Fun Times at the Sheraton Binhai

My Clothesline Fiasco

Monday, I left work slightly early to purchase train tickets for the weekend (the window closes at 5:30pm), and then I wandered to a dry cleaner (they don't really have laundromats here since nobody has dryers) just to check the cost.  Believe it or not, it was actually about the same cost as the hotel, so I continued to the grocery store to buy supplies to hand wash: gloves, detergent, and clothespins.

I Googled "hand washing clothes," since I've never really done it before, and then I set to work with my clothes, detergent, and bathtub.  I was done in about half hour and set about hanging all these things up (I probably should've done two rounds...)  There's a retractable clothesline above the bathtub, and when I went to pull it out, it wouldn't extend farther than about 6-7 inches (not so useful).  Being the engineer that I am, I grabbed my pocket knife and unscrewed the clothesline from the wall to try to fix it.  Once removed, I couldn't figure out how to get the back off and decided I was better off asking the hotel to replace it then potentially being charged for breaking it.

Relatively angry (my clothes were all sitting in a wet pile in the bathtub), I took the broken clothesline downstairs and asked them to replace it.  The following is the series of events that occurred:

1. Front desk tells me they will send someone up to look at it
2. A woman arrives at my room, acknowledges that the line is broken, and tells me to wait for a phone call
3. My phone rings, and I'm told (at least I thought) that they are going to come change my clothesline
4. A bellhop shows up at my door with a cart and a new room key and announces he is here to take me to my new room
5. I get really angry, go on a rant about how I'm staying here for 6 weeks, all my stuff is put away, and I'm not going to change rooms
6. The bellhop is very apologetic and tells me to (again) wait for a phone call
7. This time I ask them to speak English, and they tell me they will send their engineers up tomorrow morning
8. I insist on them coming up tonight as my clothes are still in a wet pile
9. The engineers show up (two of them) and once again acknowledge that the clothesline is broken
10. The engineers step out into the hall and make a phone call
11. The engineers return with a new clothesline (seriously that took THAT long) and spend about 15 minutes figuring out how to install it correctly

It was now about 10pm, and I had started doing my laundry at 8:30pm.  What a frustrating evening!  It just goes to show you how their first solution was not to just fix the obvious problem, but instead to just get you out of there so they could figure it out later.

Heightened Hotel Security

Police with police dogs entering the hotel

Tuesday morning, when we got to the lobby to leave for work, there were two metal detectors setup at the entrance, and the lobby was swarming with what appeared to be secret service. We walked outside, and the usual cars sitting and waiting for people were nowhere to be found.  While we waited for the Foxconn van to arrive, I took some pictures, and my co-worker inquired to the head of booking at the hotel about what was going on.  It turns out that the president of Singapore was coming.  By the time we got back from work, all was back to normal, so I guess it was a brief visit.

VIew outside the hotel looking northeast

View outside the hotel looking northwest

Reconstruction of the sidewalk outside the hotel

My co-workers: JA (left) from Malaysia and Blanco (right) from Shanghai

Me and my co-worker CS from Malaysia