Plan your trip with our routes

Pingyao, China, medieval city.

We have been just in three or four countries and we have been mistaken by tourists from different countries: Irish, German, Italian, but most of all by pariahs. And I can understand that we don’t look like the brightest, but if they have tried to still our wallets one day after the other, from the right and the left, what do they do to the typical retired American couple, or the people who are not used to travel? Who knows! Maybe the former, looking naïve, are the kings of leaving the restaurants without paying, and the latter don’t have any doubts to pick a taxi driver’s butt if they are trying to cheat.

Because that is what we feel like doing, tired of being cheated in all forms of ways and colours. White in Jordan, brown in India, and yellow in China. It is clear that before God, we are all the same, the same thieves. We have examples to write pages and pages. In Shanghai, taximeters hidden behind toilet paper. In New Delhi, travel agencies that insist that they are the Official Tourist Desk. In the Dead Sea, hotels that charge your visa twice. In the Great Wall of China, guided tours where you have to pay tools that were not included at the beginning. In Xian, public parking where they make you pay at the entrance and at the exit. In Pingyao, stallholders who, in less than one minute, give you up to a 90% discount. In Katmandu, drivers who take you to a different hotel, swearing that it’s the same you booked, but changed its name a week ago.

Yesterday we said: ENOUGH! A Chinese taxi driver wanted to charge us one euro for a distance that really costs 60 cents. We almost reported him. This is the consequence of running into so many thieves. We turned into cold and calculating animals, negotiating savages, willing to haggle over fast food prices or get out of a taxi for a few cents. This is what we call a great Master degree in Sales. No theories, only practice.