Crazy Old Sichuan Bag

Trip Start Feb 25, 2006

148

Trip End Jun 24, 2009

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Where I stayed

Ice Mountain hostel

(Songpan hotels)

Flag of China Songpan, China
Wednesday, August 29, 2007

One of the other benefits of 5 star travel is that you don't have to work around bus schedules, especially if there is only 1 bus at 7am. After a couple hours in a taxi that Dennis and Anna hired to take us from Jiuzhaigou to Songpan, we arrived in the old walled city. They checked into their pre-booked hotel on the south side of town. I figure it would be difficult to meet up if I was on the North side of town where all the guest houses were. So we looked at a beat up old restaurant that had rooms to let. I looked at a room and it was OK and she was willing to give me the whole room for 20Y, but it had a shitty toilet (pun intended) and no shower. It was close enough to their hotel so I said OK against my better judgment and paid her before we went into town to eat. This is where we found out that their hotel is far on the other side of town and our driver said that it was dangerous to walk around at night in that part of town. So I decided to move to the better part of town where all the restaurants and massage places were

North Gate

. I just hoped that the old lady would let me move out after only dropping my bags off a couple hours earlier. When we got back to the restaurant, it was all closed up and the riot gates were down. I'm thinking that this old bat has gone thru my bags and decided to retire on the money that I had in my stuff. We called the number on the door and she said that she was at the bank and wouldn't be back for 30 minutes. I figure she's either stalling while she escapes or she's gone and deposited my 20Y all happy she finally got a lodger in the shit hole she was running. When she got back, we tried to explain to her that I wanted to give her back the room because it was too inconvenient especially if she's gonna lock up every time she goes out. This is where she lost her mind. At first she said it was OK, but that she'd only give me half my money back. When we asked her why, she said that someone had come by to rent my room and she turned them away because I had already take it. All happy about her story, she decided that she wasn't going to refund any of my money. When I called her on her blatant lie, by opening the other doors to her empty identical rooms, she said that they didn't come but had called or something equally stupid. This is where I lost my temper. I don't mind if you just say sorry, you've already rented the room and I'm a crazy old bat that doesn't offer any refunds. But when you start lying to me and generally being a very disagreeable bitch, I wanted a pound of flesh or something in kind

Statue of Songpan

. When I couldn't find anything of value to this crazy old bat anywhere in the spartan rooms, I made a hasty mistake and grabbed for the key she was holding thinking that 20Y would be a reasonable key deposit and if I lost the key that would be fair enough. Unfortunately, this crazy old bat wasn't as slow as I had expected. I felt like Grasshopper trying to grab the pebble out of the master's hand. Here's where the situation got even uglier than her. She started to scream all kinds of obscenities at me and then got violent. She grabbed an spray can of something and started waving it at me trying to hit me with it. Our driver and Anna had to hold her back. This was like some surrealistic shit out of a B movie. I decided this was a lost cause and took my bags and went down to the car. She started to spit at me from upstairs and I told her to shove the 20Y up her ass. Unfortunately, that part wasn't translated, but I think she at least got the gist of my meaning. Then she decided to come downstairs and picked up a pair of charcoal tongs and started waving it at me. As she got closer, I came close to taking a swing at her with my water bottle, but before she got close enough the driver just about tackled her. Fortunately, my flight or fight instincts were intact and I decided not to pick up a weapon of my own and club her over the head with it. I figure I had all the right in the world since she attacked me first, but I figure that might be difficult to explain to a small town sheriff that she probably at least knows if not a relative. Instead I got int the car and closed the door and we drove off. It's really strange. Most places that I've stayed, I either become friends of the owners or the staff and they've invited me to join them for meals and drinks, but here I barely set foot in the place and the owner is brandishing weapons at me. Fortunately, I found a nice place, Ice Mountain Hostel, where the owner was very nice and gave me a 3 person en suite room all to myself for 20Y right next to the best restaurant in Songpan, Emma's Kitchen. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the Crazy Old Bat, but it all happened too fast.