My college degree took place in a hotel until the end of last year.
So I spent a year of college - lessons and lectures - in a hotel, where it was running for about ten years waiting for a new building. It was awful.

The hotel wasn't fit to be a hotel anymore, never mind a place of learning. There was a room with two grand pianos that were visibly at different slants to each other and just about fit into the room. While in another room playing music you could hear the vibrations of someone tapping their foot on the ceiling above.

There was a 'classroom' which had no windows so the air conditioning had to be on for the entire time that we were in the room, making it colder than anywhere on earth, moreso than when you walked outdoors.

But best/worst of all was our music technology room. The sound engineering equipment was in a kitchen section of a dining room. The kitchen room was directly underneath an en suite of a bedroom that was still rented out to people. On two occasions people left the bath run and the water leaked through the roof onto the mixing desk. Oh, and that room was prone to flooding from the river it was beside, every winter.
(AshTeamRacing, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 5:44, Reply)

Not my story...
But one of the local TV stations did a news report on bad hotel maids, bad maids at high end hotels.

They had a hidden camera where they caught the maids wearing the same gloves they used when they cleaned the toilets, to handle the glasses they just rinsed out. The glasses had noticable lipstick on them.

Needless to say, I'm gonna be a bit picky when staying in hotels.
(travishayes89 is tired of people starting fights at school., Mon 21 Jan 2008, 1:42, Reply)

I've seen it all.
I used to work for the company that makes those graduation T-shirts with everyone's name on the back. Part of my job was to go to graduations the length and breadth of the UK and actually sell the things on the day. So when it comes to the multiplicity of shoddy and unsalubrious hostelries out there believe me, I've seen it all and worse. In '06 I stayed in a pretty low dive in Wrexham where all the rooms came off a long narrow corridor with a shared bathroom about halfway down it. Wrexham makes you feel dirty so I had my evening shower but when I tugged open the bathroom door to leave I saw a sight to chill the very blood.

The ancient white-haired man staying in the room directly opposite the bathroom had rightly surmised that since only three feet or so of threadbare carpet separated his own door from the bathroom he'd be able to skip getting dressed altogether and dash across to the shower in the blink of an eye without anyone seeing him. It would've worked too, had I not chosen that precise moment to leave the bathroom myself. There's some sights you just can't un-see, and the look of utter shame and defeat on the moist-eyed face of a naked septuagenarian, quivering hand outstretched to open the bathroom door, is one of them. That and his battered cock and droopy white-haired ballbag.
(Whizzer, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 0:18, Reply)

I'm staying in a guesthouse in Buenos Aires right now
It's not too bad except for the occasional power flickers that knock out the wifi router and turn off my inte
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 0:03, 1 reply)

Brush with royalty
I never stayed there, but worked there for a bit when stuck in Alice Springs after being offered a really good job, and flying for 2500 km to get there, only to be told 'oops, sorry we didn't actually have the funds'...

Anyway, this hotel's claim to fame was that Princess Di and Charlie had stayed there once. This was a while ago, and while there was this creepy little shrine with the table she sat at and the plates she ate off the place had gone downhill.

Badly.

The hotel is now used by drunken locals to sleep/booze up/fuck in when they get the welfare checks and want to go 'posh'.

I had to clean up:

- several metric tonnes of beer cans
- A bathroom full of pubes
- Shit liberally smeared on the bedroom walls (the designers had thoughtfully tiled every surface, so you could hose the rooms out), and once, worryingly,

A used condom, with blood on the INSIDE. On the outside, I could have handled, even understood, but on the inside? Ouch!

But, I got to crap in the same toilet as Di and Charles, I checked.

The inevitable royal flush jokes made it all worth while...

