Going to Hollywood was one of the things I said to Ben that I definitely wanted to do when we had a chance to be in California. As soon as we went to California, I reminded Ben again about getting a Hollywood tour. Actually Ben had not been on the tour before, even though he lived in Hollywood for 5 years. We also asked our friends Mikka and Jamie to join us. I was so surprised that both Mikka and Jamie had never been on the tour either. So I was very excited about it. When I was in Vietnam, I thought Hollywood was a fancy and wonderful place that I just can see in movies. It was always a mysterious place to me. When we got in the center of Hollywood, where the Mann's Chinese theater is, I got so excited when I saw a lot of people wearing costumes of some characters in movies. One guy pretending to be Spiderman scared me by walking so close to me. They looked very cool to me. I was curious if I could take a picture of them. I would love to show that to my nephew Viet Hoang because he loves Spiderman. But then I became not that interested in taking picture of them because we had to pay money if we wanted to. Once we were in front of Chinese theater, Ben told 3 of us to stand together to take a picture. Suddenly a guy wearing a scary outfit, which I even did not know who the character was, came up to Ben and asked: Hey, do you want to take picture of me? Ben said: No,thanks. Then he turned to us and asked the same question. Actually I kind of wanted to do that, but since he took out his mask and his face looked like not a good person. So we all said no. But he did not stop from there, he pointed at Ben and said: Next time, if you want to take picture of me, better to ask first! We were so surprised and Ben said: Sorry, we did not take picture of you, you can see the picture in my camera. Then the guy touched Ben's shoulder and said: Yes, because I am very smart to move out of the way! He looked very mad and really wanted to fight with us. We did not want that at all, so we all just stopped arguing with him and left the area.
The guy really made our day go down hill. However we still wanted to do the tour. We stopped at one of the tourism stands and asked for Hollywood Star tour. One of our friends had done it before and told us that we can negotiate the price. So we ended up getting a pretty good price for $25/person. It was a really hot day and the touring bus was an open van, so it made us feel like we were fried. We got on the bus and here was the first sign we saw:
Our tour guides make their living by the tips.
$10 if you think the tour is good
$15 if you think the tour is great
$20 if you want to go back.
There was also handwriting on the side saying: Per person. It is pretty strange for me how they set their tip ranges like that, because we don’t have to tip in Vietnam. We did not talk about that until we had our last stop in the trip and all of us said that is ridiculous how they asked for a tip for such an easy tour. Basically, our tour guide did not do anything except drive us around huge mansions of Hollywood Stars. We even did not stop for taking pictures at most of the sights. Even worse, at one point a famous celebrity (Vin Diesel) was in a car right next to us at a red light, talking loudly on his cell phone. Everyone could see him because he was in a convertible and his voice is very recognizable. However, the tour guide didn't have a clue he was there.
After the tour, all of us think that we would never want to do it again. But we still gave our driver (tour guide) some tips. If any of my friends asks about going to Hollywood, I would say that Hollywood is not that interesting and shouldn't be on the top of their list to visit.
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