What is the worst hotel you've ever stayed in?

[Man of Harveys]

The reason I ask is that I think I stayed in mine Monday evening. After leaving a swanky oil industry bash (sorry, I've just dwayned) I was faced with the prospect of waiting for 30 mins for the 2am Three Bridges train home, plus a £50-60 quid cab ride to Brighton from Gatwick, plus waiting around with a bunch of dodgy sods at the station gates - they don't let you into Victoria that late at night in case you're a tramp.

But...in my cups, I remembered the "railway hotel" that I'd just passed in the cab - a decrepit old building in between two gleaming 80s office blocks. Cheap and nasty shelter of any kind was called for at this stage and at £30 for a single room with no shower, I couldn't argue.

In truth, it wasn't THAT bad. But the walls of the room were very, very dirty - black indeterminate stripes of something - and the pillow wasn't much more than a case, and the carpet stuck a bit.

But, just as in posh hotels they leave a chocolate on the bed, well, someone had left something of a similar hue in the dunny which was shared by about 15 rooms, and it was persistently coming up for air, despite my best efforts to "drown the kitten". I decided against the breakfast...

 

[Lammy]

Not a hotel as such but a B&B above a pub. It was a pub in Manchester novely titled "The Rovers Return" Basically My Dad and I were travelling between Bradford and Liverpool and thought it would be 'nice' to have a stop off in Manchester rather than Liverpool. We walked and walked to try and find a B&B. It was pissing with rain and we were desperate. We then stumble across a pub advertising B&B for £20 a night. Job done.

no breakfast as the kitchen was knackered. Walked upstairs surrounded by the smell of shit. Something had obviously gone horribly wrong with the plumbing somewhere! We arrived at the door to our room. I say, door it was more like a hatch! It also had a massive hole in one side of the door! (doors are hollow in the middle). To be fair the room was pretty big, no lamp shade on our bulb though. After the smell from the stairs we decided to give the toilet a miss. Went downstairs for a drink before heading into town for a meal. Pool table was broken and my pint was 50% cleaning fluid as they hadn't pulled it through the pipes properly!

The next day we arrived in Liverpool to see LOADS of B&Bs right by the station and looking rather nice.

 

[Brighton till i die]

awful B&B up at blackpool away a couple of seasons ago - UTTER GASH!

 

[Napper]

the leaking boot in Grimsby was pretty awful the weekend we went down

 

[CHAPPERS]

In Krakow, it was the cheapest place we could find arriving there without accomodation and it being early evening. We turned up after a very strange cab ride and what looked like an old commie housing block.

This is exactly what it was. Our rooms were brown all over, including bed sheets and there was chcicken wire across the wondows which we assumed was to prevent us jumping off.

The strangest thing was that their were families living in this place and it was costing us a tenner each a night. We were FLEECED I reckon.

 

[Goring Gull]

The Huddersfield Hotel - bl00dy awful place stayed there once when hunting for a house booked two nights but only stayed and paid for one then booked into a travel lodge , look like it has seen better datys , the rooms are filthy, the bed was damned uncomfortable and the rooms are above or opposite two nightclubs and a strip club, not great when you want a good nights kip. Room stank of smoke when we'd specifically asked for a non smoking room.

Had a good complain but not much was done about it, useless B@stards

 

[bhaexpress]

Stayed in a lousy Motel in Dallas one time, it was a Best Western I think. Room was quite scruffy and it was damned cold as they didn't give us enough blankets.

 

[disgruntled h blocker]

Must have been the 'Hotel Parisien' in Le Havre last year. Terrible - bathroom smelt like someone had chain-smoked in it!

 

[Trufflehound]

The Black Coffee Hotel in Chengdu, China. A former bomb shelter, it was built in underground vaulted rooms with no windows and no ventilation. Once inside you lose track of time, and get periodically concussed by banging your head on the low ceilings. Humidity was permanently around 100%, and there was always moisture dripping off the mouldy walls. The passage to the communal showers involved walking on loose brick stepping stones across a flooded corridor and side-stepping the breaststroking rats. Once you got to the showers the walls were black with mould.

