However, China is so frustrating that, yes, I regret to say I turn into a Travel Monster!
It's like the whole time you're there you're moving up and down the scale from Slightly-Miffed right up to Incandescent-with-Rage, and the country plays you like a Rage-o-phone!
Look, I'm not someone who expects Other Places to be exactly like Home! Decidedly not! I always relish The Different. But China .... Aaaaahhhh!!!
It all started out so well: a throng of local TV channels at Hung Hom Train Station filming the first layer of the new security measures China made us put in for Olympic Reasons and it was so cute going through it all with all the security staff trying to show off their best side.
And then, on the train, all foreign passport holders in the one carriage with our very own Beijing Cadre to take our photographs.
And then, on the train, all foreign passport holders in the one carriage with our very own Beijing Cadre to take our photographs.
Playing Beijing Cadres!But you know! Olympics, la! so I was fine with that!
And then, four hours later, at Guangzhou East Railway Station, the place was swarming with Shenzhen Sharks and I got sooo set on, but, la?, I was expecting it and got them to sod off with aplomb, and, sure, there were the usual 10,000 in front of me in the taxi queue but I had a suduko so that wasn't a problem either, and I was even forward-thinking enough to grab a bi-lingual brochure for my hotel in passing and so was able to waft that at my taxi driver and so it was all so easy and pleasant ... until ... I reached the Bai Yun Hotel.
Bai Yun Hotel is like childbirth. You forget how ghastly it all is until you're there again.
Bai Yun is a Best Western Hotel and there's nothing wrong with the physical appearance of the place ...
Entrance to Bai Yun Hotel... but it's just that it's International so you have certain expectations and they ... it's just that they ... aaaahhhhhh!! Kill! Kill! ... the beds are hard, the baths are shallow, there's not enough hot water, the bathwater leaves a white film over your body that you just know is radioactive, they have no tea or coffee in the rooms, the fridge didn't work, the TV didn't work, and what the hell is the story about those footprints across the bathroom ceiling?
But their greatest problem is they have a staff who are so sodding stupid. And, boy, do they cry easily! Even when you're just at "Miffed" they start to water up!
It's not me, OK! It's them! Definitely!! I have spent a lifetime of traveling far and wide, and all over the world I can make myself understood ... oh, except in France where they delight in not understanding because it gives them a chance to toss their hair, shrug, purse their lips in contempt for you and stick their noses in the air! But they're famous for being a nation of irksome creeps and so you expect it there!
Here, it isn't like that! They do try. It's just that every person has only three words of English and even "I would like to register, please" has six so it takes two people to put their heads together to figure out what you actually want. I mean .... ahhhhhhhhh! Context clues, Ladies! I'm at the desk, dragging luggage, and waving my passport so what else do I bloody well mean!!!
And from there it only gets worse. Like, trying to tell them that I didn't have to pay for my hotel room because it was prepaid in Hong Kong ... that one took a 20-strong committee twenty minutes to sort out.
Totally new Layer of Hell that Dante didn't know about! I won't bore you with the details of the horrors of dealing with this hotel ... no, I will! It took nearly an hour just to get my key. And I was told they wouldn't take my money because it wasn't ironed! No, I am not kidding! They only accept ironed money! Who the f**k irons their money!!! Sorry to say, that one tipped the top end of my Rage-o-phone and I lost it ... and, yes, I reduced my own private Committee of 20 to blubbering wrecks, and yes, I felt like the worst person who's ever lived! But seriously, short of after it accidentally goes through a washing cycle, who the f**k irons their money!
Oh, and here's another nightmare piece: I told them I wanted to cancel breakfast! That one took a Committee of Ten fifteen minutes of discussion before I was told I wasn't allowed to cancel breakfast because I was on the quota ... meanwhile, right next to me, with his own personal Committee of 10, was a very nice English gentleman being told he wasn't allowed to have breakfast because he wasn't on the quota! We saw the so-obvious solution straight away, but, noooooo, not them! So we told them outright "Give him my breakfast!" But, no, after a ten minute discussion we were told that wasn't permitted ... so "Your name is Denise! And you're in Room 1010!" I told the nice gentleman and he thanked me! But the manager was standing right behind and heard and said "That is not permitted!" and I said "Either you sort this out properly or pretend you didn't hear me!" and a slow glimmer arose on this Beijing Cadre's face and he walked away! (Oooohh, I think I corrupted one of the Communist Party's finest!)
I think you get the idea ... and I wouldn't go on except, well, I'm venting! There's this whole Friendship Store fiasco too! Friendship Stores used to be the only place foreigners were permitted to shop - where they pay 8 times the price of regular stores and about 20 times the price of the local markets - only Guangzhou has recently become a S.E.Z. which basically means I can shop anywhere I damn well please. Only Bai Yun doesn't appear to be aware of this ... nor do they appear to be aware that the local Friendship Shop shut down about three weeks earlier (why would anyone want to shop there when they no longer had to) and the nearest Friendship Shop these days is a 20 minute taxi ride away! But noooooo! This is a logic-free zone! The voucher of calligraphy they give you (after taking the Committee of 20 half an hour to figure out what you want - and they haven't yet grasped the concept that it's so convenient having calligraphy for everything you want to buy!) to show people always says at the top "Taxi Driver, take me to the Friendship Shop!"
... however, I discovered something so very, very cool I have to pass it on ...
... Taxi-Bellboys are smart. Taxi-Bellboys think on their feet! Show a Taxi-Bellboy the voucher and he makes sure no one is looking before giving you a wink ... and then he gives the taxi driver totally different directions and you end up at a regular Mall close-by! And how cool is that?
I could tell you so much more about the frustrations of being in China, but I think I'll stop now.
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