kd***ton@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:22:03 +0100, Sarah Eggleston wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>I'll think about it. In the meantime, here's a summary I wrote...
>>http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sarah.eggleston1/india_2007/figures.html
>
>
> I have a few questions....
>
> Did you go to that call center and punch that little guy out for me?
>
Sorry... I should have done ours too while I was there.
> Why didn't you check in while on that cheap internet?
>
Cos its such a nightmare to post from Google groups - especially if you
don't have a Google account. You don't get newsreaders pre-configured in
internet cafes. I did read occasionally, but there wasn't a lot of
traffic.
> What was the cheapest hotel room like (glurb) ?
>
Ok, so the short answer is... fine. All the bedrooms I stayed in were
pretty much cleanish.
Oops, here's the long answer.
Mmm, let me rephrase that, I suspect my standards dropped after a month
or two. The cheapest rooms were in no way worse than the mildly more
expensive (600 - 1000 rupees) rooms, and in some cases better.
They have a nasty habit in many hotels of cleaning only with water (no
detergent), and not cleaning the walls or any luxury furniture items
like a sink shelf or mirror or bedside table (all of which add value to
a room price) at all, so after a very short time the rooms get dingy and
stained. That habit went all the way up to 4*! Come to think of it,
that'll be why the cheapest rooms, which don't have a mirror or sink
shelf or bedside table, feel cleaner.
However, mostly they do sweep or mop the floor between guests, so the
look is worse than the actuality. Just don't touch anything. Or put your
toothbrush down.
In one or two places I just ignored the insect-blood patches on the
walls: most likely bedbugs or mosquitos. I think my sleeping bag liner
helped protect from bedbugs, and I didn't have a lot of hassle with
mosquitos (winter isn't their season).
I didn't stay in any shared dorms and always picked a room with a
private bathroom as I was well under budget all through. All the
bathrooms had a Western style toilet (not a deliberate choice, it has
become the norm. I did use the other kind while travelling, especially
on trains. Quite a few of the cheapest only had a cold shower, but I can
survive that occasionally.
The biggest horror is bathroom floors - and that isn't confined to the
cheapest hotels, but affects all of them up to 2* or so. I've got a
draft note somewhere on the subject, it seemed a bit rude for general
consumption so I never did publish it on facebook.
Indian laundry is fairly good once you appreciate that they don't have
whiteners, brighteners, bleach, or perfumes in their wa****ng powder, so
after a couple of washes everything ends up grey, and the colour stains
don't ever really come out. I think most are caused by henna, tikka, and
curry - I hope! You can get that blue stuff (ultraviolet drops?) for
keeping whites white, some of you might remember Robin blue from UK
history, but it doesn't remove stains. In cheaper hotels you often don't
get sheets or towels, but you probably wouldn't want to use them if you
did. In some medium hotels I chose not to :-) You can buy bleach and
powerful detergents there these days, but they are very expensive
im****ted novelties and use is not widespread.
I travelled with a sleeping bag liner and one of those magic quick dry
folds-really-small towels, both of which pack small and light and were
<phew> very very sensibly in my daysack so didn't get stolen. I have
since donated them to charity: I'm not doing budget travel again!
Overall it was ok. If you're thinking of a similar trip, my other magic
toy was a clockwork torch, which was dead cool until it got nicked with
the rest of my luggage. I replaced it locally with a rechargable which
was very cheap and nearly as good, as long as you remember to recharge
it...
The worst hotels (and they were by far not the cheapest) had wildlife.
1) 800 rupees for a picturesque wooden hut (I should know better!) which
had a family of cockroaches. The kiddies were teaspoon sized and the big
daddy was soup spoon sized. They were ****ny mahogony in colour, and
oval-shaped rather than long, which I think makes them brown
cockroaches, probably a kind that mostly likes to be outdoors. They were
impervious to low-solution DEET.
2) 425 rupees for a room with only a cold showe. I don't mind now and
then, but because my last room hadn't had hot water either, I had paid a
whole 100 rupees extra for what turned out to be a hot water tap at knee
height. It had termites in the roof for company - everything got covered
in white powder, and a couple of tiny geckos.
3) A shark^H^H^H^H^H manager who wanted to offer me marriage, or
whatever else I liked as long as he got to sleep with me and didn't mind
too much that he already had one wife. Oh and ... there were no (zero,
0, zip, nada, nought) other guests in the place.
I ran out of 1 and 3 in a hurry without staying (the joy of a flexible
budget...)
The termites were kind of friendly once you got used to them. I quite
like geckos, although they are *very* noisy for such small creatures. I
got a shock when one ran out from under a pillow once!
Anyhow, the good news is I'm a wonderfully easygoing houseguest now.
> What is superdrug eye gel? (I read it as eyeglue).
>
http://www.handbag.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=246894
Superdrug is a fairly cheap chemist shop in the UK. Chemist as in beauty
products, rather than chemist as in pharmacy prescriptions.
Or were you asking about eye gel?
-Sazz
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