Possibly Not
I'm currently looking around for nice holiday destinations in the UK for this year. I randomly came across this on google with the search term "beauty spots uk dorset holiday":

www.shitterton.com
(stubbledchin, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 11:18, 3 replies)

Mate's stag do in Blackpool...
Cheap B&B, probably used by men in suits for dubious activites with ladies of the night (at least that's what it looked like from the outside)...

We head in, and divide into two rooms. In the other room, there are six blokes in three bunk beds, myself, the groom and the best man have a proper bed each in our room - result! Briefly.

Their room: stank of stale sweat and cheap deodorant, they found a used condom in the bathroom bin, but otherwise almost passable.

Our room: Seemingly OK, until I noticed the grubby hand marks on the walls. Hand marks above head height. Hand marks that gradually fade out as they slide down the wall.

I can't sleep all night for the image of some ropey old alcoholic slapper, braced against the wall shouting "OOOOO! TAKE ME JOHNNY!" in a broad Lancastrian accent as some sweaty, slightly overweight, greasy haired spick in nothing but a pair of Reebok Classics and a thick gold necklace pumps away for all he's worth, not helped by hearing similar noises from some of the other rooms over the course of the night either.

That place haunts my very worst nightmares.
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Fri 18 Jan 2008, 11:03, 1 reply)

Cairo - Hotel Suisse
Arrived there late at night after the taxi driver had purposely taken me to the wrong hotel (one owned buy his mate) and I was so tired that I agreed to stay there for one night. 'Reception' was a fat greaser sitting at a card table. I asked him how much it was and he asked me how much I wanted to pay. That should have been my warning.

The room hadn't been cleaned or redecorated since the 70s and a layer of dust coated everything. The windows down to the noisy street were all broken, with the shards still lying on the floor. The sheets were uncleaned from the last resident. A small floor mat, stiff with dirt, stood in front of the hand basin, but when I stood on it, my foot disappeared into the floor. Upon investigation, I found a ragged hole right through the floor to the next room.

The bathroom down the hall looked like an interrogation cell in a Chinese prison (I imagine). Which is to say that the cracked enamel bath was spattered with blood - enough to suggest that a small animal had been executed in it.

I didn't sleep a wink all night, partly because of the street noise, partly because the fight in the corridor - but mostly because of the bed bugs which ate at my torso all night.

Never go to Egypt, It's shit.
(frankspencer, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 11:03, 1 reply)

Kerrang Weekender - Camber Sands a few years ago.
Where do you start with Camber Sands,

First impressions were Auschwittz with kids playground rides, it went downhill from there.

Our 'Chalet' for 4 consisted of camp beds heavily soiled with what we deduced to be scouse jizz stains.

A avocado bathroom suite.. ahem, a bath that was 4 feet long and about 5 inches deep - heavily stained.

Carpets that were no more than oily threads covering a concrete floor.

Net curtains with more dubious stains, brown, yellow, red a delightful mix of all the human body has to offer.

Do people really pay to go on holiday here?

Suffice to say the only redeeming thing was the 2 days of rock music and cheap beer.
( WOLF .™, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 10:47, 1 reply)

Killer Fucking Spiders
Travelling up the east coast of Oz in 98 our tourbus headed about 2 hours inland so that we could experience some far flung fucking sheepstation or other that was reknowned for its homemade farm bread and being in the arse end of nowhere.
It seemed nice enough, being out in the remote countryside, the bread was indeed out of this world, and they laid on enough booze for us to drink ourselves stupid before we rolled our bedtime spliff, whereupon the farmer joined us and regaled us with fact after fact regarding the poisonous spiders he regularly found around his farm and the varying degrees of lethal injury they could inflict.
It was after said smoke however, that it transpired that the "dormitory" in which we were to spend the night was a converted barn. And when I say converted, I mean that they had put beds in it.
And so we settled down to spend the night, in THC-fuelled sheer paranoia, staring up at the dusty rafters overhead which were festooned to buggery with the thickest cobwebs you could ever hope not to see outside of a picture on the internet.
I actually pissed into an empty beer bottle at some point because I was too terrified to put my bare feet out of my sleeping bag and onto the floor.
Fucking BARN...
(Twenty Camels, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 10:46, 1 reply)

Less Hostel and More Hostile
Last year, a couple of mates and myself went off to Budapest for a few days, now seeing as it was 3 lads we decided to go to a hostel and so stayed at the Marco Polo, in Buda, near the middle of town.

