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…

Long train runnin` / I can't stand the rain

Thursday, 15/11/2012 – 154 A.D.
to Friday, 16/11/2012 – 155 A.D.

It’s 760 miles to Shanghai,

We’ve got four tubes of Pringles,

The wind’s getting up,

The rain’s coming down,

It’s November,

And we’re wearing shorts.

Hit it!

Not quite. First I had to get up and deal with a toilet that suddenly decided to stop refilling its cistern. It’s probably five months of travellers’ suspicion getting to me, but my paranoia was telling me that this was some trick the Chungking Mansions play – they flick a switch, a pipe blocks, the toilet doesn’t work, and they charge you for breaking it. Then I slapped myself and returned to reality. With a bit of jiggling and some temporary filling from the shower, that bog was up and running again in no time at all. Are there many career opportunities as a plumber? Might look into it when I get back.

[Don't forget that it also doubles as a shower room!]

Checking out of Chungking proved to be an uncomplicated affair, though descending ten flights of uneven stairs with full backpack wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. I found my tri-lat-quads aching heavily afterwards. Fortunately the subway was just around the corner and it was only one stop to Hong Kong’s main railway station, the funkily-named ‘Hung Hom’. There was the usual checking of baggage and big waiting game before several hundred Chinese people and two Englishmen surged forward to board their locomotive.

Coach 6, berths 19 and 20 were our beds. No soft sleepers for us, this time we’d be doing things the hard way, quite literally. The main differences between soft and hard sleepers are that the softies only have four people to a berth (not six), there’s a door to close them off from the rest of the carriage and there are lots more hooks to hang your belongings from. Tim and I had opted for the two top bunks to be out of the way of any hustle and bustle going on below us. And this plan pretty much worked, the only issue being the lack of headroom, which Our Kid didn’t mind too much, but I was starting to wonder how many bumps I’d get under my newly-trimmed hair after banging my head on the ceiling for the third time.

[Oooh, it's a long way down!]

From the get-go the whole carriage was filled with what sounded like a thousand chattering Chinese voices – why do they all speak so loudly? Don’t get me wrong, they’re a friendly bunch, making amusing gestures through body language (NOT with their middle finger) when the spoken language barrier proves too difficult to break. Directly below us we have a middle-aged married couple. She spent ten minutes at the start of the journey talking to whoever drifted past our berth, then got under the duvet and slept for virtually the whole journey. She snored as well, but that bothered Tim much more than it did me. Her husband is a quiet chap with a tache who seems unable to settle, hovering here and there, but never looking comfortable. He’s okay though. On the bottom two bunks are a couple of Chinese ladies of advancing years who seem friendly, but not well-versed in English. We’ll call one of them…I dunno, Margaret. You’ll find out later why she needs a name, any name. There she is in the picky below (clue – the legs aren’t hers).

The train journey to Shanghai would take about 19 hours, so it seemed a bit wrong to spend all of that time up on my bunk in the roof. So I hung out for a while at the little table in the aisle, which was above the thermos flask of hot water provided for the passengers. These Chinese folks sure love their tea and they tend to drink it from jars, often with lots of green floaty bits at the bottom. To help the tea go down, some member of the railway staff pumps some pretty bizarre music through the speaker system – traditional Chinese instrumentation meets, errr, traditional English tunes, e.g. the classic boogie-fest that is Greensleaves. I had one of those mad moments staring out of the window and thinking I was on an 800 mile train trip across the vast eastern land that is China and listening to a piece of music supposedly written by a 16th century king of England. I had to reach for my iPod soon after that and bang on a bit of Motorhead to keep me grounded.

[Everyone who is anyone hangs out in the aisle.]

Tim came down to join me for a few games of cards, but once the darkness arrived and the scenery disappeared there wasn’t much more to do than head back up to the bunks and expand our knowledge through the medium of film. Tim had dared me to watch Love actually and I’d dared him to watch In Bruges. We both rose to the challenges, with mixed results. Unfortunately Tim decided to call it a night about 22:30, and he wished me a sound sleep and rolled over to head for slumbered oblivion. I was a bit taken aback because of how early it was, though I didn’t know at the time that he’d had a rotten sleep the night before. Still, I hadn’t finished Love actually (long film, actually!) and I wasn’t in the least bit tired. Think about it, Jimbo, what have you done today – checked-out of a hotel and got on a train! No wonder you’re wide awake!

