It was a hot and sweaty morning… I had just been woken up sledgehammers dancing in my dreams. I had no idea what time it was, only I expected it was still fairly early because it was so dark in my room.

I almost couldn’t believe it when it was in fact already 8:30 in the morning, and I would have gone back to bed despite the Drum & Bass Parade outside but my body insisted otherwise. So dark… and then I realized… I didn’t have a window. Funny, I didn’t even notice it after a long day of travel. Do they make things like that anymore? Does anybody live in a “modern” apartment in a city and NOT have a window in a bedroom…? BOOM… clap… clang clang clang… at least if there were a regular rhythm maybe I could ignore it more easily. Suddenly flashbacks of my last apartment in Cancun, Mexico, come into my head with loud crews slamming out a Mexica hat dance on the apartment tower next door, its awfully loud since they are building the same materials that were used for my apartment compex,  papier mâché and straw.

Moving on, I get dressed and leave, hoping that my seedy red-light district neighborhood in Kuala Lumpur will be less sketchy in the light of day. Mercifully it is. I’ve pulled up a couple of options online, going for cheap here, and decide to walk sans backpack to scope ’em out. Within about 5 minutes of setting off in the “right” direction and every street name sounding the same to my ears (Jalan Ababasalalahamama and so forth), I do what I call “pulling an American” and just stand around looking lost. I don’t even have a map to pretend to decipher. I duck into a couple of “nicer” hotels telling them that I’m looking for and they point me in the direction of the same area I had just come from, but maybe I might consider them because this really is a nice, centrally located area or so it seems to my unfamiliar eyes.

I find a few options but they are just slightly out of what I was willing to spend. Kuala Lumpur is a huge city–I know there are is a pair of twin towers named after their oil and gas reserves, so marginally more than zero–and I may as well spend some time here. AAs far as hostels go, my first realistic option is a shoe box, with a bunk bed, in a closet, no window, a small partial length mirror on the floor…. and that’s it. The guy was very friendly and it’s all mine (privately, even) for less than $14 USD a night. But ehhh….

Option number 2, I have my own room, it’s more spacious, the walls are white and one is lavender, and I have not one but two wide windows with permanent “bamboo-like” shades. Same price. Deal. And that, dear readers, is how I found myself in Funkytown Guest Hostel… Yes, it’s a deceptive name.

Let me preface this by saying that in my former occupation, I worked in branding and quality standards for a very luxurious hotel chain and we kind of lived and died by TripAdvisor rankings, they were taken very seriously as they should be to some extent at a high level. Knowing what I knew about my hotels, I could see where some complaints were legitimate or at least plausible, and other people were just living in an extreme fantasy world or were digging for freebies. Not that I don’t personally take the reviews seriously, but this trip is more heavy handed on the element of surprise–imagine me, surprising myself every day, by being mostly clueless! It’s nice to mix things up a bit I suppose. Anyway, because I am so free on this trip, I don’t want to have a strict itinerary, since maybe some super cool change of plans comes my way and then I have to do double the work for changing future plans, if I’ve made any. I did not do my homework this time.

I just submitted a review on TripAdvisor because I think that it’s good to give constructive criticism (unless it’s given TO ME of course…) and even if the management doesn’t correct the wrongs, maybe it will be added to the STOP–WARNING–PROCEED WITH CAUTION signs which are th hotel’s legacy, dissuading any guests on the fence.

May I present to you my thoughts on this hostel/guesthouse with more of a literary flourish, eh?

The first incident was when I had them do my laundry–actually as this is the first time that I’ve done my laundry on the road, I am absolutely thrilled to not have to do it myself, and it’s a little under $2 USD for 2.2 lbs of laundry (or 1 kg, you’re welcome), so when I have 1/2 kg and it’s only $1? No handwashing of skivvies, which of course only smell like roses and summer days because I am a lady, dammit, and not hoisting them up a flagpole to dry in 80% humidity? DONE AND DONE. Now, I don’t expect them back the same day and I am going to be here for four, so for me it’s kind of a “whenever you get a chance” sort of thing.

But later on, I’m curious, and when I circle back with another guy at the front desk… it turns out they’ve given my laundry to someone else. I kick. I scream. I yell (unconvincingly). I make him care to take some action. It bothers me… but it bothers me that it doesn’t bother me more! I’m kind of just going with it so my anger is a little bit fake…? Also I may have just willingly unloaded a couple of clothing items in the last hostel since if I didn’t lighten the load of my pack I’d be returning a hunchback… But from Mexico I’ve learned that sometimes you need to scream to get shit done. I’m sorry but it happens. However, later at dinner I’m already working on what to write in my handwritten note–for the reason that I feel really bad for yelling at this guy who is genuinely apologetic. And also I don’t want to be kidnapped in my sleep. I wonder–have they beat me to the punch of selling all my used underwear to men in Japan? Can they cut me in on the deal? Could I possibly cover my trip costs by doing the same (and doubling up on the amount that I’m wearing)? When I return from dinner, the laundry has been returned. Am only slightly disappointed that it has not been embargoed to Tokyo.

