Hotel Roominations
They named it The Royal Orchid. They were wrong.
American Germaphobe India Saga (part 6)
This is an ongoing true story of a work trip to India where I, a spoiled, frightened, American germaphobe, desperately cling to my waning sanity by finding humor in the fear.
In my last post, I provided a culturally enlightened perspective on what it means to sample the local cuisine, and having questionably escaped with both stomach and dignity intact, it was time to return to the room and rest up for the next day’s visit to the office.
ROOMY EXPECTATIONS
The trip back to the room from the restaurant was pleasantly devoid of adventure, as though the universe was either taking pity on me, or else wooing me into a false sense of security. Either way, this makes me nervous.
Like a nerd in an apparently empty school locker room, I don’t trust the silence.
As I make the trek back to my room I distract myself from the ubiquitous sense of peril by mentally sorting through all the work I need to do in preparation for tomorrow. There is not too much to do, but I want to get it done quickly before I get sleepy again and need to rest. I am anticipating a rough night, primarily due to the 10.5 hour time zone difference standing between me and a good night’s sleep, but also there is the nagging worry that what I just did at the restaurant may come back to haunt me in ways I dare not think about right now. I do have a supply of emergency anti-disaster meds, and the hotel has thoughtfully blessed me with two dispensers of full rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom, but I’m hoping neither of these will be necessary.
As for the jet lag, I look forward to the fact that my hotel room, meticulously maintained and kept clean and welcoming by trained hotel professionals, will enfold me in its comforting arms of hospitality, dissolve the tension and stress of this weary traveler, and guarantee that I will awake tomorrow morning refreshed, energized and optimized for what lies ahead.
Oh wait…. I was thinking of another hotel.
I mentioned in the previous chapter that the restaurant was ill-lit. Darkness is a theme here at the Gloomy Orchid, and while one may be tempted to blame aged and insufficiently-watted bulbs or perhaps fault the decorator’s choice of light- and life-absorbing paint and carpet colors, I am more inclined to believe that the entire experience is a massive bio-feedback effect wherein all life inside the hotel is oppressed, repressed and depressed into a hopeless funk, with the combined auras of all of the hotel’s exhausted life forces feeding back into the demeanor of the hotel itself. It is a positive feedback cycle of mutually compounding depression. And by “all of the hotel’s life forces” I do not refer just to humans, who while not insubstantial in count are yet still a minority of the total biomass of life in the hotel when you include the molds, mildews, microbes, insects and rats.
Lest you think I’m being overly-dramatic or perhaps abusing hyperbole in a vain attempt to gain sympathy, let me take you on a short virtual tour of the Shriveling Orchid.
THE LOBBY
We’ll start with the lobby, but let me warn you not to jump to conclusions. The lobby is like the cover of a book, and I’ll remind you that your mother told you never to judge a book by its cover.
I know what you’re thinking: “Hey, that’s not bad. It looks clean, welcoming, reasonably-lit, even fancy.”
Allow me to make some observations with the clarity of first-hand hindsight.
First, there is the nice, shiny floor. I agree with you that this gives one the impression of a pristine, clean establishment that cares for the facility as though it were a royal residence. But sometimes things are too clean and overly-polished for a reason. No other part of the hotel that I saw looked anything remotely like this. The lobby amounts to a bait-and-switch. It is my contention now that this is probably the cleanest part of the building and the floors are kept super-polished so that they are too slippery for the rats to set foot on and thereby scare away unsuspecting clientele.
Second, note the statue. Don’t just see it. Be it. Like any good work of art, empathize with it. Feel its oppression, its desperation, its pathetic plight of escape. Here we have, embodied in materials too suspicious-looking to describe, the eventual fate of all who stay here at this hotel. Dirty, moldy, bent over from coughing and hacking too long due to the mildewed air of the rooms and the cesspool stench of the river right outside the hotel, this broken visage of a soul is a Dantean warning to all who might enter:
Third, in stark contrast to the overwhelming amounts of microbial and vermin life elsewhere in the hotel, you will note the ironic sterility of the lobby. It poses an impressive absence of vigorous life. Sure, it’s unreasonable to expect a party to be going on here, and yes, there are people in the picture. But let’s zoom in on that.
Again… be the art.
On the certified, pre-owned, faded sofa almost certainly acquired from a nearby curbside dump, there is a hotel guest sitting, looking dazed and vacant. Unlike the Sisyphean efforts of the statue in its eternally futile egress, this poor soul has at last accepted defeat in her epic struggle for freedom. She has sat down in surrender to the inevitable, exhausted and emptied of hope, probably for the last time. To this day she may still be there, like Elevator Ernie, yet one more victim of this Indian Hotel California.
THE HALLWAYS
Now, let’s go behind the glamour of the lobby to see the realities of life as a guest here at the Dingy Orchid.
I admit the quality of the photo isn’t great — my circa 2015 smartphone didn’t stabilize well when taking pictures while walking. Why not stop and get a clearer picture, you ask? Have you ever played a multi-player fast-action first-person shooter death match game? If you have, you might remember the first rule of survival: never stop moving. One does not stop walking in this hotel, as anything standing still is a target for its myriad varmints and critters.
