If you have recently experienced your first earthquake - as I did eight days ago - then being woken up by the sound of the roof above you clattering loudly is more than slightly alarming.
Yet that is precisely what happened at 1am this morning. We are staying at the beautiful Alona beach in Panglao Island in the Philippines. I’d been attracted to Trudi’s Place by good reviews on the internet. And there was an intriguing back story. Trudi had originally owned a simple sari-sari (convenience) store. Then she started cooking meals for the burgeoning tourist population, and finally she added a small hotel at the back. Initially it was a flimsy bamboo construction, which collapsed after three years, but she replaced it with a solid stone hotel. But how solid?
The standard rooms were all full, so we had been been tempted by a superior room with a 10% discount. The room seemed fine when we arrived with a nice view of the white sand beach. When we retired for the night, the loud beach disco continued, but to our pleasant surprise stopped at midnight. I quickly fell asleep.
Less than an hour later I was woken up. After experiencing a 6.9 earthquake in Dumaguete eight days ago, sleep had not been easy for several nights as I had feared being woken in the night by a possibly dangerous aftershock. I felt six of them, but only one at night. As several days had elapsed since the last aftershock, and as we are further away from where the quake struck, I had relaxed and felt confident there would be no more aftershocks.
But when I was woken up by a loud noise last night, my first thought was that this was another earthquake. Then it became clear that it was a rattling tin roof. Looking outside it was a wet blustery night.
The noise continued, and Helen and I felt uneasy. I went downstairs to the reception area. No-one was there. The door leading to the cafe and then outside was locked. There was no-one around. I called ‘anyone there’. Eventually after a few minutes a security guard opened a side door and said if I wanted to go out, I could do so by the side entrance. I explained what had happened. He came upstairs to our room but by then the wind had died down and the noise had ceased.
I noticed that in the two rooms nearest to us the doors were covered by light curtains. They were flapping in the the wind, and behind them, where you would expect a door, there was just a flimsy piece of plywood. The guard said these rooms were being renovated, and in fact there was nothing there! So, without previously realising it, I dicovered our room had two outside walls.
I shudder to think what would happen if a hotel guest went to the wrong room and fell through the plywood to the ground fifteen feet below.
Anyway we returned to bed, and tried to get back to sleep. But the wind strengthened again. It seemed to be coming in under the roof and lifting it up and down, causing the clattering noise. There was no chance of sleep. And we both felt unsafe. So once again I descended the stairs and found the security guard. “Can we change to a safer room”, I asked. The owner and manager were not on the premises, but the owner’s daughter was, so the guard woke her up and eventually we were transferred to another room. It was a poky back room which lacked taps in the sink. But the roof immediately above it did not rattle. I quickly fell asleep.
In the morning, I asked to see the owner or manager but was told neither was there. I explained what had happened last night, and was offered a 10% discount. I said that we’d already been offered that, and it was not enough. She phoned the manager who asked to speak to me. told her about our experiences. I added that I considered the building unsafe. She disagreed without saying why. I told her it was the worst night I had ever had in any hotel. She repeated the offer of a 10% discount. When I demurred, she offered 20%. I told her that wasn’t enough, and said that if I were in her position, I would not be charging anything. Eventually she offered a 50% discount. I said I would accept such a discount on the cost of the cheaper room we’d been moved to.
Throughout all this, the manager offered no apology. Even when I commented on this, expecting a token apology, she did not say sorry.
Trudie’s Place, Alona Beach, Panglao Island, Philippines. Don’t go there!
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