On the plus side it was only $1 a night.

In Thailand I nominate the On On Hotel. Part of the Beach was filmed there -it was supposedly the place Leonardo di Caprio stayed in Bangkok, except that it's actually in Phuket Town. Just your standard Asian Chinese hotel (i.e walls that don't meet the floor or ceiling) but the infestation of cockroaches had to be seen to be believed - I'm literally talking in terms of THOUSANDS per room, rather than the odd one or two.

And many of those cheap places in Asia double up as short-term brothels as well as hotels and rat, cockroach 'n' bedbug farms. There's nothing like coming back to your room and seeing the manager in the hall, peeking through the keyhole of the room next door, jerking himself off in time to the goings-on he was watching (that was in Baguio in the Philippines by the way - fortunately I forget the name of the hotel).

 

[The Wookiee]

The Palace Hotel along Southend seafront- absolute shithole with broken locks on doors where they have been kicked in, piss stains on the walls.

FFS they had a disco in the bar at 1pm!

Very strange place

 

[Deano's Right Foot]

In the mid eightees I once stayed at the GAY GUEST HOUSE near the Thames in SW London. It was the only place left with any vacancies in the area and it was run by a mad northern couple called Mr And Mrs Gay lolol. We were the only people staying there. The bed was a real antique that you needed a small ladder to get onto, and the once you got up there the mountain like mattress turned into a valley that left me and my then wife trapped for some minutes in the middle, before we managed to make our escape.

The light bulbs in the two lamps in the room had 25 watt bulbs in them, rendering them virtually useless, and this together with the fact that the windows had around 25 years of grime made it altogether a rather gloomy room, even in the middle of the afternoon of what was a lovely spring day.

We had a lecture from Mrs Gay that she didn't want any "funny stuff" happening, and that the other week a man had appeared from the room with "tousled hair", and she jolly well had known what he had been up to.

Once checked in we went on our merry way to a wedding reception on a boat on the Thames, in which the DJ was none other than (wait for it)

JIMMY SAVILLE

(...'s older brother).

The next morning we were awoken by Mr Gay's voice booming out of a hiterto undiscovered speaker above the bed, imploring us to "WAKE UP WAKE UP BREAKFAST FINISHES IN FIVE MINUTES!"

Our vegetarian breakfast was some baked beans and mushrooms with fried bread all served in a puddle of grease. Oh and a glass of Orange Squash.

That was one of the most surreal weekends of my life.

 

[Uncle Buck]

Hotel Absheron in Baku was interesting. It was obviously the old Inter Tourist place. Big old communist concrete block, the reception was OK. I think we were on the 11th floor of 13. The lift made interesting noises, there were no stairs, we found the fire exit, which was fine as long as you were on floors 1, 2 or 3, beyond that it was the lift.

The rooms were basic, but had a balcony. The air con unit was fine until the second night when there was a strong wind coming off the Caspian and it started blowing unpleasant liquid into the room.

On each corridor there were about 4 women who looked after the 40 odd rooms on that corridor. Fine except they kept all the bog roll with them, so if you ran out it was an unpleasant work to request some more. However we did find out via out mates who were in the even more unpleasant Hotel Azerbijan over the road that for the offer of a few dollars these young ladies were more than willing to do more than just clean the room and provide guests with bog roll.

 

[rool]

I have to say out of all the hotels I have ever stayed in, the one I have been most disappointed with was the Grand.

 

[Hannibal smith]

Last season for Rotherham away we went to Leeds for the night.

We stayed in a hotel that was in an Adams Family complex on the outskirts of Leeds where on entry we had to ring a 1960’s bell for service. Lurch came to the counter and gave us our family room for 4, which, shared between 4 blokes was a bit on the small side. The roof meant you had to duck down when you walked about and one of the beds was designed for a 12 year old kid which naturally all 6ft 3 of me got.

We had a pint at the bar before we went to town, which tasted worse than lighter fluid and breakfast the next morning was comprised of Frozen Sausages, Frozen Mushrooms, Tinned tomatoes and for all I know what looked like Dog Shit on toast, served of course, by Herman. I didn’t even taste it, it looked and smelled so bad.

