Oh well, today's just going to have to be a slow day. Just make it into town, I tell myself.
It went by rather uneventful, actually. No hills, no mountains, not even any rain.
Finding a suitable hotel was my biggest challenge of the day. Most of the places that I checked out were either full or way above my price range. The last place I stopped at had an advertised rate of 35 ringgit for an AC room. I saw this place earlier, but avoided it due to its grim exterior. By American prices (less than $10), this sounds like a bargain. But compared to Thai prices, this was overpriced. By Malaysian standards, this was low-end.
It was my last chance and checked it out. On first glance, the room looked acceptable and I took it. Well, the next cheapest option was double the price, so I didn't really have a choice. The room was on the fifth floor, so I had to go back down to the lobby to check in.
That was when I saw the first problem. The elevator can only be used to go up. The owner made some excuse that the it was so old, he wanted to minimize the usage by preventing people from going down it. "Use the stairs," he told me.
Well, this did bother me, but not enough to leave the hotel and pay double elsewhere. At least I didn't have to go up the stairs, I thought.
After checking in, I went up the elevator and realized that the fifth floor button did not work. I wondered why the owner went up to the roof first, before going down to the 5th when he showed me the room. OK, so I do have to go up the stairs... but at least it was only one flight.
I turned on the TV. First channel I saw was HBO. This is a good sign. Then I toured the other options. Thirteen other options, two of those were duplicate channels and three were fuzz. Well, TV is not a priority and at least I have HBO. (Top Gun was the prime time movie)
So I went into the bathroom to take a shower. The shower head was missing! The water heater was ripped off. The only thing that was useful was a hose attached to a sink faucet, but that couldn't be the intended shower, I thought to myself.
I went down the five flights of stairs (floors in Malaysia start with level G for ground level, then level 1...) and notified the owner of a missing shower head. "There's no hose?!?," he replied. So that was its intended use.
At this point, most people would have run away, but a jobless cheapskate like me talked myself into staying. "I've been to Africa! I've taken bucket baths back in my Peace Corps days. I can live with this. The most important things are that the AC and TV work. I wanted to rest my legs, so as long as these two things work, I can live with it."
