My trip to Bali

About the guide

Our guide at the Pudong airport was just like a trader in human bings. And actually throughout the whole tour , this guy was just like a serious official going through these procedures without any passion of traveling .I bet he has already lost any passion as a tour guide and finally turned himself into a stiff babysitter who always kept a straight face. Our tour guide in Bali was an Indonisian born Chinese who came from Fujian province , who spoke Mandarin with an accent , pretty much the same as my mom ,more similar to the one of Taiwanese.

About the tips

Speaking of tips , it reminds me of an interesting phenomenon we experienced in Bali. When traveling to Bali, I got the same problem when my girlfriend and I had to pay 200RMB each for the guide’s tips before we board the plane, which we were not very happy about.

As Sean mentioned in this passage, Chinese people are by no means used to tipping . Mostly, older generation, if having never been abroad before, have no chance of tipping in the main land of China. I am not used to tipping too. So it was kinda embarrassing when my girlfriend and I went out of the first spa place we went to, having forgot to tip the masseuses. It was already too late when we suddently remembered what we had missed. We were at our charter bus then already. So we began imagining those masseuses complaining about how mean those Chinese tourists were. However, we were not the worst .

After I found my forgetfulness, I couldn’t help asking our companions , a mid-aged woman and her around 65-year-old mom, if they had tipped the masseuses.
“Of course , we did” , they proudly replied to me, which made me feel even worse . “So how much did you tip them ?” I continued asking , you know , Chinese people are always curious about the price. (The guide had told us to tip around 10000 Rubi , which was equal to 10 Rmb).

“We tipped 1000 Rubi each” the ladies replied to me , being proud of the deed, thinking they had tipped the proper amount .

“What ? 1000 Rubi? That was only 1 RMB” I was so surprised to hear that.

“You are kidding me?” the ladies began to do the math .

“ Oh, my God, I thought 1000 Rubi was equivalent to 10 Rmb.”, the mid-aged woman shouted.  Obviously , they were very bad at converting Chinese Money into Indonesian money.  To me, it was not a big problem.  Since 1000 Rubi is equal to 1 Rmb, (sometime only 0.8Rmb, depending on the exchange rate),  it will be very convenient if you just forget about the last 3 Zeros when you judge the price, more like English digital system.

“My goodness, the masseuses must be cursing the Chinese tourists for their meanness. ” The old lady’s word made me feel better .

“Tipping bad is worse than no tipping ”. I remembered my roommate Peter’s advice before I left Shanghai. Finally , I was not the only idiot who sucked at tipping .