Sticker shock!

After the race, we had a beer with the Shanghai Tri-club that iron-wife trained with 4 weeks ago. It was just outside of the park at a roadside shop. Huge beer bottles. And huge coconuts (size of a small basketball). We ordered the fresh coconuts. Nice. The price, RMB$6.00. That was not CAD$1.00! When the lady quoted the price, RMB$26.00 I was ready to pay until someone said: "no, no, only these two coconuts". That lady quoted me the entire table's drink. 3 bottles of large beer, Chinese size and 3 fresh coconuts (including my two). That was cheap! I couldn't get a cup of coffee at the Sheraton! Yikes.

Yes, at the Sheraton; don't stay there! Better yet, skip the entire city - Haikou. Crap, crap, crap. When I checked out, I got a sticker shock again! It came to a grand total of RMB$10,957 and some change!!! I initially budgeted RMB$6,500.00 at the most; well.... Couple of room services and the UNICEF tax which I was never agreed to pay (mandatory). And the other service charges and service charges and local taxes. I didn't see that much good services at all at the hotel. Incidentally, my letter was never responded by the GM.

I had chat with this Aussie on the shuttle to the finish line, he worked for the Hainan Airline (a local airline group). He said there are only 200 foreigner in the city of Haikou. Getting things done around there is hard. He used to be a pilot but now heading up the English program making the pilots to communicate with the Control Tower in English; the Chinese gov't has mandated 60% of the flights, pilots must be speaking English to the Control Tower in China! According to this Aussie, Chinese pilots always have an interpreter sitting behind the pilots in the cockpit translating English instructions to Chinese. Or vice versa; yikes. Interesting to see what this will transpire later.