My wallet was gone.
F#CK!!!
So now what? I kept shoving my hand into my purse, scouring for my wallet, but my wallet was really gone.
Fortunately, while this was technically a solo trip, one of my world-traveling friends was in town, and I was with her at this very moment.
Good - because I kept looking for my wallet, but Y’all…my wallet was gone. She snapped me out of my daze and told me to immediately cancel my cards. OH YEAH, that’s what I’m supposed to do.
So I got on my phone, opened my bank apps and put a hold on all my cards. Fortunately, I still had my passport and my phone, so the only thing I had to worry about was money. That’s all. Just money, in a foreign country… Yikes. Cash-less and card-less, here we go.
Related: An Introverts Guide To Surviving Ho Chi Minh City
Okay, so I put the cards on hold. And then my phone started buzzing.
Someone tried to charge $532,600,000.00 Vietnamese Dong on my credit card. Lemme go ahead and do that math for you - that’s $23,000 USD.
They tried to steal $23,000 of my hard-earned US Dollars.
And then my phone buzzed again. They tried to charge the same amount to every single one of my credit cards, and my debit card.
WHEWWWWW! I was so glad my friend quickly reminded me that I needed to freeze my cards.
Then, because if you’re gonna steal someone’s wallet - you might as well go hard, they started charging different amounts. I guess they figured that the original “declines” they received were because I didn’t have that much available credit on any of the cards.
So next, they tried to charge $150 dollars. Still, no luck
But undeterred, they went again, this time attempting to get me for about a dollar.
Sigh…at least they didn’t get anything but the cash I had on me. Inconvenient, but I’ll survive.
But then I started getting pissed.
The first amount the tried to charge almost seven times the monthly income of the top 1% in Hanoi. That’s crazy, right?
And this was clearly the work of a theft ring. They got me in a tourist location at time when I was completely frazzled. Frazzling courtesy of the restaurant we were at. The restaurant owner was in on it.
It was late at night, around 8 or 9 pm, and within 15 minutes of them stealing my wallet, the thieves were two miles away charging eight times the monthly salary of the location, and this establishment let them.
Using a credit card that was clearly not theirs. (If you know any Asian men with the first name Roshida or the Last name Dowe, let me know.)
So obviously this was a theft ring. The restaurant was in on it. The place where they tried to use my card was in on it. Hanoi was in on it. I’m joking. I know it’s not the whole city, but you have to remember that I had only landed in the city about four hours before.
I was cranky.
Sigh, so I go back to my hotel and call all my banks. LONG CALLS. LONG PAINFUL CALLS.
And now I find out that none of the banks can deliver a card for me until about 5 days later. 5 days later I was scheduled to be in another city. Super annoying. So I have them send the cards to me in Da Nang, and they all show up at my hotel on the same day, the day before I was scheduled to leave Vietnam.
But I didn’t plan on writing only about a robbery. This post was supposed to cover my experience in Hanoi. So here’s my take on Hanoi:
I don’t remember it. It’s funny how this act made everything else get blurry. It ruined the city for me.
I remember that I went to a few of the markets. I remember that I went to the Pink church. And I remember that walking though the city was difficult, as in Ho Chi Minh City.
Related: Doing Da Nang In A Day
So here are the top ten things in the city as I researched before my temporary trauma :)
Visit the Old Quarter
Hoa Lo Prison (Hanoi Hilton)
Hoa Kiem Lake and Ngon Soc Pagoda.
Vietnamese Women’s Museum
Visit Train Street (But hold on to your things, that’s where I got robbed).
Walking Tour
… That’s it, y’all
That’s it. I legit can’t come up with a whole ten. I didn’t enjoy the city. I try to be positive when recapping my experiences, but this whole thing was a bummer. I traveled for a whole year and went to almost 30 countries, and Vietnam was the only place where I was a victim of a crime (and an attempted crime.)
I loved Da Nang. I hear great things about Hue. If you’re going to Vietnam, go in a group and/or check out the smaller cities. The big cities are just a bit much.
