Gertsamtkunstwerk

The World's Most Boring Holiday Photos

I am slowly editing the photos I took on holiday in Goa. Not the most memorable holiday; one of wasted opportunities, and that is reflected in the appalling quality of the photos I took, when I could be bothered to. I haven't finished yet. I think I have photo-editor's block, not assisted by a mouse that is slightly broke. But I don't tend to replace things until they're totally broke. And I am horrified at how neglected my poor little photoblog is....

Jimmy took some pictures of me paddling topless in the sea, but I'm a bit shy to embed them in this entry, so if you want to see them, you'd best View this photo or View this photo

Don't look me, I'm boring. Don' t look at me getting my tits out, I'm shy

Air Rage

When we - finally - boarded the plane in Goa we entered a version of reality. I calculated that it was my eleventh flight in a year, so the procedures were very familiar to me. The cabin crew were going round checking the overhead lockers, the uprightnedness of seats, the fastenedness of seatbelts. The doors had been shut; we had not yet been told our departure was delayed for ten minutes whilst awaiting the arrival of two inbound planes. The captain had apologised for the existing delay, explaining that it was caused by a passenger on the inbound flight requiring medical attention, followed by a request that anyone unfit to fly should make themselves known.

A chap stood up. I immediately clocked that he was rather the worse for drugs. I was not sure whether he needed the loo or whether he was wanting to get his anti-DVT exercises in early. Suffice to say he had to be told three times, in increasingly stern tones from the trolley-dolly, to 'sit down sir'. Once should be enough, especially prior to take off.

He spent the early hours of the flight in seeming perpetual motion, up and down more often than a...yoyo. Bit of a nuisance, I judged, and forgot about him. Eventually, food was served. There was an issue about this, the issue being that it was four hours into a flight, a flight that took off six hours after we had left our hotels, breakfast-less. Also, there was some question about whether there were sufficient vegetarian meals - I was sat next to one of a party of eight vegetarians (two couples and their four children) and behind a group of four veggies. But certainly the thirteen of us got ours.

Dinner was nearly over when Weird Druggie Guy decided to walk down our aisle and engage in conversation with one of the party in front of us. I don't know what was said, but Weird Druggie Guy was being patently passive-aggressive and the quiet unassuming chap (early twenties, travelling with - I assume - mother and two brothers) appeared to be doing the right thing in engaging him in non-confrontational conversation with conciliatory open body language. Not quite sure what happened, but Weird Druggie Guy swiped the meal tray off the young Asian man - albeit was nearly finished and walked off aggressively. Immediately one of the cabin crew was beside the Asian man, saying all the appropriate things, including "If you want, we'll take your details."

Dinner over, it was time for my loo call and anti-DVT exercises. It was an Airbus A330 with downstairs loos. In the vestibule to the loos was a woman looking like death warmed up, being gently quizzed by two cabin crew "Are you taking any medication for it?"

Back to my seat, to read, perchance to dream. Suddenly, I realize it's all kicked off. I later found out that Weird Druggie Guy had assaulted another of the Asian brothers and had been brought to the ground by one of the veggie dads sitting behind. Next thing I know, Weird Druggie Guy is marched through the curtain to the front of the plane held in arm-locks by Trolley Dolly and Veggie Dad. Slight muttering "So he gets to travel in business class..?."

A bit later he's marched back again in handcuffs by Trolley Dolly. So Veggie Dad remarks loudlishly to all and sundry "We'll probably have to make an emergency landing". I look at my map on the screen in front of me, and equally loudly, again to all and sundry announce "Baghdad". Everyone glances at the map and a nervous titter goes round our section of the cabin. I explain to Veggie Dad #2 that I had had a dream a few nights previously that our return journey involved an emergency landing at Baghdad (true...).

A bit later, I return again to the loo. Outside, Mrs Death Warmed-Up is lying in a foetal position pale as a shroud, attended by a cabin crew. No sign of Weird Druggie Man. Later, in Gatwick South, my smoking friend tells me: she's a nervous flyer at the best of times, and she spent half the flight aware that the prisoner was sitting next to an openable door, albeit in handcuffs.

Someone comes back from and says (oh how rumours start!) that the pilot would have landed but it was choice between Baghdad and Tehran, so he decided to carry on. She was hoping it would be Bahrain because Lancome make-up is really cheap in Bahrain. Someone else wanted Cairo because they wanted to see the Pyramids.

