I’ve stayed in quite a few hotels since coming to Taiwan. I’ve avoided the typical 5 star catering for homesick tourist type ones mostly due to seeing it as a waste of money but have seen my share of good to bad.

Well at least I thought I had. What I thought was bad when it comes to hotels however was all but shattered when I spent a night in Dajia Township, Taichung County.

My first alarm bell went off when I entered the foyer. Lined with old musty blood red carpet out of a Hitchcock movie, I was greeted by a ghastly old woman behind the reception desk.

I’m not sure who was older, the receptionist or the hotel building.

Without too much fuss I was given a room and trundled up the staircase. The corridors leading off to the rooms kept the same Hitchcock Hotel motif I’d seen downstairs.

As I placed my key into the door lock and went to turn it, part of me wondered if I’d ever make it out alive.

Luckily that thought was cut short by the fact that my key didn’t work. So worn out were the locks and so ground down were the keys, that it wasn’t until the receptionist lady had a good jiggle with the door for five minutes that I could get inside my room.

In the interests of living the experience I resisted the urge to just pack up and run screaming.

Thankfully the room itself wasn’t too bad.

It was spacious and had an odd 70′s era feel about it. 70′s decor is bad enough on it’s own, let alone with hints of Asian design mixed in.

The hotel room featured a television and an air conditioner. Although with one wall of the room being giant air leaking windows however, the air conditioner really wasn’t needed in the middle of winter.

There was also a fan in the corner of the room that looked like it hadn’t been used in 300 years.

I didn’t dare turn it on.  I figured ‘let’s see what happens’ wasn’t a good enough reason to justify instantly contracting some horrible respiratory system disease over.

In one of the corners of my room there was also a whole bunch of pipes attached the roof. Think like the basement of a massive office building.

I’m not sure if every room in the hotel had this feature but it seemed every pipe/wire/cable that was used to run the hotel met in my room for a spaghetti mess of a roof party.

Although I didn’t think it was possible, the hotel bathroom managed to be even more 70′s then the bedroom.

The bath tub itself was seriously the tiniest thing I’ve ever seen. I know Taiwanese girls are small and short but this was ridiculous. I’m pushing six foot one and I’d be struggling to even sit in the tub without having to bunch my legs up.

The bathroom came complete with malfunctioning toilet too.

Every time you flushed the toilet a steady stream of water would come pouring out of the cistern (the top bit), and create a big stream of water all over the tiled floor.

In hindsight I guess it could have been worse, that could have been bowl water leaking out or worse still they could have had a squat toilet.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a hotel princess or anything and I guess I’m wiser for the experience but I hope I don’t wind up staying somewhere as bad as that anytime soon again.

I’ve got a pretty high tolerance for budget hotels but this place in Dajia Township has easily been the worst place I’ve stayed so far.

To be fair I’m not going to name and shame the place as I had my room paid for. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.

1. Taiwan really puts the dog in hotdog