Hotel Splendido, Nicaragua
I once stayed at a hotel in Nicaragua where nothing worked. The lights didn't work, the air conditioning didn't work, the shower was a mere trickle of ice-cold water. There were three of us in the room, and it was so cramped the beds were virtually shoved right together.

I wasn't too bothered by this at first - it's a very poor country and you can't expect everything to be perfect. However, when we went to the boys' room and discovered that they were living it up in a veritable palace of massive beds, hot water and icy air conditioning, we got a bit pissed off.

I went to speak to the manager, told him that we were paying the same as everybody else but that our room was shit, that nothing worked, and that we were not happy.

His response was to laugh at my Castillian accent (Nicaraguans don't like the Spanish. With good reason, to be fair) and after a bit of grumbling, send a man out to have a look at things.

When the guy arrived, he looked at me like I was mad and told me that the electricity wouldn't come on until 7pm, despite the fact that it was working in the other rooms.

7pm came and still nothing worked. The guy came round again, fiddled with the air conditioning and got it working. A few minutes later it stopped working. It turns out that every time there was a power cut (which is about every 20 minutes in Nicaragua) the air conditioning wouldn't come back on again until it was reset.

Then he grumbled about having to come to our room all the time to fix the air conditioning and demanded that we paid him. We had paid for an air conditioned room, and were now being asked to pay to have it fixed.

We got the guy to show us how to fix it ourselves, which he was astonished by as Central American men live in the 1950s and think that women can't do anything except iron shirts. And then we spent a fun night in pitch darkness (the lights still didn't work), scrabbling around outside in the pouring rain (oh yeah, it was a chalet) to fix this bloody air conditioning. It was way too hot and humid to do without it.

Fortunately the boys let us use their shower in the morning.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Fri 18 Jan 2008, 14:22, 2 replies)

What kind of men were they?
Chivalry suggests they should have swapped rooms with the girls. Or at least, you should have suggested that. :P
(Musuko, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 19:05, closed)

maybe
if you had let them look.......
(papa bouba slap your face, Tue 22 Jan 2008, 13:37, closed)