On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:56:02 +0100, Sarah Eggleston
<sarah.eggleston1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
<snip>
>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 you can a room, but it costs more if it's clean? Sounds like here
(see the video I posted elsewhere.)
> 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.
Cheap and dirty seems cleaner than expensive and dirty, because you
got such a good deal <>.
>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.
I don't even do that here- I take a small bottle of sanitizer and
clean the counters myself- my husband used to think I was going
overboard, but after I showed him that video, I think he's convinced.
- But how do you stay in a room without touching anything? Just wear
shoes the whole time, squat over the toilet, and stand up and douse
yourself with water from the faucet? Come to think of it, I've done
that, too. Maybe I've been to India and didn't know it? We did that
in a motel in Mexico, blech.
>
>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).
What was the temperature, generally?
>
>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.
The kind where it's just a hole?
> Quite a few of the cheapest only had a cold shower, but I can
>survive that occasionally.
My cousin spent time in Italy in a total-immersion Italian language
course. Their room was nice, but they don't have shower curtains, so
the whole bathroom basically gets wet.
>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.
What's the point of cleaning the floors in the rooms, but not in the
bathrooms?
>
>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?)
Yeah- bluing- they used to use that here when I was little.
> 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...
Did anything dear or expensive get taken with your luggage?
>
>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.
I am in the South. If you don't have those here, something's wrong.
>
>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
Gee, what a golden op****tunity.
> 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.
That's kind of creepy. Did you make all these reservations in
advance? Or just as you went?
>
>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!
I like lizards and such, just not anything poisonous.
>Anyhow, the good news is I'm a wonderfully easygoing houseguest now.
I should say so.
KS
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