T-3: A Trip to Wuzhishan

March 13, 2021

If you ever thought to brew a pot of coffee using beer instead of water, I can inform you from personal experience that it's a terrible idea

I think—perhaps—it is easier to count the things that went wrong with this trip than it is to count the ones that went right.

Back in February, right before Chinese New Years, an acquaintance of mine with an events and media company held a South African Braai down in Sanya. Being as the party was a great success, as the butcher wanted to do more parties, as the awesome hotel in the rainforest that I stayed at before my last Tour has these private villas which are perfect for a party, and as all plans for an actual birthday get together were destroyed by Covid, I convinced her to make the next one this weekend.

There were some 60s buildings on the other side of this wall (dated by way of slogans glimpsed from the car) but the gate says "military property" and there wasn't really any time to be negotiating permission

It didn't happen. More precisely, it got cancelled. But there were still some people who were up for heading down from Haikou to do a birthday getaway with me. This was compounded by some of those people being business partners of mine in a new venture and us thinking we were going to also be meeting with some government people while we were down there.

Which didn't happen.

There were also late departures, overheated engines, and a hotel which—now that we were looking at it from the point of view of quality assessment—wasn't anywhere near as nice as we remembered.

Food was good; company was good; and while that's not all that matters, it was at least a saving grace.

The breakfast buffet décor is a selection of canned foods. I don't think I've seen anything like this since 2005.

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