Hanoi – For several days I’d been kick-starting my old Yamaha Nuovo. Then one long drive seemed to recharge the battery, or whatever, and for a weekend it started with just the usual click-and-throttle. Then I drove to a coffeehouse. An hour later, it wouldn’t start, period.

But I knew what to do. I walked it about a half-mile to Mr. Phuong, the neighborhood motorbike mechanic who has fixed my flats and replaced the shock absorbers – and charged me less than his original estimate. I’ve come to like and trust Mr. Phuong.

This is something that many tourists don’t hear about Vietnam. They are warned to be wary of unscrupulous cab drivers with hot meters, or cyclo hustlers that demand outrageous prices for a little ride about town. They are advised, correctly, to shop around and bargain. But expatriates, many of us, learn that many Vietnamese business operators and technicians don’t try to take advantage of foreigners presumed to have deep pockets.  Many expats think they are over-charged as a matter of routine – “a white man’s tax,” my Viet Kieu bride calls it. But I’m convinced that I’m more often treated fair and square.

I left my motorbike with Mr. Phuong in the afternoon and he assured me it would be ready in the morning. He probably assumes, correctly, that I am not mechanically inclined. I didn’t ask for an estimate because it wasn’t clear what the problem was. But the capitalist question really is: How much would I be willing to pay to get my motorbike working again? How much would the market bear?

Whatever that figure was, I know it would have been a lot more than the VND150,000 Mr. Phuong charged me the next day. That’s about $7, total, for parts and labor. He showed me the spark plug he replaced.

And as I drove away, I realized that the function of my brakes had improved. I had been meaning to mention my brake concerns to him, but forgot. He apparently noticed it on a test.

Perhaps I should have given Mr. Phuong a tip, but tipping isn’t part of Vietnamese culture.  Instead I have resolved to show my gratitude by filling up more often at his little one-man outpost. (I assume he charges a bit more than the large petrol stations.)

Mr. Phuong, in my experience, is not that unusual. I’ve also come to trust the FPT technician who has helped me through laptop troubles. Once, expecting to fork over the standard Apple fee for a new graphics card, he pointed out that it was still under warranty – and so it was all free of charge. And when I upgraded from that old, balky laptop, he loaned me a cable to transfer the contents of my hard drive. I had agreed to return it in a couple of days, but held on to it so long that he called to say he needed it back. I felt bad about this because he had trusted me. So when I brought it in, I apologetically offered VND200,000 – a rental fee, if you will, for a vital piece of hardware. He refused to take it.

Perhaps I’ve just been lucky. I’ve had a couple of suspicious incidents with cabbies, but nothing too dramatic. Scams are not at all unusual back home in the U.S. A subgenre of TV journalism involves hidden cameras exposing corrupt auto mechanics and other problems. And while I have Mr. Phuong here in Hanoi, I’m glad I met John the Plumber (as his business card put it) back in Los Angeles.

A friend recommended John after a plumbing emergency one night had sent me to the phone book. A plumbing contractor sent out a plumber who shut off my water service and diagnosed the need to replace an old pipe that ran beneath the home’s foundation and a concrete walkway on my property. He explained the need to demolish a section of that walkway to dig a trench, extract the pipe and install a new one. He wrote of a contract with an estimated cost of close to $1,000, but assured me I could save money by doing the shovel work myself or hiring a day laborer. Certainly water is important. So how much was I willing to pay to get the water working in my house?

Something didn’t seem right, so I didn’t sign on the dotted line.

The following evening, John the Plumber shook his head with disgust when I told him what the other plumber had advised. John explained that there was no need to bust up the walkway – that with some digging and a little tunneling on both sides of the foundation, we’d be able to twist the damaged pipe out and slide the new pipe into the void.

And that’s what we did. Total cost: about $175.