By the time the film finished, I realised that no one else in the entire carriage was talking, or if they were, they were no longer talking at typical Chinese volume. Even Margaret and her friend down below had been silent for some time. Suddenly I felt guilty for being awake and needing to climb down the three bunks to go and clean my teeth before bed. I figured I better do it before it got any later, but there was no way I’d turn the lights out just yet, I’d watch a bit of Boardwalk Empire before I rolled over to sleep in my two foot wide bed. Getting semi-undressed and into my sleepsheet was a challenge and a half and I probably woke the chap below me, if he wasn’t already sleeping (his wife was happily snoring away). And so, about ten minutes after settling down to watch the netbook again, I saw my day bag stored precariously on the luggage shelf, at least six feet away from me, start to move. It was starting to move because I’d dislodged it from its secure spot when I’d shoved my boots into the tiny available hole in the luggage space. Now my expression turned to horror as I watched in slow motion as it toppled from its place high up on the shelf…

…fell quietly through the air…

…and crash-landed far below on the carpeted floor with a thud, right next to Margaret, waking her with a start. It almost hit the poor woman slap-bang in the face! I felt extremely sheepish as I reached for my jeans and tried to work out what the surprised-yet-hushed Chinese voices were saying below me. I have learnt one word in Chinese since being in this country: “share-share” [written phonetically] – it means thank you. And all I could frantically whisper was, “share-share-share-share-share-share…” Margaret seemed cool about it and husband handed the bag up to me, accompanied by lots more share-share-ing from my ashamed lips. From then on, day bag went beneath my pillow and I turned everything off – lights, laptop – though not my mind for a while.

Sleep did become me, though it unfortunately eluded Tim again for most of the night. He said he was kept awake in the early hours by someone sitting in the aisle slurping noodles rather audibly. I woke up about 09:00, but didn’t get up `til quite a bit later when it seemed like everyone was packing up to get off. Didn’t really want to face Margaret again, but I did need to go to the Gents. While waiting for the toilet to become available, I got talking to a nice young lady who’d previously lived in the USA and therefore could speak the lingo pretty well. I never got her name, but I cheekily got her to translate my apology to Margaret when she appeared in the aisle with case all packed – bless her, she laughed it off with a big smile and I believe Anglo-Chinese relations suffered little for the whole affair.

Upon stepping onto the platform at Shanghai Central Station, one thing was obvious – it was cooooold! Yes, you lot back in England are grinning from ear to ear to read that I am now experiencing the suffering you’ve endured since that last warm day in August! No more single layers of clothing for us, that was for sure. But it got me thinking – on this whole trip, there have probably been only a couple of places where the temperature was just right. Although it’s recent memory, Hong Kong was spot-on, New York was okay (apart from when on the eight floor), Chiang Mai was fine at night (but not during the day), San Francisco was fine during the day (but not during the night) and somewhere around the Queensland-New South Wales border conditions were perfect. But here in Shanghai the skies were grey and the rain was drizzling down. And things got worse when the customs lady confiscated the four apples I’d bought in Kowloon – “They are forbidden,” she quite rightly said. Man, I haven’t had a decent Golden Delicious in months!

Our first stop was to the station’s ticket office where we really needed to book ourselves some beds on the night train to Beijing in four day’s time. Should we go for hard sleeper again, as opposed to soft? It was a case of price versus number of bumps on my head. Yep, you guessed it – price wins every time. We located the designated English-speaking counter, but were told that we could not book beds on that train until 18^th November. Okay, whatever you say. We’ll be back! With a vengeance.

The Shanghai subway system is cheap, extensive and efficient, just like those in most major Asian cities. And what do we know about Shanghai? For one thing, it’s absolutely vast – 23 million people in the greater metropolitan area. It was known as “The whore of the orient” in its early days before different segments of the city were handed out to be run by various nations such as the British and French at the turn of the 20^th century. Anyone who’s seen the film Empire of the sun will know what happened when the city was taken by the Japanese in the 1930s and for the next 50 or so years Shanghai wasn’t really much to shout about. But since then it’s turned itself into an Asian economic powerhouse that can rival, nay potentially surpass, Hong Kong for financial clout. But for now we just wanted to get from A to B on the underground, B being the Shanghai Celadon Theme Hotel.