Eventually, afternoon is served, with fulsome apologies from the stewardess that they were two cabin crew down. To which the only reply is "Don't apologise: we know what's happening..." After afternoon tea, the captain announces that the toilets were closing and there would be no at-seat service for twenty minutes because the staff had not had a "break due to unforeseen circumstances..." Veggie Dad suggested "You lazy gets" - our stewardess had the wickedest sense of humour and had spent much of the flight teasing those she instinctively judged could take it.

Finally, we land at Gatwick. I was fully expecting a "we've run out of ladders" announcement; it usually happens to me at Gatwick - indeed coming back from Dublin in March it actually took longer to locate a set of stairs than it did to fly the journey. But no, it seemed that the stairs were ready and primed for our arrival.

The captain's dulcet tones came over the PA. "Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately we will have to hold you here for sometime because we are awaiting an official response to onboard events..." There was a collective, but muted groan. Of course, we all wanted to be off, but we wanted Weird Druggie Guy dealt with appropriately. Although Veggie Dad said, Unless he and the people in front pressed charges, the guy would walk free and be free to board another plane the next day.

Word had gone round that he was travelling with his wife and baby. Unbelievable. If I was wife, I would be filing for divorce immediately. What an irresponsible toss-pot! I think it's unforgivable to get into such a state that you assault people, especially on an aeroplane, where there are great concerns about endangering the lives of others. But to do so when travelling with a babe-in-arms is despicable. I suppose Wife was left to deal with luggage for 2+1 and screaming baby. Lovely...

One of the Sussex Constabulary's finest, complete with official police baseball cap (Surrey are due to get hoodies soon) boarded the plane and marched purposefully towards the back. And to a massive sigh of relief, the captain announce we were free to go. As we left the plane, I noticed a further four police officers - and, remember, at airports they're armed. I overheard a conversational snippet between cabin crew and police saying "We have the details of the victims..."

Our bags were among the first off, and we beat a speedy retreat to the relative sanity of Costa Coffee in Arrivals (one of my favourite places on earth, would you believe...!). We were joined by fellow passengers and I try to eavesdrop on what happened to Weird Druggie Guy but I could only make out that 'something' had happened - presumably arrest and removal - and his 'wife had to..." My eavesdropping is good, but not perfect...

Meanwhile, in today's BBC News: Air rage grounds 200 passengers:

A British airliner which had to make a forced landing in Florida when a passenger allegedly became violent and abusive has landed back in the UK. The Thomson fly plane from Cancun in Mexico to Manchester was diverted to Sanford Airport in Orlando following the disturbance on board.

Which only strengthens my belief that we too might well have been diverted if the options were other than Iraq and Iran.

Don't Stand So Close To Me

Subtitle Brits Abroad

Sub-sub title Silently Screaming

It happened. We went on the Package Holiday of Hell. It was stupidity. If we had thought a bit more, and had not spent the entire autumn being so bloody knackered, we could so easily have avoided it.

I recall the best holidays as being USA 99 and Cuba 01. Independence and spontaneity. And almost total avoidance of Brits abroad.

Not that I'm adopting a tone of moral superiority. I was one of those Brits Abroad. It left me with a distaste and a slight self-loathing. I filled in the Customer Dissatisfaction Surveys - No I really don't want to socialise with other holidaymakers from UK and Ireland when on holiday. Nothing personal: we conversed with some very nice, interesting, pleasant, and amusing people; I felt a strong rapport with one person. Even many of the people who 'weren't my type' were okay, not impacting on me except when I chose to people-watch. And utterly prejudiced - if I never hear another Liverpool-Runcorn-Warrington-Widnes accent again in my life, it will still be too soon.

Calangute is an absolute hole of a resort. Brash, overcrowded and over-commercialised. Horrible to move around on foot; worse to move around by vehicle - fortunately the taxis were extraordinarily cheap. And the restaurants were unbelievably excellent. After Seven, Roma and A Reverie were as good as, if not better, than any restaurant I have been in in London, New York etc, and, imported wine aside, so incredibly cheap. Beach shacks and small Tibetan restaurants provided food much better than almost any High Street in Britain. Surely there has to be more to a holiday than spending all day baking on a sun-lounger on a beach - interspersed with wave jumping in the most glorious swell off golden beaches - and all evening in (often) European-style restaurants. The highlight was the three nights we spent sleeping in a treehouse on Aswem Beach a (relatively) quiet tropical beach, really quite close to paradise.

