Vietnam, Kangge - The broken trailer axel!!! After 2 welds, the first being of low quality and way too expensive, the same axel

Vietnam, Kangge - The broken trailer axel!!! After 2 welds, the first being of low quality and way too expensive, the same axel held strong through Austria, where it bent after Jim slowly fell onto the Bandwagon while I was pulling it. We found Kangge, the "Floating Village," to be a tourist trap. At first greeted by a nice middle-school aged girl speaking English, it turned out her kindness (and English ability) was a way her family makes money. Although we're not used to this kind of "making money off of traveling guests" idea that unfortunately has been ever popularized in small villages like this one via Lonely Planet, we were much more upset at the uncle who conspired with a local welder to charge us 4x the normal amount to fix it...who then pocketed the extra himself, leaving the welder with the normal amount. We maybe could have turned the other cheek until, upon 15 min after departing, the same axel broke again on this new weld.

Amazingly, the next day, we found both a new welder (a stronger arch welder instead of a gas flame), and the old welder. It was when Jim talked with the old welder through his English speaking son that we learned the it was the uncle's idea to over charge us so much. To make things right, the old welder, bless him, insisted on giving us his share of the fee. Resolution.