Length? about 3 weeks before getting the hell out of there
(pizzaforcat ate some cement and HARDENED the FUCK UP on, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 22:58, Reply)

Chester - i think
Okay, so myself, a mate of mine and his lady friend are off to the Menai Straights for a weekend of wind surfing. Were a bit delayed so decided to stop in Chester on the way. Now, this hotel had been "recommended" by a dodgy looking geezer we met whilst pounding the streets looking for accomodation. Slightly hesitant, we parked up in the car park of this somewhat scary looking hovel. We went into reception and rang the bell. After about 5 minutes a chap looking suspiciously like John Virgo but with a longer beard but slightly more booze inside him than Len Ganley ever consumed in his life, informed us that he only had 1 room and it had 2 beds, a double and a single. On arriving at the room we found it had no lock or even door handle. Inside we found filthy stained bed clothes and filthy stained mattresses. Of course, my mate and his girlfriend had the double and I had the single bed. To my utter despair the double bed squeaked like a mouse in distress with the slightest movement and guess what, my mate and his partner decided to spend most of the night shagging. Oh joy. During the brief periods of sleep I awoke to find someone trying to get into the room. Luckily, due to the lack of lock we'd wedged a wardrobe up against the door so they never got in. I manfully pulled the filthy stained quilt over my head until they'd gone of course.

The next morning, we went downstairs to find he hotel deserted and the promised breakfast missing. Never mind we thought, we'll just go back to car and carry on to the wind surfing. However, having failed to get into or room, our night time friends had instead emptied my car of everything of any value, including everything in the boot. We found some of the stuff in a nearby hedge, but most of it was lost. We went back into the hotel but couldn't find anyone to tell so we moved on.

Now a small addendum to this story is that my mate at the time kept some very dubious company (not me of course!) and I heard on the news that this particular hotel had burned down a week later, arson suspected. I never asked him if he'd organised it, I was too scared. Still I hope the thieving bastards burned.

Length ? 3 stories, 10 bedrooms, pile of ashes about 2 feet tall.
(littlechav Suffering from too many red bulls since, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 22:37, 1 reply)

We later christened it "Hotel Armageddon".
I went to New York with my mates and arrived at the hotel we'd booked on-line. We had to wait 45 minutes to be given a room, which was horrible.

We were craftily filming the manager at the front desk because he was such a stereotypical New Yorker and we liked the way he talked. Had he known, he probably wouldn't have told us the hotel was double-booked and so he'd kicked some "permanent residents" (i.e. drug addicts) out to make some space. We were sharing a bathroom with their friends, so we promptly found somewhere else to stay.

Video here: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJqt2Kai5U

(Another guest came to complain about the lack of blankets whilst we were filming. )
( teedyay, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 20:05, Reply)

Stag Night
After my successful stag night in sunny Blackpool at a really good but reasonable seafront hotel a friend of mine decided that he too would spend his last nights of freedom in the mecca of the North. So we all piled into a coach and looked forward to the obscene amount of alcohol that we were going to put away upon our arrival. Unbeknown to us however the best man had decided that £25 a night was a little on the expensive side and through the miracle of T'Interweb has managed to procure us beds in a place that was only a tenner a night. Well we didn't actually expect much for such pitiful amounts of dosh. As long as it was clean and had a roof we were good, but we were still a little shocked when we arrived at the back road doss house that was to be our home for the next two nights. Firstly after trudging down the urine smelling path we were greeted by a Begby from Train spotting lookalike who through clouds of cheap ciggy smoke grudgingly trudged upstairs to show us to our rooms. I was booked into a four berth room with some friends and was a little apprehensive when the door that our psychotic scots friend was showing us too had a massive crack down the middle of it and a hole where the lock should be.
"This is yors..." He drawled as he swung the door open. Now the only way that you could tell the difference between our room and a broom cupboard was that broom cupboards have generally had a cleaning implement inside them at some time in the last ten years. 2 bunk beds were pushed up against one wall and partially obscured the doorway. The rest of the room was a corridor about two feet across with a wardrobe at the end of it, which incidentally was in the way of the only window and the broken sink. The floor was covered in plaster dust from the ceiling and some one had punched holes in the walls so it was possible to see through to next doors identical room. Whats more the bunk beds had so many slats missing or broken that you were in danger of slipping through them.
Never mind horrific though it was we were determined to make the best of it and besides we'd already paid. We'd go to the bar as it would only look better once we'd got around the outside of a couple of shots of liver puncher.
We trailed downstairs and got Begby to stop drinking the bar (many bottles of knocked off spirits) and open it for us. Now at our previous hotel one of the main selling points was that the bar was open all night and charged the princely sum of a quid a pint. Not so here. This flea pit was charging around £3 a pint or shot (this was around 10 years ago when this was extortion).
Anyhow we moped around Blackpool drinking but our heart wasn't in it. The plague pit of a hotel kind of killed it for everyone. None of us stayed for breakfast the next morning when we found Begby had cooked it and had to make do with a Mcbreakfast. I didn't last a second night.

