Busted

Sunday, 18/11/2012 – 157 A.D.

Both of us took ages to get off to sleep. I could hear Tim huffing and puffing, he could hear me tossing and turning. The reality was that our minds were wide awake, running through what was done to us the previous day, and what we’d do the coming day. I told my brain to stop thinking, shut up and go to sleep, as there wasn’t anything I could formulate now that I couldn’t better formulate come the morning, but brains don’t work like that, do they? Sometimes I’m not sure how mine works at all!

Getting scammed by The Tea Trio had really been an eye-opener. Suddenly I found myself seeing scams everywhere. The woman who handed Tim the baby to hold – if I hadn’t been there with my camera, would she have passed baby across with one hand and used the other to grab his wallet while he’s busy avoiding the gurgling and drool? Crazy, I know, but also equally plausible. I found myself thinking of people we’d met in other countries and wondering whether they’d been on the hustle…the whole world’s a hustle, after all! The websites said that people in China are naturally standoffish to foreigners, so if anyone comes up to you and starts talking then you should run a mile. But take Vietnam, for example, back in the park in Saigon we met students who genuinely wanted to practice their English by talking to us and nothing more. Don’t beat yourself up about it, Jimbo, just sleep for now and sort it tomorrow…

We woke up to bright sunshine streaming through the window – good. When you’re screaming for vengeance, you don’t want to do it in the rain. After coffees and apples and heads-under-the-shower, we sat down and worked out how we were going to play it. Turned out we had quite a bit of ammunition up our sleeves, but more about that later. And what about any real ammunition, such as AK-47s, smoke grenades or elastic bands? Nope, we only had our made-in-England-muscles and intelligence on offer. Oh dear.

[Lieutenant Tim checks the kitbag before battle...

"James, did you pack the Swiss Army knife?"

"No, but the plastic fork from the pot noodle is in there."]

Before we could return to the scene of the crime to confront our cheeky little scamsters, we had the inconvenience of nipping over to Shanghai Central Station and buying our tickets for the Shanghai-Beijing train in a couple of days. Even though it made the anticipation for our main task of the morning so much tougher, this really couldn’t wait as we really had to be on that train. Fortunately we managed it with no problems – two hard sleepers, top bunks again. Who cares about headroom? And with those bought, we jumped back onto the metro and headed for the spot where it all began: Peoples’ Square.

[Would you want to mess with these two well `ard dudes?]

Upon arriving at People’s Square, we were immediately alert and scanning the area for familiar faces. Plan A was to return to where we were “picked-up”, have a reunion with Herman’s Hermits, tell them exactly what we knew about them, tell them exactly what we thought about them, and ask for our money back. No, demand our money back. In truth we just wanted to confront them in the cold light of day and show we were onto them…what’s that quote from the film The Italian Job? “Be careful of these English, they are not so stupid as they look.” But what would happen then was anyone’s guess. It would be a crowded public place so the chances of a ruckus happening were slim. Our other hope was that we would find the three of them hitting on a fresh batch of tourists and we could stroll in and tell them what’s what, thus saving them from getting scammed. That would ease the blow somewhat.

And so we attempted to stroll on the fringes of the Square, but no sooner had we walked a few yards than this happened:

[Group of four students lining up for a photo.]

CHIRPY MALE STUDENT: Excuse me, can you take our photo?

JAMES: [striding past, head down, angry tone] No, I can’t!

CHRIPY MALE STUDENT: Why not?

JAMES: You know why!

CHIRPY MALE STUDENT: [sounding a bit less chirpy] I don’t…hey, I don’t!

But I just kept walking, possibly turning around to laugh sarcastically his way, I don’t remember. Not one minute had we been back in People’s Square and we were a target for a new group of tea house scammers – unbelievable! Good job we didn’t still have our tassels dangling from our bags! Or maybe we should have, that way they would have left us alone.

After about ten minutes circling the periphery, we moved a little deeper into the square. Across the way I spotted a young Caucasian guy being spoken to by a couple of local girls, dressed in the same sort of clothes and posing in the exact same way as Herman’s hermits did yesterday. I nudged Tim and suggested that there looked like a victim-in-the-making and we both agreed to intervene. Up we walked, bold as brass, and Tim calmly said, “If they ask you to go for tea, mate, don’t bother.” I casually added, “They’ll take all your money. They did it to us yesterday.”

Silence all round. Bloke looks a little embarrassed, yet in complete understanding. We start to walk away.

Then one of the girls goes A-B-S-O-L-U-T-E-L-Y ballistic.

I’m not joking here! She strode up to us, first to Tim, then to me and shouted at the top of her voice, “Why you say that? WHY???” as if we’d committed the ultimate verbal faux-pa. We gave a few responses, but she wasn’t really listening. Instead she followed us as we walked off across the square, still shouting at the top of her voice so that everyone in the area could hear, and they invariably turned to watch. It was mildly intimidating, but only because we didn’t know what she was capable of. At the end of the day, she’s someone who operates on the fringes of the law, despite the fact that in that little cute, student get-up she normally looks like butter wouldn’t melt, but not now. She was so fiery the butter had long ago been burnt into oblivioin!

A selection of some of the things she said:

“This is my happy day, why you have to say that?”

“I tell you get out of China now!”

“You will have accident today!”

“My goddess curse you!”

“You are stupid, so stupid!”

“I remember your ugly face!”

But we were right, weren’t we? To react in such a way only shows she’s a nasty little scam artist who hates it  that she’s been exposed and lost some of her (ill-gotten) livelihood. Her making a big song and dance was maybe a way of making a statement for us not to come back and try the same trick with other punters, but the fact that we stopped one of these scams going through was satisfying enough. Her little mate arrived (meekly saying nothing – probably another trainee) as Crazy Girl followed us to the edge of the park and repeatedly asked my nationality so she could call my embassy to have me deported. I said I was Norwegian. There was also talk of the police and when she threatened to call them, we dared her to because we’d have plenty to say to them about her. Of course, she didn't end up calling them. I’m afraid there are no pictures of this confrontation, but Timbo managed to sneakily video the whole affair on his phone, and I could have kissed my younger sibling for that (but I didn’t).

