Yesterday, the same guy from our hotel in Lijiang who helped us book a private car for the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain also booked a taxi to take us to the Lijiang Airport. In addition, an old man who works for the hotel carried our luggage from the hotel until the taxi pick-up location on his bicycle built especially for this task, for free.
When we arrived at the Lijiang airport and wanted to pay, the taxi driver said there was no need. I asked immediately also the guy from the hotel via WeChat how much we had to pay, and he said it was free, and thanked us for choosing their hotel. How nice of them. I replied that we had a great time and experience in Lijiang, and that I will recommend this hotel to my friends. Therefore, if you are in Lijiang, I recommend booking this hotel (especially the room that has a balcony, as our room did; our bathroom had a Japanese style toilet, which was pleasant to experience). The balcony was full of flowers, having a small table and two chairs to sit on, as well as a rack for hanging the clothes in the sun, if needed. The view from it was also nice. The location of this hotel is in the old town of Lijiang. You can also wash and dry your clothes for free at this hotel. The only minus I would say is that the hotel doesn’t have a buffet, and vegetarian people will have limited options regarding food choices. Other than that, the experience was very nice very nice thing we also liked was the Japanese toilet in the bathroom.
At the Lijiang airport, we bought some snacks, and the best-looking and best-tasting can of Red Bull. After around 3h of flight, we reached Beijing. Here, instead of going to take a taxi from outside like we did the first time when we came to Beijing (we ended up paying 550 CNY / 68 Euros for that trip to reach our hotel), this time, we went towards the „e-hailing“ sign (Dipty found out from her second best and smart friend after me, ChatGPT, that e-hailing is the place from where you can call a „DiDi“ yourself using AliPay, therefore making the ride much cheaper than taking the taxis waiting near the „taxi“ sign outside of the airport). And indeed, ChatGPT was right, because by going towards the e-hailing sign, we ended up in a parking lot from where we ordered a DiDi with AliPay and ended up paying only 141 CNY (18 Euros) for the ride to the new hotel. The first hotel in which we stayed when we first arrived in Beijing 3 weeks ago is only 30 minutes away by car from here, and from our experience, driving with DiDi for 30 minutes costs about 30 CNY (almost 4 Euros), so if we were to take a DiDi to the same hotel, we would have paid only 22 instead of 68 Euros. Anyway, I hope this helps you all in the future to save a bit of extra money when going to China.
Spoiler alert: I plan to write a practical blog post about what one needs to buy and in what order, so that one can fully enjoy the time in China; I will do it after we reach back home in Germany tomorrow.
Because this time we are in Beijing only for 2 nights (the reason being only to be able to rest a bit and fly back to Germany from here tomorrow), we booked another hotel called „THE YARD HOTEL BEIJING, Tian’anmen Square“ using trip.com (it was booked before even coming to China, the main reason being this). The location of this hotel seems great for those who want to be in a very central area of Beijing (if in all other hotels we mostly saw Chinese people, and less foreigners, in this hotel, most of the customers are foreigners), but we honestly liked the first hotel we booked while in Beijing 3 weeks ago more. Why? Because the location of this hotel is near a very busy street full of tourists, shops, etc. For example, in Lijiang, despite having the hotel near many streets with shops and tourists, it was very quite. Also, the first hotel we had in Beijing when we first came to China was situated near Embassies, quite area, etc.
Also, from the taxi station until this hotel, we needed to carry our luggages ourselves for a few hundred meters because the cars are not allowed to enter on this street (yes, we got spoiled by the hotel in Lijiang). There were other three things that took us by surprise: first, when we arrived at this hotel yesterday, they gave us a room in which, after I took a shower, the water spread into half of the bathroom (there was nothing like a delimiter made of silicone or rubber or something else that could keep the water in the shower area), and I also saw a bit of mold in three areas of the shower walls. Second, I saw that the WiFi didn’t work at all in our room. Third, the TV didn’t start (Ok, this was not so important because it might have been my bad; maybe I needed to switch the TV on from somewhere else; I tried with the TV remote, also pressing the buttons from the back of the TV, but nothing worked). Therefore, I went straight down to the hotel reception and told them about all these three problems, with photos and screenshots as evidence, especially about the mold and WiFi issues. The girl there didn’t understand everything I said in English completely (even when using the translation app), and asked a guy near her, who might have been her supervisor or probably manager, for help. The guy approached us, and after telling him about the problems and showing him the evidence on my iPhone, he replied: „- There is a bit of mold because our hotel is 20 years old, and having an old design with bathrooms without windows, the air exhaust doesn’t always dry the bathrooms effectively.“ I replied: „- So you are telling me that having mold in your hotel room should be accepted as a normal fact by all the people who book a room here, and that they should not even raise this point with you, because the health aspect of the customers is of no importance for the manager of this hotel?“ The moment he heard me saying this, the guy immediately replied: „- No, no, I completely understand your problem, and we are very sorry for this. We will send someone to clean the room later. For now, because you are staying here only for 2 nights, I will give you another room. Please follow my colleague, she will show you the new room, and if you like it, come back and tell me“.
