The pits

After leaving Jervis Bay and driving the relatively short distance north to Sydney I now have the misfortune to be ensconced in room 102 of the Ibis Budget Hotel in St Peters. And to say it’s the pits is doing it a gross over-service.

I didn’t take any photos or videos during the journey north because after the first few miles it was all just on a motorway that could have been anywhere in the world. Before leaving the comfort of my motel room in Culburra Beach I made an angled mount for my phone out of a Rice Bubbles box (we call them Rice Krispies in Britain and France) which made it far more secure and readable and Waze brought me straight to this ghastly hotel.

And that’s when my problems began. When I tried to check in the reception clerk said that the only booking he had for me was for the same dates, 3 nights from the 25th, but for January of next year! This was unfathomable. I’d made the booking direct on the hotel chain’s web site – usually I use Agoda and have never had a problem like this – and I cannot understand how this could have happened. And yes, my booking confirmation email showed the same but I hadn’t noticed as at the time I was making a number of bookings one after the other.

I was then on the phone for what, the best part of an hour trying to get the hotel to amend the booking but the same reply kept coming back. ‘Computer says NO’. This is what happens when you are dealing with idiots running a crappy hotel chain. In the end in order not to lose the over Au$300 that I’d already paid, I was effectively blackmailed into paying an additional Au$217 for the three nights I want to stay, so in effect I’m paying a premium hotel rate for what has to be the most awful room that I’ve ever stayed in, in a dirty, rundown budget hotel in a dirty, rundown area.

Just take a look at the pictures.

They said that if I didn’t make up my mind quickly, this was the last room available tonight and I would end up losing that, and sure enough, the sign outside does now show ‘no vacancies’. However it’s pretty clear from the pictures that this is a disabled room and the facilities on offer are dirty and badly knocked about. I’ve asked to be moved to a different room tomorrow for the next two nights and the reception clerk has agreed, but I’ll need to wait until about 11.00 am for the move to happen. This will delay my journey into Sydney but I think it’ll be a small price to pay. To be honest, this is not a great start to my Sydney adventures 🙁