There were two things about this place that we liked:
1) It was dirt cheap
2) There was a 24 hour bar! Fantastic

So first night arrives and we decide not to venture too far from the hostel on the first night and go into the hostel bar and play some shithead (It's a card game for the curious).
The music was a bit poor so i decided to ask if i could bring a CD down and play that to which the helpful and friendly bar staff agree, to which I think 'how cool is this'.

Anyways, the night comes and goes and we go down the next day to retrieve my fab cd (they'd played it for the rest of the night).
When we asked for it the following conversation ensues:
Me: 'can I have my CD back please?'
Bar Staff: 'We don't have your CD'
Me: 'But you were playing it all last night!'
Bar Staff: 'I'll look in the back'
Takes about 2 seconds and comes out again 'We don't have you CD'
Well fair enough, my CD must have been that good they want to keep it, was only a writeable one so no big loss.

Fast forward a couple of nights and one of the boys disappears without his jacket (a story for another time) so i end up back in the hostel bar with said jacket, which I promply forget due to severe alcohol consumption.

The next night we traipse back down to the bar and as before the same conversation takes place, excpet this time without the looking in the back room, just a straight 'no'!

Gits

Still the beer was cheap and it was accessable so I'd go back...
(Fuckarma was masturbating into your handbag, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 10:38, 6 replies)

Cardiff
In autumn 2004, I was invited for an interview for a job at Cardiff Law School (Hello, Søren! Hello, Nicky!). I didn't get it, but the person who did got a promotion somewhere else after a year, and so I was reinterviewed in August 2005.

The first time around, I had been accommodated in a lovely B&B. I couldn't remember what it was called, but asked the university to book m in somewhere on the assumption that they'd use the same place - a prospect that pleased me. They didn't.

I turned up to the place they chose this time. From the outside, it looked pretty tatty - and I had plenty of time to study the outside because the front door was locked and there were no lights on. I rang the place, explaining that I had a reservation and that I was stood outside. The manager told me to wait ten minutes.

Once inside, there seemed to be no record of my having booked in; I was invited to wait on the stupendously uncomfortable sofa. The manager reappeared after a while and asked me to follow him and led me to my room.

The place smelled of old fags and there were dog-ends on the landing carpet. In the next room, I could hear a TV (and would go on to hear it all night, too). There was neither a supply of teabags nor a kettle on the nasty G-Plan dresser.

Later, as I climbed into the tiny bed, I made a mental note to be sure to sleep in a sort of "C" shape, the better to avoid contact with the strange stain on the sheet. Plumping up the pillow a little, I caught sight of a bloodstain. I tried not to think about that as I turned it over.

The sound of the TV from the next room was consonant with the sound of the leaky showerhead in the bathroom, next to my room on the other side. (En suite? Pah! My room had only a small, dirty basin.) When I attempted a shower in the morning, more water came out of the leak than out of the showerhead proper - and it was cold water, anyway. When I tried to turn off the shower, the whole unit fell off the wall. I opted to wash from the basin instead. At least that had hot water.

I growled as I left - and I left as soon as reasonable - and arrived for my interview, unslept and feeling filthy, after having sat in the park talking to a tramp for a good while. He was a nice man who sympathised with my woes. Some hours later, after the interview, I realised that I'd left something at the B&B, and had to go back before getting my train. Unsurprisingly, my room had not been touched.

Did I get the job? No. But I didn't mind that. I was more worried about getting scabies.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 10:14, Reply)

Arachnophobia
On holiday with a mate en route to the Belgian Grand Prix (via a week's touring in Switzerland), we stopped off in northern Germany in a place called Trier, to break the journey. I don't recommend going there, as there's nothing to see, but anyway, we found this decent-looking hotel at a remarkably reasonable price, and checked in.

Up we went to the room. OK so far, two clean beds, bathroom fine, working telly, nice view over the river.

But it was stinking hot, and there was no aircon, so we opened the windows and went out for some food.

An hour or two later, we returned to what appeared to be the set of Arachnaphobia. The room was full of spiders. Dozens of the buggers. Up the walls, on the floor, in the bath, in the beds. Everywhere.

Now, I'm not afraid of spiders, but I don't really relish spending the night with them crawling all over my bed, so we decided to chuck them out. We captured them and threw them out of the open window, whereupon we noticed the root cause of the problem. The entire front wall of the hotel was covered in spiders' webs.

Evidently the hotel management was quite aware of this, which is why they'd kept the windows shut. But surely they could have employed a cleaning company for a day or two to de-web the hotel?

