Scams to take note of in Shangri-la
I noticed that many of my peers have been travelling to Yunnan in recent times. While it is indeed a beautiful place, Yunnan is actually quite well known for scamming travellers. Before travelling to Yunnan, I had heard of stories from friends and families of common scam tactics involving jade and silver. These usually come with some sort of sob stories from the sellers.
Claim 1: Supposed conservation grasslands at Na Pa Lake
Be aware that some local drivers may bring you to supposedly conserved grasslands when you ask them to take you to Na Pa Lake. This is even if you have booked their services for the entiire day as drivers do get some form of commission from the horse farms that run the horse riding services at these “conserved” areas. The narrative is that Na Pa Lake is a conserved area and you can only enter by getting a horse riding package with them. They may also throw in some photography sessions. The real Na Pa Lake is completely free to enter and roam around. To get to the free area, you can simply take the public bus for 2 yuan from 独克宗古城北门 to 纳帕村白塔站. Alternatively if its too difficult to navigate the buses in chinese, you can get a didi/cab and set the location as 纳帕村白塔站. There is also a famous cafe 黑豆咖啡屋 in the Na Pa Lake area with great views of the grassland and lake. But visitors must purchase a drink from the cafe before being let in to take pictures and hang out.
纳帕村白塔站
Claim 2: Taking a car ride up Songzanlin Monastery
Upon taking the tourist bus from the ticketing office to the entrance of Songzanlin Monastery, you may be approached by several locals claiming that there is still a very long climb up and they will offer to take you up in their cars for a fee. The “very long climb” is in fact a few flights of stairs.
Claim 3: Best seats at 扎雅土司庄园
Zha Ya Tu Si Zhuang Yuan 扎雅土司庄园 is like a local tibetan style banquet. It is a great local experience, with tibetan style hotpot, alcohol and performance throughout the night. I had booked mine through my hotel owner but apparently if you were to ask different people you will be quoted different prices and allocated different seats. Some may be further back, away form the stage, some may be on the second floor, etc. Similar to how concert tickets are sold. I only found out that whoever sold you those tickets gets some form of kickback after discussing with the other guests beside me. They had gotten their front row tickets from a shop owner that did their tibetan costume make up for the day.
Claim 4: The mysterious Balagezong
This was a last minute attraction which I barely did any research. Safe to say that I absolutely regretted this stop. The only way to visit this attraction is via their scenic area tourist bus which will drop you at each attraction within Balagezong for a short amount of time to sightsee. Its essentially like a tour with the exception that there are many buses plying the same route and you are allowed to take any of the busses. This meant that you can choose to stay for longer or shorter periods of time at each attraction stop. Sounds fantastic right? But no, let me explain more below.
At the very first stop, the guide brings us into this monastry and a monk comes out. He explains about the tibetan culture and buddhism to us. Then the story begins (much of which I dont recall but essentally he was asking us about our zodiac signs and that different zodiac signs will face different difficulties this year). He ends off with placing a wooden tablet of sorts on our palms and said something along the line of how its fate and destiny that we received these. He also claims that you need one tablet for each member of your family. Each person in our impromptu tour group received several wooden tablets. So you would have thought this is a free souvenir for our blessing right? But no. “恭喜你的了，这里扫码支付” Out came the payment QR code and we were told to pay for the tablet and then leave the tablet at the temple to ward off bad luck and keep the good blessings. It was 60 or 70 yuan if i recall correctly.
Notably, balagezong is known for their pagoda stupas. But the ordinary admission ticket did not include visiting that attraction. At our third stop, we were given the option to add an additional 75 yuan to visit that attraction. By which point in time, we did not want to waste any more time and money and really just wanted to leave this place.
Fourth stop was to some area with a glass floor overlooking the water currents below. But you are only allowed to walk on it if you purchase their shoe covers.
There was also a zipline activity which required additional costs which we again skipped. Honestly, perhaps the attraction wouldn’t be that of a flop if they didn’t try to squeeze money out of tourists at every opportunity. It felt even worse because we did pay for the admission fee to enter the area which was like 170 yuan if I recall correctly.
oh and take note that there are not many lunch options. As balagezong is quite far out from civilization, the food there are all pretty pricey. Do remember to bring your own food if after reading this you still decide to visit!