Hustled

One of the parts I left out of my previous post was that when I got to the airport I got hustled for a little over $ 100. Yup me, the world weary, savvy, street smart kid you all know and love (or should or will). I'm still pissed about it. I can't think about the incident without getting angry with myself.

It went down like this.

I finally got back to the airport in Beijing at about 12:30pm. No big deal right? Wrong. I had foolishly booked a flight for Dalian that left at 1:30pm. I had booked this flight at the hotel thinking I would get to Dalian a little earlier than I would have the day before and perhaps be able to salvage some time.

Bad move. I should have relaxed and gone for the ride.

After I booked my flight to Dalian I got directions to a "big car" depot/station/whatever that would take me to Beijing. Turns out "big car" means van and its leaving for Beijing airport at 10:30am. This has me concerned because the drive time will put me right up against the flight's departure time. The guy at the depot tells me that if there isn't an accident on the road that I'll make it on time. In my mind this is a huge "if" (more on that on another post). I ask if he can help me change my flight... No.

So I have to wait. And my nerves don't need any more passengers.

We leave on time. The ride is uneventful. I get to talk to a Chinese lady who's travelling with her husband back to Toronto. I tell her my story up to the present (relative to the van ride). Nobody in the van can believe my bad luck or that of the guy who's driver I took. When we get to the airport she doesn't dump me but helps me find my way to check in.

It was upstairs. Not well marked but upstairs.

I thank her profusely and head up to the ticketing counter. I don't know what time it is. I think its a little before 12:00pm. My body language must have been shouting that I was an easy mark. I had just loaded up on cash, a necessity in China and was wandering back and fourth from the info monitors and the ticketing counter.

And then the wolves pounced.

I was approached by a woman in what I think was a jump suit but may have just been a uniform type outfit. She has patches and everything, so I'm convinced. She looks at my ticket says "No time! No time!" and drags me over to an open counter. I had been coming to the same conclusion but wasn't sure how to expidite my boarding. Sure enough the woman behind the counter clucks her toung and hands me a boarding pass. She also has a pittying look on her face.

And here comes the drop.

The woman who was helping me urges me to follow and to hurry. Again this urgency thing sucks me in. I am grateful for her help and she seems to genuinely want to get me to my flight on time. We whip around a dividing section, cutting past some retractable ribbon barriers and pick up another woman who is dressed the same as the first. Chinese is exchanged and the newcomer giggles. We three take off. About 100 yards later the woman who was helping me turns on me and says I have to pay her. Ok, no problem I pay for services rendered. She want's 200 RMB, oh and 200 RMB for the other woman who came along, oh and another 200 RMB for a third woman who suddenly shows up, and another 200 RMB for overweight luggage (it was heavy).

800 RMB! WTF!

If these had been $ 20's I'd have stopped at 1 for the effort. But its funny money and I'm flustered and confused. Having finally put my foot down and refused any further payments the first woman guides me all of 20 feet to the security check point. I get wanded and rubbed down and I'm through.

Then it hits me. Hustled...

Total distance traveled from the ticket counter to the security check point, about 120 yards.
Total time elapsed, about 2 minutes.
Time before my flight, about 1/2 hour.

Arrrrghh. I was furious; but impotent. There was nothing I could do. I couldn't go back, and even if I could I was never going to get that money back. I can hardly believe how stupid I'd been since I got to China. The $ 100 stings and I want someone to blame other than myself. I'm thinking about if I should and/or how I could expense it.

This put me in a very foul mood with respect to China.