I followed the girl, and we reached a room that was situated at the very back of the hotel, which had a small private area outside full of small flower pots. When she opened the door of the room, guess what? The room was in fact a suite: a very large living room with huge sculpted chairs, a huge sculpted table, several paintings, and a TV; a bedroom with a nice clothes cabinet and another TV also here; a small working room that had a table and a chair; and a bathroom that had a big mirror, a shower, and a bathtub, with the toilet being separated. I was positively shocked by this upgrade. She asked me: „- Is this room ok? Do you like it?“ After quickly checking that the bathroom didn’t have mold, I replied: „- Obviously, who would not like such a room?!“ She smiled. After that, we went to the reception together, and I told the guy that I appreciated the upgrade; it was unexpected. He replied: „- No problem, please take this new room access card, and bring back the old one once you are done moving your stuff into the new room.“ I said thank you very much, to which he said no problem, and excused himself again for the inconvenience. After moving the luggage into the suite, I returned the old room access card to him, and thanked him again for the understanding and the unexpected upgrade.
After that, I went with Dipty to the same restaurant in Beijing where we used to go 3 weeks ago, and enjoyed some delicious food. Towards the end of our dinner, we saw a black girl sitting at another table having some issues paying with her AliPay app for the food she ate there. We also heard one of the young waitresses working at the restaurant apologising to the black girl by using the translation app. We were a bit confused about what was going on. If the black girl couldn’t pay, why was the waitress apologising? Because we know how hard it is to „survive“ in China without at least having a working eSIM and AliPay installed and set up with a credit card, we approached the black girl and tried to help her with advice, like how she could activate her eSIM card and data, or connect to the WiFi of the restaurant (this happened to us before during our first two days in Beijing, when AliPay was taking forever to load by using only eSIM data from the „bad“ Holafly, but worked once connected to the hotel WiFi); nothing worked. We even said that we could pay for her, it was no problem. She said she would try to activate her NordVPN on her smartphone (to which I replied that usually it’s not needed, because we also don’t need a VPN at all; with just our eSIM everything works perfectly), and once she activated it, I was surprised to see that suddenly her AliPay loaded and she was able to pay her bill.
During this time (around 3-5 minutes), the waitress was continuously still using her translation app, telling the black girl that it was ok if she didn’t pay, and that she was sorry for the inconvenience. I asked the black girl: „- Why is she apologising to you all the time?“ to which the black girl suddenly replied very loudly while looking at the restaurant staff: „- Because they took pictures of me, and even a video, when they saw I was having trouble paying! I saw some of the staff girls laughing behind my back about my situation, and I cannot accept waitresses doing something like this to me just because I am a black girl in China. To not be able to pay with your smartphone as a foreigner in China should not be laughed about, because it could have happened to anyone! in fact, I just wrote a very bad review right now, also giving them 1 star on Google.“ The restaurant staff said: „- This is a misunderstanding. We didn’t meant it like that. In fact, you don’t have to pay at all for anything. It’s all good.“ The black girl replied: „- You are all lying, because I saw you laughing at me, taking pictures, and recording a video on your smartphone. This is unacceptable!“ I replied: „-They show they are sorry and apologised many times, even offering you to not pay, so all good maybe?“. She replied „-I don’t buy it, I will not allow someone to disrespect me“. Well, she got a point. I would have maybe done the same. In life, it is often easy to say to someone else to „just let it go“ when you are no personally involved and don’t feel his pain. Seeing that she was able to pay (this issue being the reason we intervened in her space anyway), we didn’t want to stay there any longer, so we paid our bill as well and left the restaurant, feeling a bit sad about what we just witnessed. But things like this one sees only if one goes out in the „real world“ folkes.
Then, we went to the Family Mart just across the road, and bought some delicious flavoured water and other drinks. After that, we called a DiDi, and while waiting for the taxi to arrive, we saw around 30 police vehicles (cars and motorbikes) driving near us. We usually see 2, 3, or 5 police vehicles driving in a city during an emergency, but 30? Never! I remember saying to Dipty: „What is happening in Beijing this evening?! First, the hotel room incident, then the black girl at the restaurant incident, and now these 30 police vehicles?! maybe these police vehicles just came or go for a mission like the ones we saw online where they are accompanying an important politician?“. Later that night, after reaching the hotel, we rested well. After all, it was a long day.
Today, we thought about going to visit the Temple of Heaven, but in the end, we decided to just enjoy a walk in Beijing, relax a bit (after all, 3 weeks of almost continuously moving and exploring was enough for us), and buy some last small gifts. Later in the day, we also did a professional foot massage (it was my first time doing this) for 1h, which cost us 263 CNY / 32 Euros for both of us. It was Dipty’s idea, „pushing“ me to also do it. It was a nice experience keeping my legs in hot tea (hot water with 3 tea bags inside it) for a few minutes. The massage was also good I think (have no prior experience with this), because walking felt like walking on clouds later for a few minutes. I had fun chatting with the masseurs there using the translation app. They told me that I have a very good quality hair on my head :)), that I look much younger than 40, and that I am a type of person that is very easy to talk to due to my open character, and always smiling. They should see me when I’m fighting for the last piece of cake with Dipty.
Finally, we ended the day by enjoying some delicious fruits, and relaxing in our hotel suite. Tomorrow we fly back to Germany.
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