Joanne's birthday - Blogabond

The morning of Joanne's birthday, we had just ordered our breakfast when I thought I heard a couple at the next table asking for “two free breakfasts”. The previous day I had noticed a sign up saying “Free breakfast not on the menu”, but we had decided that it meant that there is no free breakfast, although we had considered the other possible interpretation; after all there was no free breakfast on the menu. I went up to the desk to ask what it was all about. I as told it was only for class A rooms, whereas we were staying in a class C room but, I complained, we only moved into the cheaper, shared-bathroom, room for the extra two days we'd had to extend our stay by when we discovered we were stuck in Beijing. He flipped back through his ledger and said that since we had booked over the internet, only class B rooms are available, and that's what we had been in before. He pointed to the price advertised behind the desk and said “Class A”. This was actually the price we had paid for days three and four of our stay; we had originally booked in for only two days in case we didn't like the hostel or we could find a cheaper option, and when we discovered how nice the hostel was we asked to extend our stay by two days but had been surprised to discover that we had to pay more when booking direct, when it is usually cheaper to book direct. Suddenly I saw: it was dearer at the desk because it then counted as a class A room, entitling you to free breakfast. I explained all this to him and he demanded to see the receipts for days 3 and 4. I objected that I didn't know where they were, but he seemed unable to find any trace of the middle section of our stay. Luckily Joanne was able to find the receipts. In China you always need to keep your receipts: without your deposit receipt, you can't get your deposit back, and without receipts in general there never seems to be any proof that you have paid; in this case, apparently, because their ledger system was a shambles! They made some excuse about a new girl having taken the money from us; apparently they each have their own ledger book and system of notation: either they couldn't find hers or couldn't understand it. Nonetheless we came away partly victorious with four free breakfast vouchers. We had already eaten breakfast, but I didn't care: I was having my free breakfast!

After second breakfast we were joined by Sue, who had just come from her free breakfast, won after a battle of her own: she was in a class B double room, but only because they were not able to provide her the single room she had booked, and since she was paying the full class B tariff, she argued that she should at least get a breakfast for the extra money she was spending. As we talked we heard a murmer of “free breakfast” spreading round the room. Soon there was a queue of people at the desk and everyone on both side of the desks was looking rather agitated. “See what we've started”, Joanne said. When we returned later in the day the “Free breakfast not on the menu” sign had been taken down.

Qilin at the Summer Palace

17 Arch Bridge

We were going to the Summer Palace that morning and Sue asked if she could join us, so we all took the hostel's advice and took the 20 minute walk to the bus stop next to where I'd seen the tram the previous day. The bus would drop us off right at the palace, avoiding the “very long walk” from the nearest metro stop.

Annoying bird whistle vendor

What a nightmare the bus journey was: it took about two hours for a seven kilometre journey, for all of which we were standing and being wrenched around by the drivers terrible driving and very heavy brake foot. By the time we reached the palace I was in agony.

Lotuses growing in Kunming Lake

My back had been giving my low-level gyp almost since the start of out trip; not surprising since my bag started out over thirty kilos, and there is a lot of taking it off, lowering it down, lifting it back up, putting it back on, lifting it up to go on top of buses, and that sort of thing; but it had so far held out and not deteriorated into a full-scale back problem. It seemed the bus journey had finally done it. I hobbled around the Summer Palace with the other two for a while but I wasn't enjoying it much.

The Buddhist Fragrance Pavillion

It was clearly a very pretty place, but the Beijng pollution was taking the sheen off the beauty again and, as with the Forbidden City, there were loads and loads of other tourists, many of whom were children with those annoying sliding bird whistles that annoying vendors everywhere inside were constantly demonstrating to sell them. It was an enormous site, full of places called things like 'The Garden of Eternal Peace and Tranquillity'. “This tranquillity is a lovely idea. Shame it's ruined by all the noise” quipped Joanne. When we saw boats on the lake it was clear what we should do, so I bought a couple of cans of beer, purely for back-pain-relieving purposes of course, and we went out on a pedal boat. Much more peaceful, and the exercise and sitting seemed to help my back a bit, or maybe it was just the beer.

Dragon boat on the lake

The bus journey there had taken up so much of the day that by the time our hour was up it was time for us to be heading back. The walk to the subway was a bit longer and we were harassed by rickshaw drivers the whole way, an experience reminiscent of SE Asia and India we had so far been spared in China. In fact apart from the “student” con artists, there isn't much hassle as a tourist in China.

