Worst Hotel Ever

The Russians and I hopped from the bed of the pick-up and said our goodbyes to Mary (or whatever I named her, I forgot) and her friend. Her friend, a heavily tattooed American gave some recommendations as far as places to stay that were either closer of further from the hotspots, depending on what we were looking for.

I found out shortly thereafter that what people in Pattaya are generally looking for, is sex.

I followed the Russians into a hotel run by Russians. Girls sat on a dirty couch and looked at me. The guy at the desk disappeared for a time and I listened to pumping techno for a while until I decided I wanted to try my luck elsewhere.

This was the situation: My bank card was sitting under my bed (or what was until recently my bed) in Korea. My cash was starting to dwindle. I was searching for a cheap motel that I could put onto a credit card so that I wouldn’t have to worry much about what would be the largest bill in Thailand.

No luck. Cash only. Apparently people don’t want others to know they were in a place like Pattaya. I walked over a mile down the only stretch of road near the coast that was barren of hotels. Occasionally I would pass these weird combo gym-hotels but I didn’t fancy the look of any of them. By the time I found a place I was covered in sweat, my arms hurt from dragging a couple of pieces of luggage, and I was frazzled and close to losing it after trying to avoid the constant rush of scooters.

I finally walked into a wide open room, asked for a room for the next handful of days. I was stuck behind a fat, bearded American biker guy as he waddled up the steps. I found my room, opened the door...

The room was actually quite large. That is all it had going for it. As I turned on the light a lizard scurried across the plaster ceiling. This is not a lie, nor is it even a slight exaggeration. My hotel room had a fucking lizard in it. The funny thing is that didn’t bother me at all. Grain and dirt covered bits of the linoleum floors. A bound menu sat atop a broken table. The menu, it turned out, was to some other hotel that had room service / a kitchen. I turned on the TV for a little background noise as I looked for the remote to the air conditioner. CNN was on and talking about some compound in Pakistan. I turned off the TV and headed out for some food.

I returned with a plastic baggie full of cellophane noodles, chili peppers, tripe, sausage, and vegetables bought from a vendor outside. It was delicious. The whole atmosphere of Pattaya that night was of a wild party. Foreigners shouted from scooters and in bars amidst bright TVs and the prospect of cheap sex, I could hear cheers. I was missing something maybe.

The bathroom was the worst part of the entire room, maybe even the worst part of Thailand in general. It existed on the same level as my bathroom in Korea in that the shower was not separated. The millipedes that sat dead in the middle of the tile should have tipped me off.

I turned on the shower found that the drain was clogged with all manner of black, mucky debris and that as the water level was raised, all of this shit just floated along the bathroom floor. I turned off the shower and tried to do some laundry in the sink and found that this water also drained into the same pipes and soon there was an inch of water on the floor and a bunch of gunk floating around. I did what I could and hung my clothing to dry on the balcony.

I then turned on the TV, popped opened a mini-bar beer and discovered that Osama Bin Laden was dead.