Notice that this hallway is narrow and bland. One must praise the manufacturer of the carpet, however, as it still retains its structural integrity and even a sense of design after being handed down generation to generation since the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs. As for the color scheme, I’m pretty sure it was specifically chosen as a visual metaphor of the persistent clouds of sewer gas that waft to and fro outside the hotel.
Now, notice that the dark hallway is not without sources of illumination: there are some light fixtures on the walls, a few on the ceiling, and finally the mysterious light at the end of the tunnel which I’m pretty sure is coming from a portal into an after life I don’t care to experience if its only access is through this hotel. But more to the point, notice how all of the lights — even the trillion candle-power light at the end of the hallway — fail to create an ambient illumination here. These lights are powerless to overcome the energy-sucking disposition of the hotel.
THE ROOM
Our virtual tour now catches up with me here in this hallway as I enter my room. I am again reminded at how different the air quality is between the hall and the room itself. That’s not to say that it is great in the halls. Not at all. It’s just that the halls are nowhere near as bad as the room. Perhaps you can relate if you’ve ever been in an old house basement which has clearly been the victim of persistent moisture and water damage. The room’s smell is a dry-wet smell of rotting wood, decaying earth and ancient human skin, mixed with the pungent hints of mold, mildew and other fungal mysteries. It’s a barely-tangible substance that hangs in the air, a dust that settles nowhere but in your lungs.
The room itself tries hard to be better-lit than the hallway. One might note that the following pictures seem to convey a room with sufficient lighting, but remember that (a) the camera makes generally dim areas seem brighter than they really are and (b) the ratio of oxygen to funk in the room is so low as to make everything seem even dimmer in the eyes of the still-living.
Since the nature of my work is such that I will be doing work in the evenings here at the hotel, having a functional and comfortable place in the room to perform this work is paramount to my efficiency. What we have here in the room is indeed functional, but while it is not uncomfortable per se, it lacks the qualities one might expect that would encourage quiet, comfortable concentration for blocks of hours in the tired evening.
Even were I to desire a more comfortable place to park my ample self, perhaps to recline a bit and tick off a few emails in a more relaxed posture, the room’s couch does a rather good job of discouraging the cautious dweller. Its color and design are perfect for hiding decades of unwashable accretion of humanity’s less-praiseworthy excretions, while at the same time evoking a convincing suspicion that I have found an actual “Flea Circus” which until now I always assumed to be a myth.
Now I already confessed in a previous chapter that I chose this hotel even though it had a mix of ratings and reviews, at least one of which even did point out that the décor and furnishings were a bit dated. So while I might be a bit complainy here, I have no one to blame but myself. And with that in mind, I begin to ponder how I might fix this situation.
THE ALTERNATIVE
“Safely” back in my room now with my belly full of shredded chocolate tire, my lungs filling with fungus, and my heart full of desperation, I pull out the laptop, connect to the wifi, and put its inconsistent and limited bandwidth to the test.
Among the many tidbits I can recall from the Putrid Orchid hotel reviews, there is one review that stood out as helpful given my already-here situation. Another funk-frustrated guest mentioned that after one night he decided to relocate to another hotel. Since I did not bother to remember the name of his savior hotel, I first had to relocate his review. Fortunately this was not difficult: he went to the Leela Palace, and said it was much better.
The question “how much better could it be?” is no longer relevant for me. I’m now at the point where it’s more about “how much will it cost and how far away is it?”
I look up the Leela Palace. It looks REALLY nice on the web site, but the rates are very, very different. I’m paying (and my employer will be reimbursing) the equivalent of $99/night for my room here at the Tortured Orchid. A room at the Leela Palace is around $270/night. So the question I have to ask myself is whether it is worth moving to a hotel where I’ll have to pay the overage of $170/night just to stay mildew-free?
I suppose if I were not a stay-at-the-hotel-until-I-have-to-leave kind of guy it wouldn’t matter as I’d be out and about seeing what the surrounding countryside has to offer a foolishly adventurous American not content to hide in the hotel. But I am not that fool. I’m the fool who instead will most likely spend all non-office hours in the hotel, continuously breathing in this bacteriological smorgasbord.
On that note, it occurs to me that my “brown lung” condition from the plane ride over here has almost certainly resulted in a fertile layer of top soil over the surface of my respiratory system, into which the seeds and spore from the ventilation ducts are now taking root, turning brown lung into green lung. Or maybe black. Mildew tends to be black. I’m gonna need an endoscope to see what is going on down there!
Note to self: ask for an endoscope for Christmas.
This could be my last night as a human unless I make a change of scenery happen. But for an extra $170/night? Is it really that good? I scroll thru their web site hotel pictures…
There are even more intriguing pictures on their site, but I keep thinking that it’s only for a week, and after you get used to the funk it doesn’t seem so bad (a thought I’ll end up having to re-convince myself to believe every night). Am I desperate enough to pay $170/night for a week for a smidge less suffering?
THE MISTAKE
Nah. I’ll stay here at the Deadly Orchid. I’m sure it’ll be ok.
Perseverance is a virtue only when combined with wisdom.
Spoiler alert… I do survive a week at the Lethal Orchid. And another spoiler alert: I do end up staying at the Leela Palace on a subsequent trip, which I’ll tell you about in a later chapter. For now, stay tuned, there’s a lot more scary stuff that happens, and the week has just begun…
