THE CHIEL: Horror hotel experiences

I’VE had my fair share of hotel horrors and surely you have as well. Mosquitoes (to die for) was one of them way back in my university days at a hotel in Knysna.

As first year students we had to sell a number of SAX Appeal rag magazines and as Cape Town had been saturated, nay flooded, by other sellers, a Rhodesian friend and I (it wasn’t yet Zimbabwe in those days) wondered where we could find a relatively easy market to exploit. “As far away from Cape Town as reasonably possible,” we decided, and hitchhiked to Knysna.

We found a seedy hotel that quoted student prices, and dossed down for the night, unaware of a squadron of mites hiding in the shadows. Not for long, mind you; soon we were under attack. No Doom to spray them with, Peaceful Sleep had not yet been invented and we had no intention of being sucked dry of our blood by a million mozzies.

So we went on the attack, pillows flying, towels flicking, splatting the little critters and caring not a jot at the noise, mayhem and black splodges we were leaving on the wall. We spent an awful night as the survivors of our holocaust took revenge, but did finally get a little sleep.

It was worth it. Our magazines sold out in no time like hot cakes and we wished we’d brought more.

Another more recent hotel horror was at a joint in Athens when Mrs Chiel and I were woken on three occasions by the couple next door making passionate love and not embarrassed in the least to let the entire floor know exactly what they were up to.

On the third occasion it was getting just too much so Mrs C opened our door into the passage, coughed loudly, and slammed it shut. That seemed to do the trick and we were then able to have a peaceful night.

Next morning we did wonder as guests arrived in the breakfast room who were the errant couple. “Don’t think it was them,” one of us would whisper as an elderly pair arrived. “No, not those either.” – “What about these? He’s smiling!”

Some years ago I told the story of a British businessman who checked into a hotel in New York and couldn’t understand why his bed was so lumpy when he sat on it. So he turned on the light to discover he was sitting on a corpse.

Back at reception the shocked guest told the clerk what was in the bed. The young man didn’t so much as look up, took a key out of a drawer, passed it to him and muttered: “Okay, you are now in room 211.”

Perhaps you sleep in the nuddies at home, but that’s not such a good idea when staying in a hotel as the story about this fellow illustrates. He arrived at an old inn too late to have a room en suite, so had to use the loo on the landing. In the middle of the night he had to rush to the toilet, only to hear his door shut behind him, locked.

There wasn’t even a towel handy to cover himself, so in trepidation he woke the manageress who fortunately wasn’t as embarrassed as he was. (No doubt she’d seen it all before.)

Tell me your hotel story.

Chiel today is Robin Ross-Thompson;