This is beyond gross...all travelers should read

[The Seeker of Good Songs]

http://consumerist.com/consumer/dis...iled-to-wash-your-cups-and-glasses-320053.php

Secret Camera Investigation: Every Single Hotel Failed To Wash Your Cups And Glasses


Fox Atlanta set up secret cameras inside 5 different hotel chains from the Holiday Inn to the Ritz Carlton (shown above) and caught every single one of them failing to properly wash the room's glasses.
At every single hotel, regardless of price, the glasses were simply rinsed out and left for the next guest. Some hotels used dirty bath towels to wipe the glasses. One hotel employee rinsed the glasses after cleaning the toilet—using the same gloves. Another one sprayed the glasses with blue cleaning fluid that was marked "Do not drink."
Fox Atlanta has turned the results of the investigation over to the local health department. Experts interviewed in the video maintain that this isn't just a case of "ew, gross" but a very serious health code violation. Dirty glasses spread disease.
Truly disgusting.
I-Team: Dirty Hotel Secrets, Pt. 2 [MyFoxAtlanta] (Thanks, Richard!)

 

[Not Right in the Head]

Damn. At first, I mis-read the headline and thought that it was about secret cameras in hotel rooms, by which the hotel management could spy on guests. We had an infamous case of that in the early 90s--there was a secret room behind one of the mirrors of the honeymoon suite. From that point on, everybody in Eastern Iowa referred to that hotel as the spy-cam hotel. It even got a writeup on Snopes.

Guess where Mrs. NRitH & I stayed on our wedding night a few years later? The staff professed complete ignorance on the subject.

 

[Dave]

I like to think there is a camera in my hotel room anyway.

 

[bagface]

guess i should start packing cups and silverware etc. along with my clothes now?

 

[Dave]

 

[Busy Clippers]

I know an awful lot of business travelers who have their own unbreakable travel mugs that go everywhere with them. Most hotels nowadays give you takeaway cups with the coffee machine - I always use those.

When I'm paying, I get surplus timeshare condos which come with dishwasher (and washing machine/dryer). Same price or cheaper than a hotel, but more room and generally cleaner. Whatever the case, I never, ever touch the bedspeads!

Think the cups are the worst of your problems??

Bedbug advice from the experts

By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY
The best rule of thumb for dealing with bedbugs? Try not to get them in the first place. Otherwise, read on:

•Be careful where you put your suitcase when you travel. "These guys are fantastic hitchhikers," says the University of Maryland's Michael Raupp. "If you have a luggage rack with metal racks, put your suitcase on that."

•Check behind a hotel headboard. That's one of their favorite spots, Raupp says. Pull back the comforter and sheets and look for the fecal stains on the mattress seams and ticking. Shine a penlight behind the headboard and look for dark fecal stains.

•If you do wake up with red welts, assume the worst. "At that point, when you go home, all laundry goes into a trash bag outside, and then right into a washing machine on a hot cycle, and then a clothes dryer," says the University of Kentucky's Michael F. Potter. "As little as five or 10 minutes kills everything on high heat. Cold will not kill the eggs and not all the adults."

•Don't pull mattresses and dressers off the street. Steer clear of yard sales or flea markets. And don't ever buy used bedding.

•If you do get them, don't use a bomb or spray, which will only scatter them through your home. "Find a good pest-control company. This is not one where you buy bug spray and battle it yourself," Potter says.

•In many cases, pros suggest getting rid of your box spring and mattress, or if you can't, using a bug-proof zippered mattress cover that traps the buggers inside for at least a year.

 

[bogdana]

If it makes you feel any better, once those glasses are completely dry, the bacteria cannot live on it anymore and the cups are, technically, safe. gross, but safe. unless they've got smudgy gloop on them where bac can hang out.

I bring my own stuff everywhere...and chlorox wipes in a travel size

 

[Buzzetta]

Yet another reason that when my entourage and I all go away on vacation whether it be Florida, Vegas, Atlantic City or whatever... we bring or buy coolers and stock them full of beer, drinks, mixes or what have you. I do not believe that I have ever used a hotel glass in my adult life.

