I've had a few moments of confusion in China, mostly because my mandarin totally sucks. One of these was getting to the bus station to find no sign of any English. In the end got helped by one of the few people who speak English. I was suspicious of course - you tend not to trust locals who speak English and want to come up and talk to you when you are travelling - but he was quite helpful and when I asked if he wanted any cash for helping he said no. Another example of not getting ripped off in China...
The best moment of confusion for me was buying some bread. I went into a small shop selling unleavened bread, cooked with chives (I think) and still warm. I asked for a slice (a lot of pointing) and for the price he showed me 2 fingers, then 5. So I think $2.50, right? Right. So I give him a $5 note. No, not enough! Wtf? Is he saying $25 for some bread?? Surely not. Hmm, so instead of handing over a $100 note, I put a few coins on my hand and he takes 2 of them. So 2 fingers plus 5 fingers equals $7! What a weird way of showing a 7!
I felt like I had been ripped off because he seemed to change the price - I was so sure he had meant $2.50, and $7 seemed pretty expensive for that bread, but it was delicious so I didn't worry.
Delicious enough for me to return the next day, and instead of the old guy, I got the old woman (his wife I guess), serving me. This time I bought four times the amount of bread, including different types of loaves. These are quite small, round loaves, some savoury, some sweet - and you don't know which until you buy and eat them ;) And guess what the price was again? $7!! So, he must have ripped me off!!
I left, shaking my head, but again, all so cheap it wasn't a big deal.
But then! Later that day I bought a can of coke for $4.50. I handed over the $5 note and I received 50 cents change...but instead of getting a 50 cent coin as I was expecting, I got a 50 cent NOTE!!! WTF??? So then it dawned on me. That $5 note I had offered the old guy in the first place, was a 50 cent note!! The price was $2.50 all along, and he hadn't ripped me off! I had just been very confused :D
I took a motorbike, 2 buses, and an expensive gaudy tuk tuk to get to Chang Mai from Chiang Khong. Total cost, $16AUD.
A tuk tuk/taxi, then a minivan from the Chinese/Laos border to Houayxai, cost $140AUD.
Fuck Laos is expensive.
The first bus from Chiang Khong to Chaing Rai was a local bus. Lots of fans attached to the ceilings and doors (front and back) and windows open. Pretty relaxing actually, and I was tired enough to fall asleep sitting up. The bus from Chang Rai to Chang Mai was a luxurious coach with air con and a crazy Thai martial arts movie!
Ok, so getting a minivan in Laos is expensive. That evil woman claimed it should cost 3000baht and so $80US was actually a good deal, but am I going to believe a single word she says? Normal buses in Laos are cheaper. 110 000 kip (um, still $14US) from Houayxai to Luang Phabang, but they are in shit condition, have to go over really bad roads and lots of mountains, and are full of English tourists.
I'll start with the happy ending - I left Laos and went to Thailand. The End.
I just wasn't ready to haggle when I got to Laos. In China, everyone is surprisingly honest, and no one tried to rip me off at all.
So I crossed and the tuk tuk driver said he would take me to Luang Namtha for 200RMB. I had prepared myself to haggle in US$, so it took me by surprise and I just just said "fuck it, yes". Big mistake, probably could have got it for 50RMB? Or 100 at the most. Fuck.
I knew it was my own fault, but it got worse. I managed to tell him I really wanted to go to Houayxai (with the intention of getting a fast boat to Luang Phabang), so he took me to a "bus stop" in the middle of nowhere and I "haggled" a price for a minibus to Houayxai - $80US. Fuck. You should have seen the look on the driver's face. And he went around telling everyone about it. Fuck, that just made me feel so much worse, and he went on about it as he picked people up along the way.
The drive was ok. The road is pretty good now, but it's fallen into disrepair in the middle sections across the mountains. So we got to Houayxai about 9pm and I was very tired. I told him to just take me to where the guest houses were. Suspiciously he took me to a specific guest house (one of those farang style guesthouses, which I generally find unpleasant), and not the start of the street, but I was very tired, so I just went in. Big mistake.
It was run by an old (and evil, as it turns out) woman with pretty good English. The room was $10US which is fine, and I organised to get her to organise the speedboat ticket for me for the next day. The guide book (which is at least 4 years old) said $22US, and she asked for $50. I just accepted it (mistake!) thinking it has probably gone up in price.
I had a meal, and immediately started feeling she was dodgy. Sometimes I don't trust my instincts because I think I'm being too critical or too paranoid. This was one of those occasions unfortunately. I won't bother going into details, but there was just a string of little things she did, both to me and to the other farang customers that made me feel uneasy.
Anyway, I got up early (woken by rats in the walls) and got ready to go to the speedboat. She had arranged for a tuktuk driver to take me there. Fine. So once there the tuktuk driver bought the ticket for me - it was 340000kip, which is about $42US, so she was making $8US profit (minus the miniscule amount she would have paid the tuk tuk driver). Ok, so rip off not too bad.
