And winner of the survey is.........

An entry that wasn't even on this blog, but from my old yahoo groups site. I didn't know so many people transferred over here. I remember when I wrote it and read it back to myself, I was a bit cringy at how badly it was written. I found an old draft and cleaned up a bit. It's not perfect but I have to admit I was laughing as I wrote and remembered....

I’m sure everyone reading this has stayed in a hotel. I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels, so much so, that I often wake up at home and for a second don’t know where I am because there isn’t a TV at the foot of the bed. There are things about hotel rooms that tend to be pretty similar from place to place, things that you come to take for granted. These little constants end up becoming part of your mental architecture. After a while you can navigate around a room in the dark….drunk and not bark your shin or walk into a wall. You stop thinking about clicking CNN first thing in the morning, or reaching to that spot up and to the right of your head to answer the 6 am wakeup call.
One of these routine hotel room “you can count on it” things, is the layout. There is always a desk, a bed, telephone, etc and they all tend to be in roughly the same place in relation to each other. The bathroom is a pretty fundamental centre piece to this. You come to know the bathroom pretty well on the road. It’s the place you spend a lot of time, showering, shaving, and doing the other things that people do in toilets. The most crucial thing to this story is the physical placement of the bathroom in relation to the rest of the room. In most hotels, 99% of them anyway, the bathroom is immediately on the left or right as you enter the room.
This story happened at the Hyatt Hotel in Seoul quite a few years ago. The particular room I was staying in, (I forget the number), was set up differently. When you entered, you made an immediate right hand turn to enter the room. The bathroom was immediately opposite the front door. Arriving late, I'd been upgraded and found myself in an “executive suite” which was set up in a zig-zaggy fashion of cabinet mini-bars, a giant TV, a panoramic view, and antique furniture. Giddy with newfound status, and knowing that the next day in Taipei, I’d be relegated to the usual “standard superior”, I had a choice:

Meet guys I knew from previous trips in the bar and drink $8 beers, ogle the, untouchable, unobtainable, local minor celeb women, (The Hyatt had a brief period of fashionable hipness at that time), or luxuriate in the fluffy bathrobes, surround sound and badly dubbed on-demand movies on the big screen. What do think I did? I'm a guy for god's sake.

I dumped my bags, and headed for the beer and pool table.
After a night of “play you for the next round ”, and being ignored by the locals, I said my goodnights and with a smug “all is well with the world” feeling, rode the elevator to my executive digs. With a belly full of booze, I downed all of the water in the mini bar. I didn’t touch any of the alcohol. I’d just told my friends downstairs how “veteran travellers” watched their booze intake, and lectured them to moderate their drinking. Seeing how we were all drunk, and they had maybe 60 years of travelling between them, this advice was met with some derision.
“Food poisoning in Bangkok? Is that why you’re wimping out at 1:30?”
“Getting old, that’s what your problem is”

I was out in minutes and slept like a baby.

I awoke as the door to the room clicked shut behind me.
With a bladder full of booze , I stood, incredulous, in a pair of red boxer shorts in the brightly lit hallway of the 6th floor of the Hyatt Hotel in Seoul.
I' d executed a sharp, sleep-walking, left hand turn as I had done countless times before. Instead of peeing with the precision of a “been in a thousand bathrooms like this around the world” veteran, I was now bursting, and increasingly frantic, knees together, half hopping from foot to foot.

Betrayed by a well intentioned upgrade to the unfamiliar terrain of the executive lifestyle.

You may think I was really concerned about being pretty much naked in the middle of the night in the hallway.
This did bother me, but what really had my attention was the slow march towards an event which hadn’t happened to me since I’d been about 3 years old.
I needed to piss.
Not the “we better stop at the next rest stop cause that last coffee is starting to make itsself felt”, sort of urge.
This was a bursting, belly full of beer and litre of smugly chugged Evian, shrieking.
I crab walked my way to the stairs at the end of the hall and was through the door and halfway down the first flight of stairs when the echoing crash of the fire door stopped me cold.

Back up the stairs. A "one way" door which was now……locked.
I had three choices: Go down, go up, or pee right there in the stairwell. Create a glorious waterfall of relief, splashing down concrete steps…..
Oh, how I wanted to pee.
It’s amazing how parental and societal imprinting comes to your rescue at times like these. Though my body screamed for relief,I just couldn’t do it. If I’d given in, even halfway, I was lost,the dyke would have been breached.
I decided to go down the stairs and door after door was locked. How many floors? Certainly more than six.

I was now below lobby level.

Half weeping, I tried the next one and, stumbled into a hallway, pitch black and filled with the sound of whatever sort of machinery whirl away in the bowels of hotels. A sliver of light to the left, a door slightly ajar, and……bliss!
I stared at the laundry room, stacked high with towels, and TWO TWIN TUBS!!!
I didn’t think twice.

There is a stupendous feeling you get when relief comes without guilt…..those tubs were solid gold in my mind.

I hadn’t given in.

I’d stayed the course, and God in his wisdom had provided me with my salvation.

Unfortunately I hadn’t realised that the door was ajar because it had been wedged open with a little wooden block, which I'd kicked aside in my haste to get at the tubs.
The door was now shut…and locked.

So here I found myself, sitting on a pile of towels in my boxer shorts in the depths of the hotel, at god knows what time in the morning.

Now I felt bad.

Now I felt embarrassed.

What did I do?

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I stretched out, after covering myself with a towel and went to sleep.
I was woken up by the door closing again. Behind it I could here confused Korean women, (at least I assumed they were confused- I can’t understand Korean), then silence. I sat up, pulled the towel around my waist “at the gym style”, and awaited my fate. I remember thinking to myself
“ Terry, you’re strangely calm. This will not end well. Why are you so calm?”
I guess was willing to accept whatever punishment was coming.
The door opened and an unsmiling front desk guy stood looking at me. He motioned for me to get up and I followed him into the hallway where half a dozen maids clustered in a group staring at me in fascinated horror. The big, naked, hairy, pale barbarian had invaded their territory, and was now to be dealt with in a swift and possibly entertaining fashion. As I started for the freight elevator, the guy half hissed, half grunted at me to follow him. I did as I was told, and was led up a short flight of stairs…..and into the lobby.
Humiliation was to be the punishment then
With a straightening of my shoulders (and towel), I stepped barefoot, out into the marble, bright, cold lobby. Standing by the front desk, and waiting for my key (which seemed to take forever), I came to the attention of a German businessman, just checking in. The clock over the front desk read 5:30 am.
“Ohhh it is good then this Korea?”
I nodded back at him mute but I gotta say, I had a smirk on my face..
When I finally got my key and was safely inside the elevator, doors starting to close, towel clutched, I felt it was all finally over…
Not so fast.
”Hold that ellie mate”
My aussie friends who I’d been drinking with earlier, arrived pissed, spilling into the elevator, girls in tow laughing and joking.
When the scene registered, there was stunned silence ( girls giggling).
“Jesus mate! I always knew you were a dark horse!”
Roars of laughter.
Explanations waved aside.
“Good on you mate!”
The next morning, it all registered, crystal clear as I lay staring at the ceiling.