Length? About 5' by 10'
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 19:36, Reply)

Not the B&B's Fault
Not really in theme with QOTW, but it was a crappy experience

A few years back (10) i was working as a door entry installer. The work we were doing was all the way down in London - woah my first week out in the big city all by myself, i was rather excited.

I made my way down there and met up with the bloke i was going to working with, and he found me a nice B&B/pub to stay in for the week.

After a hard weeks graft in the loft's running cables in between all the fiber glass insulation i had a thirst on :). So on the last night i get back get showered etc and head to the bar. As many of you working away from home will probably have done is ask the landlord for a receipt of 25 quid for an evening meal that you never actually have but just spend the cash on beer. But it looks good on the expenses.....

Anyway after several shandy's with the locals i wobble of to bed and get my head down, thats as much as i remember.

I wake up and something is strange. Its still dark. I have my jacket on with all my screwdrivers in the pockets. I have a screwdriver in hand.... Im sat in the middle of the floor. In front of me in pieces is what used to be the heater for the room hehe.

Unfortunately after a few beers i tend to sleep walk, only this time i'd taken the heater apart and what woke me up is me turning it on and burning myself on the exposed elements. I tried for next few hours to get it back together (not easy when you have the shakes). Fortunately in the morning the landlord was nowhere to be seen, so i legged it and never went back.

Length? About 4 inches with a cross bit on the end.
(spaceswitch is gonna gay ya, on, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 18:19, Reply)

Dead dogs ...
There was the hotel in Egypt. We should have known it wasn't the "popular" place to go when the coach dropped us (and only us) off after visiting every other (very popular) hotel in the vicinity. They first put us directly above the kitchen, which opened at about 5 in the morning to lots of clattering and banging. The room they moved us to was quieter, but still had walls covered in squished mosquitoes. The pool was suspiciously green, and the bar frequented by strange, gay men from Liverpool, trying to pull the waiters. The hotel was a mile or so from the Pyramids, and the main desert road from Giza to Alexandria passed close by. The hotel sign on this road had the corpse of a dog huddled at its base.

None of this would have been *quite* so bad if it hadn't been our honeymoon.

Length? 16 years in October.
(ramrod_newell had his hair brushed at, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 17:35, 1 reply)

i've never stayed in a hotel....
campervans ftw!
( SkUG >_O i got a couple of stitches in my eyeball... ow, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 17:11, 1 reply)

Not technically a hotel but...
anyone who has ever been to the Conway Centre in Menai will probably agree with me here.
I went a couple of years ago with an art trip from my high school (the basketball team went to France, the netball team went to Malta, the orchestra went to Barcelona...and the 'gifted' art students got Anglesey. Not fair, is it?). It was freezing cold, the corridors were the creepiest I've ever walked down, the food was awful (I lived on bread, apples and whatever boxes of cereal I could smuggle out of breakfast for three days), we weren't technically allowed back in our rooms during the day, and I was terrified of showering because I thought the entire mouldering ceiling behind the flimsy curtain could collapse at any moment.
Anyway, the worst bit was, the room the girls from my school were staying in was on what had, until recently been the boys floor, and there was a large, suspicious looking stain on the floor next to my friend's bed which I took great delight in taking the mick out of her for.
That is, until the day of our (much awaited) departure, when we all had to strip the beds, and I discovered to my horror that underneath the sheet, on the mattress I had been innocently sleeping on for the last three days there was an equally large, equally suspicious stain....
You couldn't pay me to go back to that place.

