Searching for the (almost) Perfect Guesthouse

Elephants taking a Bath before the Show at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center near Lampang (June 16, 2012)

Sunday, June 17, 2012: Udon Thani

While traveling in India and Thailand, I tend to stay at small guest houses or hotels which range between 10 to 20 Euros per night. I am not asking for a lot of things but there are some essential criteria when booking a room.

• I want my own room. I have definitely gotten too old for staying in dorm rooms.
• I want my own bathroom/toilet.
• I want internet, preferably WiFi as it lets me use my MacBook and iPad simultaneously.
• Depending on the climate and temperature, I need either heating or a fan (preferably a ceiling fan) or air-condition. That's more or less it and in most cases these requirements can be fulfilled quite easily.

I have been using a mixture of hostelbooking.com, hostelworld.com, agoda.com as well as travelfish.org and airbnb. The latter mostly for places where hotels might be rather expensive or more expensive and the cheap ones might be just that (Budapest, Venice, Istanbul, Singapore and Kuching so far).

However, I often think that it would not be too difficult to set up the perfect guest house and I do not mean building it, but just equipping the rooms. Here is my Top-Seven-List:

1. A shower with plenty of hot water. Not just trickling but the full blast. Even in hot climates like India, Thailand, Cambodia, etc., I do like a hot shower in the morning.
2. Decent internet and I mean in the room, not in some public area. Ideally WiFi as said before.
3. A desk! I need a place to set up my laptop.
4. Good lighting, both in the room as well as in the bathroom. I do not need romantic lighting any longer, I like my rooms well lit. If all lights could be switched on/off when in bed, that would be an awesome bonus.
5. Sufficient working power outlets. Just the other day, I stayed in a room and none of the outlets could hold a plug - they were so loose that the plugs fell out but this was a first for me. I do travel with a powerbar with 3 outlets as there is always equipment to be charged.
6. A map with directions and if possible with some indications as for transportation costs, whether by taxi, tuk-tuk, bus, etc. A photocopied map is fine and easy to update.
7. Hangars and/or hooks for clothes. I have had rooms where I literally had to live out of the suitcase as there was not a single hook.

I normally do not need a TV but with the EURO 2012 going on I have changed my mind on that one temporarily, and I do not need daily cleaning - every other or third day is usually fine.

In retrospect, one of the best guest houses I have ever stayed in was the Jade Emu (http://www.jade-emu.com/) in Dali, Yunnan, China. I think I have stayed there on 3 different occasions and Dave and his partner Song have turned this one and the Jade Roo which is just down the road into two exemplary lodging facilities.

Details of the day:

1. Surada Guesthouse here in Udon Thani - 450 THB per night.
2. Tuk-tuk from the bus station to the Surada Guesthouse this morning - 80 THB

1 Euro equals roughly 40 Thai Baht, 1 US Dollar about 30 Thai Baht.