Surviving a water pipe burst in my Shanghai Hostel
After a very nice dinner in Shanghai with my Chinese friend, which I tried dog, fried noodle with eggs, some sort of fish, and fried dumplings, I was very full and asked my friend to take me back to the hostel. When I arrived at the hostel, I did my usual of quickly pulling down my email to my iPhone and then heading to my room.
I was pretty tired and was looking forward to unwinding. As I stepped closer to my room, I heard what I thought was a shower running in one of the rooms in the same hall as my room. I thought it was a bit strange as my room didn’t have a shower in it and I didn’t think the other rooms in the hall had showers either. I worriedly approached my room because I heard water hitting the floor of the room.
I quickly opened the door and ran back to the front desk to let them know there was a problem with the room. Now, I don’t think if I would have told them that water was on the floor that they would have necessarily believed me at first, so I simply asked the person to come with me to the room to see the problem. After actually seeing the problem, they knew how best to assist me.
The hostel actually offered to put me up in a different hotel because they had no single rooms available, but it was my last night in Shanghai and to be honest, it seemed like more of hassle for both me and them.
Also, luck for me (and them), for some reason, I had left my main bag on the bed and it was not wet at all. The staff was very apologetic of the whole situation as they helped me move what little I had to a shared dorm room. I was able to move rooms in under 5 minutes because I packed light. It would have been even less time if I didn’t have some miscellaneous paper and books to carry with me to the new room. I guess if my bag had gotten wet, I would have been able to confirm the value of fast drying travel clothes, but I would prefer to have a more limited test case. I’m glad it didn’t quite come to that yet…:)
I learned some valuable lessons with this situation:
The value of packing light… Moving rooms would have been more complex and more things might have gotten wet if I wasn’t packing light. Certainly, I was lucky I didn’t have more things because I would have probably left them on the floor meaning they would have got wet when the pipe burst.
Have flexibility and understanding when unexpected things happen… Part of the joy of traveling is dealing with the unexpected. I certainly didn’t expect a water pipe to burst in my room. I could have insisted that my hostel put me in a different hotel, but I was flexible and just switched rooms.
As you travel and have unexpected experiences, try to be flexible and understanding. Learn to deal with situations as they arise, don’t panic, and know that whatever problems that occur will be temporary and are very solvable.
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