2007-01-27 #1

Hong Kong story chase

I just returned from a very short trip to Hong Kong. In fact, 'sightseeing' came down to an about 3 hour timeframe. But still these three hours started in an unusual way: While going to the Airport's MTR station, a group of three people asked us for a favour. Being the always cautious and full of disbelief german stereotype, I got presented a strange sounding story:

In fact, the story was told to my colleague, while I was standing nearby and not catching every single word. Finally I also got involved into the 'Help-Hongkong-Reporters-tracking-down-Taxi-frauds-with-Tourists'. Initially, we both were somewhat puzzled, but the guys had an answer to every of our questions, so we agreed to support them.

The plan was as follows: One of the guys would checkout a cab, where he assumes/knows, that the driver will cheat. As soon, as he found one, he would call and another guy would take us down to get into exactly that taxi. We would then ask the driver to get us to a hotel in Kowloon and we were supposed to take pictures of the taximeter throughout the ride. When we would arrive, we should pay the driver, get the bill with the 'high' charge and wait for the guys to report our findings and deliver the evidence. Of course, we would get back the ride's costs.

This would help them to create a good story and also support the Hong Kong image.

So here it goes:

We got handed over a cellphone (I think, it was Oscar's - the head reporters - personal one!) and a photo cam to report progress and collect 'evidence'.

It took a while, then one taxi was picked, but just before getting to it, it was taken. One minute later, we got a deal. Our 'potentially-cheating-driver' got us on board, we showed him the map with a big mark of a hotel in kowloon and head of. Both being excited and me being extremly nervous (this sounded just too strange) we started our acting performance: We tried to behave like dumb tourists (which was easy, as that's, what we have been) and took photos of everything. Cars left, cars right, cars beyond, signs, and the taximeter...

I got hold of the camera, but I did not managed to get a good shot. My colleague did better and produced unfailing evidence (we are still not sure, how a picture of a taximeter running might prove anything, as it can also be easily done using photoshop), but we did our job anyway.

So the taximeter counted up and we assumed it would be a final (regular) charge of about 260 HKD. But here it is: Right after stopping the cab, the driver pressed some button and the clock switched to 447 HKD. Bummer. In 'real life' this would now become a really bad conversation, as the manipulation was really obvious. But we remained calm, paid him off, got our super-charge-reciept and got of the taxi.

Some short time later, the reporters arrived and were happy, that we got, what they wanted and payed us back the taxi-bill.

They all (I only remember Oscar's Name) were very polite and very kind. After the whole show, we took some pictures (see one below) and got lead to the Temple Stree Night Market (Yau Ma Tei) (which was our primary target for the sightseeing tour).

We enjoyed the rest of the evening strolling over the market and its surroundings and managed to get back with the last train to our hotel and thought about such news in germany's Bild newspaper - being convinced, that headlines about cheating taxi drivers would never make it to the tops.

My very best greetings to Oscar and his team from the Oriental Daily News.