Train goers duped into buying grapes mixed with stones TUOITRENEWS The licensed grape traders are pictured at the Thap Cham Railway Station in Ninh Thuan. Passengers are advised to buy from these vendors instead of the dishonest peddlers who hawk their goods on train. Tuoi Tre Passengers travelling by train through Ninh Thuan Province should beware of the peddlers who invite them to buy tasty-looking grapes because the sour truth is there may be stones stuffed underneath a thin layer of the fruit. Two victims of such scam have written to Tuoi Tre in the hope of alarming other passengers not to fall prey to these dishonest peddlers. The first is reader Nguyen Long, from Hanoi, who was on the train en route from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi after his travel trip in the city. When the train stopped for a while at Thap Cham Station in the south-central province of Ninh Thuan, Long was invited by several peddlers to buy “small baskets of grapes that look very delicious,” he wrote in a story sent to Tuoi Tre. “Not only me but many other passengers were persuaded by the traders’ sweet talk, and each of us bought five to ten such baskets, each containing 1 to 2 kilogram of the fruit,” Long wrote. The Hanoi man intended to give them as “gifts from a southern trip” to his family and friends, a plan that was ruined after he discovered a bitter truth about the grape baskets upon returning home. “The good-looking bunches of grapes on top of the baskets are in fact separate fruits linked together by thread,” he described in the email. Even worse, when removing the fruits on top, Long discovered that the rest of the baskets “were packed with sheets of papers and even several stones” to increase the product weights. The cheated customer said this “taught me a costly lesson so that I will be more cautious next time when shopping at places like bus or train stations.” The second reader, Nguyen Duoc, of Ho Chi Minh City’s District 5, fell victim to similar peddlers when his TN4 train from the city to Quang Ngai arrived in Thap Cham Station on July 5. Duoc wrote to Tuoi Tre that he bought 5kg of grapes from two women with the cart, and also one “beautiful, delicious basket of grape” sold by a peddler who jumped onto his railcar to hawk the goods. Duoc said he had his mother wash the grapes before gifting them to the neighbors. “But my mother then told me a shocking story: all of the grapes I had bought were separated fruits tied together by rubber bands,” he wrote. Blacklisted traders When contacted by Tuoi Tre on the issue, Tran Van Dung, chief of management of Thap Cham Station, said there are around five such dishonest peddlers. “These traders used to sell poor quality products and have been blacklisted, after which they left to work on other localities,” Dung said. But the peddlers have recently returned to the station and continued their scams, he added. “The grapes linked by threads and rubber bands, and baskets packed with papers and stones are products made by these peddlers,” he said. Dung advised passengers to buy from the six stores that have been licensed by the station, who sell quality fruits at the right price, not from those hawking on the railcars.