davethegrinch.net

Dave says:

We were not happy with the Poopada Hotel in the hill station town of Munnar, Kerala, India for two whole days. A whole series of complaints including dirty towels, no hot water, excessive noise from both management and guests and cold/late food had brought us to a point of frustration. The hotel in question was charging more than any other hotel we had stayed in in India and was forced upon us because every hotel in town was full of Indian tourists due to Easter weekend and the start of the school holidays coinciding. It was the only place in town with rooms for the entire weekend and we were stuck there. The situation escalated and came to a head on our second night when a bus load of Indian students pulled into the parking lot, built a campfire right by the bus and proceeded the start their own Indian rave. By the time 12:30am swung around, the hotel manager was either drunk or stoned and wasn’t making much sense of our complaining. We informed him we’d be expecting a discount but I don’t think our annoyance made it through his bloodshot eyes to his beetle nut addled brain. He then attempted to turn the situation into a bartering opportunity, forcing us to explain his job was to make his customers happy by offering a discount he thought was appropriate; we are talking about a hotel, not a trinket stand at the local market. Besides, he was not serious and any offer we would have made would not have been accepted. He then spent the next 10 minutes trying to tell us that the room rate we had was discounted already and we spent the 10 minutes following those informing him it was not. He grasp of the English language seemed to leave him at the most inopportune moments, especially when arguments turned against him. Once it was clear this was getting us nowhere, we left him to think about his attitude but were sure he couldn’t care less.

The next morning, our taxi out of Munnar arrived at 9am as booked. We attempted to plan an escape by which we would take him up on his offer of naming a price but there would be no negotiation – we would pay him for one night and he would give us the other. We would slap the money down on the counter, climb into the taxi and leave. All went well until the leave part: the taxi driver wouldn’t budge. The manager had yelled something to him which we suspect was to the effect that we hadn’t paid the bill. Taxi driver English is not good enough to understand the subtleties of “some” vs “all” so he just sat there. Our next plan of escape was to grab our bags from the trunk of the car and just walk out of there to find a taxi in town. This was thwarted by the manager and his employee holding us back by our backpack straps. Our 7 years of martial arts’ training had not prepared us for breaking the grip of an adversary whilst carrying 35 lbs and being held from behind by the straps. So, we just stood there in the street, much to the amusement of the neighbors, yelling at each other.

At this point, I realized we had wound this guy up so much there now wasn’t any chance of any discount. He was so upset that I took off my pack and prepared myself for what might come next. I decided to change tactic and shouted “call the police”. This was designed to scare him into negotiation. It is a well-known fact that in India nothing is legal. Everything works on a system called “baksheesh”, which is really just another name for bribery and I was pretty sure the manager wouldn’t want the police sniffing around his hotel and costing him much baksheesh. The plan almost worked. Even though he agreed to call the police it took him another 10 minutes to do so and only after we had turned down a Rs100 discount on a Rs3500 bill. At this point, I knew the money was lost. The police were locals, they would also have selected English, everyone perceives Westerners as being rich so have no sympathy for them when they are overcharged and, most importantly, baksheesh would probably come into play between the manager and the cops to get his money and I certainly wasn’t going to start a baksheesh battle – bribing a police officer is not something I want to contemplate in an Indian jail. My goal now was to provide maximum embarrassment to the hotel. We refused to go inside and insisted whatever business we do be done on the street in front of everyone. The cops arrived, keystone fashion in a rick-shaw, 5 minutes later. Two cops, one an inspector from the local police station and one a member of the tourist police. Just as we suspected, the hotel manager jabbered something to them, they nodded and informed us we had to pay the bill. I stated our case in the most precise terms I could manage and they jabbered back at the manager. They returned and said the manager was prepared to give us Rs180 off the bill to which I asked them if they thought that was fair. I tried to ask them if they thought it was fair to treat tourists this way but selected English came into play and the best they could do was to keep pointing to the room tariff card. In the end, money now not being the point, I paid the agreed upon amount. In the meantime, our taxi driver had reappeared and brought with him a worker from his office to help us out. He told us the manager was a “cheating man” and that they had heard other bad things about him.

I hope the manager thinks badly of western tourists. So badly that he refuses to host them in his hotel. This is the only way I can think of to protect others from an incident such as this. We have now learned that unlike eating where the locals do, one should avoid sleeping where the locals do. We have heard from other hotel managers that the worst tourists are the domestic tourists and, ironically, the westerners who constantly struggle with the differences in accommodation between India and their own countries are preferable guests. During the taxi ride to our next town, we worked hard to not let egos or money spoil what would ultimately end up being a really good story.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 2:52 am and is filed under Global Travels, India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.