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Old 07-29-2014, 02:06 PM

The roaches are everywhere.

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Old 07-29-2014, 06:18 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lexadis View Post
The guy who eats live roaches was telling that roaches secrete some kind of a smell when it senses it's on danger, but 'once you get past the smell' it tastes good
-chokes a little- Well, forget breakfast.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pistachio_Moustache View Post
So the smell IS from the roaches!
I always thought it was bug spray, but it was the roaches!
I could never figure out why it always smelled like bug spray.
It was the roaches making that smell.
My cat chases roaches, so they get a little uncomfortable.
xD

I WANT TO KNOW WHERE THE HECK THEY ARE COMING FROM
When we had them, we found out they came from a bag of store-bought potatoes!

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Old 07-29-2014, 06:19 PM

Ours made a nest in our air conditioning unit during the winter because we did not use it.

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Old 07-29-2014, 06:22 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by `Kitami View Post
-chokes a little- Well, forget breakfast.


When we had them, we found out they came from a bag of store-bought potatoes!
I'm sorry I think I threw up a little in my mouth. Gag

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Old 07-29-2014, 06:27 PM

That'll happen.

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Old 07-29-2014, 06:31 PM

( ゚д゚) You didn't eat any of the chips right?

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Old 07-29-2014, 06:48 PM

Not chips, whole raw potatoes. And no. At least I don't think so. I was like 8 years old.

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Old 07-29-2014, 07:07 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by `Kitami View Post
Not chips, whole raw potatoes. And no. At least I don't think so. I was like 8 years old.
o(≧o≦)o You poor baby!
Although now I kinda feel like eating sweet potato.

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Old 07-29-2014, 10:41 PM

Sweet potato.

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Old 07-30-2014, 01:31 AM

Had fries last night.

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Old 07-30-2014, 04:00 AM

Om nom nom.

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Old 07-30-2014, 08:04 AM

Yeah, I missed the taste.

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Old 07-30-2014, 08:24 AM

I had fries done in bacon fat not long ago, they were godlike.

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Old 07-30-2014, 09:21 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by Antagonist View Post
Yay food.

Guilin (sp?) was okay, but Beijing...I'll be happy to never set foot there again. The air is horrible.
Oh god. My family decided it would be a great idea to go on a Tour of Beijing with some random tour company, but they forgot to do some research beforehand so while we did get to see the tourist attractions in Beijing we were also forced to go to these super shady factories/stores where they tried to sell low-quality stuff to foreigners for extremely high prices. Luckily, my parents knew what was going on, but I can't say the same for the others in our tour group.

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Old 07-30-2014, 09:57 AM

Oh, that's no different from here, where you try to book a tour at the tourist info booth, and you wind up out in the swamps, surrounded by alligators, and being pressured into buying a timeshare.

That sort of thing happens everywhere, I think.

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Old 07-30-2014, 10:14 AM

I guess I'm just too used to everything being neat and orderly. Most of the time I was just insanely confused because most of the time there seemed to be no rules or anything (or just a lack of enforcement of them).

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Old 07-30-2014, 10:25 AM

I just try to avoid anything dodgy, and I have a little experience with dodgy stuff, so I can sort of spot it...

But I still don't like that they do things like that.

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Old 07-30-2014, 11:52 AM

The one thing that really bothered me was this super elaborate scam from a jewelry shop we went to. [Be aware: VERY long post ahead]

The experience was pretty odd and felt more like something out of a daytime soap opera than real life. I didn't even realize that it was going to be a scam because unlike the other factories/stories we visited, the tour guide said that they were not affiliated with them, so therefore we didn't have to buy anything from the jewelry shop. The store was located inside of the Beijing Olympic Stadium, and it looked pretty authentic, so none of us on the trip questioned anything. When we entered, one of the workers ushered us into this little "VIP room" where she was supposed to introduce the usage of pearl cream and pearl powder and all that stuff to us. Instead of doing that, she chatted with us and asked us where we were from (they were aware that we were foreigners). She went out for a second, then came back and said that she couldn't find the expert to explain things to us, so we'd have to wait a while. And so we kept on talking with her, just some small talk.

A little while later, in comes this young man who is speaking very softly, and says that he can take over from this point and give us the presentation because apparently, there were a lot of people there that day and all of the experts were already giving presentations. After she leaves, he stands in front of the room and acts super shy and nervous, mentioning that he really doesn't know anything about pearls/jade/jewelry and that he only does it because his dad wants him to. Feeling bad for him because he looks extremely scared, our tour group consoles him and says that it's fine if he doesn't know anything, and that he can just say whatever he wants to say.

He mentions that he had just come to the store a few days after graduating from university, and that the day before he had tried to talk to a tour group like ours, but they had gotten angry that he was bad at public speaking and kicked him out of the room so they could go look at the jewels. At this point, the tour group is really pitying this guy, and we had let our guard down. It was the last day of the tour and the tour guide had said that we didn't need to buy anything, and that it was okay to just walk around and observe for a bit. The guy ends up saying that his father is the owner of the company, and that his father wants him to eventually take over the store and that he only studied marketing/business in college because his father wanted him to. He claimed that his one real interest was speaking English, and that he liked being called "John".

So, this "John" goes on about how friendly we were to him, and how he wanted to have some contacts overseas, and gave everyone free pearl earrings to gain our trust. Out of nowhere, he says that we can go and see his father's special collection and brings us to a tiny room that has a bunch of jade bracelets, necklaces, and other super-expensive jewelry. Some of the stuff isn't even marked with a price, and he takes out a bunch of super-expensive looking pieces of jewelry out from the display cases and allows us to touch them/hold them, and even take pictures of them (which is usually an extreme no-no because competitors can come in and take pictures of your products) because we're apparently his "good friends" within an hour of meeting him. Around this point, I started to get suspicious, but just brushed it off as him not having many friends, and wanting to have connections with people from outside of China.

