Because I stayed with an acquaintance when I first arrived, I had to wait until Hanoi to discover the great prices on name brand items such as Ray Ban, the North Face, Nike, etc. While wandering the streets one afternoon in Hanoi, I saw a small shop displaying dozens of backpacks. Some of them were North Face, one of the best known names in the backpacking industry. Out of interest, I stopped to look at the price tag: 650,000 dong. Let's see... that's only $35! Wow! I thought as I strolled away. Well, the backpacks are probably made here (so much is), so it made sense that the price was cheaper. A day later, I visited an outdoor sports shop and purused the items for sale. I found a North Face (or perhaps a different name brand) rain jacket for only 300,000 dong. Pretty good deal, and I thought about getting rid of my heavy, plastic one.
On the third day, I passed a different shop also selling North Face backpacks. I was still thinking about that cheap price I'd seen on the backpack. Coming from a country where fake products aren't sold, I didn't know what to look for. But I looked at the information tag again and began reading. Then I spotted it: misspellings on a few words and one sentence without a period mark - a sure sign that the jacket had never come from a North Face factory.
In Turkey, it was shoes which had a similar (but definitely different) logo to Nike's. Here, it's just a rip off of the name itself. Or else the grammar level of the North Face marketing team is going down hill fast.
