Beijing hotels are a RIP OFF!!

my culture is your wedding dress morning guys it is the day after my long journey up to Beijing on the train and I've got to tell you about Beijing hotels and quite honestly I'm quite surprised at how expensive they are here in Beijing and I say this is someone who travels around China a lot and I've been to all the biggest cities and tons of small cities you know usually when you travel around China if you go to any city that's not like Shanghai or Beijing or Shannon you can get a really good hotel room for under 200 rmb which is in u.s. dollars I don't know it's like 30 US dollars 20 something years old is whatever I'll put it up sorry you know my conversion I don't know how to do it but even Shanghai and Shenzhen are way cheaper than Beijing it could also I could also just be staying in the most expensive area or something because I'm within the second Ring Road my friend lives around here and the hotels here are stupid expensive you know they're expecting you to pay like up to a hundred over a hundred US dollars a night for like a room that would normally cost you 20 so I'm quite disappointed but I found this place last night for 470 RMB which is about 74 US dollars which is still really expensive it's just a tiny little room that's it it's got it does does have a bathroom in there but it's small and to top it off the oh boy I get a call at 10 past 7:00 in the morning and they're asking me about my visa now you see it's quite normal when you check into a hotel in China they copy your passport because they need to register you with the local police obviously and they copy they have to find the the most recent entry stamp so you know I provided that showed them where that was but yeah 10 past 7:00 in the morning they start calling me what kind of visa do you have like is it a travel visa like no it's a marriage visa and I'm you know when I was my friend Rick Lawson I'd had a couple of drinks and you know I'm not exactly in the mood to be working up that I was expecting to relax that's why I'm paying so much to stay in a hotel right so then they say okay put the phone call me back about five minutes later oh we don't understand what kind of easy you have we have to come up to your room to take a look I'm like what the hell is wrong with you people so actually like kind of cursed them out on the phone a little bit and said listen I'm checking out today I'm gonna bring my passport down to the front disc when I leave you can look then like you know seriously anyway I'm gonna go search for a cheaper place now with my friend Rick and I'm going to basically go hit the streets of Beijing go get some b-roll and go and see about my video which I plan to record the following day I forgot to mention this thing about them being really pedantic about your passports and your visas and stuff has happened to me before in Beijing twice so it seems to be a Beijing thing because no other city Shenzhen yeah they do the whole copy Shanghai they do that they copy your passport but I've never had like extra critical follow-ups like where is this where is that but it's happened to me two times before in Beijing so I guess it's a Beijing thing probably because it's the capital and all that they're probably a little bit more they scrutinize a little a little more when it comes to foreigners staying here in hotels I must say though that there are so many foreigners here in Beijing like it's weird you see them everywhere which is cool we went to this fantastic like brewery micro brew place last night with Rick really good burgers and stuff I got recognized a bunch of times by people on the street so yeah it's it's interesting but it's it's a completely different vibe obviously from somewhere like Shenzhen where there very few foreigners like in total so their explanation for waking me up at ten past seven is that the staff member was going to finish a shift so she wanted to call me before she finished her shift which is super nice anyway don't stay here okay so my friend Rick who's here playing with his new iPhone yeah he suggested we go to this like place in the hutong here this dragon something or other with happy dragon heavy dragon le hotel we checked it up but it's actually more expensive or about the same prices the hotel I was staying in last night so it looks like everything in this area is quite expensive but there's a chain of hotels you can always kind of count on them being fairly ok and low cost in China it's called the seven days inn and there's one not far away so we're gonna go there and see how much that costs because this looks like a hostel to me and to pay like seventy five seventy seven dollars for a hustle man by the way we are walking down what's called a hutong and everybody who lives in Beijing likes to go on about hutongs but basically what they are is they're just grubby old neighborhoods which you know used to be part of the old the old city and this is how people used to live a long time ago and they've been gentrified most of them you know and kind of made into these hipster sort of areas with microbrews and stuff it's nice it's definitely one of the big sort of character well it's one of the parts of the city that gives it a lot of character so if you do visit Beijing you should check out the hutongs but recently they've been kind of breaking them up and making them look all clean again and making them more touristy so I'd say a little bit of the charm is gone but at the same time it's still always worth checking out so we're we're in a hutong and they've got a public bathroom so you know I'm gonna have to take a look and see what it's like inside let's go well if you're here taking a dump no one is ever going to have privacy that's for sure at least I have a western-style toilet at the end here must be for all the foreigners who come here but then that is a men's bathroom ah yes if you can see that sort of yellow and orange over there that is a seven days in but we're going to have to go all the way around to try find the entrance either way if you ever see that kind of building anywhere in China you can be guaranteed a fairly clean room fairly good rates and the guys might think I'm complaining because I know in America to spend $70 or $75 on a hotel's actually not that bad I mean when I was traveling across America some motels cost that you know more the thing is this is China and you usually pay between 15 to 30 US dollars a night for any hotel and I mean really good ones too so that's why I'm complaining and that's why it's such a shock because hotels just shouldn't be this expensive in China so this is the seven days in and I went in there I asked them and yeah much better only 309 RMB for a night we'll see what the room looks like though they're usually okay you know but 309 that's that's way cheaper paid up and let's go see what this place looks like wow this is my cheap and cheerful room see that's not bad honestly much rather had this even got the see-through shower now that's more like it this is actually bigger it's definitely cheaper you can feel it but it's cheap and cheerful and I don't feel like I'm being ripped off now I can relax a book my time in this hotel for the rest of the time I'm in Beijing now I can stop messing about and I can hit the streets alright guys so that's how you get a hotel in Beijing don't get ripped off because in fact this hotel is in the exact same area it was like 500 meters walk away through the hutongs and it's in fact insider hutong which is cool so like I can walk out here and I can get all that vibey stuff and all the hutong things so I'm actually gonna go out and start to get some b-roll with my proper camera because you know these little vlog things I'm doing for you at the moment are all on my phone which you know it doesn't look great tomorrow we're gonna be just exploring Beijing so see you then thanks for joining me guys in another little vlog for those of you who are confused these little vlogs sort of daily vlog things are only going to be going on for a couple of days then my channel will revert back to normal so if you see the minidisc intro you know it's a kind of an amateur vlog thing if you see the VHS tape you know that it's going to be a full-featured serpent's add a video but you know can't wait to see you in the next one either way and I hope you enjoyed it guys and as always you know the drill

Channel: serpentza

Views: 270,367

Rating: 4.8135991 out of 5

Keywords: beijing hotel, Beijing, hotels, travel, China, sightseeing, hutong, hu tong, travel vlog, china how it is, living in china, winston sterzel, life in china, china (country), cultural differences, cultural difficulties, societal issues, china vlogger, china vlog, Serpentza

Id: avdAPZuufk8

Length: 9min 1sec (541 seconds)

Published: Fri May 11 2018