Tan had planned to take the kids to Beihai tomorrow. Given that I’d just got back from 12 days away I wasn’t massively happy about this but I wanted them to experience new places in China (as I would have liked to but knew I’d have to work). I noticed there was little dian in the dian dong che but took the kids out anyway and for whatever reason we decided to visit the deserted Pingguo International Hotel I’d been to not two weeks ago. Actually I suppose I wanted them to see this vaguely grotesque building for the experience.
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| A beautiful receipt I was given...not sure what for now but I hope it was worth it |
To my surprise Leilei and Xixi were both quite keen to explore and we walked up floor by floor (as I told them the lifts obviously weren’t working). They seemed to have the same reaction as me before; a sense of danger and excitement. We entered quite a few hotel rooms and found them exactly as if we might have been room attendants (if that’s the term for the people that clean rooms). There were used toothbrushes from 18 months ago left in beakers, and half used tissue rolls strewn around. I made sure I entered rooms before the kids as I wanted to pre-empt any condoms. Though how one pre-empts a condom I hadn’t really thought about. I imagine I would have just stood on it. Though if it had been on a bed it might have looked a bit weird. Thankfully no condoms occurred in the rooms we visited.
Then we ventured as high as the sixth floor. Even I was slightly worried as for some reason the higher we went the higher the chances I thought there would be of finding something nasty in a bedroom. But the sixth floor proved to be as normal and comdom-less as the previous five until we happened upon one room from which was emanating a dull shoom-shoom-dud, shoom-shoom-dud noise. Suddenly the false fears we had had became a little less false. Then we thought we heard voices from one of the rooms. We stood together and tried to be brave. It was definitely a female voice coming from the closest room…..
Although I was as scared as the kids, I’d had enough dreams to realise there is generally an explanation for stuff like this. But mainly I thought I want these guys to respect me for the rest of their lives, so I gulped and opened the door of the closest room telling the kids to keep well behind me….
Annoyingly the cleaner who was vacuuming the room didn’t seem in the slightest perturbed by my entrance and continued to vacuum. I apologised and left the room. But it was ok. There were no ghosts, just cleaners, and I felt confident enough to open the next door with a smile. Which I did, and at least this cleaner smiled too…it was like we were a sort of kin; me knowing she was not a ghost, and her knowing I was….well....probably not a ghost. I apologised and explained we were just looking around as you do, and she explained that the hotel would be re-opened in the future….well that would explain it.
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| Walking down the eerie hotel corridor |
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| Stuff left for 18 months.... |
When we got back home I got an IM from Tan to tell me that they wouldn’t be going to Beihai tomorrow as Chuan Chuan’s boyfriend had to work. Literally every time they have organised a trip to Beihai over the last few years it has been cancelled except for the time I went and it wasn’t even Beihai it was Fenggongchang and I got badly sunburnt as I was the only one looking after the kids… Literally every time…. Not that I was complaining as I was happy to be with the kids but blimey even four pissheads like Andge, Awl, Venky, and me were able to sort out such a journey with minimal fuss without even being locals.
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| Me keeping tabs on how many km I get for a fill-up of electricity... |
Then later at night I got a text to say that A Heng could replace Chuan Chuan’s boyfriend and drive them….
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