We got back just in time to change before the minibus took us to the acrobatics show. I should say at this point that I wasn't that excited about the acrobatics show; for our last night it was a choice between that or a Kung Fu show, which I would rather have seen, but it was Joanne's birthday so it was her decision. The Kung Fu wasn't going to be a real competition anyway, just a demonstration, otherwise I would have ensured we made it to that on a previous day.

Honest we're really spinning them

The opening act featured some difficult balancing by one girl and lots of other auxiliary girls who didn't do much more than roll around the stage. Oh – and they were all spinning innumerable plates; it was obviously fake though and I felt quite embarrassed watching it. I was just thinking that the act would actually have been quite good if they hadn't bothered with the silly plates when one of the girls dropped a plate. Immediately I assumed it was to prove that the plate spinning was actually real, then noticed that the other three plates on poles held by the same hand were now all hanging limply, not spinning, but somehow still clinging on the the poles. Quickly the girl saw what they were doing and chucked the four sticks away off stage. The group of four sticks were obviously a unit as well; I wouldn't be at all surprised if the spinning was motorised.

Honest they're not stuck together

Guy running up a pole

After that I was feeling quite cynical when the second act started. This time it was a contortionist, who was balancing piles of wine glasses, but the glasses were obviously all stuck together and it was clearly fake again. Her act was very impressive, but totally ruined by the stupid balancing. Her finale was to take each glass in turn from her forehead pile and pour out the liquid to gasps all around, supposedly proving not only were the glasses separate, but she had been keeping all the liquid in all along. During this finale, though, one of he helpers who was collecting the glasses as she removed them, kicked over one of the piles of glasses that had been removed intact. Of course the tower fell over as a unit and no liquid spilled out. I suppose the head pile must be the easiest for the contortionist to keep a good check on.

Unicyclists

I did manage to shake off some of the cynicism and enjoy the remaining acts, some of which were quite entertaining, but every time they brought an element of balancing objects they were obviously cheating and I found it embarrassing. There was no need for them to do it: the acts were perfectly good without going that extra distance. Joanne enjoyed it more than I had, and neither she nor Sue had noticed all of the cheating, so obviously I'm just too much of a cynic to be looking out for that sort of thing.

Balancing act

To top off Joanne's birthday we had decided to go out for a hot pot, which we'd been told was a local speciality. The Lonely Planet recommended a couple of cheap places, but instead we asked at our hostel if they knew of somewhere locally. Unfortunately they must not have realised we were staying at a hostel because we were cheap and we were directed to a very expensive hot pot restaurant. Ah well, we decided, it's a birthday so we can splash out and ordered the beef option. We were a bit disappointed that they didn't give us any instructions, leaving us a bit confused about what goes where when, in fact the only service we got after ordering was five minutes after our food arrived when the waitress appeared out of uniform and told us we had to pay as they were closing. We were permitted to stay and do what we could, but being novices, we really made a meal out of it. A bit of a disappointing end to a nice day. At least she had loved all the presents I bought.

Disappointing hot pot

The next day, after sharing the remaining three free breakfasts, we had only one thing to do before getting an afternoon bus: get to the post office and post home Joanne's extra glasses and a few little things we had bought. We asked the staff in the hostel for directions and they showed us on the hand-drawn map behind them. It wasn't too far, so we would have loads of time to spare. When we arrived at the spot, however there was no post office. We tried asking some passersby, but could never be completely certain we were being directed to a post office, which we couldn't find, and not just a post box, which we did find. Eventually we gave up and went back to the hostel. This time they went online and called up Google Maps: look there's another one here, they said pointing at a map with only Chinese characters on it. When I complained that I could tell where it was, they went back to the wall map and showed me. This one was even closer, so we couldn't understand why they hadn't sent us there in the first place. Ten minutes later we were standing, holding our bags of things to be sent, outside a Post Office Savings Bank. Back again to the hostel. This time one of the staff kindly offered to take us to the one marked on the map. It was not where the map had said it was, but once we were there, what a contrast to the useless, slow, Indian postal service. We stood and watched as our fragile items were expertly and thoroughly wrapped until the girl was satisfied she could bounce each one on the counter without any danger of it breaking. This took a while though, and we were nail-bitingly fearing what Indian-style delays might be involved in the actual sending, but it was fast and easy.

Excellent service, but what a carry on it had been to get there. We had to get a taxi to make it to our bus in time.

written by

The Happy Couple on July 23, 2009 from Beijing, China

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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