Chapter 2. Saturday, The Quest for Internet (and erotic alcohol???).

My Big Fat Guangxi Honeymoon

Chapter 2.  Saturday, The Quest for Internet

(and erotic alcohol ).

On Saturday morning, we were both eager to get out into some breathable air after being trapped in the special “Who needs oxygen?” room all night, so ran outside as quickly as possible for breakfast.

After some excellent Guangxi noodles (like all Chinese foods, these were Special, Famous, Auspicious ), we packed up.  My darling had spent a little time the previous evening and in the morning checking up on other hotels nearby, with an eye out for 3 things:  Good ratings (how our current hotel got well rated even though it does not contain enough oxygen to sustain human life for long is a bit of a mystery ), internet access, and affordability.

With the list in hand, we started walking.  We also checked many hotels not on the list.  There were three main issues with nearby hotels.  Some had no rooms.  Others had no internet.  A few had rooms and internet, but were massively expensive.

We finally arrived at the last hotel on the list.  It was a little more expensive than the rat trap hotel we were currently staying at, but claimed to have internet, had rooms available, and the room they showed us was spacious.  It had a HUGE bed (two double or queen bed frames with a single super-wide mattress spanning them – wish I’d brought a tape measure and still wonder where they get sheets), and also had a balcony with a good view of the river.

 

 

We went back to the first hotel, checked out, and took a taxi back to the new hotel.  The 7th floor room they’d showed us was nice and spacious, but wasn’t fully cleaned yet, so they gave us the one directly under it.  Being paranoid, the first thing I did was break out the computers and try the internet.  I should have known that it wouldn’t work. 

My darling called the front desk and they said they’d send someone straight up to fix it.  A few minutes later, I opened the door to find a highly skilled computer technician hotel maid standing there with a complete network diagnostics toolkit new network cable.  I’d already swapped out the bad one in the room for a good one I brought with me.  One irate wife call to the front desk later got us someone with yet another cable as well as a cable test device and a signal test device.  After repeated failures, we carried both laptops to the adjoining room.  Still no connection. It looked like some or all of the 6th floor had a major network wiring issue. 

We went downstairs where they had a computer room and plugged in.  Instant connection.  This might have worked, but had a few issues.  They only had 2 workstations, so if we set up there, we’d be taking ALL the publicly available connections (and if someone got there first, one of us would be blocked from working).  Officially, it didn’t open until 7:30 in the morning and we start work at 7 (kind of early, but the short commute compensates).  They also charged by the hour for being connected down there. 

They showed us another room, but my darling was .  .  .  displeased with it.   The new room was a very long walk from the elevators, not as large, and had no balcony.  My darling wife is a very sweet person, until she’s angry.  At that point, I’ve found that it’s usually best to flee to a safe distance while leaving notes behind offering to do anything she wants.   Evidently, the hotel staff decided they didn’t want to face her growing wrath and arranged to have the 7th floor room we’d originally looked at cleaned while she took a nap in the 6th floor room.  Cleaning only took 40 minutes longer than first estimated, but was finally done.

We went in, I pulled out a laptop, plugged, in and found that I had internet. We moved in. 

 

 

By that point, it was well past lunchtime, so we walked back to the main tourist area in Yangshuo – West Street.  As packed as it was with tourists, both Chinese and foreign, I was happy that it was a pedestrian-only zone in most areas.  A very nice German restaurant owner spotted me eyeing the pizza menu and told me they had excellent pizzas cooked in a wood-fired oven (Yum! ), but my darling dragged me away. 

She wanted to try another special, famous, auspicious local delicacy – beer fish.  Since I don’t like eating fish, I had pork dumplings.

After that, we wandered around shopping.  I’ve got a small, but growing collection of Alcohols of China, many of which are usually selected more for the artistry of the baijiu container or red wine label than for the potability of the contents.  I already had one bottle made from lacquered and etched bamboo given to me by a good friend in the local village police, and it came from Guangxi.  Now I was looking at many, many more on display as we strolled past “local foods” grocery stores (code phrase for High Priced Foods and Drinks for Tourists who don’t know where the real grocery stores are hidden) that came with an amazing variety of sizes and decorations.

Then I spotted something I wasn’t expecting.  One of the bamboo containers had something besides the more common horses, mountains, or pretty girls playing a musical instrument etched into the wood.  This one had Chang’e, the Chinese moon goddess.  Best of all, she was . . . less than fully dressed.  Far, far less than fully dressed. 

Being a collector of fine alcohol art as well as a complete and total pervert an ardent admirer of lovely Chinese girls, this was something I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO HAVE for my collection.  My darling wife inquired about the price and was told 45 RMB.  We looked around the store some more and then went back to negotiate and a different clerk told her 58 RMB and then dropped down to 55 RMB when she told him that was too much.

This resulted in my dearest darling wife being less than pleased with the customer service at the store.   She quickly stormed out of left the shop with me trying to catch up and determine what had gone wrong.  We went to several other shops which carried baijiu while wandering around buying souvenirs, and 45 RMB was the most common price for baijiu containers of that size.  None of the other shops had Chang’e, naked or clothed.  I convinced my dearest one to interrogate a clerk at another store about bottles with Chang’e on them.  We were told by clerks in several shops that such an item didn’t exist.  Finally, we circled around and I recognized the correct side street and got us pointed back to the original shop.  My darling went in, told a clerk that this size was 45 RMB (or else unspeakable violence would ensue ) and the clerk fearfully agreed.  I then grabbed the unique bottle and paid for it before anyone could change their minds.

 

 

Just to note – throughout the week in Yangshuo, we went to many dozens of these shops that sold “local foods”, both in town and at a number of the nearby tourist attractions.  Virtually all of the carried baijiu in lacquered bamboo bottles.  No other bottles bearing an image of Chang’e or anything similar was spotted in any of them.  I did find a few other items for my Alcohols of China collection, but more about those in later chapters.

The rest of the afternoon was spent buying up a few more gifts and souvenirs before having dinner and getting back to the hotel.

There was some official honeymoon business that needed to be attended to in that big bed. 

 

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