talya managed to convince the manager of the swissair office in peking that he could pay his rent to the chinese with all the yuan we wanted to give him ; in exchange he gave us two tickets from peking to new york with stopovers in hong kong , bangkok , penang , sri lanka , bombay and geneva and after hed counted up the beautifully etched bank notes again completely nonnegotiable except within the peoples republic itself he even threw in a night at the old raffles hotel in singapore .