25th February: 桂林 Guilin

In the morning, Nina and I wanted to take a boat tour, so we took a bus to… a place which name I’ve forgotten. I woke up around 5 am and let Nina handle everything because I can’t concentrate so early in the morning… 

Anyway, we arrived and asked a man how much it would cost and they said: “280RMB” (around 40€) We immediately declined that offer because a friend of Nina told us that she only paid 100RMB (around 14€) and although Nina and I went there during the Spring Festival we don’t think that the price should triple… On top of that they would have wanted us to pay 40RMB (around 6€) for every empty seat and because there are always 4 seat we would have had to pay 46€ each, if we had accepted. 

You guys won’t believe me what happens next:

We wanted to find two other people first in order to fill those two empty seats and just talked to two girls who seemed to be around our age. Turned out that they were also from Beijing and because they were Chinese they could probably get better deals or so we thought. They also thought that 280RMB was over the top and started to “baidu” (which is equivalent to google but you can’t really use google because… it’s China) and found someone offering boat tours for half the price and they called them and arranged a time. We walked over to the river and soon realized that we were followed by the man we first talked to. Those two girls told us that he was following us because he doesn’t want us to talk to other people and ask them about the price and even if we did, those people would see him and know that we were already “taken”. That’s the reason why we decided to split up and hoped that he would just start following someone else. 

Nina and I had 桂林米粉 Guilin noodles and decided to meet those girls again after 1,5 hours. The creepy part is that whilewe were having lunch we could see that man wandering around in front of that shop and asked us several times whether wewant to accept that offer. After meeting the girls again they told us that the person they called can’t take us because thatman has been following us and it would probably end in a big fight because he’s been “marking” us as taken, so that nobodyelse can take us… They also told us that although we split up they were still being followed! So, we had no other choice butto go to that man and start bargaining with him. After struggling a lot we agreed on 180RMB (around  26€) and when hewent to buy us tickets we asked the other man, who has been following those Beijing girls how they did business. Heexplained that it was all family business and it didn’t matter who we ask because in the end they’re all related and they werekeeping in touch with each other via cell phones and everyone was told to follow certain groups. It’s just so insane! You’rebeing followed, so nobody else can “snatch” you away! It’s so creepy! 

In the end, we were able to take a wonderful boat ride and enjoyed the warm weather and the nice view. The landscapeof 桂林 Guilin is printed on the 20RMB bill, that’s why we took that picture with that bill in Nina’s hand (although you can’treally see that bill…) 

We took the bus back to 桂林 Guilin but because there were no seats left Nina and I were given plastic buckets and wereforced to sit in that space between those two seats, where people usually walk through in order to get to their seat orstand…