That time I bribed the police.

It’s currently about 5:30am and I’ve been up for 2 hours. I’m sat in my kitchen, drinking whisky I was smart enough to buy from Gatwick duty free because I am unable to sleep now I’ve been up and driving around town two hours previous and chatting to some ‘lovely’ officers of the law.

Vietnam police officer.

Why would I get up at such an ungodly hour?

Well, I have been given a part as an extra in a war movie being filmed in Vietnam. It’s’ a very early start – 4am – from a central location. All the extras would probably get picked up and dropped off somewhere else you see. Anyway, I got there. Waited. Noone about, just drunk tourists and the local girls that dote on them.

Checked my phone. I had a text from hours before I must have missed saying the shoot had been cancelled. Not too happy about that one. Got back on my bike, started to drive home.

Now you might have seen the unholy rivers of metal and pollution that is Vietnam’s roads before but I assure you at this time of day, they’re the polar opposite. Nice, quiet, noone around. I was driving down one of these nice quiet main roads now as a Vietnamese police office runs into the road from the pavement and flags me down. I pull over and take the key out and pocket it – I’ve heard some tales of people running off with them and stealing bikes later, even police.

“Hi. You give me licence and registration”
*Shows registration* – “Sorry, I must have left my licence at home. Why did you stop me?”

“You no indicate round corner”
“I’ve been going straight on for about 3 mins”
“No. You no indicate. I take your bike for 7 day.”

I realised at this point that I was the only one on the roads, quiet obviously white, and read between the lines. For those of you that don’t realise, corruption runs very high in Vietnam. It runs even higher in public services, especially the police. This was essentially a shakedown. These guys have a small amount of power to make the average citizen’s life very difficult if you don’t play ball and to a lot of them, tourists are walking wallets. I knew arguing wasn’t gonna help, he was just going to get annoyed at the lack of communication and after all, I didn’t have my licence.. so I figured we should just play this one by the book.

“Ok, how about a fine?”

“what”

“A fine. I pay you. I say sorry. I go”

At this point I got my wallet out my pocket and the police officer and his friend who was standing nearby look around to see if anyone is watching. I pulled out a wad of notes – about 190-200k and handed it over. This is about £5.80-6. To me or you, this isn’t a lot of money, but to the Vietnamese, this is really worth something.

He looked over the wad of notes and nodded. “Ok, go now”

The officer brushed his hand as if to say, “G’wan, fuck off mate” and fuck off I did. Got home, more annoyed than I was previous and now very awake. Bah. So instead of days work that would have netted me 70-80 quid, I’m actually short a fiver now.

Bollocks. Still, this is Vietnam. This is how things work here.