Hostile Hostel

We overnighted from Dengfeng to Bejing and hopped off the train at 6:30 in the morning at the Bejing West station.  From there we went to chill and have some breakfast and then out to our hostel for the Great Wall.  The hostel in Dengfeng was wanting in a few areas but this one was down right strange.

From the outside it did not look very hospitable and seemingly unmarked.

The inside was just as sparce, but the rooms were bearable.

Some very odd things though, like the main floor bathroom being across a courtyard and in a storage closet.

We have had a variety of different door security mechanisms but this one takes the cake.  Many rooms had an RFID wireless entry system, others a card key, the night prior to this a standard key and tonight no lock at all.  Well, it did have a lock, but they did not have any keys, or at least they would not give them to us.  They said no one has stolen anything for 10 years, ok.

This place was strange.  I caught a very quick glimpse of a room full of computer work stations and a bunch of people as a door quickly shut and locked at the end of the hall.  In fact, there were workstations in every room.  What was this place?  Pirate underground Internet cafe?  Den of cyber criminals?  Was there going to be a midnight raid by the government.  Was the hostel business a front for some clandestine operation?

We came back from our afternoon trip to the wall to find our room reeking of smoke.  I guess that is why they did not lock it.  Our luggage and things appeared to be intact.  Creepy.

And my bed, my bed.  My cloth covered board, hardest thing I have ever slept on apart from rocky ground.

That night I had a cup of soup for dinner it was first class, came with an egg and everything.  I did not notice the graphic on the top until after I spied this sweet eternally packaged egg, I had happy egg soup.

The next morning when we woke up to see the sunrise from the wall it appeared that someone shut the water off.  When we inquired we found that water is shut off for the whole area every night.