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Forums > Travel Yunnan > Flights Kunming - Hanoi

As you ask about booking a flight and not some strange tourcompany which spams in forums you might find the following link helpful somerton100:

www.qunar.com

Unfortunately many of the cheaper prices you cannot book online if you don't have a Chinese passport. For this you still have to visit a travel agency yourself (there I could get those discounts even without a Chinese passport)

-Sven

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Forums > Living in Kunming > WTF! Separate arirfare for foreigners for doemstic flights

Ok, I wanted Tom69 to have the last word as he wanted but I feel I have to reply again:

First I think one should disentangle the whole issue:
1) There are cultures/countries where bargain plays a big role, the price you get often depends on how much you try to get it lower and often how much fun for both of you you make out of the whole bargaining. This I don't call being ripped off... If you feel you should pay too much just walk away, usually they come running after you and offer you a better acceptable price. Still locals get a better price as they have old connections and the other person selling in one case also gets a better price buying from the other person the next time..

2) If you buy material goods and buy a different price just because the way you look etc and there is no bargaining involved but there are fixed prices, I would call it a ripp off / discrimination.

3) If you buy a service, eg a flight, stay at a hotel there might be different prices for licenses and different efforts for the airline, hotel, rental company. If they make the customer pay a higher price than other customers because for him they have higher costs it is not a ripp off for me. Wouldn't it be more unfair if other customers would pay the same price? In the end it would mean the company would make less profit with foreigners than with locals... quite the opposite you are claiming.

As for the validity of the extra licenses + efforts which come through government regulations.. I guess at least some of it is for higher security or that the police knows where you are in some unfortunate events. Of course there always tends to be overregulations and I am not a big fan of too much government control as well.

4) Clear ripp offs: You are in a situation where you have to pay any price the company asks you to pay just because you would be stranded somewhere. Or (what happend often to me in OZ) a hostel or company tells me a price for a night to stay there but after paying says if I want a pillow and bedding i have to pay another 3$, oh and the key for the hot water shower is extra 5$ of which you get 3 back when you return it... other examples would be you pay for something and later have to pay extra fees you were not told off up-front.

5) Another interesting case (it partly belongs to other groups above):
If you want to get stamps from Chinese government offices for international purposes there are lists for each country how much you have to pay for basically the same service. The Chinese government wants foreigners to pay as much for a service as Chinese citizens would pay at that specific country. This even applies to Chinese ciitzens married to foreigners who have to pay the same high foreigner price. I even thought about going to court about this one as I find it partly unacceptable (especially the married to foreigners high price policy).

Wrap up: I don't want to defend government policies, far from it. What I claim is just that there are different issues involved. I see it that one has to accept certain government regulations in a country where one is a guest. For example that they want to know where you stay, that they have certain extra regulations for hotels and airlines. I understand if hotels and airlines don't want to pay these extra costs and make foreign customers pay for it (like I said, if they don't in the they make less profit with foreigners than with locals). And like I said before: Only some companies do this, just use another one, eg local travel agency (never had that issue there).. and the things in OZ usually happend the more far you get away from Sydney/Melbourne for me.. I did work and travel, so I ended up in lots of places like outback meat factories where the people where definitely not that educated and referred to aborigines as monkeys and even worse. But yes, all in all OZ ist a multi-ethnic country and most of it's people are nice and open-minded. But the ones who live more remote and are not that open-minded are often racists and ripp-off people. And in a much worse way than it happens in China..

0
Forums > Living in Kunming > WTF! Separate arirfare for foreigners for doemstic flights

Ok, I wanted Tom69 to have the last word as he wanted but I feel I have to reply again:

First I think one should disentangle the whole issue:
1) There are cultures/countries where bargain plays a big role, the price you get often depends on how much you try to get it lower and often how much fun for both of you you make out of the whole bargaining. This I don't call being ripped off... If you feel you should pay too much just walk away, usually they come running after you and offer you a better acceptable price. Still locals get a better price as they have old connections and the other person selling in one case also gets a better price buying from the other person the next time..

2) If you buy material goods and buy a different price just because the way you look etc and there is no bargaining involved but there are fixed prices, I would call it a ripp off / discrimination.

3) If you buy a service, eg a flight, stay at a hotel there might be different prices for licenses and different efforts for the airline, hotel, rental company. If they make the customer pay a higher price than other customers because for him they have higher costs it is not a ripp off for me. Wouldn't it be more unfair if other customers would pay the same price? In the end it would mean the company would make less profit with foreigners than with locals... quite the opposite you are claiming.

As for the validity of the extra licenses + efforts which come through government regulations.. I guess at least some of it is for higher security or that the police knows where you are in some unfortunate events. Of course there always tends to be overregulations and I am not a big fan of too much government control as well.

4) Clear ripp offs: You are in a situation where you have to pay any price the company asks you to pay just because you would be stranded somewhere. Or (what happend often to me in OZ) a hostel or company tells me a price for a night to stay there but after paying says if I want a pillow and bedding i have to pay another 3$, oh and the key for the hot water shower is extra 5$ of which you get 3 back when you return it... other examples would be you pay for something and later have to pay extra fees you were not told off up-front.

5) Another interesting case (it partly belongs to other groups above):
If you want to get stamps from Chinese government offices for international purposes there are lists for each country how much you have to pay for basically the same service. The Chinese government wants foreigners to pay as much for a service as Chinese citizens would pay at that specific country. This even applies to Chinese ciitzens married to foreigners who have to pay the same high foreigner price. I even thought about going to court about this one as I find it partly unacceptable (especially the married to foreigners high price policy).

Wrap up: I don't want to defend government policies, far from it. What I claim is just that there are different issues involved. I see it that one has to accept certain government regulations in a country where one is a guest. For example that they want to know where you stay, that they have certain extra regulations for hotels and airlines. I understand if hotels and airlines don't want to pay these extra costs and make foreign customers pay for it (like I said, if they don't in the they make less profit with foreigners than with locals). And like I said before: Only some companies do this, just use another one, eg local travel agency (never had that issue there).. and the things in OZ usually happend the more far you get away from Sydney/Melbourne for me.. I did work and travel, so I ended up in lots of places like outback meat factories where the people where definitely not that educated and referred to aborigines as monkeys and even worse. But yes, all in all OZ ist a multi-ethnic country and most of it's people are nice and open-minded. But the ones who live more remote and are not that open-minded are often racists and ripp-off people. And in a much worse way than it happens in China..

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Interview: A Mei

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yeah, I wanna hear some of their songs, I looked over at xiami.com for them but all I found was the song of the same name by 《黑珍珠》(which is also Wa music and awesome)

I went to Huadianba in 2010, up by horses belonging to the medicine factory. Guess that's how the solar panels got up there as well... can only recommend it, though it is seriously end of the world feeling, especially if you sleep up there over night and your hut gets constantly hit by lightnings...

Nice article, a bit commercial though...

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Visited it start of August, 2012. Calls itself "Super-live-bar". The house band plays with 6 different singers throughout the night. In between some musicians have solo contributions and a DJ is playing the rest of the time. The drummer and the guitarist of the band played in some quite famous Kunming band some years ago, I just can't remember the name.

It's located on the 8th floor and has super nice views, especially from one room with a large table + glass roof + 3 sides of windows. Lots of people working there so that almost every table has his/her own fuwuyuan. Design and other things are also very high-class (therefore the prices, a beer was 30 kuai if I remember correctly, depends on how many of which brand you buy of course...). It's def not your typically low-price Kunming bar but rather a fancy live bar for a superb nightout in the city center.