After this, he takes us to another room where there are a few of the workers standing behind the counters, and he shows us these jade necklaces with golden zodiac animals. "John" asks us if we like his family's jewelry, and of course we all say yes. He then says that "because you're all my friends, I can give this to you at an extremely discounted price." He then asks the worker standing next to him how much the pendant/necklaces cost, and she replies with "8000RMB" (which is roughly somewhere around 1200-1800 US dollars) Hearing this, "John" goes, "No, no! They're my friends! The price is 1500RMB!" (roughly 200-300USD) The sales attendant acts extremely scared of him and mutters something about never selling things that cheap, and he threatens to fire her. Upon hearing the extreme price slash, a bunch of the tour group (especially the older ladies) swarm the sales attendant and start to buy because they can't resist such an extreme sale. Meanwhile, my family and another family is just kind of standing in the back of the room like "...what the hell, there's no way something like this can happen." I'm pretty they ended up earning around 5000USD from the tour group, since a lot of people bought the jewelry. Also, there were 3 other tour groups in the building at the time, so that adds up to a lot of people fooled and a lot of money wasted on products that were too expensive for their quality.

After getting back on the tour bus, I realized that the store didn't even have a name on the bags of the people who bought the jewelry, and that they didn't seem to have a store name on the wall. Additionally, my mom and I had walked outside to get a bottle of water and upon going back into the building, realized that the store was completely empty (unlike they had previously claimed) and that the only vehicles in the parking lot were tour buses. When we tried to get back inside the building, there were people standing in front of the entrance asking where we were going. Only when we said that we were with the tour group did they let us back inside. So, from this, we deduced that they were probably pulling the "nervous rich kid taking over the business but then gives "friends" a too-good-to-be-true sale" on every tour group that entered the building. To be honest, the people there were really good actors. Upon getting wifi, I went on the internet and searched up "beijing tour olympic stadium jewelry scam". I ended up finding a bunch of reviews on tripadvisor, and they all detailed the same thing that had happened to us. One of the people who went through the experience also sent the jewelry they bought to be tested and found out that the jade they bought was only of B or C quality, while the store had claimed that it was all A quality. The first review was from 2011, so it seems like they've been scamming people for a long time now.

To add to the injury, the tour guide had left us there for three hours and didn't say anything after seeing that so many people had bought jewelry, even after specifically telling us we didn't have to buy anything. My guess is that she probably got a commission of some sort from them, even though she claimed that she had nothing to do with them. Another thing is that we stopped there on the last day, so we were all leaving the next day, and could not return to the store at a later date to complain.

So yeaaaah, it was a pretty surreal experience, and I'm pretty angry that they've probably swindled so many unsuspecting foreigners like that. (lol sorry for typing out such a long story, just had to get it off of my chest )

TL;DR: Jewelry store scams a bunch of foreigners for years, I learned to do research before signing up for shady tour companies.

Last edited by Q U E E N; 07-30-2014 at 11:54 AM..

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Old 07-30-2014, 12:47 PM

That sounds like a pretty serious scam, thousands of dollars a run...

They're probably able to pay off local police at that rate, and it's all overlooked.

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Old 07-30-2014, 01:35 PM

Haha, they all do that. We didn't get the jewelry scam, though we did get a super long 'tour' at a silk store where they tried to get us to buy silk blankets and stuff. These 'tours' always take several hours while the actual tours at tourists locations and stuff sometimes lasts less than an hour, and obviously because the tour guide just wants to get out of there. (My mom saw the tour guide giving the evil eye at the woman who was showing us a place enthusiastically...after catching the our guide's look the tour was cut short quite abruptly. We then went back to the hotel where we proceeded to sit around doing nothing for two hours before it was dinner time.)

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Old 07-30-2014, 06:11 PM

I've never been anywhere, really, so I've never gone on a tour.

The worst "tour" story that I have is like less than a year after that horrible tornado (that 160+ people died in), my hometown had this amazing () idea for "Tornado Tours" where they'd put little brochures in the hotels, and they'd have actual tour buses take tourists to sites of some of the worst damage, and to people's memorials where people had put flowers where they found bodies, and places that were being rebuilt. I was completely disgusted, and so was like 99% of the population. The idea was boycotted and was squashed pretty quickly and thoroughly with the general opinion of "NO. Wtf is wrong with you people? That's sick."

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Old 07-31-2014, 06:45 AM

...Seriously, wtf is wrong with some people. :\

That reminds me of that journalist who took the picture of a fireman carrying out the body of a small child after the 911 attack. After the photo became famous, the journalist promptly began making tons of 'souvenirs' (T-shirts, key chain rings, etc) of the dead child and selling them, and then raised a huge stink when he got sued.

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Old 07-31-2014, 08:07 AM

IM HAVING AN ODD WITHDRAWL AND FOR SOME REASON I THOUGHT OF THIS THREAD SO I DECIDED TO POST.

---------- Post added 07-31-2014 at 03:15 AM ----------

I now see that my post is very awkward.
I am sorry for that.
I just miss McNugget:'s face.
That's my odd withdrawal.

;____;
Sorry I was random.
And sorry I'm weird.

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Old 07-31-2014, 11:48 AM

That's not weird at all, he's cute!

WAIIIIIIIIIII~

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Old 07-31-2014, 02:46 PM

lol! Nuggets-withdrawal.

 



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