Towards the end of the two weeks we jointly and separately kicked ourselves for not hiring a scooter and using it to explore the back lanes, to properly discover some of the most breathtakingly gorgeous scenery imaginable. We were put off by the traffic nightmare that was Calangute and Candolim, plus the absence of insurance and crash helmets. I became very jealous of the freedom that all the adventurous people had. But no camera is needed for me to recall the most beautiful sunset as we crossed the Chapora River.

I was fascinated at the seemingly wild cattle that wandered down every street and beach lugubriously minding their own business. More fascinating was watching the semi-wild dogs that scavenge in packs. Amazing to see how they patrolled their territory and communicated in a medley of barks, surely actively communicating messages with meaning. Longterm readers will know that I am not a dog person. And on this holiday I discovered something interesting about dogs.

Pet dogs take a dislike to me. I try to rationalise it as being a circle of fear - knowing that the dogs will sense my fear causes to me send them signals of fear. It has amazed and perplexed serious conscientious disciplined dog-owners for many years. Twice this happened in Goa; on both occasions the dogs were domesticated animals, one belonging to a specific family down the road from our hotel, one belonging to an aging European hippy who took it for walks on Aswem beach. Otherwise the wild, but human-dependent dogs roaming the streets and beaches ignored me as I was happy to ignore them. Now I have to find out the reason why. It could be a major breakthrough in the field of psychology...!

The most fascinating aspect was the pack instinct of the dogs. And of the humans. For years it has troubled me, not understanding why humans choose to crowd out other humans when there are acres of space from which to choose*

Episode 1: at the poolside bar. We had returned from a hard day tanning, and had paused for a quick drink before showering and changing for a hard evening's dining. Of a dozen or so tables, two were occupied, with a barrier empty table between them. We sat at the far edge of the group of tables, leaving a clear eight tables for all newcomers. Five minutes later a group arrived and chose to sit right next to us. Pointedly, I moved away from them. The previous night, both men in the group had provided mirth to most of the rest of the guests as they failed to walk across the floor without falling over (one finally split his head open and had to go to hospital). I had heard that earlier one of the men had physically threatened someone without any obvious provocation. (He had made the mistake of attacking a younger fitter man who hinted that he had put his youth behind him and wanted no trouble on holiday with his wife and children but could clearly look after himself)

Episode 2. On our one and only excursion, into the jungle to feed the monkeys and swim in the waterfalls, Jimmy and I were both taken ill, he with travel sickness, me with - you couldn't make it up - extreme constipation that suddenly manifested itself as waves of debilitating stomach cramps and nauseating fever. Too listless to progress further, we sat down on a rock, watched the waterfalls, and criticised the footwear of people that passed (when stumbling over rocks is it better to wear three inch platforms or flip flops? Is it better for your child to wear flip flops or three inch platforms?)

A woman passed by and realised that, in this entire jungle, this was obviously The Rock Where People Sit Down. So she sat down next to me and addressed me, really rather aggressively I thought (as another stomach cramp doubled me over and sent my temperature over 100), "They didn't tell us about this trek, did they?" I really don't like people putting words into my mouth; I also don't like the 'Blame Someone Else" culture, especially when I'm doubled over in excruciating pain and running a fever, so, haughtily, I replied, "Actually, they did..." and waggled my walking boots at her. She realised she had picked The Wrong Rock and The Wrong People To Sit With, and wriggled nervously away. Oh WTF, I hadn't chosen that rock for its sociability but because I was dying of what I had by then concluded was burst ovarian cysts, grumbling appendicitis, kidney failure, and possibly a f***ed pancreas mixed with a dose of hypochondria.

Episode 3: Asvem Beach. Quiet. Almost all of the visitors lying on sun-loungers, sleeping or reading, murmuring to their companions, interspersed with periodic visits to the sea for a spot of wave jumping. No thumpy-druggy-disco music. No great physical activity from anyone. One small patch of beach, with three rows of sun loungers. To the south, half a mile of deserted beach. To the north, mile upon mile of deserted beach. Arrive the group of loud people. The men immediately start to play football. Right in front of everybody's sun loungers. How bloody irritating. Thud, as the ball bounces on wet sand. Thud thud, shout. Scream. Be reasonable, I scolded myself, you cannot object to people playing football on a beach. Thud. Thud. Running footsteps. Shout. Scream. Rather hoping that one would come a cropper on the submerged rocks and concluding I was a grizzly old cow.

