Continued lodging chaos in Lijiang

I felt that something was fishy about the homestay I had booked when I didn't receive any check-in instructions, nor any responses from the hosts to my questions. On top of that, I also didn't have an exact address, only a rough GPS marker on a map.

Well, I figured I'd just take a bus to the point on the map and have a look around for the place, then everything would fall into place. I chose the bus over a taxi because it was a direct connection by bus that took only 15 minutes. If only I would've understood the bus scheduling a bit, haha. I ended up sitting in the correct bus for about an hour before it finally started moving. Apparently I had gotten on right at the beginning of the drivers break.

Once I got out of the bus, I immediately noticed something was wrong. Right where the GPS point was, was a governmental building. And across the road a gigantic shopping mall. There were no residential buildings anywhere to be seen.

I needed support, so I called up Schie, who helped me to research the place that I had booked. It turned out to be in a completely different location - actually in the ancient city of Lijiang, which I had purposefully tried to avoid with my booking. After I got proper directions from Schie, I showed up at the place. Apparently the Schie had already called the owner, so they were expecting me. Not with good news, though.

Apparently the listing I had booked through Agoda was around seven years old, and in the meantime the owners changed. However, the new owners didn't care much about non-chinese platforms, so they didn't even receive access to them from the previous owner. Who didn't delete the listing either, though.

They had a room for one night, and after that they'd have to kick me out. Since I was quite exhausted and really didn't want to deal with an evening accommodation search, I agreed on staying there for one night. Of course they couldn't cancel my booking, and I had to deal Agoda customer service to get a refund for my nonrefundable booking, and had to pay roughly double what I had originally booked at for the one night. But at least it was a really nice room 😍

After deciding to not deal with the lodging chaos anymore for the night, I headed out into the ancient city of Lijiang, which was right outside my door. I have to say, it really is super picturesque. But it was also soooo busy!Leia mais