Also, when I went to Rome with my parents, the 'hotel' we were booked into, when we finally managed to find it, turned out to be practically a wooden shed constructed as an after thought onto the top of a building. The front door of the room opened onto the bathroom, which we had to walk through to get to the bedroom, the place was so small, there was no breakfast room, so we got given tokens every morning for free croissants and milk at the cafe across the road.
At least it was clean though.
(Applebite Uh! A cow!, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 16:14, 3 replies)

what an evening.
Well one night not long after i split up with my girlfriend, i was talking to a girl from the college i used to go to on myspace (i soon grew out of it, promise). Now i'd seen her about but had never spoken to her, i had nothing to do and she invited me out for a smoke with her and her friends, having no pot and finding her quite attractive i thought why the hell not?
So 2 hours later i was waiting at a bus stop nearby, she turns up with two charming boys in a nice little purple old lady wagon blasting out pendulum loud enough to wake the dead. Now i love my drum and bass, i cant get enough, but id rather shoot myself in the foot than have to go through that again, pendulum is so bollocks.
Finally we pull into a sketchy council estate, into a house with two of the biggest dogs ive ever seen, full of people i didn't know and i had possibly the most uncomfortable couple of hours of my life sitting there.
Finally it came to the point to go for a smoke, oh brilliant someone has a garage full of sofas everyone chills out in! So off we trot, probably near enough 1am by this point.
Now i think there must have been atleast 8 of us stuck on a couple of 2 seater sofas and a chair or 2, so that was fun. I also think one joint went around in this entire time, rendering me pretty much sober, crammed in a room full of people i didn't know, freezing. By about 3 i think maybe 3 people left, leaving us to try and share an old blanket or two between us. I think i just put my hood up and sat there for about 5 hours, while everyone else slept.

She was very nice though, and we were err, how do you say, 'close friends?' for a while after, so atleast some good came of it.
(jangaaaal shes lost control..., Sun 20 Jan 2008, 14:33, Reply)

where to start? an extended trip through asia on a backpacker budget will give you plenty of these stories
roaches? check! Mossie nets with more holes than the albert hall? check! uninvited drunken scraggly hookers? check! bucket of cold water instead of a shower? check! Ice factory next door? check! mysterious smell of gravy? check!

but for consistensy, let me tell you about indonesia, now I don't know if it's like this all year round but I made the mistake of going there during ramadan, the big muslim holy month. During this period they chant prayers from the mosque, I say chant, they usually just mumble them in a relentless monotone or squeal like they have a corkscrew in their anus (because singing would be art and therefore a sin, or something) and then pipe the results through louspeaker mounted atop themosques minarets. They do this several times a day, starting around 4 or 5 in the morning.
And where were all of the guesthouses I stayed in?

That's right! Right next to a fucking mosque!

Every morning I was woken us by this bloody droning, what a joy it was. After a while I managed to get some earplugs, having lost my originals in the jungle.
They worked ok against mosques but there's something else commonly found near Indonesian guesthouses.
You see Indonesians really love cocks, they like nothing more than getting together in a barn and watching two large, upright, red tipped cocks thrusting and jabbing at each other, darting back and forth, each trying to get on top of the other until until finally one gets the upper hand and presses the other into submission, often using their specially sharpened talons.
Yes, that's right, the ancient sport of cock fighting is alive and well in Indonesia.
If you were brought up in the city like me you may not instantly be aware that cocks are the same thing as roosters and cockerels and are often employed as alarm clocks in rural areas because the fucking bastarding things get up at dawn and COCKADOODLEFUCKINGDOO all over the place. Only the ones in indonesia are clearly batshit crazy and while this may improve their prowess in the ring, it does nothing for their timekeeping abilities. These little cock knockers start their screeching as early as 3 am and continue until someone throws a well aimed brick and it gets dark out their so aiming is tricky.
Even in the cities there was at least a couple in any given neighboruhood ALL OVER THE FUCKING COUNTRY, even on the tiniest little island and the worst thing was THE EARPLUGS ZEY DO NOTHING , the high pitched screeches cut right through the earplugs and straight to my aural canal

the only solution was to drink some arak and get very, very stoned, which I managed despite border guards stamping "death to drug traffickers" on my passport in big red letters

length? about a foot and a half when erect
( VampireMonkeyOnSpeed a super sexy sexual sex terrorist sex, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 12:46, 1 reply)

Get The Fuck Up!!
I used to work in an hotel as a nightporter/bar-bloke/thief and lazy-arse so to be honest i could fill this QOTW with stories about bad experiences for the "customers" in my hotel but one particularly sticks in my mind.

