On Husbands and Hotels (and why I wanted to change both!).

Our first night in Myanmar was not the calm, pleasant one we had expected.  And I blame Alan for that.  

We had not expected a luxury hotel when we arrived in Mandalay, though a bit more space in the room would have been a bonus (look closely at the picture and you will see that whoever (and by that I mean Alan) slept on the far side of the bed, had to climb over the end of the bed in order to get past the mini bar.  Well at least we had a mini bar.

The electrics were also not exactly what one would have hoped for, but again, we were not expecting too much.  Little did we know however, that our (and by that read my) sanguine attitude to this would rapidly evaporate come nightfall.

Above our bed were some tiny spotlights.  The one on my side of the bed turned off when I twiddled the little knob underneath the spotlight.  Alan's only has the stump that the knob once graced.  At bedtime he tried to turn it off but he just couldn't get it to go off.  Finally after ages of twiddling with it, it went out.  However, the room was somewhat lit up by a television that had a blue light along the lower edge and the air-con, which had a light display that would have had John Travolta strutting his stuff across the floor.  I unplugged the tv but the a/c HAD to stay on.  Suddenly the spotlight above the bed switched back on.  Alan twiddled with it and finally got it to dim really low rather than completely out.  A bit later it lit up again and we repeated the above procedure several times.  Finally I got up and twiddled with it myself and it seemed to work (or so we thought).

A little bit later I needed the loo.  I got up and (not using the bedroom light) went to the toilet.  All was okay until I turned off the toilet light, which somehow, switched Alan's spotlight back on!

At this point I can say with sincere honesty that my language was starting to be of the very colourful variety, especially as we now couldn't get the spotlight off at all.  After some effort Alan finally switched it off and again we tried to sleep.  Back on came the light.  I finally noticed that any change in the electrics in our room, turned this light on.  We already knew it was a bit dodgy as it kept making a sort of fizzing noise when we moved the switch, but as soon as the a/c started, so did the light.  Finally we turned the spotlight upwards and tried to sleep with white light on one side of the room and blue on the other.  Obviously it wasn't a restful night.  Okay I admit that my ranting at full steam in the middle of the night about what I was going to do to the hotel manager, how they had better change the room, why had Alan booked us in there, that they had dimmer light-deprivation rooms in Guantanamo Bay etc etc, probably didn't help.  I can tell you, by the next morning (which I had seen the arrival of with unusual clarity), I was ready for that manager.

Once dressed in the morning, I put my glasses on and as I was leaving the room I paid closer attention to all the switches next to ALAN"S side of the bed, which as you can see, he could reach without moving.  Er Alan, what are all these switches for???  Yes, it was the on/off switch for the spotlights!!!  Before you say it, I wasn't on that side of the bed and wasn't wearing my glasses.  Alan on the other hand, was practically eyeball to light switch.

Alan said he hadn't seen the switch, then said he thought it was for something else.  In short he blamed everything except himself.  As you can imagine, the vitriol once aimed at the manager, was then winging its way across the room at Alan!

Stay tuned for part two of Husbands and Hotels!