Woohoo! Shanghai scam goes horribly right!

Travel International Travel
1

Just back from a serious would be rip off, intact, wallet and all.

Midnight, walking near the Bund in Shanghai and some tout gets my head with a nearby bar. I pop my head in, next thing I’m in a private room with two birds, “ladies” drinks and a plle of snacks. Bemused, I drink my drink and say I want the bill. Next thing, fat boy aint so slim wanders in and declares that I have to pay for the room, two girls and the snacks. All up,
NT$10,000. I start mixing some serious “fuck you” into my Chinese and fat boy comes the heavy. Realising I have five floors to get out of there, I ease up on the “fuck you” - and isn’t it insane the way Chinese react to the sound of “fuck you”? - and focus on what frightens fat boy. He’s spooked because my Chinese is alright, but I’ve not really played that hand. So fat boy, and he is considerably taller than me, is pushing me, me pushing him, but all the while he is wondering why he’s talking Chinese to me and getting it back in a way he understands. I tell him he doesn’t know who the fuck I am and how he has no idea of what level of hell he has just invited into his boss and his life, but that tomorrow, his mistake will come to light right about the time they bury him and his stupid boss.

The girls put up a fake show of defending me and he gets uppity with them, which just gets me furious. So I’m tossing fat boy around the room wondering how I’m going to get to the first floor, let alone my hotel, and then I hear one of the girls saying “ease up, there’s cops outside” I wrench the door open and there is a foreign dude surrounded by China’s finest. Fat boy freaks, but boldly demands the NT$10.000. So I throw NT$50 (Rmb10) into his face, and to my utter amazement, waltz right out of there unscathed.

I then cross eyes with the foreign dude calling in the cops - obviously caught in this scam and paid, walked, and then called in the carribinerri. While he is sorted, I still have to get home through dark streets. Mercifully I get to the ground unaided and waltz into a cab where I tell my tale, much like here, with much happiness.

Superb! But watch that one, folks!

If I ever see fat boy again, and I will be looking for him, his balls are going on holiday to meet his tonsils!

HG

2

Reminds me of HK 25 years ago. Stories like this being told at every bar.

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Glad you made it out of there healthy. This world sucks far too often.

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tout:“Hey Hey Hey…Check it out! Check it Out!..Girls! Girls ! Girls!”

hayseed:Aaaa…yup!

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I agree TC. That set-up is so old I’m surprised HG got suckered in that far, into the room, with the girls, their drinks and snacks, etc. Obviously there was going to be a ridiculously large tab and a big enforcer coming. But I’m glad he made it out of there so well. Good save.

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the key is in the “midnight walking near the bund”…our brave author methinks had already 'ad a few jars and had let his guard down…

best stick to maoming nan lu…at least the business there is on a one-to one basis…

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Hey, dudes, this was no freshman sucker! I mean if it was, trust me I wouldn’t have mentioned it. It all looked legit. That was no sleazy HK curtain bar and mealy mouthed tout, but a vast rolicking nightclub. Mind you, once I was in the room I could see the sting on the horizen, but decided to see it through for a laugh. Basically I had limited cash, no cards or wallet and figured, that it’d be far too much hassle for them to get the loot out of me.

HG

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HG,
What about your Sikh bodyguards? I guess you had given them the day off.

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Looks like you got lucky…however I’m a bit surprised that this happened near such a tourist spot like the Bund. They like to keep these things orderly.

Hmmm…reminds me of a time that happened to me in Germany…saw the trouble coming but did it anyways…bought everyone drinks including the bouncer…

Got off by saying essentially, look at me, I’m just a poor student - what did you think I was going to pay and how are you going to explain that to your boss (while hanging by my neck from the bouncers hands). When they asked where I came from I told them I was Canadian :smiley:

Gives me shivers now thinking about what could have happened.

