Tuesday 14^th January, 2020 1430 Tianshui

Not everything the internet tells you is necessarily true. According to Google maps, our hotel was 1.4km from Tianshui south railway station if you walked, about 4km by car. It took half an hour in the taxi.

Now, when booking the hotel a week previously, I had gone directly to the IHG site in order to take advantage of the prepaid advance booking discount. Except I couldn't because there was no option to use Unionpay. Well I could but that meant using my UK card and incurring exchange and NST fees which would have wiped out any savings. And booking through a third party means you don't get your reward points.

So I went on the “guest services” webchat and was told the reason was because the hotel doesn't accept Unionpay. That seemed ridiculous to me for an hotel in China but I ended up booking for the higher rate, paying on arrival but securing it with my UK card on the basis that if I took cash with me to settle nothing would be deducted from it.

When we got here I had a whinge to reception about it being idiotic they never accepted Unionpay, only to be told they do! Was it Booking.com who said this? No – your own company's website! Needless to say a suitable missive has been emailed to IHG and I await their reply.

The room is spacious with everything you need and despite said website saying it was non-smoking throughout (that would have meant leaning out of the window for a puff), I sit here contentedly inhaling in a smoking room. To my dismay there was no soap in the bathroom (only body wash, which I hate), no razor (I could have brought my own had I known) and no body lotion.

Now you may think I could suffer these deprivations and indeed I could but nonetheless when we went out to dinner I asked at reception. Soap and razors were delivered but they actually don't keep body lotion. I can hardly complain. Some of you may be wondering what on earth would a grizzled old salt want with body lotion so I shall tell you. The Lanzhou climate has dried my legs and if I don't use it I scratch them in my sleep and end up bleeding. My back also itches to distraction left unmoisturised.

For lunch we walked miles. I didn't want lunch but Alice naturally did. I wanted a beer. After a hike we found somewhere, a hotpot place. Alice asked for the least spicy soup they did. When it was placed on the hotplate I was aghast, it was packed with evil, fiery red chillis! I tried just one mouthful of beef. It was beautifully tender but you know occasionally when you chew something and you get the impression in about a minute it's going to kick you in the nuts? It did. My mouth was on fire for about two hours.

In the evening we found a little place fifty yards from the hotel and went in, originally to have dumplings. However a picture on the menu of pork and pineapple dispelled that notion. Plus some “man to” (steamed bread rolls) with two different types of pork, one marinated in stinky tofu, completed the order. The first was lovely but for me the pork for the steamed rolls was not to my liking. And we over-ordered so there is a doggy bag which will end up in Lanzhou tomorrow.

We were up early this morning as breakfast ends at 0930 and anyway Alice wanted to climb Maijishan to see the grottoes. With only one bus a day taking two hours to get there, I plumped for a taxi. About an hour each way, an all-in price of 350¥ and the driver will take you there and wait to bring you back. It seemed reasonable to me.

Being a Holiday Inn Express I hadn't expected much. There would be no bar and the restaurant would only open for breakfast. I was however hoping I could get some bacon and eggs with toast. No bacon, only chicken sausages (I still say there is something bizarre about them) so it looked as if I would sit watching Alice eat whilst I drank juice.

The restaurant manager, clearly too good to be in an Express, noticed and came and asked me if he could organise something I could eat! Surprised, I said some bacon and a sunny side up egg would be nice and it was a pity the sausages weren't pork. Well blow me if he didn't get them to rummage in the freezer and get them! Ok, the bacon wasn't good and the sausages were inedible for me, they were typically Chinese bangers but I couldn't knock him for trying. Afterwards I explained why I never ate the sausages and said tomorrow I would probably just get a couple of eggs and have them on toast. He apologised and started to explain the upmarket hotels have all that and I stopped him by saying I knew the situation. He hasn't long been here, previously he had worked at an IHG 5* place and I think they are wasting him here, he reminds me of my Hilton GM friend – top of the game.

Now I climbed that mountain two years ago courtesy of a jolly laid on by the Bureau of Foreign Expert Affairs for the province and all I could recall (aside from the fact that the climb all but destroyed me) was that the coach parked close to the foot of the mountain. So this morning we were dropped off at the ticket office, Alice bought a ticket for 80¥ for admission and grottoes, mine was for 25¥ seeing as I would not be ascending. Jesus Christ! We got up the steps and I forked out for a little bus to take us (I thought) to where we had been taken the first time but no, it took us part of the way and then it was an uphill hike from there on. About a mile up roads which at times must have been a 40º gradient! This was even harder than I recalled climbing the mountain was!

Lanzhou is freezing cold. Tianshui is even colder. And Maiji is way colder even than that, and today there was a blustery wind that soon saw me losing feeling in feet, hands and anything above the neck. It was purgatory inverted, waiting for ninety minutes at the bottom while she carried out today's mission.

And then of course there was the walk back afterwards to the taxi. Easier going downhill than the reverse for sure but with each step I was becoming increasingly concerned that my knees would simply buckle and once again I would go down. Given that after a week the pain from the last episode is only just abating, it was a genuine worry. And at the death I took one look at the final stairs down and just said “no”. It terrified me. There were no railings to hold on to and I know had I fallen I would have been killed. A very kind lady who had been chatting to Alice on the final bus back to the exit went and asked for me if there was a less precipitous way out. There was, a bit of extra distance but ultimately only three steps. I can handle them!

I got into our cab with relief. It took half an hour to be warm enough to unzip my coat and now we are toasty in the room. Second and final dinner this evening, we spotted a barbecue restaurant so will give that a whirl.