DA NANG, VIETNAM – Australian tourist Becca Taylor shamelessly walked out of a popular Da Nang pub on Friday night without tipping local staffers the 12,000 Vietnamese dong (US$0.53) she received in change from her 200,000 dong proferring on a 188,000 dong ($8.20) tab, saying it really was not up to her to feed and clothe an entire nation when she clearly had more urgent expenses to attend to back in her suburban Melbourne home of Ferny Grove.
Taylor could be heard lamenting to staffers at Bamboo 2 Bar – which offers a daily “buy Two, free One” happy hour for the boozy expat and tourist regulars who come to soak in the bar’s indulgent me-so-horny atmosphere – that although she normally tips the Aussie standard 10 percent to bar and restaurant staff when on a night out in her hometown, she was hard-pressed to do so at Bamboo 2 or any entertainment venue in Vietnam for fear of somehow upending local mores.
“Now, I realize this represents a princely sum for your people and you could probably live off it for a month?” Taylor loudly upwardly inflected to a smiling Nguyen Duc Giang, a 19-year-old university student and part-time waiter at Bamboo 2 who had served Taylor’s table. “But I’m sure you can see the benefit of my actually keeping the 12,000 dong as I don’t want to encourage – You understand encourage, yeah? – as I don’t want to encourage people here that I’m just made of money and can go throwing it around?”
“I mean, I know you worked hard and all to bring me my drinks and chips, but in Australia it’s just not common – common? you understand common? – to tip someone such a small amount, all right? Actually, where I come from in Melbourne – you know Melbourne, yeah? Not Sydney, right? Sydney is the LAAAH-JIST CITY of Australia? LAAAHHJ? – in Melbourne it would actually be considered somewhat insulting if I left that money behind as a tip for a server?”
“Because in Australia our servers – Servers? Waiters? Like you? – are treated with great respect and are unionized and so tipping is institutionalized,” Taylor explained as Nguyen patiently rode out the implausible soliloquy. “And so it’s more in keeping with our culture – CUL-CHAH? – to actually see that the wait staff and the chefs and bartenders all receive what we Australians really view as a minimum kind of stipend – Stipend? You understand ‘stipend’? – to keep our this culture alive and vibrant.”
“But here,” Taylor continued, “I just really came in for a dingo’s breakfast anyway, and so I’d be absolutely rooted if I just laid my dong on the table like all the other tourists probably do. I mean, do you see a sign on my head saying ‘Another Sucker Tourist Here to Spend All Her Money in Vietnam’? I think that’s highly – HIGHLY – unlikely,” Taylor said, now shouting as if to lend thunderous validity to her argument.
Taylor then turned to her husband, Wayne, and ordered him to march straight out of the bar without so much as a thought of slipping any employee of the bar an Aussie tuppence for their efforts.
“Don’t even think about it, Wayne!” she clapped. “We need that for our Grab Taxi to the airport tomorrow!” she said, coldly calculating that although the 5,000-dong note Wayne had crumbled in his palm ready for a token hand-off to the barman could probably feed an entire Vietnamese family for a week, the money would be better overspent as part of their 2.7 million dong ($116) fare for the two-and-a-half kilometre ride to the airport.
READ MORE: SCOTTISH LIQUOR TYCOON SENDS SAIGON GIRLFRIEND TO HANOI FOR BOOB JOB BUT FINDS NEW TETS OFFENSIVE