Ryan Adams… scraping the bottom of the barrel for music reference titles, I guess. I’ll have to switch to another Jeopardy category like “famous lines from post modern fiction” or “fart jokes.” Some new photos before we start the main thing:
Ahh, I feel better now. So get ready for the beginning of a looong series of posts I like to call
TODD’S MASSIVE GUIDE TO CHINA
PART 1: HOTELS IN CHINA
We began our China expedition in Beijing (Grand Hyatt, 3 days),
went to Hong Kong (Regal Riverside, 3 days),
and ended in Guangzhou (White Swan, 13 days).
Hence, much of the info will be primarily about the White Swan with contrasting points from the other two. I obviously have no info about the other provinces, so your mileage may vary considerably.
The Lobby was exceptional in all places.
GRAND HYATT
WHITE SWAN
The front desk staff varied in their English abilities, but (except in one or two instances) were able to call someone over who was more adequate when I insisted on using words like “bovine” and “transubstantiate” and “exegis” when asking how to get to McDonalds. At the non-White Swan hotels, they were LOUSY at recommending places to eat, varying from “our hotel restaurants are the best places” to “our hotel restaurants are the only safe places.” We needed to ask the guides about this. We never asked at the Swan because they gave us such extensive info before hand.
SUBSECTION A: Money changing - Cash exchange was a little more involved in Guangzhou where they entered the serial numbers of all bills that they gave you into a mini-register so that they had a record of which bills they gave you (I suppose this was in case you come back and claim they gave you a counterfeit bill). If there is a line of two people for the changing, I would definitely come back later. We were told repeatedly to bring our passports to the counter when we changed money but we never needed them (just the room number was good enough). One crucial thing is that the US money needs to be in good condition when you change it (something they told us) but tears are the most important thing, as we had a bill rejected for having a 2 mm corner tear (in an otherwise pristine bill – they never mentioned this particular to us beforehand).
More Swan info: There is a business office on the second floor (other side of the elevators from the front desk) of the Swan which you can make copies, use the computer and print. It’s not cheap, but not too too expensive, and we used the computer only to print airline stuff before we came back and to make one set of A4 – the rest of the world other than the US’s standard paper size - copies. The second floor has the taxi stand “main” entrance by the main hotel lobby desks. The “primary” first floor exit by the elevators is the main one you will use to walk in and out (it empties onto the street where all the restaurants and laundry services are). In this area are 2 ATM’s and a booth where they sell mooncakes that was ALWAYS crowded. This may be seasonal though. You eat in the AM with your breakfast vouchers (they usually ask for them up front) in a buffet setting on the first floor on the other side of the elevators from this entrance. It is open till’ 10:30, but the last half hour they are ACTIVELY trying to get you to leave (they stop refilling the juice containers and let them run out, they completely stop refilling your coffee when it’s hard enough to get refills as it is, they start taking away food 15 minutes early… man, I hate “they”- “they” are rude). So don’t cut it close unless you enjoy the bad wait staff game. The food is somewhat predictable and you can always find something - even if the bacon was uniformly soggy you can always eat 20 hash brown cakes to contribute to your overall excellent gastrointestinal health in China!
On the first floor on the other side of the stores from the elevators are the “back entrance” where you board all the busses you might use, and a group check-in desk. There is a small but (seatwise) well stocked lobby here. Behind this is the Mattel themed playroom
where you can visit the Juicy Barbie (tell her hi for me). This playroom has a variety of stuff, so for toys I would only bring small stuff from home – some jangly things like plastic key rings, a few books maybe – to play with in the room, but the playdates with others from your travel group are very helpful in combining playtime with acclimation.
Elevators in China are often missing floors with 8’s in them. The Swan starts on floor one, but almost every other elevatored building we were in China had a G floor and a first floor. One of the Swan elevators was “haunted” and kept doing funky stuff. The Swan fire escape is fun, and I highly recommend using it, at least experimentally, if you have to go down or up a floor by yourself. To do this, though, you have to avoid the hall monitor… yes, each floor has a person (usually female) at a podium who is on you like a wet leaf as soon as you leave your room. They press the elevator button for you, hold the door open, etc. THE GOOD: if you need pillows, ice, etc, you just have to stick your head out of the door and ask. THE BAD: it gets incredibly intrusive, you get self conscious having an open door conversation with your neighbor, you are constantly trying to figure out whether you need to throw the “race” they are having with you to the down button… this last is not as trivial as it sounds: you are forced to interact with someone in two well defined social settings just to get into the elevator, and you constantly wonder whether you need to slow down and let them hold the door or press the button for you. I still have nightmares about opening the door to the room and seeing a woman with no face maintaining a distance of 3 inches from the tip of my nose as I walk towards the elevator. At least I’ve sopped having the dream about riding that steam-powered snake through the tunnel.
So, at last we get to the rooms. The AC’s in China weren’t that powerful (except at the Hyatt), and I’d advise against turning them off or significantly down even if you are cold. In the Swan and one other hotel, the AC return was accessible in the room by prying open a panel, and we got better airflow by messing with the filters which were overdue for cleaning. You can’t really feel the air blow (the fans on the unit aren’t so hot).
The laundry prices were much better on the street than at the hotel (we only know this for the Swan), and there are several laundry places immediately outside the entrance (we used Shelly’s on the corner right outside the hotel… the place that has “40% off laundry” painted on it in large friendly letters… we are easy). Look in the drawers in the closet rolling drawer set, as there are some helpful items (several White Swan bags, for instance) that we didn’t find until later.
