I don’t suffer from stage fright and actually enjoying speaking before large groups. But I do suffer stage fright of sorts when stepping out from the safe confines of baggage claim into a new land…especially when I do not speak the language.
My Trepidation When Entering A New Country
I had landed in Cotonou Airport in Benin and found a place to store my larger carry-on bag so I would not have to lug it around Cotonou. My flight to Istanbul was scheduled to leave in about eight hours.
Now I had to work up the courage to walk out of the airport and into the crowd of eager taxi drivers hungry for my business. I had a general idea of what to pay, but my French is bad and I felt like I had a huge target on my back.
So I stood in the lobby between the baggage claim and the airport. With my heart racing. For literally 30 minutes.
Even after visiting over 135 countries, my heart always races when entering a new country. For all the safety precautions we exercise, I have to chuckle sometimes that we are willing to hop into a car with a perfect stranger in a foreign land because he has a taxi sign on his car.
Only in Cotonou, the taxis are all unmarked…and there are no meters. I would have to negotiate. Perhaps even in French.
Finally, I stepped out of the air conditioned arrival hall and into the scorching afternoon sunlight. As expected, I was immediately mobbed by men trying to lure me into their taxis.
The challenge began. You sort of have to be rude lest you really be taken advantage of. I tried to pretend that I was a frequent visitor to Cotonou, but that is kind of hard to do when I was looking for a driver who would double as a tour guide for a few hours.
I answered French in English. Not to be an ugly American, but to avoid stammering and struggling. Very bluntly, I stated that I needed a driver for three hours. I gave no further details just yet.
That didn’t work because now several taxi drivers were asking me where I wanted to go. I thought I’d play them off one another and mentioned that I wanted to visit Marche Dantokpa and Étoile Rouge.
Now the men sensed I was a tourist. And it seemed that although several came up to me, they all worked together.
One guy whistled with his finger for another guy to come over. A young man walked over and introduced himself as Lucky. I had to smile.
He spoke some English and we began negotiating. First he wanted 80USD for three hours of his time. I laughed. He laughed too.
“How much you want to pay?,” he asked.
I told him I’d give him 20,000CFA (~37USD).
He thought about it for a moment (thus, I knew the price was fair) and then countered at 30,000 (using his mobile phone calculator).
I shook my head, took his phone, and typed in 20,000.
Then I noticed he had an Audi A4, the same car I have. I mentioned how much I liked his car, which seemed to please him. He agreed to the price and beckoned me to hop in.
We were off. I had not failed miserably!
But I still hate the whole process…
This story is part of my An African Adventure As The World Shut Down trip report.
Most people don’t like change. And you see this on vacations as well. They will visit the same place over and over because it is now comfortable and they don’t want the stress or unknown of a new place. Sure some small percent of people thrive on adventure but not most people.
My issues are always food and transportations. Getting to know how to use the trains and metro is important and can be intimidating. Food is an issue with me due to various medical issues and you clearly don’t want to have to worry about running to a bathroom while in a country new to you.
I tend to stick with western European countries since I’ve gotten use tothem. In England (where language is no issue) at one point I was good enough to adjust metro rides on the fly which was important since they seemed to have so many outages when we were there last.
Negotiating with taxis and the like isn’t my thing. I recall once leaving a military base in Bahrain and have a flock of cabs waiting outside the base. I got tired of dealing with them, and despite the brutal heat in late May, walked the 2 miles back to my hotel room. I think I went from walking in 130F heat (and it was humid) to a hotel room they kept at 68F.
Great post. Completely understand where you are coming from and how you feel on foreign soil. I have felt like that many times. (sometimes my wife and kids unhappy why I do not just pay a little more)
I love that feeling. If you exit the airport and feel complete confidence there’s no rush. No thrill. But it’s also very unnerving,
Please post more stories like this. I’ve really enjoyed your recent Africa posts. Reminds me why I love travel so much.
PS- Very jealous of 135. At 110 currently. Was hoping to hit 10 more in 2021, but very pessimistic right now. Hopefully one day soon I can make a run at my goal of 150.
Countries that I have a lot of interest but think I will never visit include Paraguay, Guyana, Benin, Cameroon, Syria, and Tonga.
Syria for Krak des Chevaliers, Palmyra (what’s left), Aleppo, and the Russian Naval Base at Tartus. Too dangerous for the first 3 and would never be allowed into Tartus.
I feel your pain. I have done the same thing twice. Once was in Hungary. I was so intimated that I could not speak or even read signs in Magyar. Words look like this to me…”SIOF DKSLKJD PFOV”. Luckily, I arrived by car, eating and sleeping in the car. The next morning, I walked or drove within Budapest then returned to Vienna. I’m happy to say I only got a parking warning, not a ticket, which I had translated by someone later.
Another time, I arrived in Indonesia for a few hours. This time, I could not comprehend the math since everything seems to cost a million rupiahs or a little less. I spoke to no one. I ate food that I had brought. I should have been less hesitant.
As far as taxi drivers as tour guides, I have a happy story from Auckland, New Zealand. The taxi driver said he would run the meter but stop it when it reached an agreed amount. If the meter was less than the agreed amount by the time we got to the airport, he would honor the meter and not the agreed price. He was a good tour guide. He was a Maori man who knew a lot of jokes and local history.
With 73 countries visited, I too feel jealous. I do have a funny story on one of my first trips to Europe in the 1970’s. After taking the train from Vienna to Saltzburg I chose a hotel with the station phone banks. My wife an me loaded our baggage in a cab and stated our hotel as Hotel Europa. The driver smiled, made a u turn from the Bahnhof and said “ welcome to hotel Europa”. He did not accept the small fare but was handsomely tipped. It is so much easier to find hotel information today.
This reminds me of Bangkok. You enter the taxi and tell the driver where to go. He drives off and doesn’t turn on the meter. I say “Meter”. He responds “No meter”. It goes back and forth with the car running. First stop in the middle of traffic, I open the door and leave. Did that many times until I found a driver that turned the meter on.
This reminds me of my first trip as a young traveller to Phuket. After I cleared Customs, I had a swarm of drivers coming at me, trying to get my business. I was so young and naive and had no experience in how to “haggle” in a foreign country. I was more used to catching the airport transfer bus from the airport to my hotel. So this experience kind of frightened me because it was so overwhelming. But now, I walk out of Customs anywhere in the world and can get down and haggle with the best of them…
Great story…
And taxi drivers wonder why they’re losing their job all over the world to Uber.
I appreciate you posting this because I have traveled a reasonable amount but certainly not as much as you and feel like I am failing when I get that feeling in a new country. It’s so much easier the second time around, but I feel well on the back foot right out of the airport.
Yes I can relate.
My first time arriving late one evening in a former Soviet country, in about 1998. I expected someone to meet me so was using my handful of Russian words to reject all the taxi drivers. Gradually the arrivals area cleared, leaving just me, realising that I would need a taxi, and about 7 or 8 taxi drivers eyeing me, also knowing that I was going to need a taxi! Finally I had to swallow my pride and negotiate a ride in a battered old Zhiguli that seemed ready to fall apart in the next pothole.
Half way to town he stopped for petrol, but there was no petrol station, just a guy by the roadside with a dozen glass jars full of a dirty looking liquid. As the guy was decanting from a jar into the tank, my driver lit up a cigarette and I really thought my time was up!