phillipas

There's a mistake in your post! Your use of the word 'came' suggests the situation you describe no longer exists.

chgoeditor

My only trip to China was in the early 80s! It was interesting, to say the least. There was the hotel where we had to step over the dead rat on the threshold. The room where we pulled back the bedsheets to find bugs and a footprint. The hotels where they didn't trust guests with room keys, and we instead were let into our rooms by the old women seated on folding chairs on each level.

One of the more amusing hotel-related stories. One of the members of our group--a heavyset Brazilian man in his 40s--went out to explore on his own in Canton/Guangzhou. Somehow he lost or forgot to bring a card with the hotel's Chinese name on it, so he was forced to perform a pantomime to tell the cab driver that he was staying at the White Swan. He re-enacted it for us at dinner that night, I still laugh at the image of this big guy doing his best swan imitation.

rkkwan

Oh, here are some more of my recent experience - in brand new 2* hotels in smaller towns in Western China:

- No lights in the hallway to save electricity. Good luck finding the keyhole to get the door open.

- All lights and electric appliances are controlled by the "modern" circuit board between the beds. No light switch near the door. So, it remained totally dark even after I managed to get into the room.

- Western toilets, but no toilet seats

- "Modern" shower stall with massage features - but will no nothing but spray water jets all over the bathroom.

- KTVs right in the hotel or just outside blasting music till 2am - maybe that midnight "massage" is not the worse idea afterall.

And in brand new 3* hotels:

- Figure out what in the room is free, and what is not. In summary, in the bathroom basic soap, shampoo, conditioner are free, so is toothbrush/toothpaste. Everything else is not (including condom, briefs, panties, various creams, fancy towels). Outside, water in the 3-gallon water fountain is free, so is chinese tea leaves. Coffee and everything else is not.

rjh

This is actually an advantage, because the toilet seat provides uncertain footing when squatting.

My (patent pending) invention for rural/small town Asia is a toilet seat with molded in pads for stable foot placement. I have some hopes of selling to UA for their transpac flights.

Braindrain

LMAO!! The memories...

vysean

We had overall great experiences during a two week stay in August in and around China and Tibet (of course we made use of international branded hotels wherever possible, like Hilton, Sheraton, Holiday Inn, etc.).

That said, our stays in Tibet were a little more interesting - in Shigatse, our supposed four-star hotel had no hot water, a broken window, and no electricity throughout the hotel or the restaurant (though somehow our room did). It backed up to a Chinese military encampment that was busy all day long with marches and shouting and what-have-you. We assumed the hotel had simply turned off the hot water for the night and that it would be available in the morning. We were wrong.

I've never experienced such a cold shower in my life - turning the knob only made it colder. I must have looked like quite the idiot as I attempted to hold my breath while dousing my head under the freezing cold stream of water while attempting to maneuver my body to avoid as much of the water as possible. It didn't help that we were at about 13,500' up and I still wasn't well acclimatized. It was, without a doubt, one of the shortest showers of my life. The bathroom itself didn't look much better, and the toilet, while constructed to western standards, looked as if it had never seen a housekeeper's brush before. We were quite happy to leave that hotel.

Later that night, we arrived at Everest Base Camp to a spartan "hotel" which made our night in Shigatse seem quite luxurious by comparison. It wasn't a surprise - we knew what we were in for when traveling to this relatively remote place. There were some other interesting/fun experiences on that trip - some confusion over food and whether we were eating "potstickers" or "pork testicles", and fun and games with police and a taxi driver in Xi'An during the full solar eclipse.

I'll remember China fondly - not for its sophistication and glamour, but for its friendly people, most of whom want nothing more than to be gracious hosts. That and some of the crazy taxi drivers that nearly killed us...

window-seat

I had the exact same experience as the OP but it was in New jersey....

mediakzar

Here are two hotel stories from a China trip we took in November 2007. If it matters, we’re pretty experienced travelers, especially in Asia and this was not our first trip to China so we didn’t go into the adventure totally naive.

I apologize for the length of this posting.

After visiting some larger better known cities, we traveled to Guizhou Province in the southwest corner of China. We spent 1-night in the regional capital city of Guiyang and then took a long van ride to the city of KaiLi to visit some ethnic minority villages in the area. After 1-night in KaiLi, we continued on to the lovely domestic tourist town of Zhenyuan for a couple nights followed by another night in KaiLi on the way back to Guiyang.

Any traveler to China can attest to the hardness of the beds; even in the best hotels. But the beds at the Golden Phoenix Guesthouse in Zhenyuan may set a new standard. A 1½-inch cotton batting pad on top of a hardwood board served as the mattress. In the video linked below, you’ll see just how hard the beds were as well as the en-suite porcelain facilities; an interesting variation on what Western travelers typically might expect. Here is a link to a tour of the room. http://crackle.com/c/Travel/Zhenyuan...259037%26fx%3d

This should not be interpreted as a complaint against the Golden Phoenix Guesthouse in Zhenyuan. We found it exactly as it was described to us when we booked our trip; a small clean suite in a good location with a great view overlooking the river. From what we could gather, there weren’t very many other options for (either domestic or international) tourist. We had a great time in Zhenyuan and if we ever return there, we would certainly consider staying again at the Golden Phoenix Guesthouse.

On our drive back towards Guiyang, we spent another night in KaiLi. On all of our travel documents, the Grand Dragon Hotel was listed as our hotel there. I guess we should have been a little suspicious on our first night there that there wasn’t any dragon theme to the hotel décor but we were there for such a short amount of time, we didn’t think about it and just decided to live with the less than spotless room, broken fixtures in the bathroom and non-working internet connection in what was described as a 4-Star hotel. We even laughed about the rats running across the bottom of the drained hotel swimming pool as we were checking out from our first stay.

