When size does matter...

The room phone rang. We exchanged confused glances. Fletch casually reached over the bed and picked up the phone. We had checked into Xi'an's the Super House Inn (another

www.elong.net find) only a few hours earlier. Zhe shi shei? Who is this? We have been thinking in broken Chinese for a while now. Ni yao shenme? What do you want?

Our little room in the Super House Inn was very clean, cosy and critically - after being in a state of perpetual frostiness in Pingyao - came with 'independent temperature control system', otherwise known as reverse-cycle air-conditioning. We washed off the remnants of last night's overnight train trip - in a steaming hot shower - and wandered aimlessly through Xi'an's old town - a Muslim Quarter.

We lunched on tasty, although unidentifiable, street food. I gave the young boy cooking our lunch a brief English lesson. "Potato," I said, pointing at the white chunks frying fragrantly in his monstrously oversized wok. He threw in some chillies, cumin and coriander.

"Po-ta-to", he practised dutifully, tasting the new words in his mouth for the first time. "Pota-to. Potato!" I gave my new student the thumbs-up sign. He gave me a toothy smile and a steaming hot plate of "po-ta-to" in return. It only took one mouthful to realise that we were not actually eating potato at all, but a jelly-like substance that borrowed all of its flavour from the spicy sauce around it.

But I digress. The receptionist was on the other end of the phone to Fletchie, talking quickly, excitedly and very loudly in Chinese.

"What's she saying?" I quizzed Fletch. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Dui bu qi, wo ting bu dong," he told the girl on the phone. Sorry, I don't understand you.

The girl continued to talk just as loudly and excitedly, but slowed her pace.

"I think she's asking us if we want another room," Fletch said to me, his eyebrows raised with this new hypothesis.

I then overheard the English-speaking manager cut in: "Hello, you want room upgrade? We think, this room to small for you. We give you deluxe room." If only he knew that last night we slept in bunk beds designed for far smaller bodies than ours.

Our new room features two beds (one which we assume is considered large enough for us - it's a king), two tables, three coffee tables, a sofa, two armchairs, four lamps, a mini-fridge, a kettle, a king-size bed, a single bed, a big flat screen TV (which we lack the skill to turn on), six coat hangers, a spare pillow, four pairs of slippers (enough for Flatuch as well), one shoe shine cloth, two big windows to gaze out at the melting snow, a sign in the bathroom advising 'Electricity hot water - shower time last 40 minutes' and - critically - our very own freestanding 'independent temperature control system'. Now we just need to wait 24 hours for our deluxe room to reach the 'tropical' climate setting.