Bathrooms – All toilets were fine (no complaints) as was the toilet paper (please note… this goes for the hotels ONLY – most of the squatties have no toilet paper). Sink space is limited but decent. The Swan tub was a little small, but the Riverside tub was IMPOSSIBLY small – if you are into conjugal bath time, I hope you are a Leprechaun. The water in the tub is brown, which is nice as it serves as a reminder not to get any in your mouth. The faucet is “Giardia” brand, so that helps too. The outlets in the bathroom on all places were dual voltage (i.e. had plugs that would work with any US shavers), but are low output so only stuff like shavers and game boys would work – no hair dryers won’t cut it here, so all my wife’s coiffing was done at the desk. There was an additional British plug only outlet in the adjustable mirror in the Swan – this is key to note in that I have been in rooms in the Swan where there was a remodel and they forgot to put in any other outlet. So if you don’t see an outlet, check the little mirror.
The rooms are variable in size, but a little on the small side in general. At the Swan, they all had a tiled area near the window with a crib, a chair, a small table, and a hutch. The hutch had a badly formatted honor bar (I knocked over bottles constantly) on some shelving, with a staging area which is about 2x2 feet , with some of the back part less usable due to the shelving. They place your 2 free bottles of water a day here (Watson water at the Swan, Cool brand water at the Riverside, and 3 bottles a day of some local "white label" brand at the Hyatt). On this area is the best thing in china – a pot that boils water in, like, 7 seconds. I am not overstating when I say it is a miracle. It is the best invention since the mitochondria. I can’t find them in the US. That sucks. This pot is your friend. Your 6:00 AM bottle makin' friend. Under the hutch is a fridge that is stocked with juices and stuff, that only had door-room to hold the 3 liters of the TsingTao that you buy at a time at 7-11 (and by you I mean all those drunken reprobates in our travel group). The rest of the fridge has only about 2 pizza slices of clearance above the bottles. Very cramped, but if you are smarter than I was maybe you can get the intrusive hall lady to clean it out for you.
A note about cleaning at the Swan… they are good about restocking, making the beds (more about the plural in a minute) and doing the turndown, but they don’t clean the room adequately or even tolerably. We had to ask someone to come and remove the trash or clean the surfaces on several occasions. They seem to regard detritus as something that the room inhabitant should be ashamed of… i.e. they expect you to clean the room of all evidence that you are not a robot before the cleaning people arrive. They did not ever wipe the spilled formula powder or rice flakes from the hutch without being asked. In one event (the details of which I am not at liberty to disclose) we had a routine biological accident that, ordinarily in the US, a hotel would have dealt with and ignored – they had a manager call us and tell us that if it happened again, that we must contact them immediately. They scolded us about effluvia! Wouldn’t fly stateside, boy.
In China, the hotels have consoles – this bears specific mention. The nightstand, between the beds, contains a series of buttons that work the lights and TV in the room, as well as the do not disturb light. This is usually styled in a very 70’s way, but is kind of cool. Only problem is, it is attached by a harness to the wall that makes it impossible to move the nightstand more than a few feet. This means that you can’t push the beds together, which is necessary because…
THE CHINESE DON’T CARE WHO GETS TO SLEEP TOGETHER. We had 2 twin beds and could not switch rooms. Of our travel group, only one family that I know of had a bigger solitary bed (a king). This is out of 14 rooms. The sleeping arrangement thing is not something that is considered while booking. I don’t think that there is anything you can do about this (except maybe to ask your adoption group in advance to ask your in country guides if they could arrange something) but sleeping apart was unusual for us. Also, the beds were very hard at the Swan, but there is bunting in the room (up in the closet? can’t remember exactly) that helps some. Get ready for a firm rest, though.
Overall the Grand Hyatt was the best and most Western of our experiences, while the Riverside was the worst (I didn’t talk a lot about it specifically, but it was out of the way for anything you wanted to do, was very un-updated in appointments, had a criminally small tub, had exposed wiring, and smelled like aspergillus), and the White Swan was OK. If you adjust your service expectations, or are alright with being insistent, and don’t care about the manager discussing you bodily processes, it was pretty good. If you have a river view, there are (basically) light shows outside you window every night
(in a related note, the curtains come together a little funny, but once you make them meet they are very thick and block out the light effectively).
There is more to say about the hotels, but the other things fall under separate categories, and I’ll address them there. Sorry for the long and less snarky post, but there was a lot of info to dump.
During your visit to china, you will have 2-3 groups of guides – one in each city that you stay in. They will organize the paperwork-filling sessions, arrange to get you to appointments, and arrange other optional excursions. Some of these excursions will be pure shopping, and others will be sightseeing (most of these have shopping too). Many of the trips to big stores (friendship stores, department stores) may be necessary or even mandated by regulations, but I was surprised (this is likely a product of my own naïveté) that when the guides bring you to stores in multi store shopping areas that they say have been “recommended” to them you should try other places as well.
We weren’t really happy with these stores as they wouldn’t bargain very much, with the store proprieters droning on about the “quality” of the merchandise, which seemed OK but not really top notch. We came back to the mall (as I’ve mentioned in other posts) alone, and found some very good stuff at a better price at “Apex Jewlers.”
Later, a member of our group discovered that the salt water pearls that they bought at one of the recommended places was fresh water, confronted the staff, who told them that no, they were really salt water, they didn’t know what they were looking at. Three more opinions later, the guide went back with them to confront the store, the store owners gave some face saving excuse, and then made it right.