Crazy Girl eventually went back to the square as we took five across the road. Busting that scam-in-the-making had been satisfying, but it wasn’t enough. We were both still £30 down and we hadn’t found Herman and his Hermits. Nor were we likely to, especially with Crazy Girl hanging around and acting unhinged. There was only one thing for it – time for Plan B – go back to the tea room. But first we had to find it…

Let’s retrace our steps from yesterday. The trio met us on the edge of Peoples’ Square, then took us on a walk through the park past the matchmaking adverts, then down several side streets until we reached a small shopping mall called The Champ-Elysees. I discovered online that victims are often taken on long, convoluted routes to the tea rooms so that they are not able to remember where they are located. Thing is, I only had to do a bit more searching online to find out exactly where the Champs-Elysees was. And yes, it was just across the road from the square, all of that walking through the matchmaking area was a totally unnecessary detour. Ooooh, these little scammers, in one way I admire them, in another I want to throw them off the top of the city’s tallest tower! So, we knew how to get back to the Lion’s Den, but what to do when we got there? Our goal was simply to get our money back, that would suffice. It would be nice to chuck in a few insults and blow the odd raspberry, but that was secondary to our primary purpose. But how to make these people give us our money back? After all, they showed us the prices for the teas that we drank, albeit fleetingly. 

Here were our options:

* We walk in, keep it friendly, say they did very well to scam us, but we know that it IS a scam, and we ask for our money back.

* We walk in looking like we’ve just stubbed our toes and got severe toothache, beat our fists upon the desk and generally use strongarm tactics.

Or a combination of the two. Then, depending how that goes…

* We threaten to tell the police.

* We threaten to put their pictures all over the internet and promise to splash their names across a thousand websites.

* We threaten to sit outside the mall, wait for scammers arriving, tell the victims the score, thus depriving the tea room of future profits. And we’ll do it for as long as it takes.

…in fact, our only real plan was to use an ad-libbed combination of the above. If big blokes suddenly came out of side doors then we’d re-think things on the spot. But if it came to a stalemate we wouldn’t budge. And we wouldn’t shrink away from this, no matter how tricky a proposition it seemed. All I had to do was think back to when I was a kid and my dad offered me 50 pence if I swam a width of the school swimming pool without armbands. I bottled it then, but there was no way I would be bottling this. Yep, this wasn’t for 50 pence, it was for £30, and it didn’t involve armbands…just balls.

Ahem.

[Back to the scene of the crime...]

With balls carefully checked, we arrived at the Champs-Elysees Mall, adrenaline pumping, teeth gritted and noses in the kind of position they're in when you snarl. There were few people in the mall as we strode inside, went up the stairs to first floor and strode confidently along the landing. The tea shop hadn’t moved since yesterday, and the receptionist was sitting there silently, just as she had the day before. As we approached the desk Tim did his sarcastic clapping, but I was uncertain whether to speak or to try and play a role I’ve never managed before in my life – the strong, silent type. Whoever greeted me was going to have to deal with the fact that  it had just gone 12 and I hadn’t had my lunch! But I had to laugh and say hello when I saw the door to the side room ajar and sitting inside was Herman, at first inspecting his camera, then looking up at the sound of fresh guests. The bewildered expression on his face to see us back again was absolutely priceless!

He was in there with a couple of other hermits, Mai Qi and Emmy not being around, which was a shame, but hey-ho. I got the impression that they’d freshly scammed someone this morning and had returned to the tea room to re-distribute their cash. As Herman got up and came out to meet us, the cheeky git actually had the audacity to ask, “Have you come to have some more tea?” “No! We had enough tea yesterday and we’ve come to get a refund!”

Any semblance of a plan that the Brothers Gray may have had went out of the window at this point, but it didn’t matter. We caught Herman in a perfect crossfire, sticking firmly to our guns that we’d come for a refund and we weren’t leaving until we got one. At one point Tea Lady appeared in the shop, then did a sharp u-turn and went to stand out on the landing for the whole discussion. I think both Tim and I were checking behind us for any heavies, but there weren’t any, only Herman and given how small he was compared to both me and Tim, somewhere deep down in a strange place I felt a little sorry for him. But then I remembered that this guy had conned goodness knows how many people out of a lot of money, and I snarled once more.

Herman tried his best to make out that our transaction had been innocent all along, but when I pointed out that he and his Hermits had claimed not to know the people in the tea shop, yet they were back here again today sitting around, he knew he was busted. He asked what we wanted and we said they could have a fiver for their excellent performance, but we wanted the rest of the £60. He offered us £30 at which point Tim carefully dropped in the word “police” and after doing a double take he went back into the side room to collect some notes from the Hermits. The fact he didn’t have chance to reach for a secret box and give us counterfeit ones (a big problem in China) made things all the more sweeter. And so he counted out six 100 yuan notes into Tim’s hand and we turned around and walked away with the promise that he’d never see us again (but without mentioning anything about putting his picture on my blog – serves him right anyway! And he won’t be able to access it anyway from within China). Plus we got to keep the pot of tea that he bought for us - great success!

We kept our heads high and kept walking confidently as we went down the stairs and exited the mall, checking that we weren’t about to get jumped by anyone. We didn’t, though if I ran that tea shop I’d have at least one big lad sitting around reading comics all day, just in case, but I guess Herman never thought we’d come back. But he doesn’t know Grayboys, does he?

GRAYBOYS RULE!!!     

[Loadsamoney!]

Once again I am afraid there are no pictures of this momentous raid, but once again Our Kid managed to capture the whole thing on mobile phone video and he recorded some sweet, sweet footage! In fact, the whole thing couldn’t have gone sweeter. We’d been scammed, fair enough, we hold our hands up, but we'd fought back, infiltrated their operation, got the majority of our money back and salvaged our pride. Just shows that He Who Dares really does Win! Will these people think twice about messing with the English again? Probably not, but at least they’d remember two of them in particular. In fact, the raid coupled with the bust in the square made us feel a bit like undercover cops! Who could we help next? We decided not to push our luck with any heavy stuff, but we vowed that if we saw any tourists with the infamous tassels hanging from their bags then we’d go up to them, sympathise with them, but tell them that it is possible to get your money back. Just stand tall and don’t shave for a couple of days. Oh, and don’t forget to snarl with the nose.

