I stayed in a small hotel in Puno, Peru in 1988. I was shown to my room and before I was allowed to enter, the floor was swept clean of about a pound of dirt. The room had a small window, a small bed with gray sheets and coarse wool blankets, no heat, hot water only for a few hours in the morning. No water at all at night. I won’t go into details about how the communal toilet looked in the morning. The communal shower was almost directly over the toilet. At over 10,000 feet I kept waking up in the middle of the night freezing and gasping for air. It was only 96 cents though.

I stayed in a dive pension in Barcelona back in 1980 that had a bed so soft my butt literally hit the floor. A few weeks later I stayed in a pension in Porto, Portugal and the bed broke in the middle of the night and I came crashing to the floor.

I stayed at a hotel in Jamaica with a toilet that erupted bugs and ants when you sat on it. When I complained I was given a can of bug spray. When I complained more the hotel threatened to call the police and not let me leave the country if I did not pay the bill in full.

Stayed in a room about three feet wide in Hong Kong’s infamous Chung King mansion. There was a cot and a small table with a fan. There was water dripping down the wall so the desk clerk taped paper to the wall to channel it to the floor. He taped over a lizard so I had a live lizard stuck to my wall. Strange thing, I had the soundest night of sleep in my life there. Completely zonked out for over 12 hours (no alcohol either).

I also stayed at the Regent Palace in London about 5 years ago. It is indeed a dump, but still not too horrible.