The Time I Almost Stayed in the Nicest Hotel Room I Would Have Ever Stayed In

I went on a semi-spontaneous trip to Hawassa for work at the end of last week. Since my presence on the trip wasn’t decided until the day before we left, we had some issues getting me a hotel room. Long story short, I ended up in the deluxe suite. Holy smokes. It had one of those big round beds with built-in speakers, a complementary bottle of wine, and a massage chair. I only had time to throw my stuff in the room before heading to dinner. When I got back, I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out the shower with its remote control and 10 spigots, showered, dressed, and walked back into the room. At this point it was about 10:30.

I noticed that there were quite a few mosquitoes on the wall next to the bed. I started smashing them with my guidebook, but it seemed like they were multiplying exponentially. They grew in number from “quite a few” to “swarms,” and I went on a rampage with this guidebook. I must have killed at least 40 mosquitoes, leaving disgusting blood stains and half-crushed mosquito bodies plastered all over the wall. It was a full-out massacre. Then I stepped back to survey the damage more fully and realized that this area of my room was now populated by HUNDREDS of mosquitoes. They carpeted the floor and flitted around the wall, ceiling, and bed in enormous packs. They were everywhere. I can’t overstate how many mosquitoes were in this room. Now, Hawassa is in a malaria-endemic area and the room had no bednet, so I decided to pay a visit to the front desk.

The man at the front desk said there were no bednets or any other open rooms, but he offered to bring the roach spray up. He wanted to fumigate my room. With roach spray. And then have me sleep in it. I said that didn’t really sound safe, and he helpfully suggested that I wait 10 minutes after he sprayed to go back in. He came up to the room, opened the door, and saw the population of mosquitoes that had by that time swelled to plague proportions. He freaked out, realized that this room was uninhabitable, and also realized that the window was open behind the floor-to-ceiling curtains. Aha. I didn’t even know there were windows behind the curtains. After ascertaining that I had not opened the window and didn’t realize that the window was open, he moved me to another room and set about cleaning up the deluxe suite to offer to the guest who would be arriving shortly and had reserved my new room. My new room had a normal bed, no wine, and no massage chair. But it did have a bednet and a lack of mosquitoes, so it won by a long shot. The meaning of this little parable: as suspected, I am really not made for deluxe suites.