Once I lugged my suitcase out of the back of the taxi, the handle snapped. This bad boy had 2 handles, one on the top for holding vertically and one on the side for horizontal. Back in 2008 during my second trip to China, the vertical handle was busted as me and Nick (my bud from Manchester) rampaged through Beijing West Train Station attempting to catch a train that was obviously long gone. And now in 2009, the horizontal one has gone. To be honest, it probably couldn't have gone at a better time. It lasted the plane journey and I was 10 metres from the hostel door so I guess it was good that it went then and not when I was dragging it through the metro.
I got into the Captain Hostel and I'd heard from a number of reviews on Hostelworld that the staff were rude. Now I didn't really get that impression. They were terrible at English and they seemed to be the most unenthusiastic workers I'd ever met. If a lack of enthusiasm = rudeness then I must be really rude! I'm not gonna bust their balls on that. However, the overall stay was just pfft...
pfffffffffffft
That's all I can say about it, it was utter guff (ok that's something else... it was also shite). The room at first seemed alright, it was an 8 bed dormitory with comfortable mattresses and a nice little seating area in the middle. The room was full of stuff, but there wasn't anyone there. The main reason I chose the Captain Hostel over more positively reviewed hostels is that it apparently had an awesome rooftop bar. Now one thing was awesome, this view....
It's pretty baller. It's like having a bar on the riverside of Hong Kong (although HK's view is far superior to Shanghai's). I was pleasantly surprised as to how nice it actually was. I ordered a beer and a pepperoni pizza which came to 90RMB. Now that is like £9. Stupidly I ordered the beer without checking the price, and pizzas are always pretty expensive. Now my pizza was 45RMB, understandable. But how on earth a pint of Tsingtao (a shitty Chinese beer) costs 45RMB is a question only God could answer. That's like £4.50 for a pint of shit beer. And I thought Sweden was expensive...
So I ate my pizza, an atrocity that cause any Italian to probably keel over and die. It was rubbish, like a freezer pizza but not even the same sort of quality as a Ristourante. Thankfully I'm only a quarter Italian so I just died a little inside, a quarter of the amount of a real Italian I'm sure. The bar wasn't really that good to be honest. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was expecting like a proper bustling pub/club style affair. It had the potential but it wasn't very busy. It was reputedly extremely cheap too. Pfft.
With the bar being a bit of an anti-climax I head to my room to have a little read and then go to sleep. That was when I noticed the Air Con wasn't working. What was a nice chilled room before was now pretty hot. Imagine when the 7 other people returned home. Furthermore, there was what appeared to be a closed window onto the street. It was closed...ish. That means a ton of mosquitos were flooding in and eating me alive. I must have got about 10 bites in an hour. In addition to that, the room was on the street level next to the road. You could hear EVERYTHING. Every car, every pedestrian... everything. And Chinese drivers looooove to use their horn.
I lasted an hour. As I tried to sleep, I was sweating from rage, desperation and heat. I arrived in a new country, for the rest of my life and I felt like I was sleeping on the street. It was probably worse as it was so freakin hot.
I went to reception to talk to the softly spoken dude who checked me in. He probably wasn't naturally softly spoken, he was just so unenthusiastic that he probably didn't want to waste the effort of putting some volume into his voice. I asked if they had any other beds in any other rooms. He said "no". That's it. Of course I take his lack of English into account but there was no "sorry" and no sympathy whatsoever. I can see why no-one ever showed up in the room, because they wanted to get away from it. It was exactly like when I was in Hong Kong with Nick (but that's a story for another day). So I thought fuck it, and left.
I found another hostel on Hostelworld, one with a nice 90% approval and remembered how to say the name. It was the Le Tour Traveller's Rest Hostel. If the taxi driver didn't know where it was then I'd have been screwed, also if they had no room. Thankfully the taxi driver was pretty awesome and took me right to the doorstep, just had to keep repeating the name of the street and number. Doubly good was that they had room.. and the hostel is just awesome. Here's the front:
Doesn't look like much but the air conditioning works, they have free WiFi (Captain charged 20RMB an hour!), they have a table tennis table, they have a pool table, they have 24 hour DVD and TV rooms. And the staff were friendly! I usually don't care but after flying for so long, dealing with the shit in the other hostel and getting a taxi in the middle of the night. It helped. This place was like heaven after what I'd experienced in the nautical farce 20 minutes ago. So at around 1am, an hour after I left Captain's I dropped off to sleep in a silent, air-conditioned room.
.....
That was two nights ago.
Since then I've done pretty much nothing. For the first time ever I've started to experience jetlag. The tiredness at silly hours, the general apathy to anything at all times. I was hoping when I arrived at the Captain's to get a bit tipsy that night and talk to some people in a buzzing bar environment. I can't be arsed to talk to anyone! I must look like the weirdest traveller ever right now. I've just been sitting around reading, surfing the net and watching Wire in the Blood (awesome show). Of course they don't know I'm here for a year and a half. There is no urgency for me to do anything. In fact, it's probably better I just sit around waiting for jetlag to wear off and then I'll have stuff to do when I'm lively and eager for shit to happen.
I think I'm going to set out my plan tomorrow. I didn't get the uber-job I applied for, which was very disheartening. I had a plan for when this happens, but it involves waiting for lots of stuff to happen. I hate being in this limbo. Going to work out everything that's got to get done tomorrow. For tonight, I might go out to some techno night. This DJ is playing that I slightly know, so I'll prob have a few drinks and maybe have a chat with some people.
See you tomorrow, if I get home that is.
Just read through all of your entries. God, what a horrible start to your trip. Glad you're in a nice hostel now, it sounds pretty awesome.
ReplyDeleteHope you have fun tonight, try to meet some new people!
Sophie x