No wonder it was cheap.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 10:12, 2 replies)

It wasn't the hotel's fault, it was mine...
When I was very young, we went on holiday to France. Mother and Father in one room, my Bro and I in another.

I shat in the bidet.

My Mother had to pick it up in loo paper, and run down the corridor to their room to drop it in the loo and flush it away (for some reason, our room didn't have a loo, only a bidet).
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 10:11, 2 replies)

My start of uni life was... interesting
I know I waffle on... sorry.

I was informed that I lived "too close" to the Uni to be priority for halls. I lived 50 miles away from the uni and didn't really feel like driving that far for possibly as little as 2 hours of lectures a day.

The accommodation manager said I would be able to stay with a host family. Now I had never heard of this before, but basically it's people who want easy money and have a shitty room in their house free. So I was given directions and was informed it was in Blackbird Leyes, for those not familiar with Oxford this isn't really the place you want to live unless you have a fondness for burberry and making your car look like you have reversed it through a filler factory before sticking last years christmas lights on underneath.

So I arrive in my (totally standard) Nissan Micra loaded to the hilt with all my worldly possessions. I knock on the door and meet my new "Family" for what could potentially be 10 weeks. They were called Shaz and Dave. This was not a good start. They also had a dog called Buster who was not neutered and therefore tried to get rather too friendly. I was never asked if I had problems with dogs, or even if I was allergic to them! Luckily I don't or it would have been even worse.

So I am led to my room. It is covered in Disney wallpaper, there are Disney framed pictures on the walls, Disney lampshades, Disney cushions and more stuffed toys that I have possibly ever owned in my life. I died a little inside. My "desk" was also a triangular piece of wood that Dave had nailed to the wall the previous night.
I had brought food supplies and was looking forward to some hot soup, however cooking it in anything in that kitchen would have meant that I would have been eating more unknown than known...

I cried myself to sleep and woke up at about 6am. Braved the disgusting shower (hair, mould, dirt you name it) and I decided to get the bus to Oxford and have a walk round then head up to the Uni to try and meet some people. I also started calling the accommodation guys and leaving sobbing messages on their answerphones (I am not ashamed to play the damsel in distress and I wanted out of there ASAP!).

At about 9:01 the manager calls me back and informs me that they are looking for somewhere for me. I sniffle my thanks. 9:28 and he offers me a place in a Catholic girls only dorm where I would be sharing with someone. This sounded like heaven. I am not religious in any way shape or form, but god sounded way better than Walt fecking Disney.

10:05 they have found me a room in another hall I can move in today. Excellent! (I did actually jump for joy a little in the middle of Oxford). So by the time I finished up at the Union and got back to Shaz and Dave's informed them I was leaving (try not to grin like a maniac) and get to the new halls (which I eventually found) it was 7pm and no one was expecting me. I was pretty drained so I did just start crying, so the nice hall warden spent 30 mins phoning people and sorting it out.

I got the key to my lovely new room and even the dried sick and mouldy cheese that had been left by the last resident (lasted 3 days before getting major alcohol poisoning and leaving sharpish so no time for the cleaners to get in) couldn't tarnish my joy.

And yeah it was Brookes not the "Proper" Oxford :p
( TGB checking Off Topic is still shit at, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 10:08, 1 reply)

Ivy Cottage, York
A number of years ago, my presence was requested in York for a mate's snag night. To keep project costs down it was decided to stay at teh Ivy Cottage... a place frequented by those who are partial to how much they drink, and not partial to where they lay the drunken carcass.

So, having to drive up from London I decide to go on the Friday ahead of the crowd, get a good night's kip, rise early, get a haircut and wander round the boutiques of York to get something dazzling to hit York town in later on Saturday.

Now, when it comes to hotels, it has been a very long time since I have done less than 4* (except in France where it's all shit).

So my arrival at the Ivy was a met with some trepidation. A quick look up on the interweb advertised it has having "running hot and cold.", which wasn't clear if this was water, marmalade or syphilis puss. Luckily it was water. Each room had a TV. My room had a TV mounted on top of the wardrobe and pointed upwards to the ceiling. It was black and white.

The bed had a permanent hollow left by someone of Rick Walleresque proportions. The bedding was winciette, dirty grey and smelt rank.

I think I slept with my head one inch from touching the pillow.

Breakfast was prepared by the Maltese host, who not only coughed on my bacon but left some of his dark hair mixed in with the food.