 

[suparni]

a little off topic but still pertaining to shocking hotel stories... When I arrived in India, I was 19 and alone with a backpack. I was so shocked by Bombay when I landed at 2am that I couldn't think of anything to do but book a flight somewhere less overwhelming. At that point even the couple of hours on the safe clean plane sounded good to me... So I took a flight to Madras and immediately went to a hotel. I chained my backpack to the bed and went for a shower. I turned on the faucet to brush my teeth (with bottled water of course) - and I looked in the mirror. Already my face had changed... I had never been in such a strange land - alone, overwhelmed, and on sensory overload with all the sites, smells, sounds, people... it was too much! To be honest I was afraid to go outside.

So I am brushing my teeth and the faucet is running... I spit some toothpaste into the sink and suddenly I feel my feet are getting wet... I look down and there is a little pool of water and toothpaste foam. I followed the sink tube drain with my eyes and saw that it just spills out to the slanted floor, eventually running to a floor drain. Obviously I started to cry.

A few months later I was in another hotel up north - a nicer one mind you... and I went into the shower, leaving my belongings just outside the door on my night table... the room was locked and the windows closed. I came out of the 10 minute shower and my passport, money, train ticket, plane tickets, visa... everything GONE - I had not a single rupee to even get to the American Embassy. huh... 19 alone in India with not even enough money for a 3rd class train ticket to Bombay. Gosh... I wanted to start anew... but not even a single piece of paper with my name on it and not a single rupee to my name was not exactly what I had in mind!

Turned out to be an adventure and I will never forget it. Was kind of an amazing thing - to be that alone and vulnerable and with nothing but my feet and the shirt on my back...

Well that's my strongest hotel memory and I will never forget it. Not exactly the plaza hotel...
But with hotel and restaurant hygiene - I never drink out of those cups in any hotel anyway. You would not believe what you discover about hygiene and mishaps when traveling in India. The smallest mistake with hygiene, hand washing, food caution, water caution... even cutting into an orange (the bacteria on the knife from the rind contaminates the flesh of the orange) and you are SICK AS A DOG for weeks! Once I lost 22 pounds in 3 weeks... never again. I don't have much trust for hotels... It's amazing how bacteria spreads and just how careful you really must be. Restaurants and pubs... gosh you really have to be careful... anybody who has ever been a waiter or waitress knows very well what I mean!

 

[bogdana]

reminds me of the "South Bronx Parasite" Diet from aqua teen hunger force!

 

[PregnantForTheLastTime]

Yet another reason that when my entourage and I all go away on vacation whether it be Florida, Vegas, Atlantic City or whatever... we bring or buy coolers and stock them full of beer, drinks, mixes or what have you. I do not believe that I have ever used a hotel glass in my adult life.

You have an entourage? Can I see?

 

[Busy Clippers]

a little off topic but still pertaining to shocking hotel stories... When I arrived in India, I was 19 and alone with a backpack. I was so shocked by Bombay when I landed at 2am that I couldn't think of anything to do but book a flight somewhere less overwhelming. At that point even the couple of hours on the safe clean plane sounded good to me... So I took a flight to Madras and immediately went to a hotel. I chained my backpack to the bed and went for a shower. I turned on the faucet to brush my teeth (with bottled water of course) - and I looked in the mirror. Already my face had changed... I had never been in such a strange land - alone, overwhelmed, and on sensory overload with all the sites, smells, sounds, people... it was too much! To be honest I was afraid to go outside.

So I am brushing my teeth and the faucet is running... I spit some toothpaste into the sink and suddenly I feel my feet are getting wet... I look down and there is a little pool of water and toothpaste foam. I followed the sink tube drain with my eyes and saw that it just spills out to the slanted floor, eventually running to a floor drain. Obviously I started to cry.