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[quote=“almas john”]HG,
What about your Sikh bodyguards? I guess you had given them the day off.[/quote]\

Had to give them the weekend off, something called “national rejoice in Indira’s death” day, or some such.

Actually, now trust that I;m no lecherous perve here, if you can, but I was shocked to see a really skanky sex shop right opposite the entrance to the Peace Hotel on Nanjing East just near where it interesects with the Bund. That little strip is full of sleazy touts.

Last night’s frolics were up the other end off Guangdong Road.

HG

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That happened to me 20 years ago in HK. I was in a bar, two girls sidled up next to me, asked me to buy them a drink, I said no, they put some food in front of me which I didn’t touch, I had a beer, and tried to leave. The bill was outrageous - I could have had 10 beers at the Hyatt for what they were charging. The bouncer blocked the door, but he was a good foot shorter than me. I told them that I came in for the beer special advertised outside the front door, that I hadn’t touched any of the food offered to me, and the girls were uninvited. Then I showed him my wallet, which wasn’t exactly flush with cash (I was 19 and on the final leg of a year-long, round the world trip). I asked dude if he really wanted this to become an incident, because I didn’t see a good outcome for him on any level. He muttered darkly, and stepped aside. :sunglasses:

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Once I walked into a bar in HK, just south of the Tsim Sha Tsui mosque in an alley. It was a narrow staircase down to the basement, and I didn’t care for that. I got to the bar and it was empty. A hostess tried to show me into a back room where a couple of hostess girls were waiting on a couch, but the whole thing didn’t look right to me, and I had heard of these scams, so rather than have a seat and order a beer and risk it, I turned right around and exited before they could pull the scam.

It was early afternoon and I don’t think they were quite geared up for action yet, either. But I’m pretty sure that’s what would have happened had I stayed.

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Alternatively, it might have had a happy ending! :smiley:

Kidding!

An update. A colleague said that the Bund area in Shanghai is notorious for scammers. Makes sense, as China’s showcase is Pudong, I guess, not what the filthy farang built as they were peddling drugs, trashing national treasures and looting the populace.

Just to clarify, and this was the point of my post, this was a good ruse, as even thinking about it now, there was nothing suss in the venue - a disco half full of a mixed crowd.

HG

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Ha,Ha.

I’m impressed by how you could still be scammed like that. It takes a lot of blocking out the negative and to scale the upside of one of those deals. The great thing about your story is you got a bounus dose of righteous indignity to take away from it, not like my swollen prostate that left me with a right dose of indignity when it was my turn.

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[quote=“Fox”]Ha,Ha.

I’m impressed by how you could still be scammed like that. It takes a lot of blocking out the negative and to scale the upside of one of those deals. The great thing about your story is you got a bounus dose of righteous indignity to take away from it, not like my swollen prostate that left me with a right dose of indignity when it was my turn.[/quote]

:laughing:

A lot of people have asked how I wandered into it. Truth is I wasn’t that concerned, as I had little cash on me and no cards - I’d left my wallet at the hotel. Basically I assumed, and I think correctly, that these dudes are about intimidation, they really don’t want to be hurting anybody or there will be cops involved, and it being Shanghai, even if the cops are on the take, they will have to respond.

All was going swimmingly, really, until that last shove when fat boy pushed one of the lasses. I caught him off guard and balance with a big shove that sent him across the room and head first into a wall where his head connected with the loud “tock” a coconut makes when it hits concrete. He got up from that with pure menance in his eyes. Fortunately, that was exactly the time the other lass mentioned the police.

HG

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Those girls will probably get a good beating for defending you.

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Nah, all part of the game methinks. Good cop bad cop sort of thing.

HG

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His head made the sound of a coconut when it bounced off the concrete. That’s got to hurt. If he is anything like me, I always blame everybody else first.

Anyway you survived unscathed; that’s the main thing.

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You forgot the magic words: “Zhu Lian Bang”. There is an old Chinese saying: “He who has the Lao Da’s phone number calls the tune”.