2011-09-27
Cheap and not so cheerful
When I set off on my gap year travels as a wide-eyed and innocent 18-year-old (at least in my parents'eyes) my grandmother had one piece of advice for me that I still use on my adventures today; never stay anywhere with dirty sheets. She was a very house-proud woman. The kind who ironed underpants and had all the printed tins in the kitchen cupboards lined up to face the front, so she knew what she was talking about when she told me that it doesn't take a lot of work to put clean sheets on a bed. If they couldn't even be bothered to do that, then heaven only knows what other things they were scrimping on.
Even now I’m a thirty-something bloke with a family of my own, I still religiously check the state of the sheets every time I arrive at a new hotel or hostel. Whether it’s the five-star luxury I occasionally get thanks to my work or the cheapest of bed and breakfasts in a remote corner of Southeast Asia, all the sheets get the once over and if they don’t pass muster then I’m out the door. Well, once I had to stay somewhere with questionable bed linen as a catalogue of misfortunes saw me arriving at my Indian destination after midnight. Despite the greyish tinge to the “white” sheets and a rather questionable smudge on one of the pillow cases, my hotel was the only one in town. I’m sure my Grandma would have marched out and headed for the next village, but I was just too damn tired. Sorry Nana.
It’s amazing what horrendous conditions I have learned to put up with over the years, considering my fastidiousness when it comes to clean sheets. Cockroaches, towels ripped into shreds, the remains of a meal sitting in the bath tub – all have been encountered and dismissed as inconsequential so long as I had somewhere clean to lay my head that night. Grandmas really do know best!
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