36 year ago before I got a real job and tried travling on a budget $5 a day or something, I checked into a dump in Mexico city and checked out the next morning. The toilet was cracked and the rest of the Bath wasn't very inviting. Felt embarressed for myself, even thinking of budget travel. At that time, I vowed to treat myself to finer shelter and GOOD beds and GQQD food after a long flight. Just wish the Ritz and the 4 Seasons had some better deals. That is my idea of 'roughing it'!

Hands down, it was the Comfort Inn in Beaumont, TX. I arrived late and the Hilton (not exactly a palace either, but better than what was to come)had a large church group that stayed over and occupied all the rooms. At 11 pm I was walked to the Comfort Inn. The armed security guard in the parking lot, which was ringed with concertina wire, should have been a clue! The room had a funny smell, and when I pulled the bedspread back and saw what looked like an entire order of old french fries sticking out from under the bed, I understood why. The room phone didn't work, and the shower didn't spray. More like, it wheezed. Ugh.

WOW - I like the stories. Some are really scary. One or the other - like Schutzee's "Magnolia Motel" - would fit in the Guinnes Books of Records.

eastwest wins.

About 10 years ago my wife and I with our 10 yr old daughter arrived at Cairo around 2 in the morning. We were to connect with Kenya Airways who decided to cancel the flight and we were stuck for 2 days. That first night we stayed at the hotel in the main terminal complete with no a/c, nasty grey sheets, very brown water, no towels and lots of noise. The next night we took a taxi and stayed at the Mena House Hotel near the pyramids. It was wonderful and we talk about it to this day. In this brief time we were able to experience the worst and the best hotel stay back to back.

Some years ago while in Frankfurt, decided to take a few days and flew to Iran(the Shah was still in power then). Arrived in Tehran late--very late(around 3 am) and arrived at the hotel which I had reserved from Frankfurt. I was shown to a room which seemed a bit unkempt--but at least the bed was clean and I was tired. At about 7 I awakened to the sound of the door opening--in walked 3 maids--turned out they had put me in a storage room which was also functioning as a "last resort" bedroom. Maids nodded to me(obviously this was not first time) and went about their work of pulling brooms from closet, wash pails, from another storage space, and....well, it was a room from hell--thank goodness the next night was in a regular room--given to me gratis for the "inconvenience" of the previous night's experience. The next several days were wonderful, including a fantastic night in Isfahan at the Shah Abas Hotel(spelling?)--can't imagine what it all must be like now.

Great story davidlee.

This isn't exactly a worst-stay-ever story - I'm not exactly sure what it is, maybe oddest place you've ever stayed - but somehow it seems to fit here.

Two summers ago my husband and I chartered two large sailboats in the British Virgins and went sailing for a couple of weeks with 12 of our friends. The summer in the Virgins is quite hot and humid and the boats didn't have a/c, which made sleeping difficult. Sleeping on deck was fine until a squall came through. One day we pulled into the Virgin Gorda Yacht Harbor for the night and discovered they have wonderful air conditioned bathrooms. Well ... can you guess where the crew slept that night? I have a wonderful picture of the crew, each in their own stall, on top of an air mattress, with their heads sticking out into the walkway. The janitor came in about 5 a.m. to clean. I guess he at first thought he had found some dead bodies, because he had a look of terror. It quickly turned into the funniest thing he'd ever seen. I'm sure he's still telling stories of the crazy American women who abandoned their yachts to sleep in the bathroom.

Several experiences:

Hong Kong: Some guest room house on Nathan Road. Traveling with my frugel buddy Rick (who never believes in hotel reservations in advance) we get to one room and it's a big bed. Rick says "well wehre's Mark's bed" she says "no, you two men sleep together in nice big bed." We both said NO WAY.

our next room: two cots (mine always fell in when I turned -- Rick snored the whoel night in his,) a toilet that shook for a half hour when you flushed it, a hose for a shower, and in the early morning hours... a cat that made his way into my bed. That was the one good thing about the hotel.

Beijing: the Beijing hotel: broken elevators, torn carpet, and a bed that I think had a massage thing in it. I was playing around with the buttons on the sideboard and all of a sudden there was a short circuit and the bed went on the fire. The manager said "oh this happens with foreign tourist aat least once or twice a week."

