I am in the City of Fuzhou, which is a seaport in Southern China. My flight into Fuzhou had enough tennis players and so I just tagged along with them from Airport to the hotel. It would surely been a challenge otherwise as the airport is about 40 kms from here and there were no taxis at the airport. Just shuttle buses to the city from which point on, one had to catch taxis onwards to their final destination.
I landed late last night and today was just a practice and sign-in day.The courts are a lot slower than Hefei, but the weather is hotter and more humid. In fact, it was 41 degrees Celsius this morning when we practiced with about 70-80% humidity. It cools down a bit in the evenings due to the sea breeze. I practiced twice today and when I went to sign-in, the same referee from last week seemed quite genial. He even asked me if the Indian Tennis Federation was doing enough to help me with the travel.
One thing I have learned in the past week in China is when a hotel has the word “International” in it, BEWARE!!!! It usually means that they probably don’t speak a word of English and do not conform to international standards. Like my current hotel, people who work at the front desk or the restaurant do not comprehend a word of English. Many of the Chinese players now have become my friends and don’t seem to mind playing the interpreter.
Food is definitely a problem here for me. The free buffet breakfast is, to say the least, “interesting” as they don’t even have bread or cereal. I guess last week’s hotel spoiled us quite a bit since it was an international chain of hotels, almost everyone spoke English and even the restaurant had enough continental cuisine.
The draw came out a few minutes ago and guess what-I have a bye!!!!! So no match for me tomorrow.I guess I will play on Sunday. One more day to get acclimatized to the conditions…
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