After all that excitement, I wasn’t quite ready for lunch, despite it being well past 12. Instead we headed down Nanjing Road to The Bund. With it being a clearer day Tim wanted to get some better shots of the buildings across the river, so I tagged along and got a shot of him looking at buildings across the river.

Unfortunately, while looking out at the river, we came across a scenario which may well plague the rest of our stay in China. I was just minding my own business when a Chinese girl approached me with camera and asked if I would take a picture of her with her two friends. Hmmm…haven’t we done this one before? I duly complied and handed the camera back, only to be asked where I was from. Yawn! We chatted, but I kept things so laid back my words were practically horizontal. Surprise, surprise, they weren’t from Shanghai, they were from Beijing, here on holiday. The one doing most of the talking was keeping it pretty chilled as well, not like Herman and Mai Qi who’d had verbal diarrhoea the whole time we’d been with them. On this occasion I cut to the chase and asked if they were students, to which they said they weren’t. After a few more exchanges, they politely made their excuses and walked away, but not before one of them had described me as being “very facial”. Really? Two hours ago another Chinese girl was going to “remember [my] ugly face”!

So what was the score here? We couldn’t work it out. Now after some thought we do believe that they were scammers, but at the time we wondered whether we’d been a little harsh on some genuinely friendly people - tourists in a strange city, just like us. Last thing I want to be is rude to people, especially if they’re being genuinely friendly to me, but I don’t think Tim and I will be able to trust any Chinese folk ever again, especially if they approach us. Well, that hard-hearted attitude may soften in a few days, we’ll see. But as ever, we’ve got a plan – anyone approaches us, we tell them how we had a mad day falling victim to a tea shop scam, but we managed to get our money back. They split at the news, they’re gits; they stick around, they just may be alright.

After lunching at the traditional Chines eatery known as Subway, we headed for the Shanghai Museum. Hey it’s got four floors of “stuff” to see and it’s free! But before we got there we finally saw our first vehicle collision in Asia. Some 4x4 didn’t brake in time at the lights and went into the back of a taxi. There was a loud crunch, but no real damage done, possibly a slightly dented bumper. Given the amount of traffic chaos we’ve seen, this should have happened long ago!

The Shanghai Museum is very popular, but most of its exhibits weren’t really to my taste. Focusing on all things ancient and Chinese, there were rooms dealing with traditional dress, traditional pottery, traditional art, traditional calligraphy…and precious things owned the by Tsars and Tsarinas of Russia, which seemed a bit random. Still the Easter eggs were cracking, especially the one that contained a tiny golden replica of the Trans-Siberian Express which even ran when wound up with the special key. And I looked into all of the windows of all of the carriages, but I couldn’t make out the tiny golden replica of Karl Pilkington.

[You weren't actually supposed to take pictures of most of the exhibits, including the one above, but no one seemed bothered by this rule, including most of the staff!]

The Chinese economy may be booming now, but they were never going to achieve such monetary dominance when their coins looked like this:

And I did like the scary Tibetan masks that were on display…maybe next time we need to go bust up some scammers we should wear something similar?

After trailing round the museum we trailed back to the hotel, heroes in our own minds, probably nothing of the sort in anyone else’s. That evening we decided to celebrate getting our 600 yuan back and went to a slightly nicer restaurant in the French Concession than we normally would. I had vermicelli seafood noodles, Tim had kung pao chicken, but with a three chilli rating instead of two because none of the staff spoke any English and he wasn’t sure what the waitress was trying to point out to him on the menu. But despite a slightly runny nose, he managed it. And mine had a kick as well, it being a Sichuan place after all, but I survived. Oh and one thing we should point out for anyone hoping to go to China – they have no concept of bringing everyone’s meals out of the kitchen at once. When they’re done, they come, no matter if your dining companion’s takes another 20 minutes, as has happened to both of us on separate occasions. Ah, the Chinese and their funny ways!

Ah, the Grayboys and their triumphant ways! What a day it was…

[...it's now a trophy to represent a great victory.]

Baby, I love you

Saturday, 17/11/2012 – 156 A.D.

What a difference a day makes! Or rather, what a difference the weather makes. After a hearty night’s sleep we woke up to golden sunshine peeping through the Shanghai smog, but more importantly, no rain. Yep, the sky had stopped crying and its tears ceased to fall. Time to be happy all round! Just so long as we’re both wearing three layers.

Our ever-happy receptionist at the hotel had still not found any English maps, but he told us we could get one from the post office two minutes down the road. We tried to find it, but failed. Oh dear, was it going to be another one of those days like yesterday? There’s plenty to see in Shanghai, but it’s a pain when you can’t mark things out on the map, especially when the city is as large as this one. Therefore we formed a vague plan to head to Peoples’ Square, the very heart of Shanghai, and see if we could locate tourist facilities.

We found a man with a magazine stall flogging maps for £1.50, but they were far too large for our purposes. Peoples’ Square didn’t seem to be very square where we were standing, but we didn’t end up having very long to explore the area. We’d only taken a few steps before we were asked to take the picture of three young Chinese. Our voices led to the, “Are you English?” question, which led to the, “Where in England you come from?” question, which in turn led to much conversation. 'Herman' (our name for him, didn't catch it) is in Shanghai for an internship – something to do with computers, and he is being visited by his two female friends from back home (caught the name of the city, didn't remember it). They are Mei Qi (pronounced May-Shay), who is a student of English, and Emmy (SIC – same name as my parents’ cat, which I didn’t tell her), who studied traditional Chinese medicine.

After chatting in the “square” for a while, our new friends invite us to join them for something, which neither of us quite catch, but we both agree to. Some kind of show, possibly involving puppets? If they’re water puppets then we’ve been there, done that! The five of us walk across the square, passing through a small tunnel and then into a strange area which is described to us as a place for matchmaking. Yes, in Shanghai the older generation who are long past being out on the pull prefer to come to the park, jot down their vital statistics on a card, and hope their future sweetheart passes and spots them. Who needs online dating when you’ve got this?!

We continue to walk a few streets and enter a big old building called the Champs-Elysees Mall. Up some stairs we go to the first floor, into a shop, and a woman in traditional red dress invites us into a small side room, with no doors or windows. All that’s there is a rather grand wooden table, five chairs, some tiny mugs, and lots and lots of tea. Ah, right – it’s tea tasting time!

The tea lady comes in and closes the door and immediately my defences are up. The tearoom scam is probably the most well-known trick that foreigners fall for in the whole of China. Basically you get befriended by someone who hangs out with you for a bit, then takes you for a tea-tasting session, before suddenly disappearing out the back door and leaving you with an astronomical bill that contains several more zeros than it ought to. So, I quickly played out potential scenarios in my mind:

1.      There are three of them – if they try to slip away all at once, they’re going to struggle.

2.      There are three of them (four including the tea lady), but they’re all pretty small – if they turn nasty and claim we need to pay up, I reckon that Tim and I can take `em.  

Semi-assured in that respect, I ask to see the prices. I have to ask several times. A price list is waved swiftly before my eyes, but I still don’t get a concrete answer. Oh well, maybe I am being paranoid again? Just sit back and enjoy it, Jamesy! Not everyone in the world is out to diddle you!

No, that’s not warpaint I’m wearing under the eye, it’s a certain type of tea leaf that Mai Qi put there to help the skin – you can see Herman applying some to Our Kids’ peepers in the background. The basic tea tasting routine went as follows:

1. Tea lady hands out a jar of a particular type of tea.

2. We all pass it round, sniff it and comment how good it is.

3. The tea is poured out into shot-size glasses, which we have to knock back in three, savouring the taste as we do so.

4. Sometimes little rituals are performed before the shots, such as waving our hands over the liquid in a certain motion for good luck, health, wealth, a playstation 3, etc.

[Touching the three-legged toad for good luck (that’s not its little chamber pot to the right, it’s my latest shot of tea.]

[Tim strengthens Anglo-Chinese relations by teaching Herman that trick where you make it appear as though you’ve voluntarily snapped your nose.]

[High as kites on herbal tea, Mai Qi tries on my glasses while Emmy gestures for peace.]

We must have got through about eight or nine different teas (some of which were very nice, others just okay) before the time came for us to pay up. I’d dragged out of Mai Qi the information that the price for us to sit in the room was £3, so that was pretty good, but the total bill for tasting all those teas within said room was considerably more - £30 per person! You can get three good boozey nights out for that in Cambodia! Although our new-found friends aren’t out to scam us, they’re obviously part of the "have class" of modern China, as opposed to the have-nots. But there was no pressure to buy any of the tea, even though the girls each bought a pot of their favourite. Tim was about to buy a pot to take home until I whispered that he’d forgotten to carry the decimal point, the realisation of which caused him to reverse his order! But then Herman said it was tradition for Chinese people to buy something for new friends, so he shelled-out for a pot of tea for us to take home with us, which seemed like a decent gesture.

It was about midday when we left our authentic tea-tasting session, still recovering from open wallet surgery, but happy to have done something the proper Chinese way, with proper Chinese people. Due to our proximity to Nanjing Road – the most crowded street in all of China – the girls were happy to hit the shops, and Herman was reluctantly forced to tag along. Not wanting to use up all of our Shanghai time in H&M and Zara, Tim and I said our goodbyes, with a vague plan to keep in touch and possibly meet up for drinks another evening (hopefully not in the trendiest, dearest bars the city had to offer!)

Back to being a duo, we headed five minutes down the road to the area known as The Bund (“bund” meaning muddy bank in some form of Chinese). This is the point along the river where everyone gathers to stand on the more traditional side of Shanghai and look across to the eastern bank where the modern city has developed with all its economic powerhouse skyscrapers. There isn’t much over there for us, so standing and taking a few snaps on the western side sufficed.

Then something happened, something which should not have been totally unexpected, given our Chinese experience so far, but which caused the two of us to break down in fits of laughter afterwards. Tim was innocently photographing the other side of the river when a Chinese woman with a camera and a baby approached him and asked if she could have picture of him holding the baby. Of course he was only too happy to oblige, so the lady then snapped several pictures of Our Kid holding her kid. She even asked him to turn to a different side at one point so that the light would be better for the photo. I kept a straight face while I snapped him being snapped, but honestly, it was the funniest thing I have seen in a long time! What next? The newly-formed Chinese government want a piccy together with him???

After all the excitement of the morning, we needed to slow down a little. After a quick lunch in a fast food chain that I’m too embarrassed to namecheck, we headed into the Old Town. This is where we ended up yesterday when the drizzle went into overdrive, but under fine clear skies the experience of strolling in the old streets was vastly improved. It’s the same old thing that we’ve seen many times before – stores selling tat to the tourists, but not just the Westerners, mainly to people from other parts of China. We had another look for coats, but decided to leave it `til the proper hardcore locals-only clothing market we want to check out tomorrow. We can just about get by without a proper jacket here, but it’ll be a different ballgame in Beijing. On the way back we turned down a side street where they sold all kinds of interesting food stuff. I didn’t take any pictures; couldn’t really, given the assault on my nostrils. I’ve come across some pretty putrid outdoor smells since setting foot in Asia, but what I smelt at this point was not of this Earth. It was like sweaty feet meets gorgonzola meets Beelzebub’s armpit. The kind of smell that lingers, that if you inhale hard enough in its presence you can get your dinner out of it. Bleurgh!