Hotels=all night bar, so many times we'd have some fairly pissed people around the place. One time there was a rugby club in, not a famous one (maybe they were, i know nothing about rugby) and yes they stayed up untill 4/5 singing strange chants and acting quite gay (i know enough about rugby to know this is normal) by showing each other how many 10p pieces they could hold under their foreskins. Generally acting like the latent queens we all know rugby players to be. After they'd retired to bed i found one!! Passed out in a corridor! No surprise. What was surprising was that i couldn't wake him up (no, he was still alive, that's a different story) and that he'd tried to get undressed on his way to his room, clothes all over the place.. So after a few minutes of shaking him and checking his breathing i decided to position him holding a sign saying "HuNGry and HomeLess, Please HElP" and take photos. After tiring of this i got a felt tip (permanent of course) and drew a nice big knob on his head, hoping that he'd assume it was his mates. Still not tiring of abusing him i then nicked his clothes, the ones he'd removed that is, i didn't actually strip him!!

Then my bleeper went off and i had to attend to some trivial thing that is essential to making hotels work at night, yes, i went and had a smoke with the other night porter. Totally forgetting this guy was up there (kids, winners don't smoke weed).

An hour later a little old lady came to reception (up early to walk her pooch) and informed my boss of "a man asleep in the hotel". After the initial confusion, "it IS a hotel Madam, people do sleep here!" He went to investigate, finally returning with the aforementioned rugby player, still heartily drunk, wearing his briefs and a torn shirt, felt tip cock resplendant on his head, clutching his little sign, to the reception area, to find out what room he was supposed to be in, just as breakfast service starts!!

That must have been a pretty bad hotel experience, I think I still have his club tie somewhere...

Length? About 40 pence...
(By George I Think He's Got It! It's not fucking Sheep is it?!, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 12:02, 2 replies)

Bikers
Pub-stroke-B'n'B near Morecambe, can't remember the name. Shame.

Arrived at night so didn't see the sign for their car-park on the opposite side of the road. So we parked in front of the pub, in what appeared to be a pull-in for such purpose.

Next morning we saw loads of hairy bikers in the bar. Then we went outside and saw LOADS of hairy bikers and LOADS of hairy bikers' bikes - all surrounding our car.

There was virtually no effort made to move for us - the ones who were obviously accountants and only "bad" at the weekend were the worst. But it needed loads to move - and we just couldn't talk the talk.

For a brief moment we did consider pushing our way out - our Range Rover had plenty of power. But we didn't fancy getting a bike stuck under the wheels as even the meekest biker would soon have pulled our arms off.

So we went back inside, explained the situation. Seconds later the fire-breathing harridan of a land-lady came out and laid down the law. And the bikers parted like a bunch of pussies.*

Unfortunately that was the only redeeming thing about the place. Otherwise it was sh*t.

* - we kept this thought to ourselves.

(This is my first ever post. Hope you liked it. It is, at least, 100% true. Therefore unlikely to win the "Best of"... ;-) )
(Lambglot Slightly, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 11:58, Reply)

Cambridge - seat of learning excellence and hotel shitness...
A few years ago Mrslawofnations and I were invited to a wedding in Cambridge. At the time I was in Scotland and MrsLON wasn't a Mrs and was in the Midlands. I travelled down to see her, and we took a train out to Cambridge, safe in the knowledge that we'd be able to catch the last train back.

Shortly after the starter we realised that there wasn't a chance in hell that we'd have enough time to have the meal and get back to the station. So, the choice was be incredibly rude and leave, or stay and hope we could find somewhere to stay the night.