A few months later I was in another hotel up north - a nicer one mind you... and I went into the shower, leaving my belongings just outside the door on my night table... the room was locked and the windows closed. I came out of the 10 minute shower and my passport, money, train ticket, plane tickets, visa... everything GONE - I had not a single rupee to even get to the American Embassy. huh... 19 alone in India with not even enough money for a 3rd class train ticket to Bombay. Gosh... I wanted to start anew... but not even a single piece of paper with my name on it and not a single rupee to my name was not exactly what I had in mind!

Turned out to be an adventure and I will never forget it. Was kind of an amazing thing - to be that alone and vulnerable and with nothing but my feet and the shirt on my back...

Well that's my strongest hotel memory and I will never forget it. Not exactly the plaza hotel...
But with hotel and restaurant hygiene - I never drink out of those cups in any hotel anyway. You would not believe what you discover about hygiene and mishaps when traveling in India. The smallest mistake with hygiene, hand washing, food caution, water caution... even cutting into an orange (the bacteria on the knife from the rind contaminates the flesh of the orange) and you are SICK AS A DOG for weeks! Once I lost 22 pounds in 3 weeks... never again. I don't have much trust for hotels... It's amazing how bacteria spreads and just how careful you really must be. Restaurants and pubs... gosh you really have to be careful... anybody who has ever been a waiter or waitress knows very well what I mean!

More! More! So what happened? How did you get out of that situation when you were completely robbed? Tell all!!

Some day I'm going to Dharamsala, but everybody I know who has been tells me similar stories to yours. One friend, the Rick Steves of Buddhists, says to get one of those plastic ziploc pencil cases that you put in a looseleaf binder, fill it with your valuables, and wear it on a sting around your neck in the shower. He mainly does it to keep his drugs dry, so I call that Dope On A Rope.

The filthiest hotel I have ever been in was near l'Ecole Militaire in Paris. There were actually fleas in the lobby, and the walls were covered in lovely albeit dingy fin de siecle paper. They didn't even give you clean sheets. The mattresses looked as though they'd been there since Appolinaire slept on them - ancient! There was a street market below and if you foolishly slept with your window open you awoke in a room full of fat little flies who'd come to check you out to see whether you were better than what was on offer below. The carpeting...my friend took off her shoes and after about a half hour her white socks were dark grey on the bottom. The showers, there were only two in the hotel, were about as clean as a central London phone box, complete with those stupid cards for escort services. Water? The color of tea.

 

[The Seeker of Good Songs]

Water? The color of tea.

And many in the USA think that our tap water is so bad that they have a bottled water as their constant companion.

 

[suparni]

More! More! So what happened? How did you get out of that situation when you were completely robbed? Tell all!!

Well, at that time I was very much concerned with dropping my belief systems, conditioning, and somehow expanding my world and appreciating all that I take for granted as a rather lucky American... I had never experienced financial hardship and I had traveled the world etc etc. I was somehow ANTI a lot of things... and I wanted to grow up and see the world and what it is like to be free and on your own. As that was the beginning of my trip... the 2000 dollars that were stolen were all mine - I had earned them at an after school job the previous year. Fortunately it was all in travelers checks... at least all but a few hundred dollars.

Anyway when I got out of the shower and realized my stuff was gone I sort of went blank. I did not allow the fear to overwhelm me on the spot. I put my clothes on and went exactly where I had planned to go before this happened... to a master I had been sitting with a for a couple of weeks now. I had been sitting with a Tamil master down at Mount Arunachala near Ramana Maharshi Ashram in Tiruvanamali before this one; at first i thought the Tamil master was the reason I had come to India - but after a few months I asked him if I could leave... the monsoon was coming and South India is treacherous in the summer. He gave me his blessing to go.

I met another traveler - an older woman who needed a young person to help her along the way traveling North. We went to Auroville and I rented a motorcycle and rested in a beach hotel for a few days - it was my first week away from the Tamil Master - and I had been with him for months so it was a separation - energetically from a somewhat deep guy... But he did not speak any English, was pretty traditional in the format of the satsang and all that... and I felt he was not "IT" but nonetheless something had happened to this guy energetically... anyhow.

