D19: 大梅沙 → 坑梓

June 10, 2023

I was so proud of how I frankensteined this LKLM pannier hook onto the Vaude pannier rail.... unfortunately, the second any pressure is put on the pannier, the hook stays hooked ....... to the bike but not the bag

I've decided to write a Letter of Complaint regarding the Dameisha Police and the hotel situation.

In the past, I generally wasn't escalating to the point of formally bitching other than in circumstances where I was really pissed off¹. This, in turn, meant I was only sending letters in cases of gross malfeasance on the part of the local government. As a result—although it shouldn't affect her in any way (unless, say, the places already known for breaking their own laws did things they shouldn't)—my assistant didn't really want to continue to associate her ID number with letters sent on my behalf to places that won't let a non-Chinese citizen use their online portal.

However, as discovered while trying to find out if the Hong Kong border crossing closest to LKLM's factory was open yet², Shenzhen is not one of those places.

Clever people setting up a mobile drinks shop next to where the road closes, and the only way forward is the bike path and the pedestrian boardwalk

Last time I came this way, the bike path was under construction. This time, the road is

In point of fact, I don't even need to do any fancy jiggery-pokery to convince the system that my Real Name doesn't have Chinese characters and my actual ID number isn't an 18-digit ID card that passes the checksum.

For added "punch," and because it's one of China's major international cities, I sent the letter in English.

"Last night, after booking a hotel in Dameisha via AMap, I arrived only to be told: 'we don't have the qualifications to take foreigners' with the owner of the hotel being very firm that it was the local police who had explicitly told her her category of hotel is prohibited from taking foreigners.

As we all know, as far back as the late 90s, Guangdong was one of the earliest provinces to lift restrictions on foreigners being limited to specific hotels.

The one guy seems to be giving photography lessons to the other

Subverting the "I am in [place] thinking of you" meme sign that is found in places that want to be popular online. (厕所 means toilet)

I, therefore, called 110 who dispatched local officers to the scene.

After failing to find any sort of documentation supporting their agreeing with the hotel owner that I wasn't allowed to stay at this category of hotel as 'there was no way to register me,' because I continued to insist in Chinese that I either be allowed to stay in the room which I had booked or be compensated, the police figured out how to register me.

This took over an hour and it seems that the ultimate source of the problem is the Dameisha Police."

A historical site of interest that I also failed to visit in 2019

UnderBridge hand painted anti-illegal immigration propaganda as well as some "Fight Smuggling" that clearly dates to Covid

I'm particularly pleased with the phrasing of the "as we all know" paragraph, framing Guangdong's clear lack of restrictions as a point of pride that challenges anyone who attempts to say otherwise to prove that they're right. Because, as more and deeper progressions into the rabbit hole have been demonstrating, we don't "all know" this.

Today is scheduled to be a slow, lazy day as I continue to recover from vaccination. Compared to the first time I got Sinovac³ or the only time I ever got a Flu shot⁴, I'm pretty okay. In fact, I'd put it in the category of Sinovac Shots Two and Three⁵ of mostly being unnoticeable but being more tired than I ought to be.

Obviously, since I'm on a bike tour, "more tired than I ought to be" is a problematic metric to pin down. Still, I've done a combined 50km in the last three days, and I had a massage last night⁶, so even if the Mirs Bay Greenway is a cliffside confabulation of stunningly beautiful views amidst steep ups and downs, I can tell that the reserve of energy which should be there - isn't.

Missing the opportunity to get a proper meal because, during the change from resort beaches to industrial wharves and back again, I passed through the last small town as something better was sure to come soon. I then turned off towards something that was a fairly moderate-sized town and will soon be a fairly large construction site.

Failing to take pictures of the spread of ages and architecture on the many buildings marked 拆 for "to demolish," I am not so far dead to the world as to fail to notice that this is a good sign that I should have stopped forty minutes earlier.

I'll end up with fast food meat buns and a strawberry syrup smoothie that, drunk too quickly, gives me an ice headache so bad I knock my water over when curling in on myself in a full-body episode of pain that suddenly makes me understand why Chinese people—who didn't grow up being told not to chug their Icees—think cold drinks are bad for you.

There's a ticket printer on his utility belt!

Fed, watered, and no longer feeling like shit, I'll have a 'lovely' bit of bike path alongside the expressway followed by large boulevards and urban riding that assigns two-wheelers a place away from the cars but doesn't always make it easy for non-e-bikes to achieve that place⁶.

I'll get to my not actually interesting Historical Destination of the Day just as the skies open up and begin to pour. Once it seems the rain has stopped, I'll later need to take shelter again at a bus stop.

The Amitabha Stone at this crossing probably indicates that there was a major accident here

Stopping for dinner before I get to my hotel for the evening (which turns out to be one of the nicer ones providing housing to nearby factory workers that don't want to stay in the company dorms), I am first in a Really Good Mood because a random person walking by on the sidewalk recognized me and got all tongue-tied and stammery about what to say to me, and then in a less Good Mood because an equally random person who didn't recognize me walks up and starts talking at me, rattling off questions without giving me the time to answer them, and touching my bike.

There are a lot of really cheap hotels around this area, and I've picked the place I picked because it's in the middle of the price range, so likely to face market pressure at both ends. The Front Desk is dead sure that her computer doesn't have a foreigner registration option, but a call to the boss tells her that photographing my passport will be plenty enough and, even with offering her money should she be right, I fail to talk my way behind her desk to prove her wrong.

¹ The police in Henan who stole money from the original hotel owner in order to move me to a five-star hotel, for example.

² Kindly phoning me the morning after I returned from Hong Kong to let me know the border crossing wasn't open yet.

³ Knocked me on my ass for two days

⁴ A reaction so atypically strong that I was told—unless I'm going to be around babies, the elderly, or the immunocompromised—to put off getting the Flu shot again.

⁵ My C19+ PCR test was from roughly 90 minutes before I got Shot Four.

⁶ From a theoretically medically trained guy who nicely avoided the jab site but, on account of not understanding the difference between "Covid is now an endemic disease that is no longer as dangerous as it was in 2020" and "the pandemic is over" was surprised I'd gotten vaccinated.

⁷ The biggest issue is the curb cuts that don't go all the way down to the street, but there are also all sorts of zigs and sharp zags combined with sudden slopes that just aren't feasible without much wider tires and a motor.

Duck and canned lychee vodka cocktail for dinner

The "art" over the bed is a framed poster for a hotel chain I'm not staying at, letting you know that the hotel I'm not at has their towels hygienically sealed at the off-site laundry, which cleans them and not to use unsealed towels. (The towels at my hotel are unsealed)

Today's ride: 50 km (31 miles)
Total: 1,096 km (681 miles)

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