Epilogue

Maybe you’ve guessed it, but something wasn’t sitting right with me, and it wasn’t the spicy beef and green peppers I munched down for tea. I didn’t know it at the time (circa 23:00 this evening), but the same thing wasn’t sitting right with Timbo either. After doing a bit of googling (not easy under Chinese search engine censorship!), it wasn’t hard to see that we’d been scammed by our new found friends bastards. Yep, you’d already guessed it, hadn’t you? I mean, who pays 30 quid for a load of tea, even in an expensive city like Shanghai! It’s China for gawd’s sake, there’s tea everywhere and it costs b*gger all! And as for that gesture Herman made when he bought a pot of tea for us? Well that cost b*gger all as well!

The internet has plenty of reports of “students” asking tourists to take their pictures, then taking them for a highly elaborate ruse to these hideously over-priced tea ceremonies. I only really homed in on the scam I’d experienced when I included ‘Champs-Elysees Mall’ in the search criteria. Previously I’d done my homework and knew that such scams existed, but the glaring flaw in my knowledge was the following - the money the scammers use to pay for their tea is not their money at all, it belongs to the tea house. And all that talk of them visiting Shanghai is absolute garbage – they live here all along, it’s all part of the ruse to make the unsuspecting tourist think that everyone is in the same boat. And it’s a boat that leaks, glaringly once you look properly underneath.

One thing I did not mention was the tassel. At the end of the ceremony, once the bill was settled up, tea lady set down five coloured tassels for us all to have, complimentary-like. They are typical of the type of thing we’ve seen in tat stores all around. It seemed a bit strange, but we didn’t intervene when Mai Qi tied a tassel to the bottom of my day bag and Herman did the same to Tim’s, supposedly all in the name of good luck. What I now know is that this is a sign to their dirty little comrades that we’ve already been scammed and to steer clear of us, lest they try the same trick again and we become suspicious. The thing even has small bells on it so it makes a noise when we walk! I had to hand it to these kids, they really had it all worked out! And we wore those tassels on our bags all afternoon like a couple of mugs taken for 30 sheets.

Don’t get me wrong, £30 is not too much to lose. If it had been more than that I would have refused to pay anyway, yet online there are stories of people shelling out hundreds of pounds! For the performance these three young actors gave (well two really, because Emmy didn’t say much – we think she is a trainee), I have to admit that they really earned their money, which split three ways and with the tea house taking its cut isn’t a vast sun. Good job we didn’t buy any of the bloody tea! I’ve had nights out that cost more than £30 and weren’t half as good as the performance I was treated to, but that is not the point. For once the money does not matter. It’s the fact that I was taken in by it all, even though something deep at the back of my mind was screaming that it was a scam. Guess I was right to be paranoid! Travelling the world we have come across sooo many confidence tricks that eventually we were bound to fall for one of them. But in response, I feel cheated, I feel embarrassed and I feel angry. Part of me wants to find those three little %&*!)’s and wring their necks, but another part of me wants to sit them down and ask why, when they have such a good grasp of English, do they spend their time in this crappy little enterprise when surely they could do something much more productive, much better paying, and much more moral? But what do I know about their circumstances, and at this late hour, I couldn’t give a monkey's toss about them.  

Tim felt exactly the same way as I did, but after reading several of the stories online, we were ready for action. Plans were formed. Tomorrow was a new day (what a difference a day makes???) and we were going to take our revenge. If those little scammers thought they’d seen the last of us English boys then by Britannia they had another thing coming…

He ain't heavy, he's my brother

Tuesday, 06/11/2012 – 145 A.D.

This young man turned 32 today.

In my mind he will always be about four years old, but then again he is looking pretty well for his age. It’s strange having your birthday in a far off land, I still recall how weird it was in Sydney. Would being in Hanoi be any weirder for Our Kid? I was able to get him the obligatory card, though it hadn’t been easy to locate during our What Carcass Day back in Phnom Penh. I don’t think they really do birthday cards in Cambodia, let alone with the words in English! Unfortunately the hat was not a present, it belonged to the cleaning lady.

I am fast getting used to the above views. Give me music, a beer and a balcony and I am happy as can be. Spent quite a lot of time up there last night, watching the Old Quarter quieten down. Come 23:00 it’s pretty much deserted down there, but they certainly rise early in this country. It took us a while to get going today, maybe we’re just taking things slowly because we know we’ve got three nights still to go in this city. But later on we’d have a go at painting it red….if we ever got going, that is!

Eventually we did, and we ended up at the mausoleum of that great Vietnamese hero, Ho Chi Minh. Saigon in the south may have his name, but in Hanoi they still have the man himself, permanently laid out in state, Lenin-style. There are lots of visitors who come here from all over Vietnam and many rules that must be obeyed, such as no folding your arms when inside the mausoleum. However, we knew beforehand that we weren’t going to get inside to see HCM because during October and November every year he is taken away somewhere for “maintenance”. Quite what that involves kept us guessing over breakfast – they change the formaldehyde? Check the oil? Straighten his alloys? It was a shame really, because in a slightly macabre way I was quite keen to see a corpse, simply because I’ve never seen one before. If there comes a time in my life when I simply must see someone in a cadaverous state, I’d prefer to have forewarning, rather than it be a grisly surprise. Umm, sorry for the dark tone so early on in the post!

Above is the nearby One Pillar Pagoda, so named because… This is actually a reconstruction of the original - another building knocked over by the `orrible French as they moved on out of the Nam. The guidebook says you either love or hate the One Pillar Pagoda. I thought it was okay. And it was around this time that I realised I had broken my second pair of sunglasses on this trip. Oh well, they were only ever meant to be a cheap replacement, though I’ve only had them since Siem Reap. And despite what was written on the lens in gold writing, I don’t think they were genuine D & G shades.

This is West Lake, quite a large body of water, the far side of which is either shrouded in mist or smog. We were quite a way from the regular tourist haunts and it showed when we tried to find somewhere for lunch. Hardly any English was spoken and I regret that my attempts to learn get-by-in-Vietnamese have somewhat stalled. At one place when we asked to see the menu the waitress (with a face like a smacked arse) simply threw it onto the table behind her, expecting us to go fetch – needlessly to say, we kept moving. In fact, most of the places only did drinks, no food, so by the time we found somewhere even a quarter decent, we took our seats. After ordering a rice-based dish each, the waitress communicated to us that rice was currently off the menu – she wrote down “the end” on her notepad and thrust it under my nose. Therefore we played it safe and ordered a ham and pineapple pizza between us. Now, let me take you back to September of 1996…

[James is in his university halls and has grown sick of pot noodles. Therefore he phones the local pizza delivery place.]

