An Egyptian Bates Motel

Like The Three Musketeers, my producer, cameraman and me, trooped to the hotel lobby..the one owned by Egypt's top singer (whom I suspect is dead now, by the way she looks in her portrait as you enter the hotel)!

The overly helpful lobby manager gave us a sweeping look and announced generously that he had upgraded us to individual suites at no extra cost!

It was telepathic, I thought. He somehow knew it had been a tough night so far, and felt we so badly deserved better. Well, either that or it was just my fatigue catching up.

After what seemed like ages, he handed out the keys, and informed us that our suites were on the top floor.
And then I see a strange sight - it's close to 3.00 am, and there are a few rather well-dressed women walking past the lobby, greeting the porter as if they were about to step out for a walk under the sun!

Odd, I say! Considering I was just told nobody is safe in Cairo!

Anyway, we make our way to our so-called suites, in a steel enforced lift that takes four minutes to climb five floors! I open the door, and it’s again one of those moments I'm not likely to forget in a hurry. Two of them in one day!

It’s huge..this ain’t no suite, it’s a house! There’s a drawing, dining, bar area, two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The furniture looks as if it all belonged to someone who lived aeons ago, and it’s been lying there ever since, unkempt and untouched.

The musty smell is so overpowering, I feel nauseous. Something just doesn’t add up here hmm... Why would the hotel give us a place that’s this large, this spooky, at no extra cost?

That our balcony windows don’t lock, just adds to my already high anxiety levels. At this opportune moment, the porter tells me that all the floors in the middle, from the first to the top do not belong to the hotel at all!

They are residential apartments. By now my hackles are raised.

It’s close to sleepless 4.00 am, I take the blasted lift right back, and inform the lobby manager, that we will be better off in a regular room.

He’s baffled, tries to argue, but doesn’t get anywhere. I have made up my mind. My producer is 10 years my junior, and submits to my wishes, even though she quite fancied the ghost-like suite!

Finally, he gives in. We head for our room on the first floor where no lift goes. We take an escalator, fully carpeted, only a foot wide, and it creaks like two unoiled pieces of steel grating together.

By now I am wishing I was out here on an investigative piece rather than a food show!

The rooms are just as musty and haggard, the lighting bleak and dreary. My bed cover looks like the tents that were used in marriages in India some 20 years back!

There’s even a dark narrow alley in the corner of my room, which I explore and discover has no reason to be there. What a fright night..

By now sleep is at a premium, and I can't fight it much longer. I am scared to bits, and somewhere along the way fall asleep with thoughts of the creepy suite. God help me, I'm in the Egyptian Bates Motel!