The information
about the exorbitant taxi ride, the shipwreck cases and the trouble at the Noi
Bai International Airport which occurred recently; all have aroused the
indignation from people, who have called on stopping the problems, to polish
Vietnam’s images in the eyes of foreign travelers.

On May 13,
Mai Linh taxi firm organized a meeting with three Malaysian travelers to
clarify the issue relating to the “exorbitant taxi ride”. Prior to that, the
three travelers came directly to Mai Linh’s headquarters to complain about the
overly high and unreasonable taxi fees.

Nasniya
Mohd Taib, one of the three clients, said that at 7 am of May 10, they caught a
taxi with logo M.taxi Group and telephone number 08.39620620 to go from the Ben
Thanh Market to the Tan
Son Nhat
Airport. When they
arrived, the taxi driver forced them to pay four million Vietnam dong
and 300 Ringgit (about 2 million dong), or six million dong in total. Meanwhile,
the taxi ride actually costs 150,000 dong.

Nguyen Tuan
Sinh, Chair of the Trade Union of Mai Linh Group, said that after receiving the
complaint, security officers of the group and the three travelers came to the
Ben Thanh Market area and discovered that this was a taxi which counterfeited
the Mai Linh brand.

When the
Mai Linh Group’s officers and the three travelers took pictures of the taxi,
the taxi driver of the car with the number plate 52V-0160, the one that carried
the three Malaysian travelers, tried to assault the people

Ms Nasniya
Mohd Taib said that one of the members of the tourist group was a journalist,
and he wanted to clarify the issue. The Ben Thanh Market is a well known
tourism site, and any bad information would badly affect the tourism industry.

Nguyen Ngoc
Hieu from Mai Linh Group said that more and more travelers have complained
about the taxis that counterfeit the Mai Linh brand. Prior to that, many
travelers, including foreign ones, also came and complained about overly high
taxi fees.

Manh Tien,
a reader of Saigon Tiep Thi, related that he once took a counterfeit taxi and
he was asked to pay the fee which was higher than 30 percent over the normal
rate. “I think the taxi driver did not dare to ask for more money, because I am
a Vietnamese. However, I think that government agencies need to take actions
immediately to stop the problem,” he wrote to the editorial board.

According
to the representative from Mai Linh Group, there are a lot of counterfeit taxis
which run mostly in the Ben Thanh Market area, Bach Dang station and the Notre
Dame Cathedral. Especially, actual Mail Linh taxi drivers do not dare to go to
the areas to receive travelers because they have been hindered by the
counterfeit taxi drivers.

He said
that in order to avoid counterfeit taxis, travelers should pay attention to the
uniform of taxi drivers, the logo and telephone number on taxi cars.

The
information about the exorbitant taxi ride has aroused indignation among
Vietnamese people, who have called on to take drastic measures to stop the
problem, or Vietnam
will no longer be considered as an attractive destination in the eyes of
foreign tourists.

“My foreign
friends have warned that if the problem cannot be settled, no one would return
to Vietnam
any more,” Dang Nhat Vy, a reader, said.

“What do
foreign travelers think about Vietnam?
It’s to blame government agencies on the problem,” wrote Nam Thien to the
editorial board.

“Why don’t
relevant agencies try to settle the problem?”, a reader wrote from Handsome…@yahoo.com.

Especially,
some other bad news also occurred in recent months, including the latest
shipwreck at Ha Long Bay and the cracked septic tank at Noi Bai Airport which has annoyed Vietnamese
people.

On May 11,
the septic tank cracking led to the fact that waste was leaking to the aircraft
packing area. One day ago, the Noi
Bai Airport
released a notice that the trouble was fixed after one hour, explaining that
the water drainage system of the airport has become overloaded. However, the
explanation has not been accepted by people.

Source: SGTT