I spent much of today sleeping and hanging around the hotel waiting for my tickets to be returned, as I had sent them back to the travel company. All in all I think I deserved a rest after yesterday.

I tidied up my accounts and had a skype chat with my boss, she wanted to see if I was all set to go and if I had any questions. I think she was surprised by how few questions I seemed to have.

I decided to go out for dinner, I didn't want to fight with the menus in the restaurants again so I wandered a bit further a field and ended up in the Beijing night markets.

Now if I thought the markets on Khao San road in Bangkok had been a bit crazy it was nothing compared to this. In those markets, there was one guy with scorpions and other bugs on sticks and he made you pay to take photos. Here, this was the norm! Almost every food vendor was selling bugs on sticks…..at one point I even spotted yellow scorpions on sticks, that were still moving. I was quite traumatized by that, and believe me it takes a lot to freak me out these days. Just the site of those legs flailing around, even as I write this it makes me shudder.

At the end of the market was a pedestrianised street, with many bright lights and signs and lo and behold a McDonalds. I was so happy to see that after the scorpions. I ate my Big Mac, but couldn't help thinking about the scorpions….it was still turning my stomach.

After I had eaten I was approached by two Chinese girls, who wanted to go for drinks with me so they could practice their English. Now I knew this was a scam, but I went along with it anyway, as I didn't have any more cash on me. I sat and chatted to the girls in a private booth at a bar for about an hour. We drank green tea and I helped them with their perfect English and I got them to teach me a few Mandarin words.

When the bill came and it was 990 yuan, which is about $130 AUD. All we had was a few cokes and a pot of tea. They looked at me and said they would split it with me, but after showing them the contents of my wallet, which only contained 20 yuan, which I happily handed over, as this is what drinks should cost, one of the girls pulled out her gold visa and paid the bill. Suckers. I'm not such a stupid tourist after all.

I excused myself and they both glared after me…20 yuan for tea, Pepsi and a Mandarin lesson, that's pretty good I thought to myself. You know you've been doing this a long time, when you are able to beat the scam artists at their own game. Anyway, when it comes down to it, when you travel you can either trust no one, which is probably the smart way to go, but it means you end up alone all the time. The other option is you open up occasionally, sure you might get scammed some of the time, but I think I'm happy to get scammed on the off chance I might make a new friend.