what its like to stay in a $3 hotel

Kiwi-boy and I are now in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia...its one of the coolest areas of malaysia (literally!!..it rarely gets above 21 degrees here.) anyhow, because we were flying around Penang and had no time to spare before catching our bus to the highlands yesterday, we didnt get a room reserved for the night...so when we showed up, we were sadly informed (after making the trek to a couple of hostels) that there were no rooms at the inn...and we would have to go to the dreaded Daniel's guesthouse...which to quote lonely planet, "some people reported bedbugs and found the staff to be unhelpful." Believe me it was the last place we would have even considered going...but we saw the room (stark, but kind of clean...although there were blood stains on one of the pillows...I had them replace it)...and the place is supposedly under new management...(they have a petition to lonely planet to come back and change their review.) Anyhow, we signed on for the night...and at $3 each, the place was a bargain....

But then we went into the communal bathroom/shower...if you have ever been to korea you are probably familiar with the bathroom setup, where people shower in the same space that the toilet is in...well that is basically what it is like here...except in all of my travels to korea, I never actually flushed a toilet and saw the water leak out over the bathroom floor...followed by the water in the sink....basically there was no drainage system for the sink and toilet and they shared a communal drain within the stall....When i realized this, I made a pledge to myself, to never shower in these conditions...

And the bed...well the linens were a bit dodgy...I mean there was a dead ant under the "clean" pillow (the one with no blood)...and that clean pillow did have a rather noxious smell coming off of it....At this point, I would like to give a special thank you to Thai Airways, for allowing me to "borrow" a blanket from the plane...because that is what I slept on...wrapped up like a little burrito..praying that I wouldnt catch any sort of diseases from the bedding.

Tomorrow night, I plan on staying at a nicer place (maybe a $6 hotel??)...oh and I think the big lesson that was learned here, involves checking the sheets and the bathroom before signing off on a room.