PIZZA PERSON: Hello, Lucky’s Pizza?

JAMES: Hi, can I get a ham and pineapple pizza please. No onions.

PIZZA PERSON: Ham and pineapple don’t come with onions, mate.

…and ever since that day I have found that person’s words to be true. Until now. What was brought before my brother and I may have had pineapple, it may have had cheese, it did not have tomato, it didn’t appear to contain any ham, but my goodness was it stuffed FULL with bloody onions! It was like the chef had an obsession with sneaking them into every nook, crack and crevice within the dough! Obviously the Birthday Boy had no problem with this, but instead of enjoying a heavy lunch I ended up with a light snack. And stinky onion breath! Yuck!

We had wanted to have a game of Shuttlecock at some point, now re-christened by us as “licky-kicky” (don’t ask, long story), but we couldn’t find anywhere private enough. Not surprising really, given that we’re in the middle of a capital city! Besides, we had to be heading back to skype our parents at 4 p.m. our time (9 a.m. UK time). There was just time for Tim to approach a woman with a conical hat and ask if he could buy one, before turning away and running off in embarrassment upon being told only women wear them.

Not really. That said, we have seen some men wearing them – Western tourists who know no better. In those cases I rechristened them “comical hats” – geddit??? We got home, spoke to mum and dad, then prepared to go out for a few drinks….or rather a few more drinks than normal. We’d done our research online as to the best places to go in the city, but first we had to pose for the traditional pre-going-out-and-poncing-about photo.

As it was Tim’s birthday, it was Tim’s choice where we ate, drank…and whatever else we got up to. He’d picked out a small restaurant called Gecko a few buildings down from our hotel for an evening meal. I’m afraid that once I saw the menu I committed the cardinal sin and ordered a hot cheese, chicken and bacon baguette, i.e. Western food. But Ho Chi Minh did it taste GOOOOOOOD!!! Once it was down we headed for the corner of Loung Ngoc Quyen and Ta Hien in the heart of the Old Quarter. At first we didn’t find it so, with the twin pressures of bladder and thirst on the attack, we ducked into a nearby Irish bar. In fact, the only vaguely Irish thing in it was a tiny beermat behind the bar in the design of the Irish flag. Apart from that it could have been any other kind of bar in south east Asia. And, as you can see from the picture below, I was really firing up for a big night at this point:

We eventually found the road with all of Hanoi’s supposedly best bars on, or maybe just the most popular. Or maybe just those mostly frequented by tourists like us. The ones we visited were okay, but nothing fancy. Then again, this was no Khao San Road like in good old Bangkok. Things seemed a tad more civilised and there was no chance of being invited to a ping pong show, which was kind of a relief. By the time we reached the final bar at the end of this strip (we didn’t go in `em all!) we were feeling pretty merry and lost in 1,001 conversations about everything and nothing. Suddenly we heard a siren in the alley, followed by a loudspeaker. Glancing over our shoulders, we saw the police striding sternly into the establishment. Uh-oh! What is this – some kind of raid? Our passports are currently at the Indian embassy! How much are we going to have to bride them with? And what are we doing wrong in the first place? Play it cool, Grayboy, just be polite and give them no trouble. Suddenly the barmaid comes over and clarifies the situation – it’s simply gone midnight and all the bars in the Old Quarter have to close up at this time. Seems they’re quite strict at enforcing this rule. I worryingly grip the top of my bottle of barely touched Biere Larue and ask, “I can take this outside with me, can I?” She says I can (with the concealed subtext of “Just get going, English Boy!”)

[Danger lurks in dark shop doorways...]

I'd done my research and knew that there was one place in Hanoi that stays open past midnight - Bar Phuc Tan in the area known as...errr, Phuc Tan. Okay, so this place had a bit of a trashy reputation, but at this point I wasn't bothered by that, just fancied a nightcap. And I guess curiosity killed the cat (if only it would kill the rat as well!) We knew where the Phuc Tan area was on the map and had a semi-vague idea of where the bar was, and it wasn't too much of a walk. However, we had to cross a large flyover which acted like an unofficial divider between the Old Quarter and Phuc Tan. There were no footbridges across, so initially we were a bit stumped. Then we noticed a couple of shady characters, picking their way through various holes in the walls, so we did exactly the same, keeping our distance behind them.

I have no idea what Phuc Tan is like by day, but by night it was pretty damn grim. Gone was the warmth and charm of the Old Quarter, this place looked like it was still recovering from the war, make that a series of wars. The first streets were virtually deserted and eerily quiet, but also badly lit, so it was difficult to see what (if anything was lurking in the shadows). Obviously I’d had a few cheeky beers by this point, but it’s times like this that you suddenly find what alcoholics refer to as “a moment of clarity”. This was not a place for two foreigners to be wandering blindly around. The guidebook had described Hanoi as “a dangerous city by eastern and western standards”, but during the three days we’d been in town I hadn’t felt threatened at any moment. To be honest, since I’ve been travelling there have only been a few moments when I have been slightly concerned for my safety and all of those were way, way back in the USA. But Phuc Tan was different and I found myself striding more confidently than a drill sergeant, with shoulders held as high and wide as was physically possible, and my “come near me and I’ll smash your face in eyes” fixed firmly forward. After a few minutes of aimless wandering, people started taking an interest in our presence, calling out, “Hello!”, which they normally do, but now we would rather they didn’t. A dishevelled old woman sitting on the floor asked us where we were going and I replied, “Phuc Tan Club.” She turned and pointed down the alleyway beside her, intimating it was just down there. We both craned our necks around the corner and realised we couldn’t see the end of the alley, nor could we hear any music. “Yeah, cheers,” I said with big smile, not caring if she understood me or not, “we’re gonna walk around for a bit more and then we’ll go down there.”

