On the road again!

But first, Indian food.

Substantially better than the Indian food I had at Chungking Mansion in Hong Kong, this round of Indian food is also better than it was the last time I passed through Hangzhou and was taken to the same restaurant. This could be because China and India have settled their border squabbles and the restaurant is no longer having issues getting work visas for Indian cooks, but it's also helped out by Haikou's Indian food environment tanking.

In 2019, Little India Hainan¹ was only Haikou and the Haikou owner was making an effort to ensure awesome food. In 2023, Haikou has not only seen the rise and fall of Chili Dehli and Wow Curry², we've also lost the good chefs at Little India to a new location in Sanya.

On the ride to the restaurant and the whole time we're inside eating, the weather is gorgeous, cool and breezy with scattered hints of blue in the sky. Sully thinks it too oppressively hot to sit outdoors but—despite a decade living in one of China's Four Furnaces³—he's still not good with the heat.

Of course, this beautiful weather means that the wispy trailing edges of the remnants of the typhoon that recently hit Hainan will hit Hangzhou in a pouring deluge roughly 30 minutes after I set out.

Waiting out that downpour for about an hour and, later, another cloudburst for about 30 minutes put me well into riding after dark territory but, as with the other night rides I've ended up having this Tour, I'm thoroughly in streetlight-land by the time the sky goes from gloomy to black and I don't need to fish out my headlight.

If I'm feeling pessimistic, the absurdly steep and narrow stairs up to my hotel check-in desk⁴ could count as "trouble with getting roomed" but that's the only trouble I've got. Possibly because they just can't find it in themselves to tell a huffing and puffing someone who just hoofed an obviously large and unwieldy bit of luggage up their stairs⁵ but, even including Covid-times, I can only think of one time⁶ I've been NFA'd at a place like this.

It's just that, even when the room interiors are as nice as they turn out to be at this place, I fucking hate carrying my bike and panniers up the stairs.

--

¹ Which is loosely connected to the Little India restaurants throughout the Pearl River Delta but, despite the owner of one being a nephew of the owner of the others, they are quite explicitly not a chain.

² Given how much money I lost by stupidly investing in the latter, I have the right to refer to the owner of these as a god-damned fool with no head for the operations side of business.

³ Tianjin, Chongqing, Wuhan, Hangzhou

⁴ It was not a lobby

⁵ Or possibly because low-class low-grade low-end places are generally directly run by owners who intentionally chose to get into hospitality

⁶ At most, if you want to count the time the hotel owner felt it necessary to call the police and ask how to process my registration, it's 1½ times