The Hotel

It has, of course, occurred to me that it would be nice to post photos. But I have so many Philippine photos that I get swept into them and then don't write about the trip itself.

Anyway, the hotel!
The last several batches of coworkers who came to Philippines had a hotel with a kitchenette and their own laundry.

The company didn't want to spend that much money again, which I understood, due to budget cuts. But it seemed that we were going to be placed into an apartment instead of a hotel.  We looked at tons and tons of apartments with the vendor, looked at signing a 1 month lease, with two people to each apartment.  It was good and bad. Good because we'd have a kitchen and washing machine. Bad because we'd be cooking our own food, purifying our own water, doing our own laundry.
That makes us sound like snobs, I know, but when you know your coworkers didn't go through this, it is less exciting.  I resigned myself to it either way, but not everyone in the group was as enthusiastic. The showers in the apartments were not ideal.
Eventually, it came back to the fact that we are not allowed to sign contracts in foreign countries and we could not make the lease work.  So we were at the hotel the whole time.

The hotel employees were VERY NICE--but the hotel wasn't that great for a long term stay. There was a tiny fridge...and that's it. The walls were very thin and I could hear *EVERYTHING* in the room next to me, which frequently included a crying baby, who did nothing but cry.

As an expectant mother, I understand that babies cry. Even back then, I told myself to get used to it, since it would soon be my future.
But when you work all night and should sleep all day, a crying baby is a bad combo. There were also parties in the room next to me whenever there weren't babies.  You might recall earlier that the hotel asked when I wanted my room cleaned. I am not even sure what I said, but the time was usually in the middle of the day when I was sleeping, so I changed the time, but then my body clock would change. Consequently, they were always trying to clean my room when I was in the shower or asleep. Which meant that I didn't get my 2 bottles of water that I needed every day. Yes, I could call and ask for them, but that meant another tip and feeling too much like a princess ordering around a hotel staffer-and maybe I just like to complain about not having water.

Also, the hotel didn't provide bathrobes, another exceptionally inconvenient thing about being awakened with housekeeping or laundry.

These things would be Ok to adjust to if we were all used to this experience--but everyone else had gone before and usually stayed at 3 star hotels or better--and this just wasn't that great. So I guess you could say our standards were just too high. We were not snobby Americans, though, I promise--the hotel was nice, we tipped well, we paid a lot, we were very nice to the employees, but we were all expecting quiet rooms and bathrobes, and it just didn't happen.
 The beds were soft, though, and that helped.

I promise the next blog entry will be happier and nicer. Maybe the complaining, whiny ones are easier to type.