We never went down there. Instead we decided to knock the nightcap on the head and went back across the flyover to the Old Quarter. Sense of adventure is one thing, but I believe the reason we’ve got so far on this trip without being too badly scathed is because we do know when it’s time strap on the old sensible head. The hard partying until dawn would have to wait until another time. Besides, Tim had enjoyed his birthday sufficiently, even though it wasn’t technically his birthday anymore so it didn’t matter what he thought - normal service resumed!

Phuc tan? Phuc that!

Manic Monday

Monday, 05/11/2012 – 144 A.D.

Bonfire night in Vietnam!!!!! They don’t tend to celebrate it.

Guess what was the first thing we saw this morning as we left the room? Rattus norvegicus! Or it could have been rattus rattus. Either way, Tim stopped dead in his tracks at the top of the stairs and pointed it out before it scurried away into a hole in the wall. Is that a good thing to witness within the walls of a hotel? So much for the excellent reviews on Booking.com!

[Stock photo.]

[Pointing out the hole it scurried into.]

We had a couple of jobs to sort out this morning, the first of which was booking our train passage out of Vietnam and into China. This had to be done before we got our India visa because in order to get the tickets we had to show the China visas in our passports. Obviously to get our India visas we will have to surrender our passports for several working days. Man I am sooo getting sick of visas and will get down on my knees and thank The Road once they’re all sorted!

We arrived at the main Hanoi train station at 08:45 and were told to proceed to counter number 7 to book tickets for trains to China. Counter number 7 was the only one of the ten counters that was not staffed. We took a seat to wait, presuming that someone would be along at 09:00. At 08:59 I realised that I had rather stupidly forgotten to bring my passport photos with me, so I had to leggit to the hotel and back, which took a good half an hour. Prior to this the weather had been perfect temperature – neither warm nor cool,  but now I was sweating cobs and normal service was resumed.

By the time I got back to the station, Tim told me that a woman at counter number 7 had been, then gone. Rather than sit around like plebs, we decided to stand at the counter in the hope that someone would see us lingering. It was another fifteen minutes before a woman arrived, though she then asked us to wait five minutes while she went and fed the cat that was hanging around. By the time she got to the other side of the glass, I was envisioning the Indian embassy closing its doors just as we rushed up to them.

[We're thinking of hiring the station's cat to deal with the rat infestation at the hotel.]

The woman was obviously the international train specialist and her English was reasonable, though I had to ask her to repeat everything for clarification, as well as having to bend down a couple of feet to shove my ear through the hole in the glass. There is only one daily train out of Hanoi to Nanning, so there was no confusion with that, we just had to tell her which day we wanted it and whether we wanted top or bottom bunks. Then she asked for payment of $40 each – I quickly did a calculation in my head – 21,000 dong to the dollar, so 21,000 x 40  =  840,000 VND. Yet the website I had been looking on suggested the price was 740,000 VND. Once again we were being diddled and not by a market trader, by someone in a uniform who worked for a nationalised industry! I wrote down what I thought should be the price and asked her to provide it in dong. Probably realising that I wasn’t a foreigner to be messed around, she quoted a price of 705,000 VND. Great – even cheaper than the website said! She didn’t half have a face on her as she wrote out the tickets though.

The Indian embassy was relatively plain sailing after that. We showed our completed forms and were told to take a seat. There were only a couple of people in the queue before us, but unfortunately one of them had about thirty applications with her! She explained later they were for employees of her company – not sure if they were heading over to India on business or for one big jolly. Anyway, she didn’t hold us up for too long and soon we had surrendered our passports, along with $63 each - $20 penalty for not applying for them in our own country. Well how could we? An India visa gives you six months from the date of issue, but we’re travelling for over six months and flying out of India! Do the maths, dude!

After all of that rushing around in the morning, we took it fairly easy in the afternoon. The Old Citadel has, as its name suggests, been around for a long, long time. Built about a thousand years ago and acting as the seat of various kings, the nasty French needlessly destroyed a lot of it shortly before being booted out of the country in the 1950s. Up until 2009 what remained of it was used as an army base and off limits to visitors. Today the majority of it seemed to be used for a Miss Hanoi shoot and everywhere we walked, especially on the higher levels, we were unable to get out of shots as camera lenses pointed our way. Wouldn’t it be funny if Vietnam’s latest edition of Vogue featured a gorgeous woman in traditional dress on the front, with a dopey-looking English bloke slightly out of focus in the background, desperately trying to hide behind an ancient archway? It could happen.

And nothing much more happened today. But then again, no news is good news, so they say. Not sure who "they" are, but I'm sure they're very wise.

See you tomorrow!

Holiday in Cambodia / Still in Saigon

Thursday, 25/10/2012 – 133 A.D.

Fortunately no Bangkok-style hangover this morning! But we were fed and watered by a little after 10 and into a tuk-tuk to get to Mao Tse Soung Boulevard. Yep, it was time to pick up the visas we dropped off four whole working days ago. Had the Chinese accepted us into their lands? What would we do if we were rejected? And would we cry? Here’s the answer…

Success! 30 days roaming had been granted, so long as we enter their realm before January 2013. Not a problem, guvnor, just let us get Vietnam out of the way and we'll be right over.

Not a great deal went down for the rest of the day. We’d planned to visit the Royal Palace which is only a two minute walk from the hotel. It was closed. For the last five days we’ve seen people dressed in the mourning colours of white and black making their way to what was the king's official residence. The week of mourning ended two days ago, so we thought it would now be open to the public, but alas no. Instead, we passed pilgrims sitting outside and still paying their respects.

