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VietNamNet Bridge – 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.
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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
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