Later I said to him I was going out to get some edible food and would be back later. He asked when I was checking out because he had 16 yobbos coming over from Manchester for the evening.

"Ah" said I, "I am one of those yobbos...."

Ended up being an average weekend, not enough pills and powders.... and by Sunday morning the place looked like a normal B&B... Yay drugs!

It's student accommodation now... google it.
( Piper Alpha is being a grumpy northerm bastard on:, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:52, Reply)

Holiday Inn
As well as cheap breaks we employees frequently had to go on training sessions in other hotels, usually involving one or more overnights.

One of these was at the Leeds/Bradford hotel in the middle of winter. The heating failed - completely. Cue everyone sitting around wrapped in blankets.

Another was computer system training somewhere further south. Blazing hot & miserably humid.
No aircon, hardley any ventilation. I dread to think what the temperature was in the training room - a small room with a dozen or more computers & people & no openable windows.
One trainee passed out, but we had to finish.

I hated working for Holiday Inn & will never stay in one again.
(misspiggy In danger of having to get a job, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:52, Reply)

Honeymoon
Got to tell you about my honeymoon in Shieldaig, a small village on the NW coast of Scotland.

Our wedding was a quick got up affair so we had to book something at pretty short notice. The old land lady of what seemed to be the only cottage available told us that she only accepted two week bookings but when she learned that it was our honeymoon she relented and gave us it for the week.

I wish to fuck she'd stuck to her guns.

It looked like she'd furnished the place from charity shops or from bequests from dead colleagues. The beds had all sagged to perfect U shapes. The one available double bed seemed to have been for a kid ... certainly for a person of resticted growth. I'm only 5'9" but my feet and ankles were hanging off the end.

No sofa, only seven of these high backed chairs you get in old folks homes, the kind that minimise the effort of rising. Most were red vinyl so this being early August you'd be sticking to them after about two minutes flat and sweating like a fucking rapist after five.

The kitchen was similarly well appointed ... twenty six (yes, 26) egg cups but only one tea spoon. Fifteen saucers but only one cup. Fortunately there was also a mug so at least we could have a cup of tea at the same time. ( Water boiled in a pot by the way - no kettle.)

To top it all we were awoken ever moring at 7 by contractors in huge mechanical diggers etc shoring up the sea loch bank right outside or bedroom window with huge boulders. This from 7am till 5pm daily had us about demented.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention the decor. All the pictures on the walls were of witches and wizards and other supernatural shit. The new Mrs Tupper was genuinely spooked by the whole experience.

We lasted a whole four days then came home.
( Ramsay Tupper, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:47, Reply)

The "New" Nile Hotel - Wadi Halfa Sudan
Dirt floors and no running water. Beds were metal, on springs but no mattresses. There were no windows or doors, or lights come to think of it.

Washing facilitiees were a bucket of dirty water and the toilet was a hole in the ground out back, overflowing with shit and piss. The smell in the 45 degree heat was quite strong.

All in all, not the nicest hotel but made bearable by the unique position.

Room service was also crap!
( zulu eh?, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:44, Reply)

The True Budget Inn, Hull
Sweet god alive - this story is legendary AND 100% True - I'm sure someone else has bound to have stayed here.

Stag Do to Hull about 4 or 5 years ago, Mini bus with about 25 Gerodies on, the hotel had been selected for it's cheapness - £15 a head if i remember correctly - how bad can it be? it'll have a bed - that'll do. how wrong we were...

Think that film 'Hostel' - that was the part of town it was in, so we turned up, It looks from the outside like a cross between a 1950's formica factory and an insane asylum. Red brick, cheap rotten windows, hand painted sign. Inside, it's like a big insane asylum once again, 1 long corridoor down the middle painted white, rooms off either side, it stinks and looks like a hospital. There's speakers up and down the corridoor blarring out scouse house - it's 2pm in the afternoon. We book in to be told "there's strippers lads at 6pm in the function room" - ohh it's looking up maybe!

The Rooms - Most rooms were like hospital rooms, with enough space for 2 beds in each, except there were 4 beds in each room - As you do, you go look around your mates bedrooms to compare your facilities;

(*) Room Number 1 - All beds pushed together, filthy bed sheets and empty bottles of baby oil everywhere.

(*) Room Number 2 - All bed clothes on the floor covered in sick, buckets next to 2 of the beds - full of sick. It stinks of piss.

