{"id":886,"date":"2012-04-11T16:16:43","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T16:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/?p=886"},"modified":"2013-07-14T21:39:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-15T04:39:44","slug":"of-mice-and-mold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/?p=886","title":{"rendered":"Of Mice and Mold"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There have been times<\/strong> when I\u2019ve wondered where the line lies between long-term travel and homeless. The borderlands between the two lifestyles can be thin, and sometimes I\u2019ve wondered if there is a type of homeless person who doesn\u2019t think of himself as homeless at all, but rather on a very long camping trip.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have a home-per-say\u2014just a 10×10 storage unit. But I don\u2019t consider myself homeless. Even as we drift from place to place on-the-cheap and rootless, I tend to think of myself as on a Grand Adventure. But occasionally I’m shocked into a different perspective: I\u2019m walking with my backpack down a dumpster-lined alley enroute to a cyber-caf\u00e9, and someone directs me to free breakfast at the church; Or I wake in our truck, look around, and realize we\u2019ve been living with a rat for two months. The glue traps are overturned and stuck to the rug, the spring-loaded snappers are licked clean of their bait, and the live trap sits untriggered with a half-nibbled crouton. I get out of bed, pull on a shirt, and flinch at a newly chewed hole in the shoulder. Is this my life?<\/em><\/p>\n

This sensation came up most recently when planning a trip to meet friends in Oludeniz, a resort town on southern Turkey\u2019s Mediterranean. We were happy to pay the cheap airfare, but after living in a van, are unused to paying for habitation; Andy perused dozens of hotel listings and quickly entered the seven stages of grief; the costs were uniformly high. Then, suddenly, he perked up.<\/p>\n

\u201cCheck this out,\u201d he said, turning his laptop toward me.\u00a0 \u201cThis place is only ten bucks a night.\u201d<\/p>\n

I squinted. The screen flashed with photos of rose petal-scattered bedspreads, flutes of champagne. The Magic Tulip Hotel.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cImpossible.\u201d The shoddiest place I\u2019d found in Oludeniz was three times as much.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s gotta be a catch,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

Andy Skyped the agency and the price was confirmed. He was frothing to book; I was fretting.<\/p>\n

\u00a0We paid The Magic Tulip in advance<\/strong>–$160 for 16 days. Weeks passed and our minds turned to other things: work, packing, coordinating meet-ups with friends. Then in preparation for departure, I pulled up some TripAdvisor reviews on the Magic Tulip. The list of horrors was unending:<\/p>\n

Hotel from Hell,<\/em> one read.<\/p>\n

The rooms were comfortable \u2026 except for the beds, <\/em>said another.<\/p>\n

Pillows made of crushed concrete<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Vile food.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Black mold.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Broken water tap.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Mice.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Four cockroaches. <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Blood on the sheets.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0A death trap.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0I spent 4 days in hospital \u2013 I\u2019m convinced this hotel played a part in the stress we had to endure as my health previous had been exemplary.<\/em><\/p>\n

And finally:<\/p>\n

\u00a0I would honestly say you would be stark raving mad to choose this hotel!!<\/em><\/p>\n

Had our standards really sunk this low?<\/p>\n

I blamed Andy who always gets suckered by the thrall of false economies. I remembered the cheap flight he once found us that arrived at 3 a.m.–after the public transport had shut down. We ended up paying $60 for a taxi. And then there was the outdated GPS he bought “for a song\u201d which directed our truck right into the ruts of The Oregon Trail.<\/p>\n

He directed my gaze to the photos of pedal-covered beds, and champagne. \u201cIt\u2019ll be great.\u201d<\/p>\n

We arrived at the airport<\/strong> near Oludeniz the next morning. I sulked at the baggage claim while Andy sang Madonna\u2019s \u201cHoliday.\u201d We grabbed our gliders from the conveyer belt and exited the airport where we\u2019d catch a van into Oludeniz.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy name!\u201d\u00a0 Andy pointed.<\/p>\n

There, in the median, our van-driver was holding up a sign:<\/p>\n

A.\u00a0\u00a0 Pagnacco<\/em><\/p>\n

Magic Tulip Hotel<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never had a sign with my name on it,\u201d he gushed.<\/p>\n

We heaved our bags in the van and were off, traveling the windy mountain road curves to Oludeniz. Andy smiled wildly while my eyes teared at the prospect of 16 days of cockroaches crawling across my face in the night, 16 days of mice and mold and 16 days in paradise without the paradise. He would want to stay. I would want to move. We would fight.<\/p>\n

By the time the van was speeding down the final stretch of highway toward the Roach Motel, my life had arrived at a crossroads: I was ready to get a real job and make real money–to start going on proper vacations. But who would hire me now that I\u2019ve spent my \u201cearning years\u201d squatting in truck stops and borrowed houses?<\/p>\n

The van pulled up to the motel<\/strong> and my mood lifted incrementally. Its wrought iron balconies were aesthetic. A ripe lemon tree grew near the door. We shouldered our bags and entered the lobby.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWelcome,\u201d said the receptionist.<\/p>\n

While he leafed through my passport I looked at a framed certificate on the wall:<\/p>\n

Gold Award<\/em><\/p>\n

Magic Tulip<\/em><\/p>\n

Best Summer Stay<\/em><\/p>\n

By Portland Direct<\/em><\/p>\n

I exhaled. A gold rating? From Portland?! My (almost) home town? I pulled the reins on my encroaching optimism. The certificate was dated 1998.<\/p>\n

The receptionist handed us the key<\/p>\n

We ascended the steps found room 309, unlocked it, and opened the door.<\/p>\n

And it was \u2026<\/p>\n

Fine.<\/p>\n

Granted it wasn\u2019t like the photos: there was no champagne, no rose-petal covered bed. But there was also no mold blackening the walls, no evidence of rats, soiled sheets, or cockroaches. Clean towels hung from the bathroom rack, and the toilet paper holder was loaded with a brand new roll.<\/p>\n

I hugged Andy.<\/p>\n

But what was with the hostile Trip Adviser reviews? It was a mystery. Either the motel had pulled its act together since they were written, or someone had a serious vendetta against The Magic Tulip.\u00a0 Either way, it definitely illustrated some of the problems with TripAdvisor. But that\u2019s a whole different blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After a brief bask in the glow of Being Right, Andy\u2014who gets anxious at settling anyplace without wheels\u2014did something unprecedented: unloaded his back pack into a dresser drawer.<\/p>\n

Let there be no doubt: For $10 per night, we were home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There have been times when I\u2019ve wondered where the line lies between long-term travel and homeless. The borderlands between the two lifestyles can be thin, and sometimes I\u2019ve wondered if there is a type of homeless person who doesn\u2019t think … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":892,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions\/892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanabonds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}