World China Sichuan Chengdu

Eastern Experience

A wasted day turned into an evening being wasted - Day 15 Oct 2, 2009

First thing we did was email hostels.com to complain about the inaccurate information on the website (still no reply at this time of writing 6/10/09). We booked our stay in Kunming (next destination) in hope to call and confirm to avoid future mishaps. Feeling pleased with ourselves we strolled down to our room to prepare ourselves for the day ahead, only to find that we had been locked out. The staff ignored us as they could not speak English, we were told to sit and wait. We were under the impression they had yet again messed up our booking and had checked us out on the system, not realising that we were staying for three nights. Three hours later we asked if we could sit and wait in our room.

Eventually the owners son who could speak limited English came to speak to us. He claimed that we had not booked, the room was not available to us and he advised us to pack our stuff and leave. We stayed in our room in protest. We pointed out that we had already spent a night here and it was agreed the night before that we were able to stay the three nights. The owners son claimed that the girl who checked us in was not and employee of the hotel and had no right to allow us to stay (however we noticed she did work at other times during our stay).

Worried that we were being ignored and possibly ending up on the streets we thought we would ask one last time. Our next move was to phone the British Consulate to seek advice, but luckily they agreed to let us stay. Standing our ground was worth it in the end. The receptionist then apologised to us, they claimed the whole ordeal was due to a mix up with our room key, however we believe that they knew they could have got more money for our room from someone else. We witnessed other backpackers being turned away on arrival too.

Because it was late in the day we missed the museum, so headed down to Grandma’s kitchen for an early dinner. Unfortunately, our Lonely Planet is 5 years out of date (see picture). We wondered along the pot holed streets and stumbled upon The Shamrock Bar. We had a tasty dinner, homemade burgers, greek salad, fries and beer. We played darts and pool till the early hours. It was nice to have control of the juke box and English conversations. Normality! The Shamrock attracts all nationalities, it was 50% Expat, 50% Chinese. We met some of the Chengdu Football Club (chinese provincial team) players who were from Nigeria and Brazil.