Read Online Bound for Vietnam by Lydia Laube - Free Book Online

went up to the sky. My jaw dropped and I thought, No way! I’m not climbing five hundred steps carrying these bags. I turned to a young coolie who, unlike the others, had not been aggressive but had just stood back and offered me a price. ‘Okay mate, it’s all yours,’ I said. He took the bags, I put my mountaineering legs into gear, and up we went.
    The steep stone steps did not appear to have been cleaned since the Ming dynasty. They were overlaid with mud which made the ascent hazardous and mucky. At the top of the first flight the porters re-appeared. They had given up on carrying my bags and, now, having decided I wouldn’t make it the rest of the way, wanted to carry me. The final indignity! When I declined their chair lift, the porters wanted to hold me under the arms and support me. I shooed them off and made it to the top only to encounter another gang of sharks – rip-off taxi drivers quoting ridiculous prices. Knowing that the hotel I wanted was close, I took out my guidebook to show one driver where I wanted to go. A crowd of hundreds instantly materialised and leaned over me to peer at the book. I was squashed in the middle of this mob and developing a galloping case of claustrophobia when I saw my saviour drive up, a young woman in a miniature taxi. I grabbed her and jumped in her car.

4 Three Dog Night
    The taxi driver seemed to understand where I wanted to go. I squeezed myself and my bags into her micro-dot vehicle and off we rattled. At the hotel the notorious discrimination against ‘big noses’ was blatantly exposed in writing. A large sign on the wall listed two prices, Chinese and Foreigner, and the latter was three times the former! I complained, but the price did not come down.
    I sought fresh fields. The next hotel recommended in my book, the Huixianlou, had the same nefarious sign displayed at the reception desk and Foreigners’ rooms were again grossly over-priced. On principle I refused to subscribe to this highway robbery. I was not going to pay such a fee for a room that I knew would not necessarily be clean and most certainly would not have all its accoutrements working. For that price in other countries I could get a positively sanitary hotel room where everything worked, at least someone spoke my language and I was not ill-treated, disdained and ridiculed. The receptionist offered me an eight-bed dormitory for ten dollars. I took it.
    The room actually had seven beds. Either the staff couldn’t count, or the rats ate the other one – there were enough of them, rats that is, not beds. And they had company. The hotel was also infested with cockroaches.
    The beds were crammed together in the room, but only one appeared to be occupied. When I returned late that night, I found, to my astonishment, that the owner of the other bed was a young Japanese man. I had presumed that communal rooms would be segregated. Sharing a hotel room with a strange young man was a bit of a novelty, but no problem. Hiro was amiable and easy to get on with, despite the fact that he had three words of English and I only knew two of Japanese. I gave him some pills and bananas to settle his crook tummy and after two days he was better and we parted good friends. Co-habiting was, in fact, amusing. One morning we wanted hot water to make tea. I said, ‘I’ll get it.’ Hiro said, No, he would. We came out of our room together, he clutching the water jug and I, holding the thermos. A pile of Chinese who were waiting for the lift goggled. A Chinese man – and my Japanese friend could have passed for one – getting off with a foreign woman, is punishable practically by death in this country. I had read horror stories about western men ending up in gaol just for being seen with a Chinese girl.
    The dormitory was on the ninth floor and had extensive windows that gave a good view, but also vertigo. The impression I got was that Chongqing was made up of building construction sites. Wherever I looked, cranes pierced