The second transgression is the room itself. Now, it looked better than my other option in the windowless, bunk-bedded option that we’re gonna call Bachelor Number One, but in real estate many things are more attractive than (basic, rough-hewn) coffins. I sit down on the bed. SQUEAK. Legs on the mattress. CREAK. I crawl over the mattress on my hands and knees looking for a “safe spot” but there are none to be had, and if you were listening to me in my room, which you would by default since the walls were built with Playdough, you would assume from the sound of it that I was having way more fun than I was. I wasn’t having THAT much fun… At night, when I saw my fellow hostel mates sitting on the balcony, I decided to join them for a minute to experiment… unfortunately the makeshift bamboo shutters did little to give me any privacy, so peep shows were included. They also didn’t do much to buffer the late-night deep thoughts conversation that some French guys thought to have one evening until about 4 am. Le sigh. Room two was better–no windows but full privacy, and no squeaking bed. The hair on the sheets was a nice touch and I made my own voodoo teddy bear. I built him in the likeness of the reception guys. No, but seriously, voodoo was not the only type of superstitious business going on in that room. I recognized blood on the wall, possibly coming from a blunt attack on the last American female visitor who bitched and moaned about her laundry, either that or I was staying in Kuala Lumpur’s version of the Amityville Horror. In kahootz with the A/C unit, we tried to exorcise the demons from the room to no avail–I, instead, was sprinkled with condensation turned holy water. The power of Christ compels you (to seek alternative lodging).

The third issue that lasted for all of my days at the hostel was a POSSESSED CAT. I feel for this guy because s/he is a very skinny, scrawny, scrappy, likely malnourished and definitely unwanted third world cat. At night, she starts to yowl, and I have never heard a cat be so loud… I thought it was a baby crying. Not only did she cry, but she came into the hostel and sat on the balcony or on the adjacent roofs (ironically, the roof next to our hostel was made of corrugated tin, and in my head I laughed at the zinger of a cat on a literal hot tin roof). She continued to moan and in some cases FIGHT with other cats or animals–below, above, and right next to my room. On the last night I caved and bought her a bag of food from the convenience store, cause I’m a sucker for animals and because I thought she might shut up a bit. I know what happens when you feed a cat, thus I have a pet cat at home, but if she’s coming around anyway then it’s for a reason like someone feeding her in the past. When she ate, the screaming subsided. But seriously, here is a video of her screaming so you can see what I mean. It kind of reminds me of that creepy boy from the Grudge.

Act four, scene four, would be the non-stop tour-de-force of smoking coming from the hosts and all the guests. C’mon guys, you can’t possibly not know how bad smoking is, although I guess in theory you can hate yourself quite a bit–see “I stuck it out through four days at this hostel.”

And, last but certainly not least, there was the bombs over Baghdad moment where I wasn’t sure if they were finally coming after me, or if they were coming after someone else. After the elephants upstairs settled down around 1:30 am, a few hours before my departure from KL, somebody thought 4:00 am was a dandy time to light off a string of firecrackers for about a half hour. They weren’t right by my head though, so don’t worry about that. They were AT LEAST 20 feet away, on the street (remember the walls made out of confetti and silly string). During Chinese New Year (which it is/was), they say that fire, loud noises, and red, is meant to scare away Nian, the mythological monster that tortured Chinese villagers. Ironically, I wanted to scream loudly, light something on fire, and in short, I was absolutely seeing red. (It’s like rain… on your wedding day…)

In closing… I suppose that you get what you pay for and I suppose this should be a cautionary tale for backpackers using TripAdvisor (or any review site), I think that the backpackers tend to be a pretty resilient bunch who are shopping for the lowest prices but expect clean and functional basics. From experience in the luxury segment, I would probably say to take the reviews with a grain of salt if you’re booking a standard class of hotel and/or are traveling to an American tourist zone, and luckily there tend to be more reviews or sources you can check against accordingly as the price of the product rises, too. I feel for the two guys running the place since it’s always easier to have happy clients rather than the pissed off ones–they definitely saw that side of me on this trip–and unless they also own the place or are paid to maintain it, they aren’t totally responsible for the physical conditions of the place.

I am pleased to tell you all that I am getting a good laugh out of this, reviewing my last couple of days in KL, and I am doing so from the complete comfort, quiet, and value of a hotel in another city. I would suspend judgement on this one except I love it already.