But on the afternoon after we arrived back in KaiLi (for our 2nd stay at the same hotel), we took the hotel car to a big weekend market. This part of China is pretty remote and well off the usual foreign tourist track. We were so out of place that while we were walking in a park next to the market, there must have been a half dozen groups of people approach us and ask if they could have their picture taken with us. We had our own paparazzi following us.

When we were ready to return to the hotel, we gave a business card that we had picked up at the hotel front desk to a cab driver but he waved us off. We were surprised that 5 cab drivers refused to take us to the hotel.

After the refusals from the cab drivers I thought that perhaps there was something wrong with the card we had picked up from the hotel and I remembered that I had made my own hotel cards before trip and I had one for the Grand Dragon in my wallet. So I gave the next cab driver the card I had made and he took us to the hotel…only it wasn’t the hotel we were staying in. It was the real Grand Dragon Hotel.

We didn’t confront the guide about the issue right away because we still needed him and weren’t sure how he would react. He was the only person we had encountered since leaving Guiyang who spoke English (other than a college student in the park who asked to practice her language skills with us). But at dinner that night, just to be sure and to give him a chance to fess up, as inoffensively as possible I asked the guide what was the English name of the hotel we were staying in. His response was “something like the Big Dragon.”

We were in fact staying at the Zhong De Yuan Holiday Hotel in KaiLi (and Zhong De Yuan does not translate as “Dragon”). I’m still not exactly sure why the cab drivers refused to take us there. It is not a COMPLETELY terrible hotel (just mostly terrible) but unlike the Grand Dragon, it is not in a good location and not of the 4-Star standard that we had paid for.

To add insult to injury that night, there was a party in the parking lot beneath our window until at about 1am; when I went to the front desk to complain. But since no one there spoke English, they had to wake our guide to translate. Poor chap.

Another interesting aspect of this tour was the number of people that were traveling with us seemed to grow almost daily. This was booked as a private tour. On our first night in Guiyang, it was my wife and I. Then the next morning, when the guide picked us up, he not only brought along the expected driver but also a young girl that was described as a “trainee”. Then when we departed Zhenyuan, a 2nd girl began to travel with us. The guide said she was a friend of the first girl. The girls were pleasant enough and there was plenty of room in the van so it wasn’t a great burden but again, with other circumstances, it added to the unusual nature of our tour. We thought there was a good chance that both girls might be involved in the tourist industry but we questioned if the position they served was actually as a “guide.”

The next morning we made up an excuse to be taken to the airport right away and took an early flight to Shanghai (where we checked into the perfectly wonderful Jin Jiang Hotel) rather than spend another day with this guide touring Guiyang.

Before we left him we told the guide that we knew he had taken us to the wrong hotel and after a brief denial, he admitted that he had. He said there were circumstances beyond his control and that in his opinion, the best way out of that situation was to tell us the lie. He said that if we had not realized the difference, “everything would have been covered.” But as he said: “you caught me”.

As strange as it might sound, I think he might be telling the truth about that. It was an interesting example of a cultural difference between China and the West. Rather than “disappoint” us that we were not staying at the right hotel, he felt that we would be none the wiser if he didn’t share that detail with us.

anacapamalibu

[QUOTE=mediakzar;10590560]
Before we left him we told the guide that we knew he had taken us to the wrong hotel and after a brief denial, he admitted that he had. He said there were circumstances beyond his control and that in his opinion, the best way out of that situation was to tell us the lie.

Has to due with the social concept of face. For a westerner its pretty difficult
if not impossible to fully understand it.


nice view from your room..!

Braindrain

Is this a CITS Guide/Spy or a private one?

If former, you may have some recourse (or at least an outlet for complaint). I do realize it's a year ago, though....

mediakzar

It was not through CITS but we were able to come to an agreeable resolution with the tour operator. In fact, they went out of their way to make sure we were satisfied.

The funny thing is, for the most part, the guy was actually a pretty good guide.

nickyboy

Stayed in Zhang Jia Jie, a small city in Hunan at the Lan Tian Hotel

The problem is that it's a tourist town (I was on biz) so the hotel is full of tourists. They are invaraibly middle-aged Chinese and Korean ladies who, away from home, go a little crazy. At 2am they were still going strong, running up and down the corridor, shouting and screaming, playing mahjong in the rooms with the doors open

I had had enough at this time (the reception did nothing when I complained) so I got up and hammered on the inside of my door with my fist. I hadn't allowed for the fact this was a pretty low grade hotel and I proceeded to put my fist through the panel

Went to sleep and nothing happened for a couple of days. Then the manager visited me and tried to get me to pay for a new door...400 kuai. I then agued with him for half an hour and finally got it down to 40 kuai for a new panel...phew

They did try to sting me for 10 kuai on leaving cos I had split the plastic room card by keeping it in my back pocket and it couldn't be reused...I paid, I didn't have the heart to argue

Boghopper

Actually, the tea water cleaning this is because in China you really don't want anything to do with the tap water, including having the dishes cleaned with it. People rinse with the tea water because it has been boiled, and they can be sure their eating utensils are therefore relatively clean. Even in a "family" place I wouldn't use the dishes without rinsing them.

scubadiver

Mrs. Scubadiver is an adventurous eater, so she did well in China. Even in the back-of-beyond places. On one occasion her KGB "minder" turned suddenly shy when asked about a local delicacy. Claimed he didn't know the English word.

Pressed, he bashfully said, as close as I can come is that is the Yak's "onion." He didn't want to say "testicle" to a woman.

Needless to say, when he visited the US on a reciprocal visit, he was treated to a feast of mountain oysters.

RichardInSF

I was going to include my recent stay at the brand new Park Hyatt Shanghai in this thread, but I guess it is a bad stay in the sense of a rather different scale than what's been seen here so far!