To lunch in the beach shack, and, unfortunately, they arrived soon after us, shouting their conversation of utter vacuous trite shite. On adjoining tables were a middle-aged hippyish looking couple; and a father with sons in late teenage. The latter group looked a bit non-middle-class, so the loudest of the loud party (who was wearing a pair of Speedos that were too physiologically correct for my liking, at lunchtime) approached the three guys and said

"Hey, where are you from, are you from Manchester?"

The sons never looked up from their books; coldly father said "Yes".

"Are you City or United?" asked Mr Loud.

"Does it matter?" replied father frostily and returned to his book (Jeremy Clarkson's biography). I later noticed a Manchester United tattoo, so, actually, it did matter. But not as much as chilling quietly with his sons, reading their books, having no wish to be adumbrated into the desperate socialising and attention-seeking of others. Please don't come over here, I prayed. But I think we, along with the aging hippies, were assessed and dismissed as weirdos.

Jimmy expressed his objection to their game of football, pointing out the long stretches of beaches in either direction. If the ball had hit him, he would have burst it and hit the nearest footballer (he says - I've never seen him hit anyone, despite his fervent promises...!). He concluded it was pure attention-seeking, and he was getting sick and tired of boring empty-headed people trying to include us into their group so that we could provide free entertainment to them.

I can only conclude that humans are no different from the semi-feral dogs, needing to roam with the pack, to mark out the communal territory. It's pure instinct. And my failing is that I never gravitate to the pack.

* I have never forgotten the summer of 76, Northumberland. Only our family could choose to holiday, during the long hot summer of drought, in the week when it rained. One day, there was a break in the rain, and, intrepidly we went down to the beach, and found our spot. Apart from us, and from the occasional dogwalker on the horizon, a massive expand of sand, as far as my eyes could see, was deserted for a number of hours. Until after lunch when another family arrived and sat down within feet of our family.

Petty bureaucracy

A senior Irish Civil Servant made the observation "The British Civil Service now only exists in two places - Dublin and New Delhi."

Dabolim Airport - or Diabolic as I renamed it in my mind - was a perfect example of the ludicrous nature of procedures for their own sake. India has aspirations to be a global economic player, and, I suppose, because labour is so cheap, efficiency is not regarded as important. Yet, paying public employees so poorly makes them very corrupt. Not in the entirely malign way that corruption is seen, correctly, in the UK, but in the casual acceptance that oils can be wheeled by a little baksheesh. Which is fine if you are a - comparatively - rich Westerner, but not so fair to the poor in this so-called democracy.

It is first necessary to queue outside the airport terminal in order to have your bags security scanned - only your hold luggage. It is then sealed , actually no bad thing, because it deters interference by bag-handlers at either airport. But it also presents an opportunity for the bag-wallahs to see what is in your case. One woman had 400 cigarettes in her case. She pointed out that it was absolutely none of his business how many she took into Manchester. Twenty pounds made it none of his business. The man shipping large quantities of Viagra had to pay fifty pounds!

It is not permitted to take Rupees outside India, and you're informed you also can't use them in Duty Free, so you're faced with changing them at usurious rates. Then we get hit for excess baggage - although that was an Airtours thing not an India thing. I'm philosophical about it, having got away so many times with it. Although they did try to charge us for twenty rather than ten kilos, trying to include our hand baggage in the total.

Next stop was Immigration and Customs. Despite having obtained our Visas prior to travel, we had still, nevertheless, to fill in an additional piece of paper for Immigration prior to landing. Incidentally, this had amused me, because there was a multiple choice question for occupation, including Self-employed, Government, business, student etc but the first possible answer was 'doctor'. It seemed to chime with Goodness Gracious Me.

I was pleased to note that all proper procedures were in place regarding Immigration. Michaela Wrong in last week's New Statesman is very amusing on the processes necessary to get a visa for Democratic Republic of Congo.

For a surreal country, a surreal visa application process. Behind the partition at the embassy's offices in King's Cross sit staff who must wake each morning thanking God they escaped a nation in which, since the civil war, nearly four million people have died of malnutrition and preventable diseases. Yet each application is processed on the quixotic premise that outside the door prowl tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Britons just itching for a chance to relocate to DRC.

