Three Ps in a Pod: Three Men, Two Beds, One Dream

I’ve always gotten weirdly excited at the prospect of sleeping in strange places. As a youth, I joined the Scouts just to join their regular jaunts to various fields in Wales and camp under the stars. And as a rogue teenager, me and my mates used to spend summer nights drinking cider before happily passing out for the night on the wicket of the local cricket club, rising at dawn to gorge ourselves on the bounty of fresh milk and orange juice the milkman had recently lain at the neighborhood doorsteps.

So ever since I’d learned of the existence of “pod hotels,” I’d dreamed of spending the night in one. To a serial strange-sleeper, these represented the Holy Grail.

A few years back, when I visited Tokyo, I had the chance to realize the biggest of my somnial ambitions … but I awoke the next morning fully clothed, half inside my mounted catacomb and half out, remembering none of it. The effects of all-you-can-drink gin & tonic at a Japanese karaoke had rendered my night in the pod hotel a failure. I had wasted a crack at my own personal big time. So you can imagine my delight a few weeks back when, crammed into a leaking rickshaw on a particularly virulent night of rain, I espied the neon signage for a “Pod Inn” in Tuanjiehu. I immediately pitched the idea to my editor that I spend the night there on the company tab. But how to make a story of it?

The Pod Cast

I’m six-feet-six inches tall. Particularly gangly, and more awkward a soul you’d be hard-pressed to encounter. The idea of me spending the night in a tight capsule was too delicious for my editor to pass up. I quickly recruited another staturally awkward friend in Peter. He’s a short, stout gentleman – some might say rotund. Again, not a build ideally suited to sleeping in a giant Coke can. The third of our misshapen trio, Paul, is both chubby and tall at six-feet-three inches. Together, we make a dream lineup for a potentially awkward night of cold storage-style slumber.

An Early Setback

Because my plan was to get my podular cohorts dead drunk before we went along to the Pod Inn, I wanted to check-in early that evening to ensure smooth sailing when we returned later that night. That’s when the Pod Inn Tuanjiehu informed me that laowai were not allowed to stay there. Passport in hand, I trudged outside, numb in the realization that fickle fortune was mocking me, and my shot at redemption had been tugged away from me as readily as it had been presented.

I glumly recounted the episode to my colleagues and the article was promptly spiked. Crestfallen, I couldn’t be bothered with work that morning. But then – a breakthrough. A web search turned up a second Pod Inn out at Zhongguancun.

Phone calls were made, and joy: foreign guests were welcome! I had been handed another chance. The booking was made.

P-Day Approaches

The week dragged but P-Day eventually came around and we intrepid podsters were again reunited at a friend’s leaving party. I was itching to get to the hotel, but risked their ire if I were to pull them away from this gathering to embark on a 50-minute taxi journey to the opposite end of the city. And so we stayed and we drank. All the while, I dropped subtle hints suggesting we should be on our way, but they wouldn’t be swayed and selfishly wished to remain enjoying the company of our soon-to-be-erstwhile friend. At 3am, they were finally ready to go. Pie-eyed and belligerent, I eventually managed to pour the pair into a cab.

An hour-long journey later, I woke the snoozing duo and giddily led the Ps into the lobby. It wasn’t all that different from what I remember the Tokyo pod lobby looked like. Then came the first sign that all was not how it should be.

The desk attendant tossed me a card. “Why on earth do I need a card?” I thought. ‘Surely this lady should just be pointing me in the direction of the pods?” Slightly perturbed, I led the gang in the direction I was ushered. A lift. “Perhaps we’re on the second floor of pods,” I tried to convince myself, but already I felt a tightening in my gut. Peter and Paul were jabbering and giggling away. I, not wanting to fall foul of my Tokyo foible, had opted to stay reasonably sober. And so I traipsed along the dimly lit corridor with my increasingly loutish compodriots in tow, aimlessly looking out for the capsules.

But I didn’t need to check. I knew that I held in my hand a room key. I’d been sold a lie, and like a fool I’d gobbled it up with extra relish. But there was still time for one more crushing disappointment.

As I flung open the door to a tiny, stuffy, scruffy urinal of a room, a shudder of disappointment cracked through me. Peter and Paul barged past me and fell face first and flat out onto the only two beds in the room.

Like a pair of drunken sows, they were each snoring already. Fickle fortune had saved her final and most sadistic trick for the last. As I took up my place on the floor at their feet, laying down a hand towel as my sheet, with the dust of an unswept floor as my pillow, to settle into a broken, dreamless series of cat naps interrupted steadily by the sleepy snorts of two drunken beasts, I realized I’d have the devil’s own time convincing my editor to send me to Tokyo.

Click here to see the September issue of the Beijinger in full.