WHY Miss P, what sound advice. Travelling blind to Marrakesh a month or two ago, we took a pocket guide to Morocco and three articles from three daily newspapers, each with lists of recommended accommodation. We should have left two of the reports at home.
It went something like this. We had taken the "hilly" route through the High Atlas mountains, north east from the Moroccan hotspot of Agadir. Weaving, winding, twisting, tumbling over snow capped passes, a wonderful day with kites and goats above the clouds turned into a wicked evening. As dusk fell like a blanket, we brushed buses on hairpin bends. Valleys rose inexorably to mountains again.
Braziers by roadworks marked the outskirts of the city. More than half lost, we found ourselves in the pulsing Jemaa el Fnaa, Marrakesh's central square.
It was wild, but we were very weary. We had the name of a homely establishment from one of the newspaper guides. It took several stops, and our hearts fell when we found it. Tour buses and taxis lined the entrance, and the charge was £80 a night. Not so long ago, a friend had lived in Morocco on daily bunk fees of 80p.
We did stay, one night, but were so disgusted that we did not touch the breakfast. Instead, we had cakes and mint tea back in the Jemaa el Fnaa, the most inappropriately named "Place of the Dead". The waiter pointed. Next door. The state-run Residence CTM (Compagnie de Transport Maritime) became home, for the vast sum of £4 a night.
It had banana trees, a roof garden, hot water - even if the tap hanging off the wall. The bed could have seen many moths, it was spotlessly clean. Our view of life - tailors, tea makers, sellers, touts. The music bells, horses hooves, muezzins, competing above the cockcrows. Straight out of Esther Freud's Hideous Kinky.
We had similar good fortune in the northern fishing port and former Phoenician stronghold of Essaouira, the latter day haunt of one Mr Jimi Hendtix. Essaouira is renowned for its woodworkers, carving out of the thuya tree. Morocco is dry in theory: in practice, one of the liveliest bars this writer has ever encountered was in the Hotel Le Mechouar on Avenue Oqba Iben Nafiaa.
The moral? Finding your own bed is much more adventurous, even if at times miserable. Yet always memorable! Like in Paris, in the Hotel de la Paix in the Belleville quarter, where the management switched off the electricity to facilitate their regular nocturnal clients and the building shook with interesting vibrations. Or in that cupboard that passed for a "room" in the Hotel Lion d'Or on Rue de la Sourdiere, only metres away from the Louvre and cheaper than its entry price.
Then there is the Hotel Dum Rekreace Rob on Na Porici 15 in Prague, which was the only establishment not demanding a tip in the days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Owned at that time by a leading Czech trade union, it looked on to the former Irish college, known in Prague as "Hybernska". And that "happy Jesus birthday party" during Christmas in a hostel in Goa, India; and that love hotel tour (research only) in Japan's Kyoto. I could list lots more, write a guide to great dosshouses of our time, but chacun ason gout, or lit, as they do say.
