Reading various blogs and travelogues is one of the many
things I love to do in my free time. It’s not necessary that I plan to go to
all these places I love reading about (though would love to travel everywhere
if I could :-D) but
I read them because it kind of give a glimpses to the lives and cultures of
people living in different places and so many more things as well. And I have
found that having this hobby of checking up everything about a place, its
people, its culture, where to go, what to do, what to eat etc. etc. has helped
me a lot when I actually visit a place/country. I love this entire process of
researching which sort of helps in building up the excitement level to discover
whether any of my readings would turn out to be of practical use. Moreover, my idea of a
trip is exploring a place on my own without the help of any travel agencies or
guides though sometimes it entails some difficulties. But nonetheless, it gives
a totally different perspective of the entire journey.
As usual, I was reading some articles and it suddenly
rekindled a particular memory. I found some very interesting articles on
various tourist scams that exist in Thailand, mostly in Bangkok. In these blogs
and travelogues, people shared their experiences of falling in the trap of
these tourist scams. Every one of us know that tourist scams ranging from simplest to complex and intricately woven operations exist everywhere, but until and
unless we know certain details on how these things operate or have personally
experienced, we won’t be able to avoid when we actually run into one. Such
articles are interesting to read as well as serve an eye opener for someone if
they are planning to travel. Having some knowledge will definitely helped us in
becoming street smart and in preparing for our trip.
Anyway, I am straying away from the main topic for which I
started writing today. While I was going through one very interesting article,
one very similar experience that I faced while I was in China came to my mind.
Now that I think of it, I can’t help but feel how naive I was at that time and
how easily I had fallen into that trap voluntarily. But I was a student then with
not much experiences who believed such things don't exist. Do I sound
like I am trying to provide an excuse for myself?? Hehe! Anyway, let me share
the story.
This happened longtime back in 2009 when I and my hubby
(boyfriend then :-D) decided to travel South China (FIRST MISTAKE) during our winter vacation.
Why is that? Because South China is miserable during winter.
It's cold and wet, and the heating system sucks. Contrary to general
conception, northern China during winter is actually a lot more comfortable
because of the central heating system, and the habit of having heater in the room.
Anyhow, we hadn’t experience winter in any southern part of
the country, so we decided Suzhou and Hangzhou would be the best places to go. I
remember why we selected these two places. We came across this saying in
Chinese about these two places- ‘“上有天堂,下有蘇杭”which
is roughly translated as “Suzhou-Paradise in Heaven; and Hangzhou- Paradise in
earth” during one of our Chinese language classes, and one of our teachers
mentioned that these two places are very beautiful. So the choice was obvious.
The entire experience indeed turned out to be awesome and we
loved every moment of it. For the first time, we were out of our comfort zone,
travelling and exploring strange places relying only on maps and itinerary
customized specially by myself. So, that trip holds a special memory for both
of us except for one day, though it didn’t actually spoil our excitement or experience
in any way. More than anything, I would say it was a learning experience
because we learn from our stupidity and mistakes.
Cutting a long story short, it happened that after we
visited Suzhou, we went to Hangzhou. We were in the city for one day, and next
day decided to visit a lake called Qiandaohu which is some 150 kms from
Hangzhou. The literal meaning of the lake is Thousand islets Lake because it
has more than thousand islets.
Our hotel manager suggested us to go with a tour agency, so
we booked one (SECOND MISTAKE). The
guide and all the other tourists were Chinese natives. The tour bus came to
pick us up and it all started well. The real thing started when the bus dropped
us to a knife factory instead of directly driving us to the lake. At that point
of time, we started having doubts for choosing this trip. We were asked to sit
in a room after which one guy demonstrated how sharp and good the knives were-a
ploy to trick us into buying their knives. To some extent, they were successful
in their effort because some people indeed bought their knives. These people
who bought looked too simple and naïve to understand the ploy. But at least we
were not that gullible enough to buy anything. Yay! That was a consolation:-P
After this, we left the place and finally reached the lake.
There, we took a boat and it dropped us off to an island. That particular
island didn’t turn out to be what I had expected. I believe there were other
more beautiful islands because I have seen pics of them. Don’t know why they
didn’t take us there instead. May be that was also a part of the scam. The
island didn’t have much to offer. There was one place which had some birds and
animals for display more like a zoo; an ordinary looking temple like place-but
after seeing so many beautiful temples in Beijing and other places, that was
nothing but just a place to sit and gather our thoughts. I don’t even remember
what else was there in that place coz there was nothing worthwhile to remember.
Lunch was on the boat and as expected, the food prices were
sky high. Since that was the only option, everybody had lunch on the boat. I
didn’t feel like eating and I don’t remember what we had for lunch also. May be
we had fish because we were on a lake J
We were tired but it seemed these tour agency people weren’t
a bit. Because on return journey also, they took us to two shops-one was a shop
for silk and the other one was for something else I can’t recollect. The time
we spent there was more than the actual time we spent at the lake. I kept
hoping this shop hopping would be the last of it but alas! Our one day got
completely wasted in visiting these shops while we could have just spend our
entire day walking around Xihu lake in Hangzhou itself, taking in the breathtaking
sceneries and watching the sunset. Sigh!
So at the end, it turned out our lake visit was not actually
a Lake Visit but more of a shopping tour. Nothing dangerous or harmful happened
to us because basically all these scams are meant to take money from us rather
than to hurt us. So, I suppose our trick to outplay them should be to irritate
them by not buying anything:-D This kind of things has happened to us in India
as well once when we booked a cab through our hotel. That’s why I prefer to do
everything on my own instead of going for tour packages.
My experience is nothing as compared to what I have read and
heard. So, I can say I was lucky not to be scammed in a big way. And I hope I
will avoid being scammed in the future as well J
but this won’t deter me from exploring new and strange places in the future,
just need to be careful, that’s it. So, I am just looking forward to my next
big destination. Let’s see whether these readings and experience will help me
there.
I believe it will definitely! :)
