Oh yes, one does often wonder about the Motels 7 or 9 that lurk at certain exits.
Don’t remember exactly the rate, but this little dive in Dar es Salaam was less than $15 for a bed with stained sheets, mosquito nets with holes and a broken lock. I didn’t get much sleep that night.
Do Zombies stay in cheap hotels? And if so, what is the Thread count on the sheets?
A decent place (only laking hot water) near Sigiriya, Sri Lanka for $6/nt for a double room.
I stayed at a Motel 6 in Walnut Creek, CA in the early eighties. I don’t remember the rate but it was certainly a bare bones experience. There were no phones in the room although two pay phones were available by the pool, and if you wanted to watch the small b&w television that was bolted to the wall across from the bed you had to pay an extra .50 cents for a metal key you inserted into a lock that allowed it to work. I halfway expected to be asked if I was gonna need sheets or pillows for my bed which would also be available for an extra charge, but those items were actually included in the cost of the room. The room and bathroom were clean and decent though.
I love the sense of adventure in staying at off-brand little independent hole-in-the-wall motels when I’m on a road trip.
I stayed at a GHASTLY little place in Gila Bend. The toilet kept flushing itself, for no reason, all through the night, roughly once ever 20 minutes. The windows were painted permanently shut. And the bed sheets were sewn together from strips of previous bedsheets! (If someone had burned a hole in one with a cigarette, they’d just cut away that part, and sew another part in its place. The sheets had seams across them!)
And, naturally, it was right by the railroad tracks…
Yet, for whatever it may be worth, it was a damn fine place to lay my head for the night, and I’d stay there again!
$25 a night at a motel in Kona, the Big Island. This was native rate, since we went with our friends who lived on Oahu. Extra cheap because the TV didn’t work, which was fine with us.
Worst cheap hotel was near Disneyland. Quite awful - and gone now I’m glad to say. But it cost more than $25.
The one that sucked worst wasn’t the cheapest one, and the cheapest one, which was in the first Nevada town east of Utah (I think Mesquite) was quite nice, with decent rooms, decent pools, and a casino attached. The one that sucked worse–well, it’s a tie. Neither of them was particularly cheap, both of them were awful, and both of them were in Colorado, so lesson one is, drive further away from home. At these bad ones: Funny smell, lumpy bed, too close to a highway–one was too close to a highway and a train track–bad temperature control. One of the bad ones was in Burlington and I walked into the room and said, “No way.” But they wouldn’t refund my money even though I’d only walked in. There was a laminated note on the front desk saying they wouldn’t, so I guess it came up a lot. The other one was in Steamboat Springs and no point in walking out, there was some event going on and it was the only one we could find.
Either $4 a night in Cai Rang in Vietnam, or (I think) $2 a night in Chefchaouen in Morocco - it might have been a couple of dollars more. Neither had air conditioning, but both pretty special locations.
I’m pretty laid back when it comes to hotel rooms. As long as it is reasonably quiet with a comfy, clean bed and then I’m fine. I sleep and shower there, that is all.
We had a boating holiday on the Canal Du Midi a decade ago with a load of friends, great fun. On the last night we booked a hotel in Nimes. The décor was “French Granny spare-room” and a little creaky and shabby with a burgundy half-size bath. But the bed was clean, the breakfast was lovely and it had this view. (That may in fact be the hotel) - 26 Euro for two of us, bloody bargain.
At the moment I’m working two days a week in London and getting a cheap hotel for one night. I’m trying different places to find the best value. (I’ve wrapped accommodation expenses into the day rate I’m charging so I’ve got an incentive to economise…plus I’m stingy anyway)
Cheapest so far was £45 including breakfast here. For London that is pretty good value
Tiny single room but clean and quiet and all facilities present and correct. The King’s Cross area seems far less scummy than 10 years ago.
I’m pushing the boat out this week and paying £70 for a Room at the Comfort Inn Room.
$25 per night. A place just outside Athens, OH. This was about 15 years ago. AC didn’t work, bed was small, shower sucked.
$2 in Siem Riep in 2002. It was actually pretty much a closet with a bed in it, but still a single room with a community bathroom, so not bad at all. I spent about $5 for a room in Luang Prabang in Laos, but was chatting with a gal who spent $0.50 for her hostel room. She was about 5 feet tall and said that the ceiling was so low that even she couldn’t stand up in it. Kinda wish I stayed in it just to set my personal best.
I was at a concert in downtown LA and was looking for the cheapest hotel. It was $50 and turned out to be that hotel where the Chinese-Canadian gal was found dead in the water tank on the roof. There are videos of her acting weird in the elevator, but I’m still convinced it was because the elevators in that building suck hugely and were probably just not acting normally.
On a recent driving trip: $50 for a night at the Riverside inn (right on the Rio Grande) in Alamosa, Colorado. An old, pueblo style place. We both had an excellent night’s sleep.
There are new chain hotels just down the road for a few dollars more. I’m glad we didn’t make that mistake.
