My hotel was not, by any means, a classy place. Barely a block from the bus station, it's proof that the moniker "商务酒店" meaning "business hotel" has, like "招待所" (company guesthouse) before it, gotten so watered down over the years as to be completely meaningless.

Knowing that the police very likely gave the hotel a stern talking to the night before (oh to have been a fly on the wall!) and feeling that my room (with its sellotape mended headboard) surely couldn't have been the more expensive class room that was what I'd actually paid for, I pocket the a/c remote on my way downstairs to rather cheekily demand the difference in price.

It's all of 10y.

And they don't actually know that I have the remote (which is worth substantially more than 10) until I give it to them along with the keycard that—if they had behaved appropriately last night—I should have put down a deposit for.

Obviously, the rancor of our relationship means that I'm not (as I'd originally planned) going to be leaving my bike at the hotel when getting a taxi up to the surely famous and important Grottoes.

After a breakfast which I don't pay for¹ because the boss thinks it's cool to have me eating his food and a failed half-hearted  attempt to convince this guy to let me store my bike at his shop, I end up riding up. I'm kind of glad I did, too. If I'd had to pay for a taxi on top of the ridiculous entrance fee, I'd have been well and truly pissed.

The caves might have been over a 1000 years old but, with the exception of a little bit of ceiling work where a lantern would have been suspended and a pagoda type structure about 10 feet tall outside one of the lower holes, there was nothing more than 10 or 15 years old. It was hot, involved lots of climbing, had views not much different than what I'd seen on the ride, was difficult to get to, and a complete waste of time.

However, the only way for me to know this though was to go and see.

Descending back to the city, I had a terrible lunch at the "best local yummy" restaurant that multiple people had recommended even before my arrival in town. Judging by some other diners, I seem to have ordered wrong, but by that point I really only cared that they were a place to sit and rehydrate out of the sun.

From Danfeng continuing towards the border with Henan, I've lost my river valley and my opportunity to take roads that aren't the main one. Sometimes I'll get another route when the Road goes through a tunnel and the old road still exists but mostly it's just kind of mehh national road of the not quite boring variety.

There's crops and a wide variety of houses from a broad span of years but this has probably been the main road as long as that corridor in Gansu with the hundred Ming signal towers had been the main road. The actual communities where the interesting stuff ought to be are tucked uphill aways from where the armies march.

I'm tired and overheated and starting to get a chafed butt (really shouldn't have worn my bike shorts at the Grottoes) when I make my way into Wuguan and can't find anywhere to stay. I don't mean the usual foreigner problem either. I mean a total lack of places.

Out on the main road there's a restaurant that isn't marked on Maps as having lodging but whose picture appears to have the word. It's not on the sign though when I go in person and, as they recognize me from TikTok, I feel they are probably being honest when telling me "no".

They also give me directions which sound for all the world like a wild goose chase but which actually lead me to an unmarked² hotel/restaurant combo where a room is 40 and the right to use the a/c an additional 20.

Would have been nice though if she'd mentioned that the a/c didn't actually work. Or if she hadn't kept insisting it was working fine and I didn't also need a fan when it had been running for 4 hours and had cooled the room all the way down to 28.5℃ during a time span where the outside had dropped to 27℃.

¹ A photo is taken, a video is made; but, I don't think he realized he had someone "famous" until after I left

² They have a business license, they call the police to report that I'm staying, and all the neighbors know about them, they just don't seem to care about advertising to the outside