(*) Room Number 3 - Someone had shit the bed then wiped there arse on 1 of the bed sheets. The room stunk of piss

(*) Room Number 4 - Beds together again, sheets covered in blood. Pissy smell again.

and so it went on... "We haven't cleaned yet" we were told. no shit. We all decide at that point we're 1) going to pull some local and stay at hers 2) we're going to stay up all night and not go near the beds.

The Function Room 6pm - Turns out it's the reception/bar/breakfast room/kitchen all in 1. The stripper was beyond belief. Nasty and rubbish. After a short while of pleasuring herself with an old and well used vibrator, she called the stag over and promptly shoved it in HIS gob - 50% of the audience dry heaved at that point. I Think most of us left half way through the show. So we head out into Hull for the main show.

Most of us return between 3 and 4am to find the music STILL being pumped thru the speakers so we head back to the breakfast area and decide to play cards for the next 5 hours till it's home time, powered by coke, speed and a few pills. The most horrific thing was around 8am, a couple came down for their breakfast, complete with 1 year old in high chair, sit on the table next to us and start eating a full english?!?!?!? THEY STAYED HERE?!?! What must have they thought coming down to breakfast to sit next to a table full of pilled up idiots playing cards, smoking and swearing?!?! i felt so sorry for them - but why did they stay? it's horrific? ON HOLIDAY?

the mini bus left around 8:30. I've never felt so dirty.
(TheManofScience, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:40, 4 replies)

Thailand
land of discovery, land of opportunity land of freedom. Or at least that is what the young French girl thought before she met a friend of mine, who we shall call Clarence.

This guy is a liability, you all know one, drugs, alcohol, cars, women he's abused them all, but somehow his cheeky grin always gets him out of trouble.

On an ill advised and barely planned trip around South East Asia he met up with a similarly loveably cretin, who we shall call Jim, and they proceeded to go out on the lash, a lot.

One fateful night however they overdid it a little and Jim a little lot the worse for wear crawled into his top level bunk bed above nice young French girl and passed out. All was well for a while before the inevitability of biology and physics of a limited bladder size took their toll. Jim gently emptied his very full bladder in his sleep and the fetid concoction seeped straight through the anorexic mattress and soaked the poor French girl below.

“Mon Dieu” I would imagine she exclaimed, before berating him in French. However her stereotypical rantings fell of deaf and very drunk ears.

“Oo la la, sacre bleu” I imagine she muttered under her breath as she flipped the mattress and remade her bed on the other side of the room right next to the bunk Clarence was sleeping in. After more clichéd Fench ramblings she once again drifted off to sleep happy that at least it had only been a little bit of wee.

Unfortunately Clarence had similar bladder issues and a little while awoke in that weird way you do when rat arsed, where you don’t know where you are or really what’s going on. Consequently in his semi conscious state he knelt up on his bunk whipped out his winky and proceeded to piss all over the already yellow tinged frog, before passing out for a well deserved kip.

I’m sure many people have pissed themselves whilst under the influence or even been pissed on, I’ll bet not many have been pissed on twice in the same night when they were sober.

Apparently the young French was gone in the morning, leaving nothing behind expect the faint smell of ammonia.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:34, 2 replies)

Hotel Dover
There was a hotel I stayed at in Dover about five years ago. I can't remember what it was called, but it did have a delightful view of the container lorries queueing at the entrance to the ferry port.

I'm not going to list everything that went wrong, or I'll be here all day. Over the course of the stay we suffered:

1) No hot water on many occasions;
2) Complete lighting failure - although at least the room seemed less grubby when you could't actually see anything;
3) Numerous mornings with no breakfast on account of the cook not turning up;
4) Toilet door handle that jammed during the night when I was desperate - hope nobody used the wash basin in the adjacent room until it was thoroughly cleaned!

To top it all off, we were not given any front door keys, but were informed that the doors were not locked until midnight. Since the pubs all shut at 11pm back then, this would not have been a problem.

Unfortunately when we came rolling back drunk at 11:00 on the first night, the doors had actually been locked already. After much hammering on the door, a member of hotel staff appeared who looked and sounded alarmingly like Manuel of Fawlty Towers fame. "Issa no my fault, sí?"

On the bright side, we complained bitterly on the last morning and got the bill reduced to half price.

Length joke: Five nights I'm afraid.
(llama patrol, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:33, Reply)

Also... I was in Mexico last year,
and we were diverted to Veracruz from the usual tourist trail due to rioting. Veracruz isn't really used to tourists, and neither are thier hotels.