One summer from hubs and I took the boys for a weekend at Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH. We had a motel reservation, but when we got there they had mixed it up somehow and given away our room. There were no spare rooms on a summer weekend anywhere in the area, but the desk clerk at the motel gave us a name and phone number and told us to call this lady who had a few cabins she rented. It was a bit of a drive, she said, but not too bad. We called the lady and she had one cabin available. We had no idea what we’d find and were trepidatious. When we arrived, though, we were blown away. The cabin was tiny, just big enough for the double bed and two cots, but it was scrupulously clean and tidy, smelled fresh, had several arrangements of fresh flowers and its own half-bath (no shower or tub, just a sink and stool). The bed was comfy, the sheets were crisp and heavy and she’d made the quilt herself, she told us. For the four of us for two nights it cost $40 and included a pancake and sausage breakfast.
I used to live in a Budget Inn that went for $30/night most of the time in the late 1990s. My parents owned it, so my room was a bit nicer than most but it was still a shithole.
We’ve stayed at a few almost every year but always with advice from a local we trusted; haven’t had a bad experience yet and all were under $40. OK, the last time it was decorated was the Eisenhower administration and it shows wear but we’re there for a good sleep and if you provide that I can be happy.
I was on a European roadtrip with some friends and we ran out of gas just a few dozen kilometers outside of Tirane, Albania. We stopped at a hotel that I think was called Bytheqir or something similar. Well we asked the price and the owner couldn’t speak english so he finally said “2 dolla” and we gave him the money.
Owner takes us to said room and we walk in and find that its essentially a waterbed on a dirt floor, no glass on the windows just a big curtain probably from the beginning of the Soviet Union era covering it and the door was a flimsy thing of wood, almost like a sheet of plywood that could be moved to cover the doorway. Inside next to the bed was an Ak-47 and 2 full clips of ammunition I suppose in case we had a hankering for fun.
Well the bed itself was normal enough, I remember the sheets were bright neon orange and black and the pillows were lovely white masterpieces of heavenly bliss probably the best pillows ive ever put my head on.
So we got to sleep pretty fast but it wasn’t fitful sleep with 8 guys crammed into one bed all trying to sleep and give the other guy a sense of privacy and personal body space zone. Midway through the night I woke up to a loud crash and I could see that the wooden sheet of plywood had fallen into the room and I could see the night sky lots of stars outside.
And then suddenly a donkey comes trotting into our room and stops next to my bed and starts literally gnawing on a suitcase. I was in the middle of the 8 and couldn’t exactly get out of bed to shoo away the donkey but i waved my hands and the donkey I guess noticed and turned around and walked away but then turned aroudn again and walked to the bed and let out a gigantic shit of donkey poo onto the end of the bed waking up two of the other guys who werent on the end but noticed that the pile of donkey shit was rolling, still steaming mind you, off the bed and onto the floor.
TLDR: Roadtrip leads to $2 room outside Tirane, Albania. Donkey walks into room and poos on the bed.
In recent memory? A HoJo’s motel outside of Portland, ME a few years ago. it was one of the very few places in the area which would take our dogs for no additional fee. The fact that it was a HoJo’s was a novelty because we thought their motels had gone the way of the restaurants. It was located off a main road and set back so there was a huge grassy area for the dogs. Suburbia began on the road behind the building.
The first night we’d gone to bed early. I was awakened by a constant rumbling which made me think “Earthquake!”. I opened the curtains and saw nothing. The rumbling continued. My husband woke up, and together we took the dogs out to the grassy area to see what was going on. Turned out that the “suburban road” behind the building was also an access road for a supermarket warebouse, and at midnight on the dot, there was a literal convoy (aka the rumbling) going out to the main road.
Back in 1985, we stayed at a couple of Motel 6 locations when driving cross-country. I don’t recall what they charged - probably 30ish a night. The rooms were fine, though it was odd that they didn’t come with TVs (or maybe we had to pay extra to activate the TV; I don’t recall - as we were just there to sleep then hit the road again it was fine).
We stayed at an America’s Best Value Inn, in Page AZ, a few years back. It wasn’t “cheap” (I’m sure we paid 60-70 for the room) but it was the cheapest in town. Very run down - lots of repairs needed to the room and the walkway outside. The “continental breakfast” was canned fruit cocktail and boxed cereal. The room was clean enough, and the beds were fine, but I was pretty amused by the sign saying that the towels were NOT to be swiped, if we wanted them we could pay xx dollars for them (as if anyone would want to swipe those nasty, tiny, scratchy things).
We travel down I-95 to Florida periodically and have yet to attempt any of the cheap hotels you see advertised on the billboards. I’d be afraid of them.
Hankering for fun, or needed to chase off wandering donkeys, duh 
Forgot to mention two bad experiences we’ve had, that were NOT cheap:
Two bad ones that were NOT cheap:
- A Holiday Inn near Pensacola, FL, for a business trip. My room was OK; others on the same trip had visible patches of mold on the walls, or their doors didn’t lock, or whatever. It was around spring break time so we were lucky to get that
- A nice suite hotel north of Boston, on a Girl Scout trip. We’d reserved a block of rooms; all nonsmoking. A wedding party booked a block of rooms. They gave the wedding party the nonsmoking rooms. Our things REEKED by the time we left (I had to throw away most of my CPAP supplies, was lucky I didn’t have to throw away the machine itself).
On the same trip where we stayed in the Motel 6es, we were bemused at one place in Kansas that had the usual “find the fire exit” and “room rate” info on the door, along with “here’s what to do if the tornado warning sounds”. I guess in the middle of Kansas, that is useful information! :eek: