Flight Across China Leaves Man Stranded(and you thought you had a bad day at the office)

http://www.comcast.net/ ^ | 4 5 06 | CURT WOODWARD

[TXnMA]

What an idiot!

Nobody fles to a country ("Taiwan").

They fly to a city ("Taipei") or, better, a specific airport ("Sung Shan"). Better yet, especially when traveling overseas, one should use the international airport acronym ("TW") when booking flights.

Intel should have kept this dumb@$$ in Califoria -- where all he needs to know to commute is the ability to read a bit of Spanish...

[Enterprise]

Yeah, there must be a bit more to tell of this tale. I was wondering if perhaps he had a LOT of money BEFORE he went in the brothel.

[RexFamilia]

Amembassy can/will provide emergency funds. Duty officer (Sh@#ty job)is on call after hours to assist flaming idiots such as this seasoned traveller.

[Dr._Joseph_Warren]

>>When I looked for that map on Google, the city of Taiyuan looks like a pretty cosmopolitan place. Skyscraper hotels, lots of industry, traffic and neon signs. This is hardly being dumped into some hick frontier town. This story seems a little odd to me as well.

Language is a barrier when you are in China because not just everyone on the streets speaks English, but he was at the airport. He could have asked people at the airline counter to help him book a room at a suitable hotel and call a cab, so that the cab driver knew before he picked him up where he was supposed to take him. I can't believe he just hopped in a cab and said take me to any hotel. I think this guy is just an idiot. I can't believe they wrote up a whole dramatic story about his idiotic adventures.

Agree with both of you.

This guy seems to have panicked and over-reacted. If he travels in China as much as the article suggests, then he should have picked up at least a little bit of the language. Hell, thanks to a college buddy, even I can order beer in Mandarin. That alone would keep me alive for at least four days! :)

[rogue yam]

This guy's a pussy. I traveled around in China by myself for six months in 1987. Trains and buses and cheap accomodations the whole way. I knew not a single word of Chinese when I got there. When I left, I could count to ten, I knew the characters for "man" and "woman"(bathrooms were so marked), and I could say "beer", "rice", "how much money" and "too expensive". I made out just fine. Ate every day and slept indoors every night. And I never had to fight my way out of a brothel once. Like I said, this guy's a pussy.

[Enterprise]

"I'm looking for a girl with green eyes."