The Last 24 Hours in China

It was the morning of August 10th. Holly and I had slept like rocks the night before. We had nothing planned in the morning and ended up sleeping in and simply relaxing. For fear of missing breakfast we got out of bed and headed downstairs to the dinning hall. Breakfast was pretty uneventful. After 19 days of almost the same thing for breakfast we were ready for a change.

Upon return to our room, we took showers, repacked our suitcases to insure our souvenirs were protected. We made an attempt at heading out to the markets but the moment we stepped out from the lobby we realized it was raining. With no interest in getting wet, we headed back to our room. We saw Bimba and Nimalah in the lobby. We were surprised to see them so early. It was 11o’clock and we weren’t due to see them until 12:30. When we reached our room and inserted the card into our door, the light on the doorknob turned red. After many attempts we were unsuccessful in entering our room. I know what you’re thinking we probably just weren’t using the card properly. I mean they are so finicky. We did, however, use the card to get into our room the night before multiple times without a problem and we had been at this hotel before for several nights and used the card without a problem.

The first thing that Holly thought was that the hotel discontinued access since we were checking out in an hour. We went to the lobby, inquired and they told us that the card was working. We took the elevator back up to the 4th floor and attempted our card again without any results. Getting angry at this point we marched back down to the lobby, using the elevator of course and explained to them once again that the card did not work. They told us they would send someone up.

Now, after multiple people and multiple cards and keys were attempted the door still remained locked with all of our luggage inside. I went downstairs and out to the street to go to an ATM so that I could tip our guide and driver, on my way out I saw Bimba again and I told him about the unopened door.

When I arrived back at the hotel a few minutes later Bimba and I went upstairs to check on the situation; still no progress. A man with a toolbox arrived and a locksmith was also called but Bimba decided to take matters into his own hands. There were a group of people all talking in Tibetan so we had no idea really what was going on. The management keyed into the rooms next to ours and they began to scope things out. Based on body language and a rope we realized that Bimba was going to try and exit out a window, remember now we’re on the 4th floor, and climb onto the windowsill and cross over to our room. We tried endlessly to deter Bimba from doing this but he moved fast and before we knew it he had popped in one room and out another; only he popped out the wrong room. Yes, that’s right he had gone out on to the windowsill four floors high and came back in the wrong room. Without skipping a beat he was back out on the windowsill and I watched backwards through the peephole of our room that he was entering our window from the outside. The door opened and there Bimba stood with a big grin on his face.

To Be Continued Next Week.