There are plenty of things to love about the Dominican Republic, but there are a few that interrupted my peace. So I decided to share them with you here!

Hustlers

For the most of it, Dominican people are nice and fair. But some people have developed the mentality of "If you are not from here, that means that you have money, and I will get some of it". This mentality translates to random people asking you whether you want to buy anything they have to sell. Don't get me wrong, this exists in other countries as well, but never before I have been yelled at by a person from a block away asking if I want to rent a car, a girl, or a room - while I was walking the opposite direction. Nor was anyone asking me whether I want to buy a necklace for my partner after 5 times I told them no for the same offer.

Another thing that is caused by this hustling culture, is that some smaller shops, especially in the big cities would sell you overpriced items just because they arrived to the conclusion that you are not from there. There are no prices on items in the shop, so they are free to tell you whichever price they see fit. The local kiosk near our flat tried to sell us beer for twice the price a few times until they learned that we live across the street and are aware of the real prices. This still happens to me from time to time, and once it does, I just walk out of the store without buying anything.

Once again, most of the people are honest! But be aware when someone tries to rip you off!

Greedy Uber drivers

Before I lay out my thought here, there is a real problem! Uber does not match it's ride prices to the actual gas prices and quality of life levels in the country, and is taking a high percentage (can get up to 40% from what we saw!) of the price paid from the drivers. For that reason, a lot of drivers are abusing the app. I don't blame them for that, but I do blame them for being greedy.

What happens is that you order an Uber at a certain price, and the driver will write you that he will come pick you up at a price between twice and 5 times higher than the app shows, and if you do not agree he will tell you that these are the prices and that you should cancel the ride (and pay the cancellation fee) if you don't like it but you will not find a different price.

To this day, I have always been able to find someone to take me for a fair price!

Somehow, this phenomenon does not happen while taking an Uber inside a big city (Santo Domingo or Punta Cana), but occurs almost every time once you are entering smaller cities (like La Romana) or once you have an inter-city ride (like to or from the airport).

What we usually do now is check the price of Uber, and then offer that same price in another app (like InDrive) which has a better offer for it's drivers. To be honest, I understand the pain of the drivers and this wouldn't bother me so much if they would ask for the fair price, I mean, the other apps are just offering them 10-20% more of the price for the ride, ask for that! Hell, ask for 50% more! But when you ask for 200% more, I will have a problem.

And for whoever is reading this, a ride from SDQ airport to the city center should cost 700-900 Peso (15-18$) depending on the time of the day, it definitely shouldn't cost the 40$ the Uber drivers are asking for. Just save yourself time and money by ordering InDriver for the just price!

The roads are horrible

While the drivers in Dominican are not crazier than drivers in other countries I visited, you still need to be aware of anything that is going on around. There is always a good possibility of a motorcycle appearing out of nowhere, or someone trying to get to the lane on the other side.

The main problem with driving in Dominican Republic is the roads. The infrastructure is extremely bad and as a result of that there are many holes forming in the roads. If you are lucky, the hole will be marked with a spray paint. The locals are used to these things and just drive around them as they know where they are. We once got a flat tire from one of these holes and the local people that were helping us told us that this hole is on that road for years! Just be aware of roads you don't know, there might a hole at any given moment. I would go as far as saying that there are places without a road in the country that I felt more comfortable driving than some of the built roads.

And a last piece of advice, get a higher car.

There is no awareness of how good service should look like

I feel that I'm complaining about this because I'm spoiled, but it happened too many times for me to pass on this. The Caribbean way of life is chill, therefore some things are slower. If you are going to a restaurant, get ready to spend some time there waiting (for service, for a drink, for the food, for the bill... basically for anything).

We have visited countless restaurants that took well more than half an hour to get to our table just to bring us a menu (sometimes after we went in person and asked for it). We have spent a lot of hours of waiting for food, once we waited for an hour and a half and at that point of life we didn't know whether it's the normal waiting time or they just forgot us (they did forget us).

In addition to that the service, when exists, is sometimes done like they are doing you a favor and not like it is their job, and that projects to the quality of service that you are getting. One good example to show this is that some restaurants in the touristic zones have QR-code online menus, but do not have wifi. And have very little will to do anything once you tell them that there is no way for you to see the menu because you do not have access to the internet.

Final thoughts

I want to stress again that we encountered these things in some places, so they exist and you should be aware of them, but I do not want to imply by any means that it is happening everywhere (well, except for the part about the roads). For the most of the places we visited, we did not encounter anything close to being as bad as I described. But we did encounter these levels in a number of places, a number high enough for me to dislike these things about Dominican Republic and go on a rant.

I hope you do find this information useful, and if not then at least I got an outlet for my thoughts... See you on other posts!