i just wanna see cuz i just bought my ticket for my chinatrip.

idk why taking pictures would get in the way of EXPERIENCING anything... pull your phone/camera out of your pocket, snap a pic, and then next time you're laptoppin' pop the SD card in and drag em into a dropbox or whatevs. wicked easy and hasn't ever gotten in the way of EXPERIENCE for my tripz

also fun china fact: after the US raised its travel visa prices in the aftermath of 9/11, china raised theirs to the same price... except only for US citizens.

This is pretty embarrassing, but I'll mention it because it might be useful and also it all worked out in the end, anyway. I got tea house scammed...

I'd been in Beijing for like 2 hours and went for a walk up in the direction of Tiananmen, etc, and when I was walking back two women came up to me wanting to practice english, etc, said they were from a city in the south near Hong Kong and on holiday. I looked it up and there are a bunch of variations on this story, but the gist will be "hi can we practice english with you, and would you like to get a drink of tea or something?".

Anyway, I was feeliing gullible and open, I guess, so I talked to them for a while then they asked if we could get a drink and I said sure so we went to a teahouse. Did the whole ceremony thing - I've got no idea if it was a good or bad one, obviously, probably bullshit? I was just kind of bemused by the whole thing and trying to be friendly. So I sat and talked crap with them for a while then made up a reason to get going cos we were running out of small talk (they probably were finished with me and wanted to move on). So the bill was supposedly 290 yuan - which yeah, high, but I knew that places were going to rip me off to an extent so I figured, it's my first day, I'll be more careful after this. I checked my statement later and the place had charged me 1650 yuan, which is about £160 or $220. Bonkers!

I'm a dummy for falling for it, but I had read before coming that while some people are scammers there are legitimately people who just want to practice english with you. I'm gonna operate on the assumption strangers in the street are bad news now. So...yeah! Very embarrassing and worrying. I kind of needed that money!

Which is okay, because I got most of it back! Once I realised what had happened I went to find the place again - it's on Qianmen street in the Xuanwu district, a big shopping area, plenty of tourists. Once I found it, I went to get a police officer. It took a while, cos my mandarin is almost non-existent, but there was a really helpful lady who accompanied us back down to the place and translated. They seemed to know what was up, cos this scam has been common for years. After a couple of minutes, like 7 other officers showed up and we all went into the place together. I had to explain myself a little, cos the police weren't instantly on my side, but after a couple of minutes they had worked something out (a lot of shouting down the hall between the police and the manager), and I got 1350 back. I figured that was fine, and really this was all kind of fun in a way, especially the getting it back part. I rode down the street in the front of a police buggy.

I've never really been screwed over like that before, which I thought meant I knew how to avoid these kind of things but apparently it just means I'm an easy target! This is my first trip to a place I'm REALLY not familiar with,so...I got approached again by some other women while I was on my way to the police, too, so this probably happens all the time in these kind of tourist heavy areas. Watch it! Bad guys!

Actually I got ripped off by one of a group of young Indian girls in Paris last month, too. They wanted a donation to some kind of deafness foundation (well, a fake one) and I said I'd give them 2 euro but I only had a 20 so she gave me changed but it was in singapore dollars which look the same colour as the corresponding euro bills so it took me a couple of seconds and she had run off. I ran after her and got it back but dang, I need to wise up.

I will be taking some pictures but I need to get some batteries for my camera, the ones I have don't work for some reason. Still got another 19 days. Haven't actually seen much nice stuff yet, but plenty dank stuff.

Watch it! Bad guys!

that's why you gotta just walk around with cash, carrying yr card around is a little risky because if someone snatches yr wallet then you're fucked

maybe im an enormous prick or something but i am not charitable or patient with ppl when i'm out of my element. ive gotten robbed at gunpoint before and since then i don't really trust strangers at all when i'm traveling and the interaction isn't on my terms.

plus i get a lot of practice being rude at home because the city is filled with people canvasing trying to approach you to send money to the ACLU, children in africa, or whatever and you've just gotta blow by them with a NO THANKS and not engage at all unless you want to spend 10 minutes getting a guilt trip on why 5 dollars a month is no big deal.

husslas always be on they grind, keep yr dick on hard and dont get caught slippin

oh yeah, glasgow has those kinds of groups too and i have had to learn to give people the brush off now, too, after a few of those guilt trips. i guess just cos i'm here alone and i wasn't really doing anything i thought why not, maybe that's how people do things here. like at the airport i got approached by a lot of guys offering taxi rides and i thought i guess this is how they do things but then one of them tried to lead me away from the taxi rank and down some dark stairs and i realised no, that isn't how they do things, if people are coming up to you getting in your face, that isn't how things are done no matter where you are. well, this is what i'm realising now. i figure i'll entertain the schoolkids and stuff that come up to me wanting pictures if that happens again, but stay outta my way!!

do u not know anyone there at all??

Nope.

that stinks jamie but I probably wouldn't have got the money back

i figure i'll entertain the schoolkids and stuff that come up to me wanting pictures

watch your pockets

yeah i felt pretty defeated about it for a few hours then realised i was walking around hating the place and worrying. seeing how the police and that woman helped me makes me feel more warmly to the place again. plus i really can't afford to be kissing hundreds of pounds goodbye, but regardless i just can't really get my head straight if i don't try and do something when things like this happen. it's not a good feeling at all. everyone becomes an enemy.

I don't think it would have even occurred to me that I could go to the police and get my money back. I'm working with a police oversight group right now and my opinion of the police is lower than ever

also I noticed a lot of the time around these parts, canvassers and the like make fun of you or say something rude if you blow them off but I'm pretty good at looking oblivious/hard of hearing

you doin' a copwatch?

also I noticed a lot of the time around these parts, canvassers and the like make fun of you or say something rude if you blow them off but I'm pretty good at looking oblivious/hard of hearing

ya sometimes they talk shit, generally you don't see them more than once because if being blown off gets to them like that then they're not really cut out for that kind of bullshit.

petitioners are easy to blow off too: "i'm not a <state> resident" or if you're feelin' saucy "i'm a convicted felon"

haha, would the felon thing make you ineligible? i suppose it doesn't really matter, it'd stump em.

about getting the police - i just felt like if i went in there with some kind of police then they would see that i was gonna make a big deal about the whole thing. i looked it up and apparently a whiff of police is usually enough to get your money back. i don't get the impression many tourists go back to get their money.

how do you get involved with a police oversight group? that sounds like a good thing to be involved in.

yeah that's pretty good, I'm gonna try the felon thing sometime!

a professor of mine knew I was interested in the social side of my field and he hooked me up. I'm not sure how else you could get involved, other than hearing about the job and going for it. the other applicants for my position were majoring in something geography-related, and my boss has a degree in investigative journalism.

you doin' a copwatch?

nah this is a little different, outwardly more of a neutral stance. I'm on the office side of things, I just do GIS stuff with the information other people gather. trying to get some sort of website up that has interactive maps w/ popup data about police fatal shootings and different types of abuse, so that anyone can have easy access to the info. it's pretty absurd that oakland is the only city in the US that has anything like it, and that one's pretty outdated. every map I've made so far shows an obvious correlation to race if it exists, as well as a ton of other info that I'd think would be pretty valuable to the public