Let me tell you a disturbing story that happened to me in Yunnan last year. Well, not to me, thankfully, but in my presence. We were hiking in the famous Tiger Leaping Gorge — an area of tremendous natural beauty and grandeur, where the river Yangtze is just a few meters wide in places. This gorge is often touted as the deepest in the world, though it is absolutely not true (Cotahuasi canyon in Peru holds the first place).
The Tiger Leaping Gorge consists of two scenic areas — the Upper and the Middle Gorge. The upper section is a national park, so you need a ticket. The middle gorge is not included in the ticket; there you have numerous small restaurants and guesthouses along the road, and locals rent small plots of land on the slopes leading down to the river. It is now quite as grandiose as the upper gorge, but you can actually go down to the Yangtze and hear it roar.
The thing is, most access paths and stairs going down from the road are kind of private — they are built and maintained by locals who own those restaurants or cultivate their rented plots. So it’s no surprise that they charge tourists who want to use the paths, though it’s no more than a couple of dollars.
Here’s what happened: we were walking towards the head of one such trail and met a German couple who were convinced that the Middle gorge is included in the ticket (the writing on the ticket was all in Chinese, so who knows). They said, “Now we will go down and we’ll probably have an argument with those restaurant owners, but we don’t care — we’ve bought the tickets and don’t want to pay anything extra, it is wrong!”
We suggested that perhaps it was wisely not to start an argument over a dollar or two, but the Germans were adamant. When we reached the trailhead (stairs carved in the rock), they started to go down; the Chinese couple who ran the restaurant immediately came out and shouted for them to stop. The Germans waved their tickets in the air and kept going. The restaurant owner, a man of around 50, then ran after them and got pretty physical, pushing them up. Now back on the road again, the German tourists got into a heated argument with the man and his daughter (I believe), saying things like, “Well, call the police! We have tickets, we have the right to go down! If you disagree, very well — call the police, let them decide!”
Only the restaurant owner and his daughter did not call any police. He armed himself with a long bamboo stick and started threatening the tourists, while his daughter — a girl of 20 at most — picked up an empty glass bottle, broke it and waved it menacingly in the air. At this point, we and the German tourists realized it was time to go — we turned and started walking fast. The girl threw first one bottle in our wake, then another, while the man started throwing stones. With the sounds of glass breaking and rocks falling on the asphalt behind us, we retired. The German couple were livid with anger, impatient to leave the gorge — that place where their rights as ticket-holders were not respected.
Who was right? Or rather, who was more wrong? It is definitely NOT OK to throw broken bottles at people. However, the tourists’ attitude of “we have the ticket, so we don’t care” was naive at best and dangerous at worst. Traveling requires one to adapt to the conditions on the ground, and just because something works where you are from doesn’t mean it will work in a place with a completely different culture. In each country, you have to learn new rules. You have to do your homework.
It is easier said than done, though. Safety tips and local customs, scams, dangers, annoyances — you don’t usually find them properly collected and systematized, not even in guidebooks. Here is where Smart Trip Platform comes in, of course! For all featured destinations, we will have an Important Tips section, available on the same task bar with the weather mini-app and currency converter. It will be one of many modules on our platform that users can edit and expand (earning rating points in the process).
In our example with the Tiger Leaping Gorge, the tips section on Smart Trip Platform would say, “Don’t try to go down to the river without paying — it is not included in the ticket!” We are convinced that a truly comprehensive travel platform (which Smart Trip Platform aims to become) must provide such information. It’s all well and good to research attractions and look at beautiful pictures, but you are unlikely to enjoy your visit much if you get broken bottles thrown at you!
Do you have any example of a situation where you found yourself in trouble while traveling simply because you did not know the rules? Share it in the comments!
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