June 1, 2023
D13: 崖门 → 睦洲
The day starts off cool and comfortable with a lovely rain storm that's good and gone by the time I'm up and moving.
Although I will get a probably 18th century bridge¹ at one point and the Haking Wong Memorial Bridge² at another point, it's a decidedly uninteresting day marked primarily by road works, unpleasant traffic, and attempts by the GPS to send me off the edge of flyovers.
It's around this point that the tickle of a memory reminds me that I didn't like the road I picked when I came north from Doumen in 2019 and I decide, rather than going to Gujing Town, to book a hotel room in a small town a bit north and east of there.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
It's not just a small town, it's a tiny town.
After discovering that the hotel I've booked is a second floor entrance type place, I spend dinner looking over everything in the vicinity and determining that, unless I want to kick out another 15km, the only difference is going to be how wide the stairs are. So, armed with a bellyfull of charsieuw rice and veg and a fizzy sugar drink³, I get to discover just how unwieldy my fully loaded bike is.
It may be that I've mailed stuff onwards to Hangzhou and it may be that I've used up a significant part of my consumables, but it's still heavy.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
The owner sees me on the stairs and comes to help me, which—although it absolutely wasn't my intent—puts me in a great position when he subsequently freaks out over my being a foreigner and his hotel being one that can't take foreigners⁴. It is, however, one of the weirder reasons I've gotten in all the time I've been collecting reasons.
Meituan has listed his hotel as "Mainland Chinese Only" and he simply assumed that they knew what they were talking about when they assigned him that status. Problem here is that no one knows what causes some OTAs⁵ to list some hotels as foreigner friendly and other hotels as not (spoiler: it generally isn't in response to any specific request of the hotel), and, I used a different OTA.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
He's pretty firm that he can't and I'm just as equally firm that he can and will. I'm working on my "not yelling at people" skills and doing a pretty good job, in combination with making it blatantly obvious he is being recorded that he calls someone (I originally thought it was the owner, but it turns out to be the police) who tells him over speakerphone "of course she can stay, she just needs to be registered."
And with that a switch is flipped and I've got the most obsequiously fawning welcome I've ever gotten from anyone. I haven't even biked 1,000km yet this Tour but I'm the coolest thing since sliced bread and am I absolutely sure I don't need help carrying things up to my room?
Two hours later, I'm in the room, enjoying the a/c and a video call with Mike when I get a knock on the door.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
It's the police.
Seems that this particular hotel's proximity to a whorehouse makes it a daily target for check-ups and, while they were doing their regular rounds, the three officers (none of whom looks old enough to shave) also wanted to check in on the foreigner and make sure I was registered.
Opening it to the info page, I hand one officer my passport, while simultaneously passing my color printed copy of the Form to another officer. "This is the relevant page of my passport" I say to the one, and "this is the translation of all the information you need" I say to the other.
The one who has my passport promptly closes it, turns it over in his hands, opens it again to a page at random, finds nothing interesting on that page and closes it again. The one with the Form looks over it carefully "Wow, this is everything we need! And it's laid out really nicely." Then, without actually doing anything with it, he hands it back to me! Which prompts the guy who is still fiddling with my clearly passport-shaped passport to also hand it back to me.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
And, wishing me a good evening and lovely travels, they depart.
--
¹ Marked as a Immovable Cultural Relic of Minimal Value, I couldn't find anything online about it, and it mostly led to my discovering that the link to thousands of pages of Antiquities Atlas is no longer working
² Named after the Hong Kong businessman who donated 16 million yuan towards its construction in 1992
³ It's very very important to never be in a bad mood when risking the start of something that might result in me getting angry at people
⁴ Hotels are allowed to not want foreigners. There is nothing saying that they can't discriminate against us. It's the government that, to all appearances, isn't allowed to say "no foreigners" (at least not without the written regulations that they are almost never willing to have to back this up). And, even if it's some arm of the government which has told the hotels "no", the hotels can't blame the government.
⁵ Online Travel Agency
Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 873 km (542 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 1 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |