Traveling to Vietnam for a romantic holiday is what everyone wants after long, hard days of work and study. So no one wants to encounter scams or bad things during your trip. Below are our tips to avoid being scammed when traveling Vietnam that you should check out before going to Vietnam.

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Pick pocket or luggage snatching
Snatching and pickpocketing are no longer strange things to foreign visitors to Vietnam, even when you are in your familiar place. The areas where the pickpockets work are everywhere. You can see them when walking on the street, stopping to buy goods in a small grocery store, even when you are sitting in a restaurant, it happens most when you travel on public transport such as buses, trains...


Tips to avoid scams when traveling
The simple way to prevent pickpockets is: Always keep an eye on your belongings and use bags with locks and zippers carefully, avoiding leaving your wallet, purse or phone exposed. As long as you always keep an eye on your handbags, wallets, and other belongings, you will rarely be chosen as a target by pickpockets. Of course, they have many other tricks to distract you. For example, they can pretend to be a newspaper boy, an old man in need of help, or simply a passerby asking questions, but this way or another, they will make you uncomfortable to pay attention and take the opportunity to "steal" your wallet, phone, or other expensive items.

Even though these sophisticated pickpocketing tricks are nothing compared to the dangers of snatching, snatchers are much more daring. Pickpockets focus on working in silence, usually they only attack when their "prey" is not paying attention. When they are discovered, they will find every way to run away and leave behind the stolen things. But as for the snatchers, they will prepare their action plan and retreat in advance. Once they have found their perfect "prey", usually women, children, and the elderly, they will approach, and almost attack the "prey". They will often yank so hard that the victim will be too surprised to have time to resist. In this case, your property is not the only thing at stake, your life is also at stake. There have been many cases of people being snatched when they were on a motorbike and having serious accidents.

In this case, the way to prevent it is to limit the "display" of high-value items, causing greed in robbers. At the same time, you should also limit using your phone in public places, even if the value of the phone is low, but remember that when you are in their sights, your life is also threatened. In addition, you should also avoid wearing valuable jewelry when riding a motorbike or walking on the sidewalk. If you need to wear jewelry, consider calling a taxi.


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Fraud on motorcycles / taxi
When you travel to a big city like Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh city for the first time, it's obvious that you haven't had time to get familiar with the streets and locations. Most tourists often choose a taxi, or sometimes a motorbike taxi, to get to their destination. To avoid unfortunate situations, please read the information below.

First we have to talk about "taxi touts". These are taxis that do not belong to taxi companies licensed to provide transportation services, but are usually self-directed drivers, transporting passengers themselves and calculating fares themselves. It must be said that not all these taxis are "taxi touts". Fake taxis often focus on foreign tourists who have little understanding of local taxi services. They lure tourists, and once you get in the car, be prepared that you will have to pay at least three times the fare of a regular taxi.

You should study in advance about reputable taxi companies in the place you travel to be more assured about the fare. At the same time, you can also contact the hotel where you booked in advance to get advice on the best taxi company, or maybe that hotel has a shuttle service for passengers from the bus station or airport.


In addition, there is another problem that tourists often encounter, even when calling a taxi from famous companies, or you may even encounter it when taking a motorbike taxi. If you are a tourist from another country, and you let the driver know that you don't know anything about the roads here, you can easily encounter a taxi/motorbike driver who is driving around, and then charge you at a price that's as much or three times as expensive. To avoid this situation, it is best for you to learn about the main roads in the city you are visiting, or you can also refer to travel forums to know the fees to get to different places in the city, how much it costs, and then ask your taxi/motorbike driver to see if the price is reasonable, agree on the price before getting in the car.

Question: “where are you from?”
This is one of the questions you need to limit answering when traveling Vietnam, even if the person asking is a room service, a restaurant owner, a souvenir shop owner, or a stranger you accidentally meet on the street. As the risk you may encounter in this case is that the shop owner, restaurant owner or service provider will most likely charge you too much just because you are a tourist. Especially when they know that you are from a richer country or city and your standard of living is higher, they will tend to charge you more than the locals.

It's best when going to strange places that you haven't studied thoroughly, you should book a tour to go in an organized tour, or if you like to freely travel without having to go in an organized activity, you can hire a tour guide for yourself, or find local friends to go with.

Street vendors
In famous tourist cities, street vendors are especially "stubborn". Especially at temples, pagodas... around famous sites there are dozens of old and young women, children, street vendors and beggar with a trick of talking that makes make you off guard. Once you withdraw your wallet to buy even some incenses, these people will immediately follow you throughout the journey. The best way to stay away from them is to say “No,” politely but firmly. If you want to buy incense or offerings, buy it at stores, far from tourist attractions.

No one wants to experience trouble or discomfort during their trip. Sometimes the amount of money lost due to the above problems is not big, but it really makes your trip less fun. So please pay attention to the above information, especially learn carefully about local culture, customs, hotels, as well as means of transportation. Keep yourself informed, and you'll be surprised how much it helps you.


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