Cambridge isn't a huge town, but you would think there might be a spare bed somewhere, right?

During my third hour of phone calls, I managed to find a B&B that had a room, for £50. Sorted. We show up. We are let in through the front door of a rather nice little terraced house. Then a nice little corridor. Then out the nice little backdoor. Through a maze of the most poorly constructed extension work you've ever seen. Walls made of MDF. For five minutes of twisting and turning. Then we get to our "room".

Bed number 1 was damp. Bed number 2 had stains of every description. Burns. Blood. "Other". There was mercifully a shower. Cold water, at a slow trickle, but at least we could wash up a little. Minus soap and a change of clothes, but better than nothing.

The next morning, stinking in the way only the unwashed can, we arrive at breakfast. Which was actually pretty damn good. There I was, sat in best suit and tie, MrsLON in a pretty dress, having a cracking fry-up...

... surrounded by barely lucid smack-heads, ASBO cases and assorted chavs. It appeared there was a reason that this B&B had beds free - it was one of the places Cambridge Council sent people who had been evicted from their homes for attacking their neighbours, and thugs who had left home "cos they is proper well 'ard innit".

I think a park bench would have been preferable that night, but despite all that I don't think I've had a better fried breakfast anywhere else!

***Edited for shit spelling pointed out by the aforementioned MrsLON***
(lawofnations, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 11:47, 2 replies)

Hong Kong's seedier side
After graduating from university in 2001, me and my missus of the time moved to Taiwan for about seven months or so, working as English teachers; however, since the work permits were taking time coming through, we had to leave the country at the end of our tourist visas and get them renewed in Hong Kong.

not much time to plan these things, we ended up booking into the only hotel we could find with a cheap room rate and accommodation: I forget the name of the place but the fact you paid by the hour suggested it wasn't a wholesome family place.

In fairness to the place, it was actually very plush: it came with free porn, condoms in the side tables and erotic and pornographic pictures on the wall - you could even put some coins into the bed to get it to vibrate, if you so wished.

The only problem was that the walls and ceilings were paper thin and although we hadn't stopped at this hotel for sex, it seemed everyone else in the rooms around us had - and the occupants of each room tended to change throughout the night on the hour...
(paulplex erm, hi..., Sun 20 Jan 2008, 11:35, Reply)

hmmm.....
well it wasn't a particularly terrible hotel.

we were in Ibiza, and the light outside our hotel room didn't have a bulb in it.

so in a act of madness my mate touches the live wires sticking out the wall, gets electrocuted and throws out all the electricity on our floor for a good 3 or 4 hours.
( the pink chicken sniffer sniffs pink chickens., Sun 20 Jan 2008, 11:21, 2 replies)

Barca - again!
Hotel Rome Reial in Barcelona.

We got a really cheap deal from a friend who worked for STA Travel, and I guess I should have heard the alarm bells when he sent me a syringe with my booking confirmation. The place is a complete hovel, full of the best of Barca's lost-it skag heads. Windows opening onto brickwork, non-functioning bathrooms, same old story. It wasn't so much the interior of the hotel that bothered me, I'm a firm believer in that if you aren't going to spend much time in your hotel, then your money is better spent on fags/alcohol/a padlock for your door/whatever. However, on the last night I was sitting right outside the hotel in the Plaza, having a drink (verrry beautiful, which made up for the hotel) and a twitchy looking guy at the table next to me got stabbed in the back by one of my fellow guests. Excellent holiday photo though.
(mookroolz, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 9:43, Reply)

old people and newquay
while visiting the well known resort Newquay me and my boyfriend were staying in a hotel with ridiculously thing walls. So thin we could hear every word on out neighbours t.v...
oh dear.
While getting ready for a night on the town we also get to listen to the very old couple next door getting down to it, along with thier running commentry on things that should never be spoken in public. And worst of all they known we could hear and that just seemed to turn them on even more :(
So how did we repay them? Coming back very drunk at 4am and in order to show we're young and in our sexual prime, we jump on the bed and make over the top sex noises. Why we didnt just have sex I cant remember....
(Emily Salvage, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 6:09, Reply)

a shithole in rhyme
when i was a young teenage lass,
i met a man with money and class
but i still lived at home,
so his hands couldn't roam,
or my mum would have drop-kicked his ass.