I watched a young Englishman, who had clearly been through this before, try to display his bona fides. He had a ticket proving he would return to the UK. Bank statements showing he could pay his way. A prepaid coupon for one of Kinshasa's most expensive hotels. Vaccination certificates proving he wouldn't infect anyone in the country, which experiences the odd brush with the likes of Ebola and bubonic plague. From where I sat, even the backs of his knees seemed to be pleading. The visa officer leafed through the papers, pretending to suspect him of nursing some secret plan to become an intolerable burden on her phantasmagorical state. "You're missing one paper." She pursed her lips with satisfaction. "You'll have to come back."

I did idly wonder what would happen if we had failed to report to the airport before our six months were up, and whether there was a bevy of clerks in Panjim or New Delhi, or maybe outsourced to a Call Centre in Burkina Faso, ticking off all departures against arrivals.

Then Customs, which seemed an utter waste of time. It's reassuring to see Customs sitting there, but worrying that they appeared to have no procedures to follow, no forms to fill in, or, most importantly, no pieces of paper to stamp, to prove that processes had been followed.

Security was the next hoot. Every piece of hand luggage had to have a label attached to it. When they passed through the scanners they could have that all important official stamp marked on them - remember, the scanners at the entrance to the airport were solely for hold baggage. I was most disappointed that when I was X-rayed and wanded I didn't get an official stamp. We were promised a frisk. I was disappointed that it was merely a wanding. Nevertheless we had to be separated into male and female, and separated from our hand baggage - which made me rather frantic because I didn't want anyone walking off with the thousand pound of geekery in my rucksack. And I didn't have my walking boots X-rayed, which was shoddy. Hey, when I was using the staff entrance at Gatwick South a couple of years back I even had my DMs X-rayed each time.

Next came the Confiscation of the Lighters.

I had to hand over three lighters from my handbag. I was impressed by the procedures. They had a schedule for each flight and thus marked the number of lighters surrendered against each boarding card number. I judged this to be an effective control. Jimmy commented that it meant we couldn't smoke airside. A nuisance, seeing as though it was still two-and-a-half hours until take off - which was delayed for half an hour, then an hour. But I had used the smoking room groundside and it had appeared to have built in lighters.

We went to Duty Free and stocked up. Naturally, each transaction was dutifully written into a self-duplicating ledger, again, an effective control. Except that it didn''t prevent us from breaking International Law by buying five times the Duty Free allowance. Still, there was clear separation of duties and proper documentation.

We went on a hunt for the smoking room, and found it. Outside stood two airport officials whose sole job was to stand there holding lighters for anybody who needed them. It was actually pokier than the smoking room at work; quite a few people remarked it was almost enough to make them give up smoking. Quite a few people, British and Russian, did have lighters, and I suspected there was probably one lurking at the bottom at my rucksack. When I found it, I gave out a cry of triumph. My joy was shared between British and Russians.

Time passed slowly. Flights were announced, to Gatwick, Moscow and Manchester. At the first call a few dozen people joined a slow-moving queue to be joined in dribs and drabs by others. Long before the queue subsided, a second, frantic call was put out, which drew a few more. Next came the 'Last and Final call' which created a third wave. The diminution of the queue to a couple of dozen created a further wave, followed by increasingly frequent and frantic calls "May I have your kind attention. Would you kindly make your way to Gate 1A where your plane is ready for departure." I would so like to abolish the word 'kind'.

The cleaners went round picking up litter. I was impressed by the supervisor who would find where there was litter and point it out to the cleaners, who would then pick it up.

Someone said she was going to reclaim her lighters at Manchester; I don't know whether she tried. It would have been a good compliance check of the careful procedures to record the lighters.

Finally, our plane was called, so, as one, we all headed to the smoking room, and took bets on how many calls would follow the 'last and final call'. I almost felt sorry for the announcer guy: we had seen planes off to London, Moscow and Manchester and we were not going to surrender our hard won seats for the dubious pleasure of standing in a queue that wasn't moving. Finally, it was down to about ten people, so the remaining thirty or so joined it, trying not to laugh at the despairingly frantic tones of the announcer guy - think, teacher who has lost complete control of a class.

Again, the procedures were impressive. We had to show our passports to the guy on the left. And the labels on our hand luggage to the guy on the right. For some reason, one couple had mislaid their 'Security Stamped' labels and were sent back to the beginning to repeat the whole process. Someone remarked that it was unlikely that they could have got so far without their bags being checked and their lighters confiscated. I felt that the chances of slipping an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile into one's handbag to be fairly slim, seeing as though it wasn't even possible to buy a newspaper airside. But then, baggage wasn't sealed against tampering, merely stamped with the Official Stamp. And there was no need to have a stamped label on the Duty Free plastic bag, which I noted as a weakness in controls.

