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Hotel Yang, Part 3

Casting an eye back over my previous Hotel Yangs, it strikes me that readers might think I’m picking on third world countries. Actually, the worst hotels I’ve slept in happen to be located in the U.S. I saw most of these dumps as I roamed back and forth across the continent as a member of a band. It was as I drove a Ford Econoline deathtrap along the American interstates from show to show that the travel bug first bit me, and it’s been siphoning my blood ever since. I’m actually going to discuss an event from one of my band’s tours, an incident when my mates and I became stranded in the central Alabama wilderness on a hot Sunday morning only to be rescued by the hillbillies from Deliverance—but in a later post.


In Hotel Yang, Part 1, I mentioned El Salvador’s Hotel Happy House and my somewhat unpredictable relationship with the place. That dynamic was never more evident one summer day when my girlfriend Diana and I rolled into town after a particularly arduous and sweaty trip. We got a room, dumped our packs, and lay down for a rest—only to be startled awake by a sound like whale song from the adjacent room.

Diana shot bolt upright and said, “What in the hell was that?”

I’d recognized the sound immediately. I said, “It’s a dog.”

“That’s a dog?”

“It’s a Bassett hound. It’s baying. Basset hounds bay.”

How did I recognize the sound of a Bassett hound? Well, as I said, I’ve been to Alabama, arguably home to more Bassett hounds per capita than any other U.S. state, and I’ve also seen several movies where runaway slaves were chased through swamps by these creatures. The baying continued, rendering the possibility of sleep a futile wish and filling me with a deep, ancestral fear that bad men with whips were coming for me. I climbed from bed, struggled into my jeans, and searched for my shoes—you know the drill—all while this hellish noise continued.

The desk clerk was the same guy from my previous Happy House stays, and I had already decided his unending presence—day and night, weekends and holidays—could only be explained if he was one of three triplets who all worked there. When One-of-Three (or #1, as we’re now going to call him) saw me coming he smiled. By now, you see, we’d settled into a routine—he’d give me a room that had problems, and I’d come back to the desk and ask for a different one. It was like a waltz we’d perfected over a number of my stays there. My Spanish was better each subsequent visit, but never fluent to the extent that #1 couldn’t credibly pretend to have no idea what I was saying.


So I told him there was a loud dog in the adjacent room, and he sort of chuckled and said he wasn’t sure he could do anything about it because the hotel was booked solid. I told him yes he could, that there was surely an empty room he could switch me into, or, regrettably, I’d have to leave (this is usually an effective threat, since the Happy House is an informal place where you pay for your stay when it ends). #1 said all the hotels were booked. I rolled my eyes and said I doubted it. We had both grown to enjoy this game, in some odd, co-dependent fashion. My victory was usually derived from getting what I wanted, and his came from making me work extraordinarily hard in a language I hadn’t yet mastered. This time, though, it was an incredible struggle, and in the back of my head I knew I was being set up for an epic punchline.

Cut to an hour later. Diana and I are in our new room, and we are awakened by yet more howling, but not from the same dog. Again I fumbled with my pants and searched for my shoes. I opened the door and into the room rolled a wave of dog odor so noxious and thick I could have surfed to Nicaragua on it. The entire hotel reeked of dog. #1 was laughing when I came to the desk. He explained—barely containing himself—that there was a dog show at the nearby Hotel Princesa, and the Happy House, as well as every other nearby hotel, was booked up with mutts and mutt-owners for the weekend. His glee in revealing this was so infectious I had to laugh too. Our relationship became something akin to friendship at that point, and every time I stayed there afterward he was glad to see me. I was certainly glad to stay, which is why the Hotel Happy House receives four-and-a-half yangs—good for second place in the rankings.

I had another bizarre hotel incident with an animal, this one in a small colonial town in the Salvadoran highlands not far from the capital. The town is called Suchitoto and it’s a quiet place of picturesque stone houses, shabby little stores, and a couple of very good pupuserias. It’s perched on breathtakingly high cliffs above Lago de Suchitlan (pictured below, in a waterlogged photo). When Diana and I arrived the air was filled with thousands of dragonflies. I hadn’t seen dragonflies since I was a kid, and it was like going back in time to a place so distant and clean I’d almost forgotten about it.


We found a room in a family run hotel called Los Alemdros, a former colonial mansion with a courtyard, lounge, and rooms decorated with local handicrafts. After spending the evening checking out the sights, we returned to the hotel, eventually turned off the lights and went to sleep. Into the silence came what sounded like liquid streaming to the floor. When I turned on the lights there it was, definitely liquid, a sizable puddle of it, freshly pooled between the bed and the door. Usually when I don’t know what something is I stick my finger in it—perhaps not a recommended method of testing, I admit. But good instinct prevailed this time, and instead I got down on hands and knees and smelled it. Yes, it was urine, and it had come through the ceiling. Again came the fumbling with pants and the search for shoes, and again I found myself standing before a less-than-thrilled desk clerk, this one a middle-aged woman who clearly wasn’t going to find any of my complaints charming.

“Hay una problema con el cuarto,” I told her. “Hay un rata en el techo, y”—I fought for the word—“orinado.”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “That wasn’t a rat,” she replied in Spanish. “It was our cat. It doesn’t like strangers and whenever new guests check in it climbs up in the rafters and tries to piss on them.” She delivered this news in a robotic monotone, as if she’d been explaining it to guests for forty years. I was almost afraid to ask for a new room. But I did and she simply shook her head. “He’d just follow you. Anyway, he already missed. You’re safe now.”

The cat only had enough ammo for one shot?

That made zero sense, but by this time I’d learned my lesson. I bade the woman goodnight, went back to the room, put my and Diana’s luggage and clothes in the armoire, and went to sleep. Adapt, adjust—that’s the key to travel. By this point I was indoctrinated enough in Central America not to stress. Anyway, the news that this cat was aiming at us was probably more disturbing to Diana than me—she sleeps on her back with her mouth open.

I’ll conclude this series with Hotel Yang, Part 4, which I’ll use to describe my top ranked yang hotel, a place so decrepit, and so vile, that only a masochist like me could love it.

posted by Egan Ehlers @ 5:41 PM