Today I visited the Bon Mua Restaurant with two Expat friends. I visit Bon Mua at least once a week and you can say, until today, I am a very faithful customer. They know me now. With most restaurants that you visit here in Saigon, if they start to know you, the service gets better, and if you are lucky, you can get a VIP discount. At Bon Mua today, they did something that irritated me. Remember, they get free promotion on the halal section of SaigonNezumi and at GoHalalPlanet.
So what happened at Bon Mua. The food was good, as normal, no complaints there. Service was normal, not the best but ok.
When we received our bill, we all paid, obviously, in Vietnamese Dong. Several minutes later, the waiter comes back and says we gave him a ripped 100,000 VND bill (see picture below). No way was this possible since all of us get our Vietnamese Dong either through an exchange of company WHOSE accountants always check to see if the bill were ripped. All three of us also knew our money was good.
They had replaced our good 100,000 VND with this one and I knew it which made me mad. Even worse, I was a MUSLIM and they are MUSLIMS, the rules of halal dictates that you should not cheat anybody, period! This act alone, means that Bon Mua is not a halal restaurant (in my opinion but not others). Halal means that you put religion ahead of money, God/Allah, is more important then profit. They did not care.
Even if we did give the ripped Vietnamese dong bill, they should still accept it since two of us come there very week. Now we both will avoid it.
Edit 1: Please note, this is my opinion and other Muslims still visit the restaurant. My experience there forces me to try another halal restaurant.
(Bon Mua replaced our good 100,000 VND with this one)
Why do they care if the bill is ripped anyway? Why does anyone care? I’ve noticed this in Mexico too. They don’t like ripped bills. In the US nobody seems to care. And legally if it is more than 50% of the bill it is still legal tender and most places will take it. I’ve never had a bill refused in the US. Even two halves taped together.
@tracyreed B/c they never accepted ripped money in Vietnam. I have a drawer full of ripped VND given to me as change in the backpacker area. That is why I check now.
By the way Tracy, you missed the comments a Twitter user gave to this post. He linked it to 9/11. Talking about the idiots of the World.
my a close friend has a restaurant in dist 7 and I came one day, they bad to me. But I advertised their restaurant the next day.
@vous le vous Restaurants need more of that. Unfortunately in Vietnam, customer service is still new, it takes time. My irritation was that “halal” means more then halal food.
Mr Kevin Meller, you are a Muslim but are you pratice praying like one MiddleEastern Muslim ?
@vous le vous I follow the Hanafi Fiqh which is followed by a majority of Muslims from Turkey to Central Asia. They are more liberal then the Shafi, Maliki and Hannbail fiqhs more prevalent in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
The food is terrible there. They are mostly serving so called Malaysian food which is really sub standard. I been there once and will never go there again
@koshin Depends on the time of day you visit. With a large tourist crowd, it is good. No crowd, it really is not that good. Their customer service was never too good though and they always “ran” out of food.
I heard it was much better in the past according the Singaporean long termers in Saigon.