we thought that, as we wanted fun,
we'd head off for a weekend in the sun
a hotel for 2 nights
with some naughty delights
had us both setting off at a run.

we arrived in paris at seven
thinking that we'd find heaven
the hotel was double-booked,
we were basically fucked
we'd have been better off in devon.

a new hotel had to be found
one that would cost us many a pound
the bedsprings were broke,
he got a violent poke
and had to give me one on the ground.

breakfast was a sorry affair
there was jam on the back of my chair
the croissants were stale
and they tasted of snail*
and the jam then got stuck in my hair

the city itself was just fine
the coffee and pastries divine
but to think of that room
and its bedstead of doom
ruined both his trip and mine

we got back to the hotel at 8
hoping for dinner we weren't too late
but i almost went green
at the sight of the sheen
of the grease all over my plate

but despite our spirits flagging
and our bed that was constantly sagging,
we didn't break down and cry,
we just turned a blind eye
and spent the rest of the weekend shagging.

*foul taste was not snail, but shit didn't rhyme.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 2:52, 3 replies)

What Dreams May Come
A few years ago myself and Miss Photon were invited to a wedding, which was to take place in the West Midlands. I was travelling from west Wales, she was travelling from East Anglia, so the West Midlands was quite a convenient central point for both of us to get to. Train timetables being what they are (especially from Wales), I was to arrive some 3 hours after her, and meet at the hotel.

Unusually for this QOTW, everything went perfectly according to plan. She arrived, settled in the room and turned on the telly (apparently What Dreams May Come was on), nipping to the loo before the film started. This proved to be her undoing, as shutting the bathroom door caused the door handle on the outside to fall off, and the bar through the middle of the lock to fall out. If you've ever fitted a door handle, you'll appreciate that this rather plain lump of metal is wholly responsible for transmitting force between your hand's pressure on the handle, and the bolt in the doorframe. Without it, there is absolutely no way of opening the door short of breaking it down.

The door was sturdily constructed, and Miss Photon less so, rendering that option impractical, so she settled for yelling and pounding on the door and bathroom walls to alert hotel staff and/or other guests to her plight.

When I arrived three hours later, it was to find a sobbing, hoarse Miss Photon, nursing badly bruised hands, in a little heap on the bathroom floor. She had failed utterly to watch What Dreams May Come, but apparently it sounded rubbish.

Length? 113 minutes, apparently.
(Photon wasting your time since, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 0:51, 2 replies)

Every
fucking Hotel in Sheffield. Why? Because they're in sheffield.

I fucking hate sheffield.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 0:42, 4 replies)

Honesty is the Best Policy
For my brother's stag do, we stayed in a B&B / hotel in the Kensington area of London. I won't name it, but it's not just somewhere at random - it does have its own little mark on the map in the pocket A-Z guide and we booked in advance.

It looked a bit shoddy inside. Then we were handed the keys to the rooms. Each had a big brass plate attached, with the room number scrawled on a piece of paper and stuck on one end with sellotape wrapped round and round. A friend of my brother got a basement-level room. The piece of paper taped around the end of his key fob had the room number on one side and the words 'SHiT HolE' on the other. And this was the key he'd just been handed by the manager.

It turns out that the room was actually a bit of a shit hole, so we decided he didn't really have grounds for complaint.
( joefish It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 0:39, Reply)

I've stayed in some shitholes in my time but.....
as fatbob just pointed out, if you want really crappy places to stay, Asia is the place. Kuala Lumpa's are amoung the worst, but what do you expect for 15 ringgit.

By far the worst I ever stayed in was an Indonesian truckers guest house right on the border of Sawarak and Kalamanten in sunny Borneo.

We only ended up there because by the time we hit the border it was closed. I'm not sure what was the worst part about it.

We had a rusting wreck of a motorbike in our room for some reason.

