I went to China with my girlfriend to attend a wedding and brought a set of wine glasses for the bride and groom. We also wanted to get them a bottle of booze but failed to plan ahead. The champagne at duty free was too expensive, so we looked for a bottle once we got to China. We got in late on Friday and didn’t have a chance to look around, so Saturday morning we were pleasantly surprised to see a building right next to us with a big name in kanji on the top; it ended with the two-character word 酒店. Nice, we thought, and headed over to see what the selection was like, but when we went into the building all we found was a lobby and reception.

Turns out, 酒店 is Chinese for hotel (loosely pronounced jo-dien). I thought that was interesting. Kind of the opposite of the Aussie "hotel pub," which confused the hell out of me when I went to Sydney.