Azabua | copremesis@yahoo.com
Anxious my trip to New Orleans I thought I slam a few shots of vodka before my departure
I sent a text to the host at 5:07pm CST.
I secure a ride to the airport... I'm feeling okay
When I get to the airport around 6:30 1st thing I notice is a flight delay.
I decided to sit at the bar. Every time I do a solo travel I anticipate meeting someone I know.
Sure enough a fellow female ex-co-worker see's me at the bar and joins me.
I took her to an art exhibit many moon's ago so it was a nice surprise to have some company.
Well due to rain the flight was delayed and there were two bounce flights. Long story short
I didn't reach my destination until 1am.
The entire time I keep trying to contact my airbnb host who is unresponsive.
As I'm sitting in the terminal I decide pull up the airbnb itinerary and discover that my host is out of town
and another contact would be my contact while getting situated. Also, I discover that they use a combination
key box to get into the house. All sounds good yet I know I would be fumbling with this late at night.
Fortunately on my 2nd flight I'm able to purchase a shot of whisky to help calm my nerves ... The flight attendant
was really kind and comps me an additional mini bottle.
When we touchdown I choose to keep the extra bottle as I know I'm not going to be doing much anything else
but just relaxing until the morning comes. I have only one cigarette left as well.
I get to the taxi station and show the driver the address. He's sort of familiar with the location and says it'll cost
$36. I'm like whatever lets do it.
We get to the destination it appears to be a really old neighborhood and following instructions I'm to walk down a really
narrow dark alley. I ask the driver to watch my back so I can verify that this place is legit
After walking 100 feet using my cell phone as a flash light I'm able to find the key box and release the key.
I then wave to the taxi cab driver my thumb's up and am feeling much better. Well now I get inside
and I'm standing in a kitchen. According to the instructions my room should be on the left ... there's 3 doors
a restroom a locked door and a closet.
I call my fall back host mentioning that I can't get into my room since the door is locked. According to her the door
shouldn't be locked. While I'm fumbling around trying to find some key or way to get into the room the door behind me open's
up. Apparently another roommate just arrived and has the key to unlock the door. He mentions he's the one who
normally takes cleans the spot however he hired someone to do it and as a result she locked the door without knowing the protocol.
His room is actually adjacent to my room so if at any point through the night he would have to tip toe through my room!?!
As expected my room is modest and it's a loft style bed that has larger than normal steps to climb.
I'm anxious to get to the bet and begin trying to relax.
Since I can't really sleep I begin working on some computer stuff to keep me busy while trying to get comfortable.
1st thing I notice while I'm there is a roach crawling next to me!!! I was already beginning to be disappointed and now
I'm in a place that has roaches crawling next to the bed?
I continue repositioning myself trying not to lean on any walls in fear that something might crawl on me or what. I continue
working on the computer. 2nd roach is observed as I'm working. I'm beginning to feel anxious again I go ahead and start
sipping my 2nd shot of whisky. At this point I'm having doubts about staying in this place cause the idea of having roaches crawl
next to me while I'm sleeping is just not going happen. To top that off the roommate who let me into the room makes frequent visits
to the restroom kitchen area attempting to be silent. Since I'm already having difficulty relaxing his attempts to be silent aren't
exactly that which push my ability to sleep another hour or so.
I finish what I'm working on and spot yet a 3rd coach roach!!! This time I pull out my cell camera and catch it on film.
Okay at this it I'm booking a hotel to another place. I discover that I have a credit card with enough to buy a room for 2
days at a really reasonable price. Without any hesitation and a little online shopping I find a nice place in the
French Quarters. Feeling better about my purchase I can now relax. I decide that I'm going to stay here until I can check
into the actual hotel.
It's now closer to 6am and I can finally ignore the idea of my past journey and am getting closer to falling asleep however
still sorta of disgusted by the thought of creepy crawlies around me. I was on the brink of falling asleep when my phone
chimes. (I should have put it on silent!) It's the original host I guess his timezone was opposite of mine.
The message is along the lines of I'm sorry my reception is poor here did you figure it out. It's been 14 hours since
I sent the original message. Now I'm fully awake again and delirious and pissed off.
One thing about airbnb and a lot of new web sites is the use of automatic video play using HTML5 video.
If you go to airbnb is this phoney marketing video of actors portraying a pleasant experience on their travel. It's
obvious they are actors as they cannot keep a natural expression as they move about with there smug smirk expressions.
Like it's really obvious they are being watched or on camera.
I remember working with a company that completely jacked the airbnb style to a tee and would often get some laughs
by using the web browser developer console to replace the source of the video with something else as the way
sites like Meowbify works. Who doesn't get a laugh watching animated cat gifs? Has anyone done this with roaches? Well
I know I wouldn't make this up so I decided to have some fun myself ( since at this point I'm delirious, upset and can't fall asleep)
After caching the airbnb homepage locally and replacing the default marketing video with my roach video capture the result is
this.
Here's my reply to the host:
The owner was apologetic but I did mention that I wouldn't spend the rest of my stay there. I said if he would credit me
back some money I would keep this story silent. Many restaurants will credit a meal or knock off some payments
if a roach is spotted.
If I were to bring this up with airbnb he's probably going to loose his listing and what not. I think it's time we consider
the ability to observe what we pay for before we do so. All I can say is I'm never using airbnb again.
tl;dr You get what you pay for.