And I guess I should finish with some closing observations of Cambodia before leaving the country. It's tragic that the main visitor draws in this land are the ruins of a once great civilisation that crumbled centuries ago, and the brutal legacy of the Khmer Rouge, but you can't understand the current state of the country without acknowledging these things, particularly the last one. There are 2 - 3 currencies in use, no local buses or national passengers trains, few old buildings of grand design, barely any monasteries left, more dust on the streets than in the entire Sahara and you're not supposed to put paper down the toilets, yet they still have a vastly superior internet service to a country like Australia. The people are incredibly polite and friendly and even in the most downtrodden parts of town you don't feel under threat. In many ways I found it similar to Thailand, but with less of an infrastructure and therefore less tourists, but the fact that there are less tourists made me prefer it to Thailand! If they give it ten years, rebuild the railway line, encourage tourists like crazy and stop their officials asking for that extra 100 baht at the border crossing, they just might do okay here. The fact that I knew barely anything about the place before setting out on this trip gives me a huge buzz. It was always going to be the most rough `n` ready leg of the Asian journey, but I think we coped with the baking hot Cambodian hospitality just fine. 

And would I come back here? Maybe in the long term, but for now simply spin your Best of Lynyrd Skynyrd LP, listen to Freebird, and the lyrics of that song will tell you all you need to know.    

Friday, 26/10/2012 – 134 A.D.

"Saigon...sh*t: I'm still only in Saigon..."

- Martin Sheen speaking the first line in the film Apocalypse Now.

Nope, we weren't in Saigon yet, still in Phnom Penh, but not for long. The alarm went off at 06:30 and in our minds we both yelled, "Ouch!" I've got a bad case of the Qatar [SIC] and Tim has a sore throat - the kind that you could get off school with for a whole week. Seems strange that these two conditions have come on after we've been staying still in the same place for five whole days, but there you go. The Road works in mysterious ways.

Yep, it was back onto every south east Asian's favourite bus service - the good old Mekong Express! They picked us up from our hotel at 07:30, a hotel which had been okay (great location), but not nearly as good as the one we had in Siem Reap. Oh well, swings and roundabouts, isn't it? And a little worrying to have the maid come bursting in just as I was about to have a last wee to check if we'd drunk anything from the mini-bar. Given the local ale prices, fat chance!

It was billed as a six hour trip to our next port of call, and crossing the Cambodian-Vietnam frontier about halfway along the route. This time I had the aisle seat so the tassels dangling from the top of the window didn't bug me and I had a bit of legroom, almost tripping the attendant as she strode up and down the bus, collecting passports and handing out snacks. Once again the Mekong staff were well organised, checking that we had the appropriate visas before setting off, lest we end up stranded in no man's land with luggage and tears. In fact, the whole border crossing was pretty straightforward - we all alighted the bus to be exit processed by the Cambodians, then grabbed our luggage and had it scanned through at Vietnamese immigration, as well as getting the stamps on our passports. When my bags went through the machine the border guard was on his mobile phone and not even watching the screen. Then we got back on the bus and, in my case, fell asleep again. Wot no looking at the scenery of a new country? Nah - it's just the same as the last one.

The approach into Saigon took a long time - already I could see this place was far more built-up than Phnom Penh. It may not be the capital of Vietnam, but it is the biggest city. Tim calls it Ho Chi Minh City, but it will always be Saigon to me, and not just because of Apocalypse Now. In fact, if you want to split hairs about it (you probably don't, but I do), the metropolitan area as a whole is officially called Ho Chi Minh City, but the central part of it, where our hotel is located, is still known as Saigon. And if the locals calls it Saigon, then by Mekong I'm going to call it Saigon. Harrumph. 

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City just before 16:00, shooing away the taxi drivers hanging around because we figured it was easy enough to walk it to the hotel. Pulling out the straps on our rucksacks and heaving them onto our backs, it was a flashback to the old days when we regularly trekked for kilometres at a time to reach our destinations. Ever since cheap tuk-tuks have been available, we've become soft, and we can't afford to let that happen, because that's when one gets the sore throats and the guitar [SIC]. 

Our hotel is called Ha My 3. Ha My's 1 and 2 are just down the road, and they're all pretty much of a muchness. The receptionist smiled and said that they would keep our passsports behind the desk until we checked out. Really? Is that standard policy in Vietnamese hotels? If so, we're going to be in trouble come Hanoi because we need to submit them for our India visas! Nyeargh, we're knackered now, let's worry about that later. The room was okay, but windowless again, and I swore from the booking reference that we should have had a bath tub. Never mind, for now we just need to kick back on the ultra soft beds and watch a bit of south east Asian television, which is either historical soap operas, complete with Samurai swords and big droopy moustaches, or karaoke channels. Strangely enough, I can't decide which I like / hate most. 

With a windowless room, you have to go out at some point, but our efforts to find somewhere to eat suffered from First Night Syndrome, i.e. it's dark in a strange city, you've got a crap map from the hotel, and you're working with a new currency and need to get your head around the value of things. The Vietnamese currency is the amusingly-named "dong" and there are approximately 33,000 dong in one British pound. When we went to a cash machine and withdrew 300,000 dong each, we felt like millionaires...until we realised we had close to a tenner in our pockets. Plus you get charged 20,000 dong for every withdrawl you make - doh! Like I said, First Night Syndrome (FNS).

FNS continued as we tried to find somewhere to eat, heading for the river and finding ourselves in the plushest part of town. We passed the opera house for chirssakes! Goodness knows how many dong made up a meal in those parts! We only read one menu and shied quickly away. And so we ended having a bit of a walky-walk, but a walky-walk in Saigon involves crossing roads. Now, I know how much I went on about the ker-azy traffic in Phnom Penh, but given that Saigon is much closer to a metropolis , it's even more extreme. Vietnamese people cross the road very slowly. The trick is to boldly go one small, but brave step at a time and let the million-zillion motorbikes heading your way see you and swerve around you. If they beep, you step back. If a car comes, it doesn't need to beep, you just step back anyway. And as for buses, well, get back the way you came, pronto!

We eventually found somewhere to serve us up some decent Vietnamese cuisine for the right price. Well, I say "Vietnamese cuisine", but rather perversely we both ordered Singapore-style noodles. And as you can see from Tim's face, he loved every minute of it!

Vietnam...the 11th country so far on this trip...I'm happy to still be in Saigon.