Tourist Trap

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You haven't seen a tourist trap until you have been to Silk Street in Beijing.

The only store where I was foolish enough to admire a blouse I had to leave dragging two sales women behind me. Each one was clasping one of my arms and pulling me back into the store demanding to know how much I wanted to pay.

I'm not exagerating.

One of the men I am traveling with has never had experience with street vendors and so always stops to explain why he is saying no. He has five daughters, so I imagine he believes that he is saying "no" a lot more forcefully than he actually is.

Anyway, on Silk Street, we couldn't find him after wandering around for half an hour and so went out to find him. Eventually we found him... in the very FIRST store we had passed by. He had been trying to leave for 29 minutes and hadn't been able to yet. We try to keep an eye on him since then.

While we are on the subject of tourist traps... beware of kite salesmen in the dark. It is kind of hard to see the thread attached to the kite.

Comments

Matthew Carroll said…
Do they sell canned condensed Beijing air?
8:50 PM
Brian said…
So, in Beijing, do the tourist shops sell authentic local silk made in Bangladesh and Costa Rica?
9:17 PM
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