I traveled on with this older woman from Holland... helped her with her bags and tickets and listened to her many stories from the road. She told me she would take me to a Master in the North and that I should certainly go to Osho Meditation Resort - where this masters master had been... but anyways... It was this lady who took me to the town where I was robbed... wonderful old witch of a woman she was!

So, I had been on my way to see this Master for Satsang (sitting in meditation) when I was robbed. So I went to the Satsang on foot rather than rickshaw as I had no money... and I sat silently at his feet basically - with about 30 other western and about 20 Indian seekers and disciples of his. I was very very afraid when I arrived, but I knew I could not interrupt and the best thing I could do for myself was to sit silently and watch my mind freak out - realize that I am not the mind, I am not the fear, I am not anything but a watcher on the hill... my life is like a play... a drama, and nothing that happens outside can touch me.
It worked. I watched the fear and did not get identified with it.

I feel that in that hour - much changed inside of me.

So when satsang ended this teacher or master or whatever he is - he asked me what was happening... I guess he felt the energy of my experience. I told him what happened and he called over two of his disciples who would be traveling to Bombay with him that evening. One of them gave me about 10 dollars... with which i bought a 3rd class train ticket on the same train in which they were traveling first.

3rd class in India is very very poor. The seats are metal and the windows are just bars... there are animals on the train and everybody is in rags. I looked around and it was almost as if I were watching a beautiful movie... that this really was not happening to "me." People in India share a lot and when the tea walla came by offering chai... i did not have enough money for a cup... it was 5 rupees... (48 rupees to one dollar) - the poor people sitting there - a family... they offered to buy me a cup and I declined... but they ordered it for me anyway and handed it to me with black toothed smiles. Real - very real poverty all around me - and in that moment - they had more than i did. I did not even have a paper with my name on it.

I got to Bombay and tagged along with that master and the caretaker and disciple... a rich man from Germany and a younger woman from Italy. The hotel manager was not going to let me stay without a passport but I think this master is respected and they allowed me to stay. The next day i went to the American Embassy where I just knocked on the Gate. The intercom voice asked what I wanted and I told them what happened. The gate slowly and automatically opened up and I saw a little piece of America - FORD cars with the steering wheel on the left side of the car and all! A guy with a Donald Duck tie came with a big warm smile and he was laughing saying that I looked like I had been through an ordeal. They replaced my passport, visa and they gave me some money so I could go to American express and get my checks back.

I paid the rich german guy for the hotel night and the master told me to come back with them - they had finished their business in Bombay. I sat with that master once more... he was going to travel with his crew up to Minali - but he pulled me aside and told me to come with him to Osho Meditation Resort. He left me there and told me not to come to the mountains but to stay here for a while... and the moment that I walked through the gates at Osho Med Resort (www.osho.com) well... I don't think anybody could have dragged me away from the place - master or no master. I realized when I got there that I had been looking for this place since I even thought of going to india... at about 18. And it turned out that my first teacher (Eugene Trimboli) who introduced me to meditation in the states and who was also my English lit teacher - had been at that place many years ago and in fact Osho is his master... long long magical story - but I ended up taking sannyas just like my first teacher in the states had many many years before. He never told me to go to Pune (Osho) - so when I ended up there and wrote to him that I had found my place - he smiled and laughed and said "on the entire subcontinent of India how did you end up finding the same master as I (your first teacher) did so many years ago?"

long long story but right now I can't make it any clearer than that... I am just taking a break but really should get back to work now.

 

[Buzzetta]

No... No pictures are allowed of them in action. While we were down in AC this past weekend I stragically removed the memory card from this girls camera. She came down with us and we told her no pictures. Last thing my friend would have wanted would be pictures of him walking around the Tropicana naked wearing only his socks and drinking beers. As he said...(about himself) "I have to retire from the city ASAP otherwise I will one day I am going to do something stupid and lose my pension."

On a side note... My friend Frank is actually referred to as "Frank the Tank"