I was greeted by the flithiest bathroom, dirtiest floor, broken windows, and when I pulled back the grubby sheets on the bed... insects. Lots and lots and lots of insects.
( Mr Gear the gay-maker, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:32, Reply)

Night life in Nice
Had a week in Nice with a friend a few years back. Hotel was ok - rooms basic but clean. What we hadn't realised was that,even in a resort like Nice, France shuts at 10 pm. So there we were Saturday night and everywhere is shutting so we go back to the hotel. This was staffed by just the desk guy, so no bar open. It had a lounge, of sorts, with a tv, but this was never used. It was far too early and much too sober to contemplate sleep so we retrieved a bottle of duty-free gin and the tv remote from our room and settled in. Ended up watching the end of The Eurovision Song Contest (in french, picture with more ghosts than a Derek Acorah trailer) and other rubbish while consuming industrial quantities of gin & tonic (from a vending machine) while all the other guests trooped through on their way to bed.
Didn't go back.
(misspiggy In danger of having to get a job, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:28, Reply)

The Horror
Not a hotel or BB, but in fact my brother in law's house. We had been to a family wedding with every intention of getting a cab home (at a cost of about 50 quid) but after a skinful of booze it seemed easier to stay at BIL's house. More money to spend on alcohol!

The room he put us in used to be the garage, which he was in the process of converting into a bedroom for his daughter. He had not at this stage got round to installing any working heating (and it was a very cold night in January), the "bed" was a slightly damp mattress on the floor, and there were no bedclothes so we had to sleep under our coats.

The true horror of this scenario? I found the best way to get warm was to snuggle up to my fortunately very flatulent husband, and treat his foul boozey arse gas as a sort of fan heater.
(Vernie, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:28, Reply)

Sleepless in Brighton
I stayed at a quite expensive (£80 per night) Bed and Breakfast in Brighton about 3 years ago.

The fire alarm went off at intervals from 11pm to 4am and on check-out they refused to give me any refund despite the fact that I would have had a better night's sleep in the nightclub down the road.
( Mr Gear the gay-maker, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:25, Reply)

Marriott - Doha
Couldn't believe the cheek of this place.

After a long (wink) flight from Dubai, I managed to spend a lovely night in the Ritz Carlton. I was only there one night as the Doha football team were arriving the next day for the Gulf Cup. They very kindly laid on a 7 series BMW from the airport with hot and cold running towels and bar. Fantastic.

The usual request to stay for the extra night was declined with grace so I tried the room upgrade plead. This again was declined as I had been given a suite and the only upgrade would have been the Presidential Suite and that was already taken.

Hmm, spose ill take it then and traipsed upto the 8th floor of the tower.

Shit, what a treat. A massive suite, with more floor space than my 4 bed house at home. Huge living room with dinning room and a kitchen - for the maid!!! Seperate dressing room and heated marble bathroom floor.

First time in Doha and warned it might be 'dry'. But no, the fully stocked bar opened up at the press of a button. Only thing wrong was that the only beer was Becks. Quick call to room service and offending crap was removed and my favourite brand installed. Sorted.

10 mins later the boy arrived with my suitcase which he deftly unpacked into the dressing room. I had to ask where all my clothes were as I hadn't spotted the extra room.

Ok so not a drive hotel, but you need the background to understand the full horror about to decend.

After a lovely day/night at the hotel (its miles out of the City so nowhere else to go), had to get the boy back to pack the suitcase again and back into the limo and asked him to take me to my next hotel - the Marriott Doha.

Its right on the main road from the airport to the bay and was in the middle of a re-furb. Obviously my bit hadn't been done.

I knew it was cheaper but did expect a few home comforts. Unpacked, all by myself!! And needed a shirt to go out to dinner with so did the usual call 'laundry' for an emergency shirt press. Usual in the mid-east if you have just arrived.

The lady on the other end of the phone advised that I had missed the cut off time for laundry and that if I wanted anything pressed/ironed (ever) I could use the iron and ironing board hanging on the back of my door.

WTF!!!

Never stayed and never will stay in a crappy Marriot again.

Will post some photos of the Ritz when I get home, just to set everyone a benchmark.
(Suck it and Sea, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:06, 9 replies)

Holiday Inn
I used to work for Holiday Inn (shudder!) and occaisionally got cheap weekend deals. One of these was to a hotel near the Humber Bridge (for reasons I won't go into here) for one night. On arriving we found that the room was set up for just one person - and as I made the booking myself I know it was booked for two. This meant having to chase up extra pillows, tea & coffee, toiletries etc. Having dinner that night was like eating in a ghost town, but even though there was only us & I other couple dining the service was still appalling.

