Many traps while traveling in China

Hi Hongling,

It is now very easy to go to China. For me there is a direct flight from Penang to Macau. And from Macau to Zhuhai is so near you can even swim across! And the cost is very affordable. If booked early during promotion by Airasia, a return flight to Macau can be less than RM300 all in. CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT!

The public transport system in China is also very good now. From Zhuhai you can take a bus to Fuzhou direct.

While I am still healthy and able to walk distances I will continue traveling. In fact, there is plan to go to Xian(西安) to see the Terracotta sculptures (兵马俑)this coming May.

This time around I learned a few things which I like to share with you. In China, while the security situation is good as far as our safety is concerned, we should be alert not to fall into the many traps we are likely to encounter.

The first trap is the forged RMB. My friend and I took a taxi to hotel which fare was RMB10. When my friend produced a RMB50 note to pay, the driver returned it and said "no change" and so I took out RMB10 to pay. My friend found out later that the returned note was a forged one. The driver was able to play a trick to exchange the RMB50 note with a forged one!

The second trap relates to exploitation of our sympathy. We met so many "beggers" in the form of baby-carrying mothers and also young girls who would come to us and ask for money. They said they need money to buy food for the baby who had been starving the whole day.
The young girls would say they came to the city to look for jobs but could not find one and they are starving too. They only asked for money for one meal but if you give only a few yuans they would say not enough. The trouble is they all say the same thing as if it came from the same scripts.

Of course there are other traps that we must be aware of. One good way to avoid falling into these traps is to shun the desire to get 'cheap- and-good' or 'once-in-a-lifetime' deals. And we must not let GREED gets the better of us!

And I will definitely travel to KL and Sin.kok on a regular basis.

Cheers!

Dajiu