Report April 8

By Dirk

This morning at half past seven the room telephone rang. Nico and I were still in a deep sleep.
What a noise that phone makes, but it kept us awake.
Tony, our guide, says he won’t pick us up at 10am to go to Tianjin, but not until 2am. It appears that no progress has been made at customs, so there is no point in going there earlier.
Sleeping in is no longer possible because we are already awake.
At 2 o’clock we head towards Xingang, the port of Tianjin, 200 km. to the southwest.
There we settle in a luxurious Mercure hotel. We just have to enjoy this luxury for a while, you never know when you will be in a nice hotel bed again.
We have a good internet connection here. The question is whether that will make me happy, because I receive a message from customs that they want to remove the cars from the container themselves, then disinfect them and drive them back into the container. If I could just indicate where the batteries are located, so that they can connect them and drive the cars out.
I send them a message that I don’t think that is a good plan and that I want to remove the cars from the container myself.
Tomorrow morning we go to customs and then I’ll see how that turns out.
They still want a new passport photo of me for my driver’s license that shows my ears well. Well, that sounds nice.
Had a delicious meal this evening in a small local restaurant; a belly full for 60 Yuan (8 euros).
Now that’s a nice meal out.