12/2/2006 China Day 68: Train Kunming, Yunnan --> Anshun, Guizhou - The Armpit of China
Anshun, if ever a city I visited in China was, is the armpit of China.
Ok, wait. Golmud, Qinghai was not so nice either. But Anshun is worse. Saga is the worst town I visited in Tibet, but it is still nicer than Anshun. Although you only get running water in Saga from 7 PM to midnight and it's damn cold because there's no heater or insulation in the walls, at least there are clean, cheap rooms.
In Anshun, I visited at least 5 hotels looking for cheap dormitory style rooms, but all of the hotels I visited were seedy-looking, dark, and dirty. They were all far, far back in dark alleys. Some were so far back that I refused to go any further in the alley to visit the hotel. The budget hotel recommended by Lonely Planet (Anju Binguan) removed its budget, dormitory-style rooms when it remodeled, and was no longer a good deal (although it was the least seedy of the hotels I visited).
I finally settled on a hotel over a restaurant (20 RMB) that was brightly lit, not in some back alley, and looked liked they actually changed the sheets before I came. It is common in China for some restaurants to also have guest/hotel rooms. It is even more common in China for cheap hotels to not change the bedsheets after every guest, or very often at all. I ran into plenty of the latter while looking for a hotel room in Anshun.
The downside of the hotel that I chose is that every budget room in it is absolutely, positively insecure. I poked around about 5 different rooms and they were all woefully insecure. The 3 rooms facing the exterior of the building all had open windows with wires coming in from the outside. You could walk on the ledge from a common area into any of these rooms through the open window. All of the interior rooms have holes cut out of the wall about 10 feet high to provide ventilation. There is only the flimsiest plastic mesh covering the ventilation cutouts, which are more than large enough for a person to fit through. The plastic mesh could easily be cut or torn apart by hand - but what's more troubling, I'm afraid it could actually be removed and later replaced with a little more care. Oh, and the doors and locks are a joke. The doors are the flimsiest hollow wood constructions I can imagine (I think I could poke through the door with 2 fingers), and the padlocks and latches are equally decorative. You wouldn't even have to break the door or the lock to get in. You could just unscrew (or rip out) the 2-3 screws attaching the latch.
I really should just pay $15-25 for a secure room in some Chinese hotel with hookers (Yes, if you pay that much for a hotel room in China and you are a male travelling alone, it automatically comes with hookers for a small additional fee) instead of trying to find a $2.50 budget room. It would certainly be worth the peace of mind of not having to worry about my backpack while I'm away from the room.
It certainly didn't help that I arrived in Anshun at night and the weather is cold and drizzling. Perhaps Anshun will look more like a pair of more pleasant body parts in the morning and I can chuckle to myself.
Ok, wait. Golmud, Qinghai was not so nice either. But Anshun is worse. Saga is the worst town I visited in Tibet, but it is still nicer than Anshun. Although you only get running water in Saga from 7 PM to midnight and it's damn cold because there's no heater or insulation in the walls, at least there are clean, cheap rooms.
In Anshun, I visited at least 5 hotels looking for cheap dormitory style rooms, but all of the hotels I visited were seedy-looking, dark, and dirty. They were all far, far back in dark alleys. Some were so far back that I refused to go any further in the alley to visit the hotel. The budget hotel recommended by Lonely Planet (Anju Binguan) removed its budget, dormitory-style rooms when it remodeled, and was no longer a good deal (although it was the least seedy of the hotels I visited).
I finally settled on a hotel over a restaurant (20 RMB) that was brightly lit, not in some back alley, and looked liked they actually changed the sheets before I came. It is common in China for some restaurants to also have guest/hotel rooms. It is even more common in China for cheap hotels to not change the bedsheets after every guest, or very often at all. I ran into plenty of the latter while looking for a hotel room in Anshun.
The downside of the hotel that I chose is that every budget room in it is absolutely, positively insecure. I poked around about 5 different rooms and they were all woefully insecure. The 3 rooms facing the exterior of the building all had open windows with wires coming in from the outside. You could walk on the ledge from a common area into any of these rooms through the open window. All of the interior rooms have holes cut out of the wall about 10 feet high to provide ventilation. There is only the flimsiest plastic mesh covering the ventilation cutouts, which are more than large enough for a person to fit through. The plastic mesh could easily be cut or torn apart by hand - but what's more troubling, I'm afraid it could actually be removed and later replaced with a little more care. Oh, and the doors and locks are a joke. The doors are the flimsiest hollow wood constructions I can imagine (I think I could poke through the door with 2 fingers), and the padlocks and latches are equally decorative. You wouldn't even have to break the door or the lock to get in. You could just unscrew (or rip out) the 2-3 screws attaching the latch.
I really should just pay $15-25 for a secure room in some Chinese hotel with hookers (Yes, if you pay that much for a hotel room in China and you are a male travelling alone, it automatically comes with hookers for a small additional fee) instead of trying to find a $2.50 budget room. It would certainly be worth the peace of mind of not having to worry about my backpack while I'm away from the room.
It certainly didn't help that I arrived in Anshun at night and the weather is cold and drizzling. Perhaps Anshun will look more like a pair of more pleasant body parts in the morning and I can chuckle to myself.
posted by Coquin at 11:20 PM
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