Back 2006, I went on a two-week trip to China, with a side trip to Singapore. Before I went, I talked to several people who had taken this trip that mentioned buying fake Rolex watches in Hong Kong. I considered picking one up as a gift if I could get a good deal on one. I was travelling with a guy named Mike who traveled regularly to China. He knew several of the people that had bought these watches and knew the market area where we might be able to find them. We spent the middle weekend of our trip in Hong Kong and I shopped for gifts for my family then.
We were walking around in the marketplace asking people about Rolex watches. No one seemed to have them. Everyone seemed reluctant to even talk about them. Mike said he thought there might have been a crackdown on these knock-off watches. Finally, someone approached us asking if we wanted to buy a Rolex. They took a bag from one of the marketplace booths and asked us to follow them. A man and a woman took us a couple of blocks down the street, then down a side street that had several shops and restaurants. We entered one of the restaurants, walked through to the back and went up some steps. We were standing in the short hall at the top of the stairs. It had the feel of an alley where murders have taken place that never made the newspaper. I didn’t want to be another victim. They opened the bag and showed us several watches. The prices were higher than what I really wanted to spend. As I looked at the watches, I remembered several of the people I knew that had bought some of these that stopped working after a very short time. I decided not to buy any of their watches. My goal at this point was to make it out of here without a watch but with my life. The prices got progressively better but not good enough to buy. We never saw guns and were never threatened. They weren’t happy that we didn’t buy but weren’t mean about it. I was happy to get out of the stairway and back into the street. We went and bought 6 Swiss Army brand watches for less that half the price of what one fake Rolex would have cost at the best price.