Jail Cells for Cheap: Guangzhou Pt. 3

The guys left Guangzhou for Hainan; I still had 2 days until my flight to Dhaka. Their last day consisted of meals with friends and finding a wang ba (internet cafe) to print off flight information. China is littered with wang ba's so finding one wouldn't be too difficult -- we use them all the time when we're traveling or our internet goes out. They're just big open rooms with rows and rows of PCs and comfy chairs -- mostly filled with gamers and college students who are so glued to the monitor that a natural disaster couldn't stir them. It's the quitest place you'll find in China.
. . .
Later we had lunch with 3 chinese friends -- 2 girls and a guy, Frank. The meal was phenemonenal! There was a live seafood market below the restaurant where we picked out the fish, shrimp, and scallops we wanted to eat. The staff would fish them out of their tanks and take them straight to the kitchen where the chef would prepare them as we requested.

After the meal, we asked our friends where we could find the nearest net bar...the girls' response was: "Wang ba? maybe it's not safe." ("maybe" always means "definitely") Drew, Keegan, and I just looked at each other. We turned to Frank. "Yeah, there's one by my hotel."
. . .
There turned out to be open rooms at his hotel. "It's not nice, but it's really cheap." That sounded fine to me. Little did I know that I was about to be charged 40 yuan a night ($5.70) to sleep in a converted jail cell. The door was metal and looked like something out of the 1940's. When you turned the key in the lock a little square door opened and your hand shot through. To actually unlock the door you had to lift up the metal bar on the inside of the door and slide it across. The bars on the windows were the added touch. Welcome to jail.
. . .
My bathroom was furnished with a water heater and a bucket. I was a little leary of the water heater since I could distinguish the flames heating the water. It will not explode. It will not explode. It will not explode. There was also the shower head which was conveniently positioned over the squatter (also my sink drain). It was never exactly appetizing to spit my toothpaste into the squatter -- always felt like I needed to brush them again.
. . .
The last full day I was in Guangzhou I was treated to a tour of the city by a few of my friends: Ken, Clark, and Moon. We saw the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park and the famous Beijing Lu (Beijing Street) where you could see the layers of buried roads that had been used during the ancient dynasties.

They also showed my around their campus -- the Guangzhou School of Business. "This is the only field...this is the only gym...this is the only library...this is the only park...everything here is 'only'." It looked quite big to me, but, then again, Guangzhou has a "university city" which is a city comprised of 10 or so university campuses, complete with restaurants and malls and post offices and anything anyone would ever need.
. . .
I went back to my jail cell that night and flipped through the ear-piercing, terrible acting Chinese TV shows but I didn't even notice them, because in less than 12 hours I would on a plane out of this country -- the first time since I arrived in August.