There was the constant sound of gun fire out side all night.

The ugliest oldest most yabaa ridden ladyboy I've ever seen- and trust me, coming from me that's saying something- trying to get into our room all night. The bike came in handy for barricading the door.

There were rats in the 'on sweet' toilet. I've stayed in a lot of places with cockroaches, but never rats out on show, happy as you like. They usually have the good manners to stay behind the walls.

Every cloud and all that though, because we were up 5am due to the fact that we couldn't wait to get out of there, the guard that had said he'd be waiting for us when we came back after we crossed the border in the other direction- we had no drivers license, and had convinced him the swipey bit at the bottom of a passport was a European license, he was dubious, but let us go with the promise he'd check it out and see us on the way back- wasn't there.

Probably a good thing, as we were in a stolen car. Happy days.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Sun 20 Jan 2008, 0:30, 1 reply)

something for all senses
I spent one night in a Backpacker in Kuala Lumpur, but figured out pretty quick it was a cross between a railwaystation's toilet and some kind of fundamentalists' meeting point. It was too late to look for another place so we tried to make the best out of it. Our shoebox-sized and - made off room was wedged between some permanent dwellers, and there was a 15cm gap on the ceiling , that allowed to literally participate on every single fart your neighbours were into.
Well, till late into night, neighbour left watched TV with cranked up volume, while neighbour right decided to have his mates over for some piss up. We tried hard to ignore it but at some stage I yelled to both of them to shut the f up, I'm here to get some rest. Left wing decided to be polite and switched off the TV, while the right wing send of his mates. I was slowly drifting away when right wing remembered his religious duties, decided to made up for his sins and commenced very loud prayers towards Mekka. 30 minutes later I'd explode again, banging on the walls and screaming for mercy. He stopped (thou I heard him wispher) and like in any good tennismatch it was left wings turn. This fella had a real problem with his sinuses and tried hard to clear them. At this stage I was begging for the night to be over, as I slowly recognised to never mess with the locals and they had probably the time of their live torturing the little bloke with their routine...
Did I mention, the room's only furniture were some steelframed beds and a tiny mirror while next to the urinal?

Length? Definitely the longest night of my live.
(fatbob pfffft…, Sat 19 Jan 2008, 23:46, Reply)

Hotel in Filey North Yorkshire
I forget what it was called. It had recently been taken over by new owners and i don't think they had quite got to grips with 'hoteleering' (apologies for my working class education).

Me and the rents, as i was a nipper at this time, dragged ourselves to the hotel bar and i ordered a glass of coke as you do. £2.10 i think it came to, however the worst bit was they poured the drink quite blatantly infront of us out of a 2litre, 19p, rola cola bottle.

what added to the piss taking was that they didnt even fill the glass to the top.


Cunts.

length - quite irrelevant at that age
( Mr Nerdy-Speccy-FuckNuts Ouchy ouchy wa wa!, Sat 19 Jan 2008, 22:38, Reply)

Rock! (of Gibraltar...)
The single worst place I've seen was the Toc H hostel in Gibraltar. it was pretty difficult to find the entrance (half-overgrown with vines) and as you walked up the garden path (littered with old boxes and other crap) you could smell rancid cooking oil. Already this seemed a bad idea. We passed in the garden the only toilets in the place. I say 'in', it was actually 'out' and it stank. The door didn't meet the floor or the ceiling, so at least you could see if it was occupied before finding out there was no lock on the door.
We stood in the open doorway in a cloud of chip fat vapour as a constant precession of mangy cats strolled in and out. We rang the bell and called a few times, but no-one answered, even though a chip pan of oil was on the go, so we buggered off.
Bloody glad we did as we found the Queen's Hotel up the road was really bloody good and cheap as anything.
( Colonel Boris "...a desperate Buzzfeed imitation...", Sat 19 Jan 2008, 22:24, 2 replies)

Travelodge
Was without a doubt the worst.
There was too much noise from passing traffic at all ours.

(I don't use hotels much)
( CandleJakk Formerly Che_Guevaras_Sponge, Sat 19 Jan 2008, 21:11, Reply)