Photo: Erick arrived from Iowa for four packed days of taking in Hong Kong. First stop, Maxim’s for Dim Sum. (you’ll note the famous chicken feet on the plate right above the green things, to the right of the green things deep fried squid tentacles. yum)

* * *

We exited the plane, excited and a bit nervous, the plan was to spend two days in Beijing (I know, I know, not enough time), then onward to Tokyo and the land of the Rising Sun.

We didn’t know anyone in Beijing, I spoke about 100 words of Chinese (not well or necessarily in the right order), and we had no specific plans, we only knew that we were to meet some friends of a friend, who said they could help us get around (all we knew about these people were they were young, Chinese, they spokes some English, and they went by the names “Ice” and “Tool”).

We slipped off the plane, into the airport, through the long lines at immigration and hustled our heavy packs off the luggage carousel (Erick’s backpack bursting with the acquisitions of his buying escapades in the ‘shopping capital of the world,’ Hong Kong). After we hoisted and strapped on our heavy packs, we headed toward the airport exit. Erick turned to me and ask “So, what now?”

“Well,” I said jokingly, “now all we have to do is find an English speaking taxi driver.”

I smiled and just as I looked up, a man stepped in front of us. “Taxi! You need taxi?” he said. Taken so off guard by his abruptness and his English, we didn’t respond immediately and had only barely half-nodded, when he grabbed Erick’s luggage and started to whisk us away to what we thought was a taxi line, only to find we were about to learn our first major lesson on travel in China: “don’t say ‘yes’ to a con man.”

(Continued in Tricked in Beijing)