But the next morning was the icing on the cake - we arrived for breakfast and could find no staff. I even went into the kitchen to try and find someone. I think we did eventually get breakfast, but I don't really remember.

I wonder if that hotel is still going?
(misspiggy In danger of having to get a job, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 9:00, Reply)

Hotel Casablanca
English bloke travelling on his own gets the cupboard room at the end of the corridor. Full of cockroaches and mould and not feeling looked after i decide to have a wank on the marble floor and throw all the furniture about breaking most of it in half (including the bed)!
fuckers dropped me off at the wrong airport the next day
(Jimmy Splash, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 8:50, Reply)

newcastle upon tyne-by THE bridge.......
late monday arrived in the toon, go to hotel, the one by the bridge, i'd travelled, paid my premium & wanted to lodge...oh fuckit-the premier travelodge (joining the dots for ya there) went to the crown pasada for last orders and wandered back, got into bed and thought: fuck this is cold, only it wasn't cold it was wet....i bounce out, call reception,no more rooms ses they, so i sleep on the couch in the room. they promise to change the mattress for night 2.
night 2, eat, wander the toon, crown pasada (easily the best real ale bar in the place)(and great company too) wobble back to room and sure nuff the bed is remade, being a cynical tnuc I thinks: best check...and sure nuff the cunts had not changed the mattress it was still fucking swamped! they'd remade the sheets on a pissy fucking bed, I know that migrant labour is cheap but fuck-surely they know how to check for piss?
I call reception-again all apologies-but still no other rooms available...
i got the two nights free BTW, but i allus check the bed in any hotel now.


(lawyers for free shouty bird can not contact me for a compensation claim)
(mickturate if i could be arsed i'd be bored, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 8:08, Reply)

Never stay in cheap hotels in London
Stayed in a Hotel in Queensway, £10 a night (back in 1995). Room was disgusting. Used condom under the bed. Sheets unwashed and damp. 'Toilet' was a behind a partition that looked out onto the road with no curtains. God knows what was living in the carpets.
(Celtican is 10! Old school or what?, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 8:08, 1 reply)

After a four hour drive...
staying at a fancy liberal arts college over night for a frisbee tournament, I got completely smashed and lost on a foriegn college campus. I stumbled upon the building we were supposed to be staying in and passed out in the kitchen, unable to see where I was and really not caring.
The following morning I awoke with hair and food fragments stuck to my body and then realized not only was I sleeping ON the filthiest floor i'd ever witnessed, but also UNDER a six foot tall hippie and his dog.
(LemonCurry?, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 5:58, Reply)

And if you look to your left, ladies and gentlemen, you'll see the eigth circle of hell...
Ahhh, Corfu. I clicked “buy now” on the deal advertising 2 weeks self catering, flights and transfers included on the sunny north coast of the island for the seemingly incredible price of £200…

On reflection, I should have known.

We flew Cheapo airlines (it may have been Monarch, I forget. Actually, I blanked out the horror), so consequently no one had thought to reserve a take off slot and we eventually crawled in 4 hours late, The bus took us at breakneck speed along island cliff tops, pausing just long enough for us to get a good look at the memorials to less fortunate drivers who’d met their end over a yawning precipice. I shut my eyes and prayed to a god that I don’t believe in to get me to a hotel, any hotel in one piece. Be careful what you wish for…

We were the last off the coach. I swear as each group of tired holidaymakers disembarked before us, I saw something akin to pity in their eyes, knowing deep down that no matter how bad their 3 star palace with hot and cold running maid service and full English breakfast karaoke was, it was the Ritz compared to what we were heading towards.

Finally we drew up at the edge of a field. In the far distance I could see a collection of sheds leaning at a jaunty angle, surrounded by barbed wire. “This is you,” the bus driver said and unceremoniously threw our cases onto the roadside and vanished into the night. A coyote howled. Actually, that’s bullshit, a cat walked past and hissed at us, but a coyote would have been so much more dramatic.

Dragging the cases behind us, we set off to the place we would call home for the next fourteen days. We approached the door and unlocked it. To be honest, if a kitten had delivered a light slap to it, it probably would have opened. I threw on the light switch and there, illuminated by a single dangling bare bulb was… it. A room, no, a fetid pit, with a double bed and single camp bed, an alcove with a shower and toilet and a toaster oven with some dangerous looking wires hanging out of the socket.

