It's not unusual to hear people who travel a lot complain about the amount of time they have to spend in hotels. Personally, I've never really had much sympathy for them, especially when they're whinging about spending the night at yet another "soulless" Intercontinental, Hilton, or Four Seasons. True, modern business hotels may all look and feel rather similar inside, but if that's your only complaint, then you've clearly never spent much time in the likes of the $4-a-night Al Majalis in Baghdad, where I spent three months in 2003, despite the absence of air conditioning in the 50C summer heat.
Yet even so, I enjoyed living there, and to this day, I still personally get a strange thrill out of staying in hotel rooms. It's partly the way you never know what you'll get until you walk in. Will it be a presidential-sized three-bed suite, or will it be a broom cupboard? And, most importantly, will it have a mini bar?
Childish though it may seem, having one's own private supply of drinks, crisps and sweets still feels to me to be the height of luxury, and checking out the contents of the mini-bar is one of the first things I do. Once again, there is the glorious element of surprise, although over the years, I have gradually worked out that there are four or five global mini-bar "profiles".
The "Standard" mini-bar (Hilton/Four Seasons/Holiday Inn etc)
Pringles, peanuts, two bottles of Heineken, Snicker bar, soft drinks. Plus maybe a few miniatures and a half-bottle of wine. Enough alcohol - and, at a push, nutrition - to sustain the average foreign correspondent for a couple of days if necessary.
The "Halal" mini-bar. (Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya etc)
Not really a "bar" at all really, given that the "beer", on closer inspection, always turns out to be non-alcoholic. The only exception is Pakistan, where at the Marriot in Karachi, it used to be possible to get beer and whisky on room service long as you filled in a form in triplicate confirming that you were a) a foreigner b) requiring it for "medicinal purposes" only. Quite what medicinal purpose was served by own self-prescription - three bottles of beer and two large glasses of whisky - I am not sure, although I did need some aspirin the next day.
The "Empty" mini-bar (anywhere)
A terrible disappointment, containing only a bottle of water. Or, if you're really unlucky, just a bad smell.
The "Tripwire" mini-bar (The Marriott in Cardiff Docks, if I remember rightly)
Well-stocked, but bearing a bizarre warning that every item inside was on a pressure pad, and that removing them would automatically incur a fee, even if you then put them back. The idea, apparently, was to stop crafty guests taking items out and replacing them with (far cheaper) stuff bought from the local corner shop. True, when all that is at stake is the odd can of beer, quite why they needed the sort of security system that only an experienced jewel thief could get around was a mystery to me. One clue, perhaps, was that next to the mini-bar lay a complimentary copy of The Spirit to Serve, the biograpy of John Willard Marriott Jnr, whose Mormon father built the empire up from humble beginnings with a root beer stand. Supplied in every room along with the Gideon Bible, it's a typically American inspirational how-I-got-to-the top book, of how Pa Marriott brought his son up tough-but-fair, taught him the values that makes the Marriott chain what it is today, etc. Or something like that. To be honest, I didn't read more than the first few pages. But it seems that one key lesson might be: give your life story away free, but never anything from the mini-bar.
The Slavic mini-bar. (Russia, Serbia, Belarus, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Poland etc)
My personal favourite. Aside from the Brits, the Slavic nations are one of the few who take their boozing and binge-drinking seriously. Not only will there be beer and wine, and a generous range of miniatures, the Russians sometimes throw in champagne too, and even the odd half-litre bottle of vodka. Plus, of course, it's often dirt cheap. You can throw an entire room party on less money than it costs to activate just one of the pressure pads in a Marriott gaff. Cheers!
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