Foreign places Famous Faces All that digging in the sand at the beach when i was a little girl paid off and i finally reached China.

As I said, we planned ahead and actually booked a private room in a Youth Hostel recommended from the Lonely Planet.; We had been poshpacking so far but knew that we had to start budgeting down. A man carrying a sign with my name on it greeted us at the station. Nice of the hostel to provide free pick up at the station. We would only pay 188 yuan. It was supposed to be clean and neat and not far from the station. the reason we plucked this one out of the Lonely Planet is that it said the Manager's name was Jim Beam. The street was flooded with puddles of water that weren't going anywhere because there just isn't any drains on the streets in china. My thongs were flicking up mud onto the backs of my legs. We were led down the road to the hotel. It turned out that the free pick up was us walking there ourselves.Hardly a chariot waiting to lead us to the palace. Upon arrival, the asked for our passports and wanted us to pay for the night. that wouldn't have been a problem except we didn't have any cash on us and they wouldn't take visa card. All the hotels we had previously stayed at have taken credit cards. No problem, I just needed to know where the nearest atm was. One girl told me, at thr crossing and turn right. Fairly simple directions. Crossing the crossing was a nightmare. Buses and taxi's everywhere with no one stopping to allow people to actually cross. The atm wasn't where she said it would be. So I kept looking. Found one across the road but it was out of service. So I flip flopped my way in the rain back to the hostel to ask for the location of another bank. Corey asked the hotel staff to accompany me to an atm. they looked at him blankly with a "you want us to do what?!?" attitude. I wasn't orientated around this city yet and after hardly any sleep, and in the pouring rain, it would have been nice for them to actually be helpful. they weren't. They just gave me a map. I took the map as i was determined it shouldn't be too hard to find a bank . I stopped at the corner and asked a man which way to go to find the bank. Out of nowhere, a young boy appeared who said he was an english student. He said he could help me and show me where the bank was. In the back of my mind of was wondering how much his help was going to cost. I had become so suspicious of the chinese as they always seemed to be after something and mostly - money. I decided it was ok to go wtih him. The Bank was closed when we arrived and there was no atm in front of it either. I walked backwith the plan in my head to tell Corey we would go to another hotel that would accept visa and not dick us around. I was glad I walked in the door when i did, as Corey was just about to walk out to come and find me. He said that the hostel didn't have our room ready but they had put our bags in another room. This was the icing on the cake as we had booked ahead, advised them on what train we would be one and when we would check in. This hotel was kind of filthy anyway. It was all beginning to become a bit of a blur after the 11 hour train ride with no sleep. I was feeling a little delirious. There was no lift in the hostel, and the stairs were lined with filthy red carpet. When i got to the room, I knew we wouldn't be staying there - it was old and gritty. The first mid-range priced hotel i called from Lonely Planet was the Melody Hotel, but the girl hardly spoke english. the second one was The Bell Tower Hotel. A nice gentleman answer the phone and said he had to meet some other guests down at the train station so if we could meet him there. We went back to the train station and were greeted by a well groomed chinese man called John. He was a beautiful, peaceful soul. He told us that his boss owned another hotel that is newer and better than the Bell Tower Hotel. We instantly agreed for him to take us there. We just wanted to lie down. This man was a pure gentlment with an amazingly calm nture. We were quite stressed when we met him. He got a taxi to the Mei Hua Golden Tang International Hotel. 468 yuan a night - thats less than we've paid for other 4 and 5 star hotels. Once we saw the room, we instantly accepted. This hotel was so nice and clean and gorgeous. Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! And so cheap !!! The only catch was that we had to pay John and not the hotel.