Motorcycle incident

It was a Friday night and I was planning to meet my friend Daniel for cocktails. I wasn't too keen on going, but he swore that the bar we were going to was amazing. So, I headed out of my apartment which is located in the busiest part of town - People's Square. Yep, nine o'clock on a Friday night and there were billions of taxis on the street... all of them full. There were also billions of people standing on the sidewalk also desperately waving at any taxi that drove by. After fifteen minutes of waiting, I was getting impatient.

A guy on a motorcycle started loitering around me. Yes yes, everyone tells you: DO NOT TAKE THE MOTORCYCLE TAXIS. They are illegal and don't have meters... they are just normal people trying to make a buck on the side. Yet, I was getting desperate, and this guy kept hanging around me, knowing that I was waiting for a taxi. So finally (after repeatedly calling Daniel who wasn't answering) I caved in and got on the motorcycle. I figured I might as well take a chance once in my life. "How much?" I asked him. "Five quai" he replied. Not a bad price.

We were zooming along happily (I was excitedly recording my video) when I realized that I only had a one-hundred quai bill with me. "I hope you have change for one-hundred" I told the driver. "It's fifty quai, so I will owe you fifty quai" the driver said. WHAT?! NO. HELL NO. He said five quai at first! Another Chinese person trying to rip me off because I'm white. I got pissed. I started arguing with the driver but he wasn't convinced. And I didn't know how to tell him to stop and let me off. So I did what any rational person would do. I called my daddy. My dad started to argue with the taxi driver in Chinese.

Finally the taxi driver stopped in a neighborhood and demanded twenty quai for getting me that far. I was pissed. I started yelling at him in my very bad Chinese. People started coming out of their houses and peering out of their windows. One guy helped me translate. Finally, I settled on marching to a restaurant and getting change for my one-hundred quai. I gave the guy ten quai and the finger, and took a picture of his license plate. The jerk.

Word of advice. DO NOT TAKE THE MOTORCYCLE TAXIS.