The Hotel

So we get our bags off the belt and walk out. In this part of the world, if Customs takes an interest in you, you may never be heard from again. If they don't, you won't even know they are there.

Waiting outside is a guy with our names on a board. To be honest, I didn't see it, but he saw us. I don't know if they were told to look for a big white dude or not, but he called out to me, and he had guessed right.

He took us outside and loaded us into our car. A black Mercedes Benz. Sounds flash, but there are dozens of them here. There must be hundreds over the city.

Sarah's bag in the boot, mine in the front seat, and we were in the back seat. Lots of buttons on the door. One of them must lower the sunshade on our windows, but I didn't bother to try to figure it out.
On our way to the hotel, we passed through four toll booths. They add up to more than half the cost of the car ride. Suddenly a good deal.

So we make it to the hotel, and I'm a little surprised. I always tease that Sarah will only stay in a hotel with a large initial on the roof, but she always does a PhD on them. Gets great deals. This one, for three nights, you get upgraded to a posh suite, and get breakfast for two every morning. That alone is huge. When we went to Tahiti earlier on, the hotel on the island included breakfast. Lucky it did, because the going rate for breakfast was about USD70 per person, per day. Now that sure adds up.
This certainly wasn't a back-packers, but we didn't pay the silly money that some do just to impress. Who, I'm not sure.
Gotta love the financial crisis. Hotels we could never afford are competing with those down the food chain for the tourist dollar.

Anyway, we pull up in the merc, and we are inundated with people.
Hello how are you? Let me look after that.
Come with me please...

We did not go to reception. We did not check-in. We were escorted straight into the lift, and up to our room. Two girls and the guy bringing our luggage. Couldn't do enough for us. It turns out that one of the girls is our butler. I know!
We've never been buttled before. Don't quite know how to go about it.
She took our passports and a credit card In case one of us gets a desire for the porn channel in the wee hours. She did all the paperwork there, and gave us our documents and plastic back.

Nice.

By the way, Sarah just told me that both girls are our butlers. I asked her which one is hers and which one is mine. Don't worry, I still have fast reactions.