Said hotel was okay – very shabby reception area, room adequate, but set out on a nice little veranda which would be fab in the spring or summer, but a bit crap under doom-laden skies. To keep things simple we had one of our tactical lunches (i.e. pot noodles filled from the kettle) and got ourselves settled in yet another hotel room. But we simply had to do something with the day, so we decided to head over to the nearby Old Town where I’d seen online that there was a tourist information place where we could pick up a free map (the hotel reception had run out). And speaking of going online, this country has certain restrictions on plenty of websites, some of which are incredibly popular. There’s always a back door to be found, but when that door’s left ajar you never know who could be looking in at what you’re doing. I’ll say no more, lest we get a sudden knock at the door (which will have been locked, not left ajar!)

The drizzle level had risen a notch when we went outside, our secondary mission being “to explore and get a feel for the area”, but who wants to do that when they’ve got wet hair? After a walk that was longer than what we thought it would be, we found the area where the tourist info place should be, only it wasn’t there. Instead we did an about turn, pausing only for me to buy a couple of apples (not Golden Delicious) from a nearby Tesco Express – any port in a storm!

Back at the hotel room we dried out, the aircon system now generating hot air for a change. For tea that night Tim looked up a restaurant a couple of stops along the subway, as the immediate area doesn’t seem to cater to our kind of palettes, i.e. we want our food to digest, not come straight back up. And with raincoats on, we headed out to the area west of the hotel known as The French Concession, which unsurprisingly was the bit of Shanghai run by the French all those years ago. Try as we might, we couldn’t find the place, but that was typical for this day, a day in which we’d tried to book train tickets, acquire a map, locate a tourist info place, stay dry and find a particular restaurant, but achieved none of those things. Instead we slipped into a nearby Thai place and wrote the day off as, well, one of those days. Apparently it’s going to be dry the next few days we’re here.

And after getting the subway back and reaching the hotel room, we both changed into our tracksuit bottoms…first time since New Zealand!

Tomorrow comes today

Tuesday, 13/11/2012 – 152 A.D.

Today it is five months since we got up at three in the morning, left a dark Southport and got on that aeroplane at Manchester. Five months??? You could have a baby in that time! Well, not quite. But it’s still a while. Are we drifting aimlessly without purpose, or are we focused on wisdom through purpose? You decide.

We’re getting up later and later, it was always bound to happen. Now the alarm tends to go off about 08:30, but it’s nearer 09:00 when we resign ourselves to rising and going to face the bathroom designed for Lilliputians. Soon it will be midday before we even bother to shake a leg. Oh, the sloth! Oh, the wallowing! Oh, the guilt! Give us a break – we’ve been on the road for five months. And when we did finally crawl out of our pits…we did a bit of admin. Groundhog Day!

[Can you tell what it is yet?]

[That's right, it's the top of the nearby mosque.]

Today we wanted to have a walk around Kowloon and see what it had to offer. Markets. Four of them actually. I was starting to get a bit twitchy about turning up in Shanghai and freezing my bits off, so was keen to check out which winter garments were currently in with Hong Kong market traders. Not many, as it happened. November isn’t winter as far as they’re concerned (is it technically Autumn in England as well?) so the stock was still mostly light clothing. Any of the kind of puffer jackets that Tim is after didn’t yet contain sleeves – apparently they’ll be coming a bit later.

[I do hope Tim is checking out the market stall's goods, rather than this woman's...]

We had lunch at a Chinese fast food chain known as the Café De Coral, and bloody good it was too, both for taste, value and size of portion. I had some kind of diced pork and sweetcorn with rice dish, but Tim’s spicy beef with a cheese sauce looked even better. If you ever find yourself over here and fancy some quick and convenient Cantonese cuisine, then check it out. After feeling really full, it was quite tough walking back through the fish market, where all kinds of marine life swim about in front of you, just waiting for you to tell the stall owner that you want fish X slaughtered for your tea that night. Plus the live frogs crammed together in a net was a bit of an unsettling sight.

After that came the “Goldfish Market”, which was basically just a street lined with pet shops. At least I think (make that hope) that the animals were meant for pets, rather than for any other purpose. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of the cute little kittens and ker-azy little puppies playing with each other because we were politely told no photos, but before that I was able to capture the sight of all tortoises great and small…

Further along in Kowloon, down Shanghai Street, which is known as one of the most traditional streets in the city, we saw that part of the road had been cordoned off by police and lots of people were looking up at one of the buildings. Was someone about to jump? Was a loose aircon about to fall from its precarious brackets? Was the Hong Kong police budget underspent and they needed to balance the books by using up expensive hazard tape? Dunno. We stayed and watched for a bit, but when you don't know what's going on it gets boring after a while.

