Dosboy's Bits and Bytes

As an addendum to the last post, I'm lonely.  And I just finished watching The John Denver Story, which made things worse.  Cuz I have a strong association with John Denver, specifically Leaving on a Jet Plane.  You see, back when I was around 20 I was dating a girl from Denver.  And we broke up right around the time John Denver died.  In a plane crash.  So every radio station played Leaving on a Jet Plane all the time.  And I left Denver on a jet plane.  And it made me sad.

I'd like to talk for a minute about being ripped off as well.  Before going to Thailand everybody told me that you never pay the asking price for something.  Coming from Canada this seems bizarre.  I mean, if $20 is how much something costs, $20 is how much you pay.  But not here in South East Asia.  Here it's like a continent-sized flea market.  Only the color of your skin determines the asking price (the whiter, the higher).  And me with my albino-like qualities, well, I tend to get shafted.  I definitely learned from my last few months in Thailand, but the Philippines is a whole new bag of tricks.  See, in Thailand if I get ripped off it means I paid double, MAYBE triple what I should have paid.  But here???  At the crappy hotel I was staying at before this one I was planning on going to the embassy, so I reserved a car when I checked in.  They said it would be 1000 pesos.  1100 if I paid with credit card.  That's about $30, and for a round-trip cab ride it seemed reasonable.  But then I did some research online, and in one forum someone said that the cost of a cab from the area I was in to the Thai Embassy was about 85 pesos.  EIGHTY-FIVE PESOS!!!  And they were gonna charge me over a thousand!  After reading this I promptly called down to the front desk and cancelled the car, as even though I'm a bit of a chump at times, this is ridiculous.  And this begs the question, what else am I being ripped off on?  And for that matter, what gives the driver the right to (attempt to) rip off someone so badly?  Maybe I'm just not cut out for world travel, or maybe I only am if I have a limitless bank account and don't care about paying a fair price.  But this kind of behavior doesn't make me angry, it makes me sad.  I guess I just don't have that killer instinct that I could demand 10 times the going rate for something from a complete stranger (or anyone for that matter).

Sad, lonely and frustrated about my visa situation.  I don't think I travel well alone.