I have visited Hoi An numerous times in recent years and love the relaxed and charming atmosphere of Hoi An town and beautiful beach at Cua Dai, BUT,BUT,BUT the one that really infuriates me is the rip-off attitude by staff on the public bus from Danang to Hoi An. I have travelled from DaNang bus station to Hoi An approx. 6 times. The bus is primarily used by locals but is also used by back papers and solo travellers as a cheaper alternative. The locals pay 15,000 Vn dong and tourists/foreigners are charged 50,000 dong and with no tickets ever issued, it is a lucrative incentive to rip off as much as they can extract.
Yesterday, (23 Aug, 2011) caught the bus from the DaNang depot and despite my challenging the rip-off, they bstuck to their guns.
A short distance into the trip, a young Japanese tourist was also charged 50,000 and when he produced his 2011/12 Japanese travel guide, was told the book was "Old book" 10 minutes later a youing British traveller gets on and is told the fare is 50,000 dong and he challenges the "rip off" for the next 15 minutes but the 4 staff on bus all tell him that sis the price for everyone and reused to budge on the price. Result 3 foreight tourists all left with a bitter taste in their mouth and poor memory of local hospitality.
Make no mistake, this is not a cse of poor local people "sharing the riches of affluent foreign tourists, but straight out greed and lying on a public transport service
This is not a case of penny-pinching and one need only look at the nearby notorious tuk tuk rip offs to see the tourism pr disaster that creates.
If travelling in a group of 2 or more then negotiating a taxi fare to Hoi An is better alternative, and,if travelling from Hoi An to Danang, a taxi a can be enaged for 200,000.
Hopefully if enough people challenge the on bus practice and complain to tourism uthorites this annoying rip-off will end.