Now to digress for a second, some of you may be reading this and thinking, “look Rakky, you shelled out £200 for this including flights, what the hell did you think you would get?” Friends, I know. I’m not stupid. I wasn’t expecting the Corfu Hilton. Hell, at that price I wouldn’t have even expected Paris Hilton, but I didn’t think it would be quite so, well, desolate.

With the blitz spirit that marks one out as being English, I selected the single bed, slipped into my jammies and settled down for some sleep. Things would be brighter in the morning, There’d be sun, sea and all the cheap oversized G and T’s I could pour down my waiting gullet.

It seemed like no sooner had I fallen into a restless doze than I was awoken by the unmistakable sound of… Well, actually, I had no idea what it was. A tinny explosion followed by the noise of what seemed like 50 horses violently pissing outside the window. “What the fucking, fucking hell was that?” I exclaimed (I’m paraphrasing, you understand.) My friend leapt out of bed, threw open the shutters and there, illuminated in the eerie half light of 4am, was the remains of the solar powered boiler that stood directly outside our balcony. It had spewed its fibreglass innards all over the floor and was now gushing water, creating a swampy lagoon right under the patio. We realised quickly that no one could hear our discontent, so we covered our ears, hoping for sleep to take us through till morning.

An hour later, I woke from a dream where I had seemingly caught my fingers in a door hinge. On closer inspection through my foggy, myopic gaze, I realised that the pain in my hand was actually being caused by the biggest beetle I have ever witnessed jamming its steely pincers into my thumb. Silently, I detached it and threw it to a watery death over the balcony. I didn’t go back to sleep; I couldn’t. I sat, shivering under a grey, scratchy blanket, awaiting the dawn.

Morning came and a man came to fix the boiler. I never knew you could do so much DIY with just a hammer, some six inch nails and a roll of gaffer tape.

4am rolled around again, as it does, and the boiler exploded a second time.

The boiler exploded on 5 separate occasions. The beetle, I’m glad to say, never returned. We never braved the toaster oven and, to be fair, the toilet only backed up twice, leaving us to pick up flaccid turds from the cracked bathroom floor before hurling them back down the U bend, praying that this time, they’d leave us in peace.

Other than that, the rest of the holiday passed without incident. Well, apart from being mistaken for a lesbian paedophile, catching an ear infection from the infested swimming pool that left me with all the coordination of a drunk Stephen Hawking and consuming the worst pizza ever created by a human being. It had hairs on it.

Still, I can laugh about it now, but it’s been three years. And sometimes, when my radiator pipes clank and hiss in the night, I’m transported back there. So I simply reach for the tranquilizers, swig them down with some vodka and finally, the screaming stops.

Good times, they were, good times…

*sobs*
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 4:42, 8 replies)

Angry Dutchman!
There wasn’t anything terribly wrong with the hotel in this story, just an incident that occurred while staying there:
After finishing college in 2006, myself and a few mates went on holiday to Spain. On the first night of getting rather inebriated we retreated back to the balcony of one of our hotel rooms. One of our number, Alex, decided it would be a good idea to vomit and urinate off of said balcony at precisely the same time as some Dutch guests at the hotel were walking by underneath. He did not know there was anyone walking under the balcony until he heard the angry shouts. Whether he managed to hit them remains a mystery as it was rather dark and they shouted back in Dutch.

Next morning we are poolside and a big tattooed Dutch chap comes over to our group, followed by 3 of his mates, and starts ranting and raving in Dutch, realising that this is probably the same guy that may or may not have been showered in a concoction of vomit and urine we decided it would be a good idea to leave the pool and surrounding area. 10 minutes later and we are back in one of the rooms and there is a knocking on the door, then a loud bang. We phoned reception to advise them that someone was trying to break into the room and waited until they told us they couldn’t see anyone on the CCTV in the corridor. We opened the door and there’s a large circular dent in the door and a fire extinguisher on the floor. We spent the rest of the week trying to avoid the Dutch guests!
(a1l3e, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 4:16, 3 replies)

This
Should probably go under the Top Tips section but it is about hotels and so it's vaguely on topic.

Whenever I go abroad to a place where I don't speak the language I print out, on business cards, the name and address of the hotel in English and local lingo and, on the reverse, a map showing exactly where the hotel is.

If you get lost, find a cab and give him the card. Saved a lot of mates a lot of trouble this has....

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 3:20, 4 replies)