On the bridge to the tarmac we were required to show our tickets to another uniformed official. It was a brilliant juggling game as I wondered whether I would lose something vital out of my handbag, trying to guess which bit they wanted to see. Halfway across the tarmac was another passport check - this time specifically for the Visa. I panicked momentarily, thinking Jimmy didn't have the required number of Official Stamps, but, phew, that was okay. Another official checked our boarding passes before we ascended the ladder, and then finally, the cabin crew looked at our boarding passes with the sole purpose of directing us to our seats.

Dabolim Airport proudly displays signs that it has been certified for ISO 9001. Cynical old me says that that just proves that the procedures are documented. It doesn't actually prove whether or not they work.

It appeared they didn't work, because they managed to let a man board who soon proved that he was in no fit state to travel. Later, people said that they had noticed him acting peculiar in the waiting area.

Still, I think we can be reassured that every piece of paper was correctly filled in the requisite number of times...

Holiday grumbles

Despite what is written below, and in some of the posts to follow, I enjoyed my holiday. But it's always worth recording the things that go wrong, some of which will be included in a letter to Airtours...

Minor grumbles on the outbound flight. In retrospect it was an idiotic decision to decide to fly for 10 and a half hours with a charter airline. But it's cheap, and you get what you pay for. But when you book a holiday you don't really contemplate what a ten hour flight means, and to the extent to which you do, you simply accept it as a minor inconvenience to get you to your dream destination. And actually, the outbound flight really wasn't so bad, with the expectation of arriving to ease the discomfort. Up to a point...

The in-flight entertainment was shit. Even so, I purchased a set of headphones, but then realised that they only worked in one ear, and half of what they were advertising in the magazine wasn't even available, so I demanded my money back. The meals were of paltry portions. What miffed me most was that they run this patronising video telling you how to avoid DVT (ie to cover their backs) which includes instructions to drink plenty of water. And so they charged £1 for each bottle of water - measuring a whole 330 ml. I know it's a charter flight, and it's cheap, and I don't really object to them charging exorbitant prices for the alcohol and tacky souvenirs, or even for soft drinks, but I'm contemplating the Health and Safety Executive. I discovered on the way back that you could get tap water if you asked for it, and perhaps I wouldn't mind paying a pound for a litre bottle, but for a third of a litre - that's an insult.

The cabin crew had a total attitude problem, but then - what a crap job - basically being a glorified tea lady who gets to wipe up people's vomit, whilst suffering the physical discomforts of life in a pressurised cabin. Nice...

When we arrived at our hotel, our immediate impression was that it was a shithole, and we wanted to get out as soon as possible. Of course, we should have realised that our judgement was somewhat affected by a long journey and no sleep, and we soon grew to tolerate most aspects of the shithole. Indeed some aspects were positively good - the standard of food in particular, although, apart from snacks and the Gala dinners we only ate their once.

We had originally booked into a different hotel, which was supposed to be 50m from the beach, but were transferred to this one, supposedly equivalent, and next door. Just a few days before we departed we were informed that it was in fact 1.5 km from the beach. Our original hotel was described as 'suitable for couples and older people' and we requested a quiet room - that was noted in the hotel register. A quiet room seemed to consist of being between the kitchen and the maintenance block so we woken up every morning at seven o'clock by the sound of the staff. It also consisted of being put in a block with four of a group of 8 (all male) lager louts, who every night returned at about 4 am shouting loudly, messing around in the Pool area, slamming doors, having their tarts hold loud conversations on the stairs, banging on our bedroom doors, and smashing the bolts on their doors. In the first week, as a result of complaints from almost all the other residents, they received a verbal (sic) warning, then a written warning, yet they continued their mayhem throughout the second week. I did not get one undisturbed night - despite using earplugs for the first time in my life. In comparison, the lack of air-conditioning, the toilet seat affixed upside down (studs in your bum...) the electrical fixings hanging off the wall, the mothballs stinking out the (tiny) wardrobe, drawer and bedside cabinet, and the sheets that didn't quite fit the beds pale into insignificance - after all it's a three star hotel in India, what was I expecting? And anyway, we just used the hotel as a base to sleep. What a joke...