I’m lodging at a “laboratory hotel” here in Tacloban, an adventurous-sounding name for what is really just a large building on the campus of Leyte Normal University where hospitality students can get real-world experience. The rooms are serviceable and the location is mediocre; the real draw is the massive staff of extremely obliging and easily overwhelmed 16 to 20 year-olds that (to a degree) keep the place running. At any hour of the day at least four attendants will greet me at the front desk. If I request an extra wastebasket then two people one bring one within minutes. It’s nice that when I complain about something the staff seem to see it as a new and exciting problem that they need to solve, not just a nuisance.
Living it a play-hotel has its drawbacks. None of the workers have figured out how to deal with the problem of my bathroom sink, which has separated from the wall and leans out at a 5-degree angle. The staff can also become overbearing; on my first day a dozen identically dressed housekeepers woke me up at 7 am to ask if they could all come in and clean.
On the tourism front, today I rode a jeep for 90 minutes and a then boat for an hour to visit a cave which, the guide pointed out anticlimactically, had a stalactite that looked just like a penis. Fortunately the scenery en route was beautiful.
Have your aspiring housekeepers already mastered the curriculum on hiding Kevin's laundry?
ReplyDeleteDid you tell them you have a sink like that in your house that we've just not done anything about ?
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