Taking Matters Into Our Own Hands
March 31st, 2008 by Chris Hansen
On my recent visit back to Shenzhen, China, we had a little… adventure. We were staying at this very nice, posh hotel. It was clean, nice location, large, comfortable rooms - nearly perfect. Until we went to bed, that it is. Sleeping that night was miserable. The bed was basically a slab of plywood with some batting on it. I called down and asked them to do something about it; change rooms, change bed, something.
They brought up a couple of comforters and put them under the bed sheet. A minor adjustment at best and it didn’t do much. Soooo uncomfortable.
The next day, with the thought of that bed waiting for us at the hotel, we decided to fix the problem.We walked over to WalMart, about a five minute walk and bought some air mattresses (five of them). Oh, also a case of water, ’cause you really can’t drink water from the tap here.
We then wheeled the shopping cart with the boxes of mattresses (and a case of bottled water) through the park, across the street, down the alley. Carried the cart up the stairs and then wheeled it THROUGH THE LOBBY, into the elevator and up to the 16th floor.
Giggling the whole time.
Earlier in the day, we had talked to the hotel management and they didn’t have a solution for us for this trip. As we rolled the cart through the lobby, the hotel management staff had no clue what to do with us.
We dispersed the materials (including the bottled water) and then two of us took the cart back to WalMart. I didn’t go to return the cart, but the report back was that the WalMart staff cheered when they took the cart back - they didn’t know what to do with the crazy Americans and we think they were trying to decide whether or not to go after the cart when we returned it.