I started my morning with a horrific discovery. Whomever used the room kettle last not only seems to have cooked something in it, but they didn't clean it out. Then, the person between the twat that used it last and myself filled the kettle with water, discovered residue or gunk of some kind, and—rather than inform the hotel or empty the gunky water—left it in a filled state so that the nastiness could become rotten, moldy nastiness.

It would have been a gross discovery had I merely taken a dry kettle to the sink and filled it with water, but no..... I felt the weight of the water in the kettle and turned it on without opening the lid until after the steamy emanations of boiling muck began to fill the room.

Needless to say, I did not have my intended breakfast of curry oatmeal with eggplant jerky¹. In point of fact, even after getting out of the room, and even with knowing I needed to eat something, the memory of the smell gave me a hard time getting my restaurant noodles down.

Unlike the previous discoverer of the Kettle Conundrum, I had the decency to call the hotel owner and tell him.  Upon my description, he said "kettles are cheap enough, I think I'll just throw it out".

So damn many people like to warn me off of using the hotel kettle on account of the urban legends of uncivilized people who boil their underwear in them but, other than the occasional tea leaves², I've never seen any particular indication of people being horrid with property they don't own.

Particularly since it was on a main road, the long gradual uphill I had for most of the day was fairly unnoticeable except in the form of noticing that the river I was riding alongside was most assuredly flowing in the other direction. It will turn into a proper uphill sometime after I cross into Zhejiang Province and get off the main road but, even then (at least up til the last bit before the tunnel) it's the sort of terrain where downshifting is an afterthought rather than a necessity.

By the time that last bit before the tunnel comes, the fact that downshifting has been an afterthought in combination with the heat of the day, means that I'm wiped enough that getting off and walking seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

I'll only walk that one little section but it's obvious that my few days in Guangzhou took me past rested and recuperated and ready to rumble back to being able to notice that I'm effectively beating my body up on a daily basis. As this region of China is one of the country's four "furnaces" and it's now the peak of summer, I suspect the change in temperature may also play a factor.

I'm dragging ass by the time I coast down the last hill into town and up to the entrance of my booked hotel. Unhappy to find that they're a second-floor lobby as per the info provided by a neighbor, I won't know until after I get up the stairs that tonight is going to go down in the Annals of Marian's Strangest Hotel Experiences.

On the second floor, the lobby is a mix of unopened restaurant, family living room, and hotel lobby. Lacking any people, it also lacks a "hey, not here right now, call me at ....." sign like I used to get in contact with the owner of my final Jiangxi hotel.

"Hello" I call out a few times. "Is anybody here?"

Then, after a moment sitting and sweating and having my heat rash start to flare up again, I wander down the hall looking for people while loudly calling "Hallo, hallllooo."

Not finding anyone by the time I get to the end of the hall, I do find two unlocked hotel rooms, and, on the basis of the idea that I've already paid for my room, decide to assign the more comfortable of the two to myself in the assumption that one of the people whom this hotel belongs to will notice a) the bike downstairs, b) the paid for reservation that hasn't shown up, or c) the sound of the room a/c.

No on all three counts. But, I do surprise someone watching TV in the living room in the morning who shrugs it off with a "I really do need to get around to putting up a sign with my phone number".

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¹ A wonderful grocery store discovery the night before

² Once, there was a dried up moldy slice of ginger