My Coffee Ordeal in Kunming

If I still have any readers left after the disgusting start to my mini-series of less glamorous travel experiences in China, then you’re about to be rewarded for your bravery with an anecdote with no mention whatsoever of toilets!

I’m in Kunming in Yunnan province with a fellow volunteer. We’re fast approaching the end of our summer holiday and after a number of hard-sleeper trains and dingy hostels we’re feeling a little rough.

Now this may sound like an odd thing to have cravings for in the middle of summer, but we were dying for a cup of coffee. Coffee was hard to come by in China at that time. In the province of Hunan where I worked, I could only get hold of instant coffee, and it was very expensive if you were on a volunteer’s allowance.

So in the Kunming summer, we went hunting for a cup of coffee, and soon realized that our best bet was one of the bigger hotels. As far as I remember Kunming at that time didn’t exactly have rows and rows of posh hotels, but we struck luck with the very first hotel we found.

They only had instant coffee, but we were still ecstatic to be enjoying a cup of coffee and some cake. We sat for as long as we could possible drag out drinking a cup of coffee, but eventually we had to ask for the bill.

Now we had left most of our money in the safe in the 4-bed dorm room at the Kunhu hotel where we were staying, but had brought enough money with us for our little afternoon indulgence.

Or so we thought. My ears turned very red, when we came to the realisation that we didn’t have enough money on us to cover the bill! After a brief moment of panic, we agreed that I had to take a taxi back to our hotel, and bring back enough money to pay the bill.

While my fellow traveller explained the situation to the waiter, I ran out to hail a taxi. A female taxi driver picked me up, but we couldn’t have gone more than 2-300 metres before she ran into a car in front of her. Luckily no one was hurt and she hadn’t caused any damage to either of the cars. As we drove on she was trying to explain to me that it hadn’t really been her fault, but I was just very anxious to get to the hotel.

Without any further accidents we arrived at the hotel and without paying her I asked her to wait a few minutes, so she could take me back. She didn’t protest, so I ran to our room to get my money out of the safe.

But my misfortunes were not over, I couldn’t open the safe! The code I had just wouldn’t work, and I had no choice but to run down to the lobby to try to get them to open the safe for me.

When I got to the lobby, the female taxi driver was now waiting by the front door, probably thinking that I had done a runner. So in pidgin Chinese I explained to the taxi driver that I wouldn’t be much longer, and then turned to the receptionist to try to convince him to open the safe for me.

Understandably he wasn’t easily persuaded as I was sharing the safe with 3 other people, but in the end he agreed to walk up to the room with me to open the safe. Luckily my money was in a money belt, which also contained my Chinese photo id, so I could show the receptionist that I was only taking what was mine out of the safe. As soon as I had shown him my id, I ran with my money belt down to the now rather sour looking taxi driver. I humbly paid and thanked her, when we arrived at the hotel where my fellow volunteer was waiting with a bill that needed to be settled.

What an ordeal for a cup of coffee! We paid the bill and walked out of the hotel. Needless to say we did not get cravings for coffee again on that trip, and I took my money belt with me everywhere I went for the rest of that summer.

TAGS: less glamorous travel experiences, travel