Grim Hotel and Weird Fruit

Disheartened I sat back down next to Joanne and we settled in for a wait. Presently some Chinese people appeared near us and started to become quite agitated, raising their voices and looking very angry. Soon one of them sat down next to us and it turned out she was an English teacher. She asked if we were also waiting for the 8:30 bus and I asked what they were upset about. Apparently they had bought tickets for the 7:30 bus the previous day but when they turned up at 7:15 the bus had already gone. I told her that it must have been gone ten minutes before that because it wasn't there when we arrived. She was from Suzhou and had enjoyed her stay except for the terrible service from the bus, she said. I thought it was pretty much par for the course in Asia, but I didn't say that.

The direct bus was much faster and we had no problems taking the two local buses required to get us to the airport, where our hotel was. Our flight from Lanzhou to Guangzhou the next day was pretty early and just the start of a very long and complicated day which would get us onto the plane to New Zealand, so we didn't want the extra hassle of getting to the airport so early, probably before the airport bus was running and we had been quite pleased when the hostel in Xi'an had been able to book the airport hotel for us.

Everything had gone remarkably smoothly since we left Xiàhé but, when we arrived at the airport we realised we hadn't asked for the name of the hotel to be written down in Chinese and we weren't even sure what its name was in pinyin. We knew there we three airport hotels so we were going to have to go into each in turn and find out if it was the place. Not as easy as it sounds: none of the buildings opposite the airport had anything other than Chinese signs so we weren't even certain where the three hotels were. One was obvious so we decided to start there but, once inside, it all started to become a bit farcical: we tried saying what we thought the name of the hotel was but, without it written down, we couldn't be sure she was understanding even if we did have the name right. It was a total failure and we were about to leave and look for the other hotels when the girl had an idea and reached for a piece of paper under the desk. She showed it to us an pointed at it then us. It said “Joanne McAllister” on it. A miracle! What a lucky and easy day this was after all.

The hotel was awful. So much for luck! Being a hotel rather than a hostel it was quite a bit more expensive than we usually paid, reasoning it was worth it to avoid all the hassle in the morning, but it was absolutely minging and our room had clearly not been cleaned: there was still toilet paper in the bin and the towel had obviously been used. I took a shower and the drain was blocked so that the bathroom filled with so much water it was threatening to overflow past the lip designed to keep the bedroom dry. In another victory for my Mandarin skills I managed to say to the girl on the desk that the room was not clean then, just to be sure, I showed her a line from the phrase book translating as “Please will you clean my room” and we went out for food. When we came back the room had been cleaned a bit, but the floor had obviously not been vacuumed in a very long time. Oh well it was only for one night.

Funny pear crossed with aubergine fruit

It was probably worth it because in the morning we just got up and walked across the road to the airport with our bags. We had plenty of time to wait around and I bought myself one of the strangest fruits I've tasted. It looked a bit like an aubergine crossed with a pear, which I thought was quite pretty, but it also tasted a bit like an aubergine crossed with a pear, which was not very pleasant, but very very unusual.

written by  The Happy Couple on August 10, 2009 from Lanzhou, China
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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