208 days ago
208 days ago
My boyfriend, usually a jovial travelling companion, was using the tone of voice he reserved for ominous situations, like the time he'd directed me to swim quickly out of a leech-filled gorge in Northwestern Australia. He knew I'd have turned hysterical if he'd told me why.
This time we were in a drab, third-floor room of a budget hotel in Taipei, late arrivals after spending a few days on Taiwan's east coast. I quickly calculated the probability of leeches being in the bathroom: low to zero. In the meantime, John had thrown his clothes back into the top of his backpack and was tying his hiking boots on again."What's going on?" I asked, already panicking. John took me into the bathroom and pointed up to the ceiling. It was a cheap modular bathroom, the ugly kind that arrives ready to stick into any budget hotel room, and one of the ceiling panels was sagging.
"I saw a tiny bit of brown paper sticking out," John said with some despair, "So I pulled out the panel and saw there are these packages." In the gap, clearly visible now, were two brick-shaped parcels tied up with brown paper. One had a torn corner through which we could see plastic wrapping binding up a whole lot of white powder.
"You didn't open it, did you?" I quietly asked.
"It was already torn a bit. I just wanted to see what it was. I never thought ..."
"What are we going to do?" I asked. "Are they drugs?" The strongest addiction I'd ever had was to one of the mystery herbs and spices in fried chicken, so this was really not my area. White powder, hidden in the false ceiling of a bathroom - what else would it be?
"I think we should go downstairs and tell the manager this stuff is here and ask him to call the police," John said.
"How will they know it wasn't us that put it there?"
"Why would we tell them about it if it was ours?" John answered.
It seemed the most logical plan, even with my brain already running away along all kinds of movie-length plotlines. We gathered our backpacks and took the wonky lift back down to the reception. The night manager had just begun a new round of Solitaire on his computer and it took a couple of loud coughs to get his attention. John explained what we'd found and the man sparked up with interest.
"I will get it," he said. "Please wait." He bumped his way out of the tiny reception area and took the lift we'd brought down. Clearly, this was the moment when actual criminals would flee the scene. We stood at the desk and waited.
The man came back with the packages, shedding the brown paper wrapping as he approached the desk. He pulled open one of the plastic bags and gave the powder a sniff, then a taste. "Can you call the police?" John asked again.
"First give me your passports," he said. He'd been too absorbed in his computer game to bother with this when we’d checked in, now we were interesting cases. Reluctantly, we handed them over. "Sit down," he commanded.
When the police arrived, three officers trickled in like they were just starting a shift. The fat old officer leaned up against the desk for a while, before removing his gun belt to relieve pressure on his huge gut. The lithe young officer took a sample of the white powder and subjected it to some kind of inconclusive test, which involved placing it with another substance in a plastic tube and then stomping on it in a crazy dancing style. The third officer nearly missed all the action and impressively managed to get stuck between the automatic sliding doors at the hotel entrance.
Finally, the police and the manager spoke to us. One of the policemen spoke reasonable English. "We do not think it is drugs. We will take it to the station for testing. You can go."
It all seemed too simple. The manager offered us a new room and we took our gear there and sat down, but soon changed our minds."If it's a cover-up, then someone will know we found their stash and got it confiscated, and they'll know which room we're in!" John thought aloud. Too many TV crime shows had got me even further than this. My mind strayed to a nicer hotel we'd walked past and dismissed as too expensive. John and I turned to speak at the same time.
"Let’s get out of here!"
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