Monday, January 19, 2015

Saigon, Vietnam: The Five Dollar Ransom, #CeciliaBrainard




The following piece is based on a true story.


The Five Dollar Ransom
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

            My friend Cynthia and I are in the Ben Thanh night market in Saigon for dinner and shopping, and afterwards, I talk her into going to the Saigon Saigon Bar at the Caravelle Hotel. “That’s where the Americans hung out during the Vietnam War,” I tell her. This is her first visit to Vietnam, my second, so I’m a bit bossy about where to go, what to do.


    She wants to take a tuk-tuk; I insist on taking a Mai Linh Taxi. Our tour guide a year ago said that only Mai Linh and Vinasun are okay to take. “Tuk-tuks are not safe. Mai Linh is.”

            As if on cue, a green and white Mai Linh taxi appears in front of us, and I open the door and pull Cynthia in. “The Caravelle Hotel,” I tell the driver. He makes a few turns and there we are; we could have walked. Cynthia, who’s our banker and manages our spending money, pulls out her wallet to pay. But then, we’re stumped because the meter is showing 600,000 dong. The exchange rate is 20,000 dong to a dollar.
            “Well, how much is that?” we say, staring at all the zeros. We’re both Math challenged.
            We even ask the driver, “How much is that in dollars?”
            He doesn’t seem to know, and after trying to do the math once more, we give up, and Cynthia hands him 60,000 dong.
            The driver takes the bills, then says, “More, more.”
            “We already paid you. It can’t be more than that,” Cynthia says, but the man continues his mantra of “more.”
            “Well then, maybe we should go to a police station to talk this over,” I suggest. It seems like a reasonable idea.
            He starts the car, and says, “All right, we go to police station.”
            For a few minutes, Cynthia and I actually believe he’ll take us to the police station. He drives on to a wide highway and seems to be leaving the city behind us. “Are we there yet?” we ask him several times, as the city lights fade to darkness.
“It’s far far away,” he replies.
            By the third time he says this, I’m frightened and I place my hands against the taxi door, only to discover there are no handles. Cynthia makes the same discovery. We can’t open the windows nor doors. We’re trapped.
A rush of adrenalin surges through me, and I’m blathering, “Oh-my-God-oh-my-God.” Cynthia pulls out her cell phone and our hotel calling card, and in the darkness, she strains to read the tiny print. I fish out my own cell phone to light the card, but she still can’t read it.
            Just then a car whizzes past us, and instinctively I try to attract the driver’s attention — I wave and rap my window.
            On hearing me, our driver slams his hands down and reaches for the glove compartment. I know he has a weapon in there, a gun perhaps: he will take it out, turn around and shoot us. But fortunately he stops himself. He says, “If I let you down here, it will cost you more to pay a taxi to get you back.”
            I’m still not understanding the full scope of our predicament and I tell him, “I don’t care, let us out right now!”
            “It will cost you much, much more,” he repeats in broken English.
            Then, something clicks in my head. We are talking about money. We are his captives. We are talking about ransom.
            Cynthia who is by nature very calm, says in a soothing voice, “Why don’t you stop the car so we can talk?”
            The man actually pulls over and turns off the ignition.
            My mind is whirring, and I remember past visits with my mother to wet markets where she would bargain for fish or pork. I can’t stop myself; my Bargaining Gene kicks in.
I recall that our driver wasn’t too knowledgeable with the dong-dollar exchange, and I tell him, “We are two old ladies on a holiday in Saigon.” Cynthia hits me with her elbow and rolls her eyes upward.  I continue, “We have a few dollars with us and we will give you some, but take us back to the Caravelle.”
            It is he who says, “Five dollars. Give me five dollars.”
            Cynthia gasps.
            I’m now in the negotiating mood, and I pull out five singles from my wallet. I fan out the bills so he can see them but not get them. “We have five dollars, but take us back.”
            “Give it now!” he says.
            If I do that, there’s no guarantee he’ll drive us back. In a firm voice I say, “No! Take us back, open door, and I give you the five dollars.’
            Miraculously he makes a U-turn and heads back to the city. Now and then he tries to grab the money, but I don’t let him. In the meantime, Cynthia and I are praying; we started praying when we discovered we were trapped.
            After a long ride and after many Hail Marys, we are back in front of the Caravelle. Cynthia and I have a plan: she will exit first, and write down the plate number. I will take my time and pay him his five dollars.
            We do just this, but before handing the money to the guy, who’s shorter than me but stockier, I scold him, “We are old enough to be your mother, and you cheat us this way.”
            He doesn’t care; he just grabs the money from me.
            My legs are shaking as we make our way to the Caravelle. The security guards there say we have to go to a police station to report the matter. Cynthia and I look at each other; we don’t want to go to a police station. We go up to the Saigon Saigon Bar where we have drinks.
            When we have more or less pulled ourselves together she confesses that after she realized we were kidnapped, she tucked away her money in her shoes.  Then she shakes her head and says, “Five dollars, five dollars. I want to see his face when he goes to the money changer.”
            We have a few laughs but we both know that was a close shave.
            Later, we report the kidnapping to our own hotel concierge. The next day we learn that that green and white Mai Linh Taxi we were in was fake.
          When my husband hears about the bargaining and the five dollar ransom, he says the cabbie never had a chance.
~~
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Tags: travel, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, Saigon, story
This is all for now,

           

            

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