“We’ll Just Turn Up And Find Something…” and other mistakes

So we arrived in Beirut only to find there was no room at the inn. Or the two other budget-priced inns in the area. In despair after having endured a bus journey of several hours from Damascus and a border crossing, we were about to give up when we saw the sign, lit up like a big lit up beacon in the distance: ‘Hotel al-Naim.’ The wooden sign below it stated: “Private rooms for families.’ As we were unsure what this meant we, sensibly, disregarded it. Sure, it wasn’t the cleanest looking building in an area that looked like an industrial site battered by years of civil war, but, seasoned travellers by now, we’re able to deal with a bit of discomfort to save money.

In hindsight, we were misled by the sign: “Hotel al-Naim.” Sure, “Homeless Shelter al-Naim,” wouldn’t have had the same ring, but it would have given us a chance. Tired and fed up as we were, we would probably have been able to distinguish from the latter name that we should try our luck elsewhere.

Because so tired were we that we manged to throw our bags on the beds and leave the room in search of food, ignoring the dead flies on the floor, the open hole in the wall covered by a mere wire mesh, the brutally loud fan, the rock hard beds and the lack of other backpackers. We noticed the ‘Hotel’ wasn’t the cleanest. And we really would have preferred it if the door closed properly. But the fact that we were staying in a shelter wasn’t immediately apparent to us.

The fact that something might not be right was discretely suggested to us by the manger of a hostel across the road. Enquiringly as to the availability of rooms there the following night he asked us where we were staying that night. His response, when we told him, was measured: “You should not stay there. It bad place. If you had said you were staying at Nearby Hostel 1, I would have said that was good. If you had said, Nearby Hostel 2, better….but Al-Naim? Is bad place. Is dangerous. Be careful.” Feeling more and more like characters in a B-movie we thanked the man for his re-assuring words and left. Much deliberating later, we returned to “Hotel” Al-Naim. There was noone around. This was slightly disappointing given that by this stage we were anticipating the possibility of being attacked by an knife-wielding (homeless) maniac. (Karen had determined to run. Having seen a nature documentary on jungle life once in the distant past, my defense was to spread myself as wide as possible, hissing loudly in the hope the predator would assume me to be more dangerous than I actually was. It’s probably best we never got to try this out.)

Indeed, we ended up staying, enduring little more than a nervy night’s sleep. And we even lay in in the morning, when we intended to leave at dawn. Sure, we were woken at 7am but a drunken sounding lunatic shouting the same three words over and over again around the corridors. And sure, we had an array of magazines strewn on the floor, jumping from one to the other to avoid walking on the insects. But we survived. High on life, we danced out into the cratered streets and a taxi to an entirely different part of town to stay in a $60/night hotel, flies not included.