There was an Irish guy, Tom, waiting too and we started chatting, and he told me that these days they actually don't want to take farang on the speedboat any more, and we sat there and watched 2 speedboats leave with locals...but not with us. Then they told us "come back tomorrow". Fuck. I only wanted to take the speedboat because I wanted to get to Vientienne as fast as possible. Tom was pretty unimpressed with this and went and got his money back and fucked off. Good move because they didn't like it. The speedboat guys said to me "wait wait", so I waited. For what was I waiting? I considered just doing what Tom did and getting my money back (minus 60000kip that the old woman got out of me), and then going on the bus (I did not want to get stuck on the slow boat).
Then suddenly the evil woman's driver turns up and says "no speedboat today!" and drives me back to her shithole guest house. "No speedboat today", she repeats. "You'll have to take the slow boat...tomorrow, and stay here one more night". Fuck. I was so angry because obviously they knew I wasn't going to be able to go on the speedboat. I said "no, give me my money back, I'm going on the bus". So here's the calculation. I had given her 400 000 kip. She gives me back 184 000 kip and says "quick quick you must go now!!". I'm pretty confused, flustered, and angry at this point. The tuk tuk driver then drives me to the bus station, and buys the ticket for me, and then demands 20 000 kip for the privilege of me being ripped off some more. So 400000 - 184000 - 110000 (for the bus ticket) means she made over 100 000 kip out of me. She told me the money was paying for the driver to the speed boat ferry and back! 100 000kip!!!!! should have cost 20000 for farang, and 10000 or less for locals!!! 100000 kip - that is the extra night she wanted me to stay! FUCK.
I remember that morning she'd told me a story of some farang who was so impressed with how she had helped him, that he brought 12 of his farang friends to stay with her! That was the point of her story!! 12 more people to rip off!! She would bark continually at her staff, and sat there like an evil spider, watching everything, making phone calls, and continually counting her money!
So I'm sitting at this bus station. It's fucking hot. I'm angry, and a bit depressed by all of this. And depressed by the fact the bus actually goes back to Luang Namtha, where I had just come from, and takes 10 hours to Luang Phabang (baring break downs) and another 8 to Vientienne. There are about 40 english tourists lounging around being touristy and english and I realised that what I had done was totally surrender control of my journey to some evil fucking woman. So I knew I couldn't put up with it any more. That there was an obviously choice staring me in the face. Fuck Laos, I'm crossing the river and going to Thailand.
I ask for my money back for the bus ticket - they can only give me 70% they say. Fine I say, and I hitched my back pack and just fucking walked away, down the road, back to town.
At least I felt I was back in control. It was hot and I was tired, but I knew I could just cross the ferry and I'd be in Thailand, and a bus ride from Chang Mai. From there, well, it didn't matter, as long as I wasn't in Laos.
And then, something good happened. A young man on a motor bike offered to give me a lift. I asked how much I had to pay him. He said "nothing, I feel happy just to help". It was like a sign. As soon as I had made a decision and taken back control of my journey, then something nice happened. He was a genuinely nice guy from a poor family and he took me straight to the ferry. I then fought to give him 20000kip, which he didn't want to take, but did eventually - and I was so happy to give it to him. So not everyone in Laos is a cunt!
Then I got on the ferry and crossed happily into Thailand.
I stopped a night in Jinghong (after a 9 hour bus ride down from Kunming), intending to cross the border into Laos.
First of all, there are NO more flights from Jinghong out of China - you have to fly from Kunming if you want to leave China. Ok, I found that out the hard way.
Next, the thing they - being both guide books and the genuinely helpful dude (Alex) in Banna (not Banana unfortunately) cafe - say is, to cross to Laos, take a bus to Mengla (somehow pronounced mulla, weird), stay the night there, get up early and get a bus that goes through Mohan (the border) and onto Luang Namtha. But I decided that was a night I didn't want to waste in Mengla (according to the guide book, super boring, and it looked it), so I got a bus from Mengla straight to Mohan (about 1 hour, but lots of stopping), and then just jumped out of the bus, exited through Chinese customs, and got a tuktuk to Laos customs. You can buy a visa there (looks like it's a pretty permanent thing, but who knows with Laos).
On the Laos side, things turned shit for me (see next post). Do NOT pay 200RMB to get a shit tuktuk to Luang Namtha - it's too much money.
Oh, I had my first chicken on a bus experience. Surprisingly it was China and not Laos. It was on the quite nice bus from Jinghong to Mengla. We stopped in the middle of nowhere and these really brown Chinese people got on with bags of vegetables and a live chicken (soon to be eaten I suspect, after they got off...).
Twitter seems to have hit the mainstream recently. I've noticed the occasional article online mentioning this, and just heard something on BBC world (radio) about it.
I gave up using twitter about a year ago, maybe more. I am an early abandoner.
I didn't just give up using twitter specifically, I gave up on using this messaging technology in general. My interest in the web and online communication has waned dramatically.