Late December back in 63.... nope not that night, I wasn't even born then waaaa ha ha ha the night I am talking about was the 20th August 2011 which in itself didn't really grant blogging about but the day after became rather interesting.
So last night I hung out with a friend for a while then went to another friend who had gotten a room at an ultra luxury (they call themselves that) 5 star hotel, I wont mention the actual name of the hotel and you will see why later. So the original plan was to get all dressed up and have a girly night at the casino hustling rich Saudi guys and sipping the complementary drinks, we, well at least I managed the dressing up part and spent the first part of the evening feeling like totally over dressed to be hanging out with a friend, anyway finally got to the hotel, the traffic was hell getting their as the whole of the army seemed to be stationed outside the Israeli embassy. entered the hotel and waited for her to come and get me (you can only get to the rooms with a card). Got up to the room and sat for a while with my friend and can you bloody believe it we ended up sitting in bath robes and watching TV all night, like 2 old ladies. So we slept in the amazingly comfortable bed and the next day tried to recapture some youthfulness by putting on loud (and modern) music and dancing around the room. Check out was at 3pm so at 2 we started to get ready to leave, my friend took a shower and I continued bopping in front of the mirror, thinking I was a spice girl :D
I heard a strange noise but thought it was a part of the song, the music changed but the noise continued so I went to the door to investigate. Can you imagine what I found?? My friend standing naked in the bathroom and the room service guy with his head poking through the door looking at her!! What the hell?? I rushed to the door and told the guy off, he then stood there for another 10 minutes and argued with us, his reasoning was, he wanted to clean the room and we didn't put a do not disturb sign on the door. Our argument was our check out was at 3pm, the music was on in the room and even if he still made the mistake of entering the second he saw my friend naked he should have averted his eyes immediately and left the room, not stand there and stare!!
This went on and on and back and forth until we finally said look it's enough give us your name and LEAVE.
The thing is, we are used to men behaving badly here but if you go to a place like a 5 star hotel then you expect more respect then if you were staying in a down town hostel, and to be honest this wouldn't even happen in a hostel downtown as men are not allowed to enter women's rooms at all! Secondly when a customer complains you are supposed to suck it up and NOT stand there and discuss the matter with them.
We went downstairs to check out and then on to the guest relations to make our complaint, this put us in the very awkward position of having to discuss the matter of sexual harassment with a group of fasting guys. As people are nosy in Egypt this got more and more embarrassing as more and more employees came over to see what was going on. We finally ended up with the house keeping manager, who seemed like a nice lady but all she could offer was "Well he says he is sorry and the sign wasn't on the door" this is where I began to get pissed off and I said look, "He was watching her while she was naked, do you want us to make a police report because that is how serious this is". I think she got the seriousness of the situation as she scuttled of to find the hotel manager. He broke off a meeting to see us (nice ha) and took us to one of the many cafes there, he offered us juice and water and was very, very professional, he listened to our story in horror and sympathized with us, I think more so as we told him, look we live in Cairo we deal with this stuff all the time and we know it exists but when you come to a place like this it shouldn't happen AT ALL. He agreed totally and told us a little about his life in Cairo, he was french and was living in the same suburb as we do. He promised to take action and investigate the matter fully, he also took care of the bill (which included spa treatments and room service) and on top of that he provided us with a private limousine to Maadi which saved us taking a cab.
His reaction was wonderful which is why I wont give the name of the hotel, they handled the situation perfectly and well it left us both feeling very happy and smug in the end.
Our limo arrived and we traveled in style to Maadi (haaaaaaa not really, we got stuck in the most terrible traffic but that is another tale....)
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