Originally Posted by moondog
I was pinching RMB because my friends were doing so -- to the extrems -- and, after a while, I sort of got into the habit. While I put my foot down on some of the nastiest of accomodations, I learned that the difference between a y100 room at a crap hotel and a y200 room at an old building at the 3-star across the street, was minimal.
This is a great trip report, and I've really enjoyed reading it!
I'm assuming that the people pinching RMB were the locals, while the "foreigners" were more willing to put up the cash for upgrades, etc. This is funny, because during my mom and my sister's first trip to China (>15 yrs ago), they unknowingly had our relatives make some of the arrangements. (Well, it was more like the relatives offered, and they didn't know any better). For example, one of the highlights of the planned trip was to travel down the three gorges. Unfortunately, they ended up on one of the local boats with very, umm, basic hygenic conditions. The relatives thought that they were doing them a favor by securing good priced travel arrangements and even getting a luxurious private cabin, but the upshot was that my sister who is very picky was of course very unhappy and basically tried to keep her food intake to a minimum during the 3 day trip. At the endpoint, she insisted on checking into a hotel rather than stay with yet another set of relatives.
I was the beneficiary of the horror stories, and for my trip the following year, we booked an expensive three gorges cruise ($500, with mostly foreigners on board). I also remember hearing that it was going to be the last year for cruises before the dam was built--of course it then took another 10 years for that to happen... We also stayed mainly in hotels, usually 2-3* hotels that to our western standards were very cheap ($25 or so) and were clean with western style bathrooms.
Also, despite being born in China (and viewing herself as chinese), my mom told the story of being charged the substantially higher foreigner price at places like the Great Wall because, as the ticket seller said, she obviously looked as though she was from somewhere else when she refused to sell her the ticket at the local rate. It probably wouldn't be as evident now, but truthfully all the older people at that point in time looked as though they had led hard lives (which they probably did).