A manual might help

There are a couple of things I hate when I stay over in hotels. Apparently I am not the only one who has some of these "pet hates". A comedian on the television the other day was explaining how mad he gets when he travels for thousands of miles with his suitcase, carrying it around over pavements, getting it on the plane and off the plane, picking it up and putting it down, basically like dragging a ton of bricks around behind him for hours or days...and then when he gets to the hotel some jerk wants to carry it for him over the last 10 meters to his room and then expects to be tipped for it. Well, I definitely share his sentiments on that one as well.

Something else I hate is figuring out how the television works, or the safe in the cupboard, or which light switch to use to kill one of the 12 lights in the room. Oh and don't forget the fancy faucets. The higher the rating of the hotel, the fancier the taps and toilets get and the more difficult it gets to find a suitable temperature for your shower. Sometimes you let it run for ten minutes only to find out that it is actually the cold side you were trying. Well, I am in a fancy hotel in Entebbe that decided to post a "manual" on the wall for ignorants like me. I guess the hotel staff got fed up with guests complaining about their complicated bathroom utilities, so here is the manual in case you are ever confronted with one of these babies.....

Now if someone can just tell me how to connect to the Internet so that I can publish this post....

Follow up:

So the next morning after publishing this I get a call from hotel reception telling me the shuttle to the airport is waiting. I jump up, run for the shower and realize that this "manual" is as confusing as I am at 3:30 in the morning. I tried everything but in order not to catch a plane with 1st degree burns all over me, I eventually finish my shower under cold water. I had no time to figure out how it works and the manual did not help much either. At least i was awake after that....

A hands-free shower, please

I like to read reviews on hotels, or to listen to people's opinions about hotels that they have stayed in. It is always interesting to see what people find as the ultimate requirement to make the hotel that they are staying in acceptable or not. I was once a bit annoyed with a British tourist complaining about the softness of his eggs, while two weeks before that I was told by the chef in another hotel that he did not have matches to make me an omelette. Then you ask yourself if some people are just more finicky than others, or if am I getting used to sleeping in far below standard hotels. Whatever the answer may be, if there is one thing that I usually check out first when I enter my room, then it is the bathroom. I don't sit with my naked bum in any hotel bath in Africa, and I don't use those crouching Muslim toilets. This is fortunatley not that common in most countries, but finding a proper shower usually is not either. Most of the hotels in West Africa have the shower inside the bath, with a moulded stained shower curtain that has no purpose other than to stick to your body once you have decided you are clean enough to get out. I will still accept the bath-shower with the sticky shower curtain, but on thing that really pisses me off is when the shower head is one of those handheld types with a broken bracket that cannot keep it up against the wall. This means that you cannot shower using both hands, you have to hold the head in one hand trying to soap up with the other, or have one hand to wash your hair and one hand to close the lid. Try clinging the shower head between your legs and soon you have the whole floor under water. Last night I slept in a room with one of these unfunctional shower brackets, and this morning I thought to myself that if I want to stay friendly today, then I need to solve the problem. I had to give up my face cloth, but at least I had both hands free to enjoy my shower....

A dirty job, but someone's got to do it

I know that many of my South African friends think I am brave to work in Africa. The images of Africa you see on television don't really motivate people to plan their next holiday destination further north than the Limpopo River. I also have to agree, the worst places I have ever been in were in Africa. Hotels with no water, no electricity, 12 television channels of which only one has a clear picture, food that forces you to go an a strict diet until you arrive home (that is if a flight is available or has not been cancelled at the last moment), insects that carry deadly diseases, corrupt officials, suspicious people staring at you like you are the only soul around that's loaded with money, the list goes on. But there is a different side to Africa too, the side I don't usually like to show people because it has the opposite effect on people. They start getting envious and don't feel sorry for you anymore. So my intention is not to say too much about this, who would believe me in any case if I tell them I had cocktails on a beach in Dar Es Salaam and actually enjoyed it? As they say, one pictures speaks more than a thousand words, so all I am going to do is show one picture of the hotel I was staying in. Africa might have a place for sissies after all......