At the end of Shanghai Street we came to Kowloon Park, which features all of the modern parky amenities you'd expect from a place like Hong Kong. And regular readers of this blog will know just how much Timbo and I lurve strolling through parks. Tim is also very much into his photography, but unfortunately while strolling through the park he was struck down by a very strong case of lens envy:

That’s just a ridiculous size, isn’t it? Speaking of size, my follicles were still getting a bit long and, as I hadn’t really done a great deal with the day, I decided I should mark it with a haircut. Rather than pick out a specific place, I simply headed for the nearest barber’s pole I could find. The place was several floors up and had “salon” in the name, but I figured they cut bloke’s hair as well. And they did, even though I was the only bloke in there, though all of the choppers were men. I managed to negotiate myself a price because I didn’t want a shampoo or blow dry, but even with the lesser amount I realised I probably should have got the locks cut in Vietnam as it would have costs me a fraction of the price. But to be fair to the lad who gamely snipped away, he worked to strict precision. Unfortunately though, he didn’t speak much English, and that had been the main reason I’d waited `til Hong Kong. Every time he asked me something and I replied, he shouted, “Vincent!” and senior-snipper Vincent  arrived to translate my requests for more off the top, not so spiky at the sides, etc. But all in all, I was pretty pleased with the end result.

Upon returning to Chungking Mansions I found the following burning slowly outside of the door to our section of the building:

A fire hazard? Possibly, so I blew it out. Then I realised it was part of the Indian festival of lights celebrations.

After five months on The Road around the world, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy Diwali from Hong Kong!

Wednesday, 14/11/2012 – 153 A.D.

The journey down the stairs in gorgeous Chungking Mansions…

We went back to one of the markets we hit yesterday. I had seen a jacket that fitted okay, but which I’d ummed and aaahed about. Tim wanted to buy some trinkets which I won’t mention in detail in case you find them presented to you in wrapping paper in a month and a half. And can I just mention that we are yet to see one advert for Christmas on television – bliss! As for the jacket, well, I tried it on again and it didn’t seem to fit quite as well as yesterday – must have slept at a funny angle. I wasn’t going to go any higher than 200 Hong Kong Dollars and the stall owner wouldn’t budge below 300 HKD (she even turned her back on me at one point – a sure sign I’d gone into the haggling far too low). In the markets here we’re constantly seeing stall owners chasing after people with lower prices, but this one was playing hard ball. Tim found several of his purchasing efforts frustrated as well. I guess this isn’t Cambodia and the Hong Kong traders don’t have to take as little as they can get!

It may sound like Tim is always buying trinkets and things – he is. This afternoon he sent a load of them back in a cardboard box, which I helped him pad out with a couple of things. That’s the third box now that we’ve sent back across the seas to Southport. May it arrive safely! What to do with the rest of the afternoon? Pick a museum, any museum…erm…let’s visit the Space Museum, as we haven’t visited one of those so far on our trip. Although we hadn’t known beforehand, the Space Museum turned out to be free on Wednesdays – great success! And very informative it was too.  

[A monolith from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey? Nah, just a skyscraper `neath the November sun.]

Come the evening we returned to the place where we started our Hong Kong journey – down by the harbour, looking out at the night time skyline. At 20:00 every day something takes place called A symphony of lights which features a light show from the tops of some of the skyscrapers backed by music. And it was a bit crap really! Well, it was okay, but there was no grand finale and the music was a bit cheesy. Plus when you’ve seen 4^th of July fireworks by the Mississippi in New Orleans then you set your standards a little higher than what we saw tonight. But the crowds didn’t seem too disappointed. And I wasn’t disappointed with Hong Kong in the slightest. It’s a place with something for everyone, where modern meets traditional, and you can get cheap electronics by the bucket load. And Chungking Mansions wasn’t that bad after all, but I will not miss being asked the following questions by dodgy-looking blokes at least ten times whenever I come and go from the building:

“Tailor-tailor-tailor?”

            Should have said, “Got a suit in Hoi An, mate. At least I think I did.”

“You want watches – genuine copies?”

            Should have said, “How can you have a “genuine copy”? Think about it…”

“Hello, Sir. Something special?”

            Shouldn’t have said anything…didin’t say anything!

That’s it for the Hong Kong Hustle, bring on the Shanghai Special!