We nicked the bell on the way out though.

 

[Trufflehound]

Forgot about the toilets in the Black Coffee: just a long gutter that was flushed out once per day if you were lucky... But don't get me started on Chinese toilets - there are far worse than that (at least they HAD a gutter).

The most basic room I ever stayed in was in Gorkha in Nepal. Just a brick box, with a wooden frame bed and a half-inch thick mattress. No electricity and no lighting of any kind. The window was just where some of the bricks had been knocked through. No glass, just open space (but on the plus side, WHAT a view). Bathing facilities were an oil drum of cold stagnant water and a plastic bucket. The toilet was "go to the cafe down the road or find a bush".

Happy days...

 

[Starry]

One in Moscow when Leeds played over there and the game was called off. It was previously part of a soviet army base, 52 floors of grey concrete, no colour, no carpet, no nothing. The pipes were frozen so no water. The heating was only allowed to be turned on when their local mayor/MP came on national TV telling everyone they are allowed to switch it on. It was november.

The Russians were completely crazy and chased us all over the hotel for no real reason.

Thank God for vodka. I don't know that we would have survived without it.

The pitch at the ground was frozen solid, they had had undersoil heating on for a week beforehand and it was still frozen.

All that way, the time, money and crap we got from the Russian people and police and the game was called off. Bleh!

 

[Man of Harveys]

But don't get me started on Chinese toilets - there are far worse than that

*Slides into leather arm chair, puffs on cigar, sips from crystal tumbler of single malt while Trufflehound lies on chaise-longue*

Do go on...where's the WORST?

 

[Trufflehound]

*Slides into leather arm chair, puffs on cigar, sips from crystal tumbler of single malt while Trufflehound lies on chaise-longue*

Do go on...where's the WORST?

Probably some cheap hotel in Qufu (birthplace of Confucius, FACT fans). A cardboard screen barely concealing two bricks to show where your feet should go. In between, no hole, no pit, no water, no nothing. Just a festering pryamidal pile of poo with strata showing stages of decay to make carbon dating easier. If you squatted down properly for healthy bowel evacuation, you arse would touchdown on someone else's deposit.

Fortunately there was a bus station round the corner with running water...

What got me was that even in the better places, many of the crappers didn't have doors, so you'd be squatting down in mid-dump and some old Chinese bloke would appear out of the blue and begin practising his English on you...

 

[zefarelly]

a very dodgy 70's relic in Walsall about 1993 whilst working on site, and the (then) unrestored 'Hotel Prahova' in Ploiesti, Romania

the only real difference between the two was the prices. Romania wins hands down on that one. at 30p a pint you can induce liver disease with the change

 

[London Calling]

A couple.

To follow Starry Russian episode.

I stayed in the Russian hotel that had in a former time been the Olympic Village for Atletics.

It was February so naturally very cold. The windows had not neen fitted prpoerly, so there was a inch gap between them and the concreate walls, stuff poorly by bits of cloth and newspaper.

We were ment to stick to the tourist floors.

One day my Dad and I sneaked pass security, the old ladies who did nothing but spy on westerners, and ventured down on the lower floors to a real eye opener.

The inhabitants were not Russians but every Slav nation under the sun.

Huge families wee occupying rooms with just a double bed, there was obviously no lights, we found one set of tourists rollling up the carpet to be placed in a bag, Another set was stripping wallpaper.

The bonus was that a group on our party had obtained a great exchange rate for our roubles, which meant we were able to purchase some mighty fine Russian champagne for a £1 a bottle.

The place also had the most stunning women I had ever seen, one night I was asked by a delightful but fur coated blond, to take her upstairs to my room in exchange for my Clash tape.

What a bargain?

But I declined partly because I think my Dad would have got a major shock.
The filthiest place was in Montpellier near the station, we had booked from a Rough Guide review.

It was just awful. It was after midnight the local streets were lively and heavy, we had to stay. We just laid on the beds in our clothes, with jumpers under our heads.

LC