First taste of Beijing

Trip Start Aug 27, 2006
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Trip End Sep 13, 2008


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Tuesday, July 24, 2007

As soon as I arrived in Beijing, I had to deal with another tourist trap: taxi driver who are giving to you their price which is obvously not a cheep price.
I ask for a lift from the bus station and the train station and the driver tell me OK for a very cheep price of 50 Yuans, during the drive I ve read the sticker that all the taxi must have on their door which says 2 Yuans per km, and I started to count the km. When we arrived to the destination after only 6 km, the driver asked me for the 50 Yuans, I answer that I would not give him more than 20 Yuans which was already more than the price.

But he did not want to let me go, so I took my GPS which look like a mobile phone and I fake to begin to call the hotline number that you have on the sticker, he change immediately his mind and thought that 20 Yuans was finally very nice.
One good point for tourists, is that with the olympic games in 2008, they put a lot of pressure to any tourist trap and if they get caught by the police: they received a very high bill...

After this first adventure, I've just took the time to get my first taste of Beijing: walking on Tiananmen square and in front of the forbidden city to finish completely dead in my hostel. The first hostel that I found had the particularity to be totally underground: the 4 floors of the hostel were under the surface of the ground and of course no window and very economic.
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