Today's highlights include a police station where no one yelled at anyone during the time I was there and my very first Tim Hortons.

As mentioned at the end of yesterday's entry, I was rudely awoken not once but twice by my failure to use the door chain¹. I'll remember tonight. I always do for at least a couple of weeks after a room invasion².

Put off by the combination of wheedling and demanding when the only reason I wasn't registered was because she had insisted I not bother, as soon as I had clothing on, I did the rest of my morning prep with the door wide open. However, if the police ever showed, they didn't get to the fourth floor.

My current lack of a gas bottle and a dearth of convenient outlets in my breakfast restaurant meant no coffee for me but the Coke 0 I'd picked up in the supermarket while restocking on honey served to fill my caffeination needs.

That lack of a gas bottle will be resolved in Suzhou, as I've ordered two of the super-minis to be shipped to a chosen-at-random Cainiao courier station. However, as the terrain and the lack of interesting things has moved me along faster than normal, I get to the courier station a full 20 hours ahead of my package.

Whether it's the Courier Station, tonight's hotel, or the police station, I've got no particular reason to be heading into the interesting bits of Suzhou that one finds inside the old moat around the cité. I mean sure, I still want to visit places I still haven't been to like the Garden of the Master of Nets; I just don't want to do it while also having to figure out where to safely park my belongings.

Also, even if you ignore the fact that I think I want to enjoy these places with someone (rather than on my own) or the museum I wanted to visit (in reference to a recent book translation⁴) not yet getting back to my publisher about me being a VIP visitor, the hostel beds in the downtown proper are more than I'm going to pay on the outskirts for a room to myself with a private bathroom³.

So, I stick to the edges, where the roads are all boulevards and the city is fresh and new. It's crossing one of those bridges built to make things Faster and More Convenient that I find and pick up the Tianjin license plate that will be the impetus of my visit to the police. 

In an interesting look at sociology and politeness norms, after being photographed⁵ returning the number plate, I asked if I could fill my bidons. Initially brought warm water in the kettle⁶, by the time I'd gone the 5m back to my bike and put my helmet+hat on, someone had corrected this "error" in etiquette and the security guard (lobby conceirge?) ran out with a full sized bottle of one of the nicer normal brands of water. 

These aren't expensive by any means, and—even assuming that they aren't stocking the half size guest bottles that usually get handed to Office Visitors in most of the offices where I've been a Visitor⁷—are probably bulk bought at less than 1y a bottle, but this is very very much a Polite Gift.

The Tim Hortons was between the police station and the courier station and tracking showed my package as "not quite there yet" so, never having had Timmies, it seemed the perfect place for coffee and a donut. Mind you, unless you count the savory avocado and chicken sandwich on donut shaped bread that clearly was not a bagel as a "donut", they didn't have donuts⁸. They also wouldn't give me milk or sugar with my cold brew because I ordered the wrong type of cold brew to be allowed free condiments.

My Canadian friends tell me that the newly opened Tim Hortons in Haikou is equally meh, so I don't think I'll be trying the chain again until I eventually visit Canuckia.

I like my hotel. It's homey and friendly and apparently not very far away from Yet Another  Water Town. Perhaps, some day, if I'm in the area again, and I'm traveling with an equally budget minded friend, I'll stay there again.

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¹ In this particular situation, I imagine that if I had properly locked and bolted the door, she'd have banged on the door to be let in.

² Accounting for somewhere between 0.5% and 1% of my hotel nights, these are my Memorable Room Invasions Over the Years:

1. Hunan, 2012 - Pre-teenage child of hotel owner, constantly peppering me with questions while I was getting dressed
2. Shanghai, 2013 - Afternoon, someone who had a keycard and a suitcase and who claimed to have been given the wrong info. Given the small items later discovered missing from my luggage, very probably a thief.
3. Guangxi, 2014 - Morning, the cleaning lady, while I was still naked in bed at a property small enough that she had no reason to be cleaning that early or to expect me gone. She would later rattle the doorknob multiple times so I honestly have no idea what was going through her head.
4. Anhui, 2015 - That time with Myf when our hotel got stormed by a large number of uniforms and one of the people being arrested tried to hide from the police in our room
5. Hebei, 2022 - The hotel that "helpfully" lied to Epidemic Prevention & Control, claiming that, despite my being registered, I had stormed off to points unknown when I couldn't provide a valid Health Code.
6. Sanya, 2022 - I think he was all of three years old and had just picked up on the concept that Mommy's keycard opens All the Doors. My door was the first one to have a person behind it and therefore the first for her to notice him opening while she was cleaning.

³ And that's even after I pay the surcharge necessary to get the air conditioner remote.

⁴ The Bricks of Suzhou's Imperial Kilns

⁵ Once, many many years ago, I found a wallet with someone's ID in it and was not only photographed returning it, but also had my ID recorded. While mostly a "look at this good citizen" thing that might end up somewhere on-line as part of a positive propaganda campaign,  in the case of a wallet, it also served as a record in case I had a suspiciously frequent habit of "finding" other people's wallets.

⁶ Effectively free drinking water, this is a neutral gift that only total assholes ever refuse to provide.

⁷ Including, the next day, at China Daily's offices in Wuxi

⁸ Not even the "Timbits" that are Tim Hortons answer to Dunkin Donuts donut holes.