Texas/Mexican Border: Motel Six (or Motel with the "i" replaced with "e") the rudest desk staff, questioned my passport, I got locked in the shower, the bed was hard as the floor, the room was the size of my walk-in closet, we had drunken college students running up and down the area half the night and the other half listenign to "Jack" and some woman screaming then "making up" for five hours straight. Then about five a-m with the nice "thick" walls hear Jack snoring so loud you can hear him in cancun. Consolation: the room was very clean.

and the worst of worst: The Howard Johnson's in Toronto. I talked of this dump before: the exploding toilet, broken air conditioner, dirty linens, rude staff and they REFUSED to give me my money back. I said I hope this place gets gutted sometime.

Well It did. Now it's a very clean and nice Courtyard by marriott who gutted the place when they took over.

Checked into the Doubletree Santa Monica in the spring of '99. They were going through massive, unadvertised renovations. Charged us the full rack rate regardless, kept up a hammer-and-saw symphony from 6am each morning, lobby thick with drywall dust and reverberating from circular saws, hot water turned off for hours at a time, room mysteriously stripped of TV remotes, clock radio, etc. (but that was OK because the hammering man outside woke me up)... the worst. The manager was out of town at the time. I remember the checkout line was like something from Fawlty Towers -- this mob of paunchy, aggrieved men in sport shirts spewing complaints at bewildered non-Anglophone staff. I wrote a scathing letter, copied it to Promus, the parent corporation, and got the whole stay comped. But I never went back.

Another real prizewinner is the Hyatt in New Brunswick, NJ. Their real business is hosting local functions (weddings, etc.) which take up all the on-site parking, and if you arrive late you have to park in a municipal garage three blocks away and hike back to the hotel with your suitcase in the rain and darkness. I only stayed there for the BA bonus miles.

At a conference, a hotel is Detroit. Never did find out who booked it for us all. The bed was low to the floor and had only three functioning legs, which made is just about impossible to sleep on. Midway through the night I tried to break off the three legs and at least get the bed even... didn't work. The windows didn't work either, and of course there was no airconditioning. I've slept in lots of places more primitive since then... including a Marrriott with much of the roof blown off after a hurricane. But none worse than the Detroit Hotel. I am reminded of it every time I go through the Detroit airport... which is another, although similar, story.

One of the worst hotels I stayed in was a Frommer's recommendation for moderate price, in Riva Del Garda, on Lake Garda in northern Italy. Beautiful locale, but the room was up two very narrow and steep flights, above the restuarant. The room/bath was just okay, but the bed was a thin mattrass atop a wire frame. My body was bent into the shape of a "C" either on my back or stomach. If that weren't enough to preclude sleep, the town's church bells rang all night,to me still unfathomable: 11:13PM, 11:49PM, 3:33AM, 7:22AM....

The worst place was a pension, another of Frommer's finest recommendations (do they EVER visit/stay at any of these places?), in Rome. Driving into Rome on a Sunday, found the pension in the "artsy" district, each floor of this once grand home, was separately owned/operated. With each floor I ascended, the rents gots cheaper, seedier and as I discovered, why they were available. This time I asked to see the room, before I paid. I remember standing in the doorway, frozen for at least a minute, calculating if I could find another hotel at this hour and secure another coveted parking space. The door barely locked, the whole bath "room" WAS the shower; the spigot emerged out of the ceiling so everything got wet. The bed provided the all too familiar sleeping position of the letter "C"; it took a month for my back to straighten. After one night,I bid Arivaderci to this fallen manse, I high tailed it to the Sheraton with my hotel certs and enjoyed some much needed sleep the rest of my stay in Italy.


[This message has been edited by Rogues88 (edited 09-21-2000).]

Nope. I remember looking for a place in Amsterdam listed in Frommer, called the Hotel Bell. When we found it we giggled because "Hotel Bell" was of course just a sign telling people what button to press to get someone to open the door.

Now can we talk about bad places people have visited in the last three years, costing at least US$50 (or something well above $2, anyway)? Places we might wander into next week, if we weren't fore-warned. (The London Regent mentioned surely isn't part of The Regent chain? At the flip end, Regent HKG gets my vote for the best hotel in the world.)

this is a cool thread, USAFAN.

I remember a Regent Hotel across from the fountain in Piccadilly as the only place to get some edible food about 30 years ago. Their roast beef had more fat then meat in it. Must be the same hotel, that didn't age well. Of course, the circus was filled with 'hippies'.

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.