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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: TOURIST TRAP (08/20/15)
The easiest way to take extra money from a tourist is to over charge him. The locals call this practice, ‘touch a whitie’. A friend of ours came to Vanuatu for a day stop-over by ship. She brought us a large case of ministry material. As we have no car she caught a taxi. She was charged $30 Australian dollars for the short 3 km trip to our house. The average weekly wage is around $100.

I would often over hear bus drivers quoting $10 au each for tourists to go back to the ship, a distance of 2km. The water taxi’s were also in on the take. They didn’t like it when I interrupted and advised the tourist that the going rate in vatu was equivalent to $2. For a family of four this was serious overcharging.

We were in Luganville on Santo Island for ministry and wanted to go to Million Dollar Point, the area where the US army had dumped all their vehicles and machinery after the war. At low tide these trucks and other machines could be seen above the water. The USS President Coolidge was sunk here in 1942 after colliding with two under sea mines. This is a very popular dive spot for visiting tourists as it rests in shallow water not far from the shore.

We checked with a local missionary who told us that a taxi ride to Million Dollar Point and back to town would be 1000 vatu return.

We approached a taxi driver. ‘Yufala tekem mi tufala long Million Dollar Point, 1000vatu nomo?’ we asked. He agreed to take us for that amount. He saw ‘white’ and he saw ‘money’. A short drive on dirt roads and we were there. We took around 10 minutes to look around, take photos and get back into the taxi.

He then told us that he had changed his mind, we now had to pay him another 1,500 vatu if we wanted to get back to Luganville. I am sure this wasn’t the first time he had changed his mind. A tourist would have to pay the extra as they had no other choice, being unfamiliar with the route back to town.

We replied ‘mi tufala missionary blong Vanuatu, mi no tourist, yufala wan stilman, Papa God, hem telem yu long book blong hem, yufala no stil anywan samting nomore.’

We quickly accessed the situation. I was carrying a bottle of water, we both had our walking shoes on and it was only a 2km walk to the airport turn off where we would be able get a bus back to town. We climbed back out of the taxi and started walking. Within minutes another taxi had picked us up and returned us to town for 500 vatu.

Looking back over our visits to Vanuatu before we moved to live there, and converting what we had paid the various drivers over that time, we also had been ‘touched’. The locals are so friendly and the a tourist unfamiliar with the currency, for the ‘touch a whitie’ practice to prevail.
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This article has been read 692 times
Member Comments
Member
Date
C D Swanson 
08/29/15
Informative and interesting approach to the topic. Great job with both content and delivery.

God bless~
Shann Hall-LochmannVanBennekom 
09/04/15
Congratulations on ranking 4th in your level and 15 overall. I think you did a great job of writing on topic. I know that happens often, yet I think this is the only piece I read about this kind of trap. You did a fine job with it.