China Travel Experience

We thought we'd take on the mammoth task of trying to get train tickets to Shanghai sorted. To our amazement this only took a few minutes and the woman spoke perfect Englsih. When we bought our china tour Chinese tour operator, we did not expect much.We'd been promised that we'd be in for a tricky time. We booked on the 7.32pm train for the next day but they had no sleepers left so it looks like we are sitting up all night! After this we went to visit the silk market.

Here there was floor after floor of obviously fake goods being sold on market stalls. As soon as the Chinese people running the stores saw our english faces we were bombarded with requests to come and look at their products. Some of them even recognised me from the day before even though it was my first time there! I decided to buy some shorts from one stall. The asking price was Y195.

This is about 19quid. I offered him Y50 and the guys mood soon changed. They start accusing you of ripping them off and asking how do i think he is supposed to survive on those prices. After about 10minutes of haggling and being shouted at we settle on Y60, shake hands and then all of a sudden he is my best mate again, probably on the off chance that i may want to buy something else. I think they just overcharge massively to start and if they can make just one huge sale to one naive customer then they have a large profit for the day.