We Pull A Thief From Under Our Bed, and Amber Cries For Her Mom

May 19-21, 2008

Pondicherry 

(Amber)

So I'm going to skip a blow-by-blow of the all night flight on a rickety plane and the rickshaw to the rickety bus, which had the angry bus attendant that yelled at us for putting our bags in the wrong place, that finally, after not sleeping a wink, delivered us in Pondicherry around 10am. Though long, we had a pretty good time together....talking, laughing, exhausted, both fighting head colds, and happy to eventually be safely on land. I'm going to skip that.

I'm typing now from the inside of a beautiful French colonial guesthouse called Villa Helena in the heart of historic Pondicherry. Interesting note....after typing the above sentence, we checked out of the beautiful place because we had paid dearly and the AC didn't work. But that's not where this story begins.

This place, while beautiful, is just where we'll regroup...and lick our wounds from the scariest, most infuriating, and weirdest thing that's happened to us since we left home five months ago.....and I didn't choose those words lightly. We're not easily scared or infuriated on the road...and "weirdest" is certainly not an easy title to claim. But this is a story that left me hysterically puffing on my inhaler, sobbing, and telling Matt that I wanted my mom.

(Matt)

She was understandably upset and hysterical, not just mad. She sobbed. It was really sad.

(Amber)

I can't remember the last time I said those words, that I wanted my mom, through sobs and meant them so completely. Of course, my mom is awesome, and of course I'd love to have her here working her magic and making me feel better...but I'm a 32 year old woman. I don't cry out for my mom! Ummm...yes I do.

I was sick, so I wanted her to bring me a really buttery grilled cheese and a popsicle. Everyone can understand that....wanting your mom when you're sick. But come to find out, I also wanted her when a man needed to be extracted from my room. I can't explain it...I can just describe it. It's funny what comes to your mind when you've broken into your own hotel room, which has been deadbolted from the inside by a thief, and then pulled a hiding man out from under the bed. And it's equally funny to think that my mom would be much help in the situation. But let's back up.....

So my time in Pondicherry has been characterized by one thing - a horrible head cold. It started in Varkala but peaked here. I've spent the last two days pretty much in bed at the Hotel Surguru (104 SV Patel Salai - in LP - do NOT stay there), a hotel recommended by the Lonely Planet as a "business-type hotel" that is not in the historical area but is a good bargain. This means it is a hotel principally used by Indians, not foreign tourists. And we were the only foreigners we saw there over the past 3 days.

With the exception of an exhausting venture to get cash and a couple of outings for food....I've been bedridden. Matt has felt bad but much better than me, so he's done some sight-seeing. He went out last night at about 5pm and came home with a pizza for me at 10pm. So of course, he's the husband of the year.

(Matt)

Plus, I found the dude hiding under our bed.

(Amber)

Anyway, Pondicherry is crazy in some areas with the typical teaming streets....and it's very quiet in the French areas and in the area along the Bay of Bengal. But I haven't gotten to enjoy it at all because of my cold. I have been miserable since we arrived.

Well today, day 3 here, was our last day to really see the sights before returning to Chennai for our Friday flight to Delhi. So I got up, ate breakfast at the restaurant at the hotel, thought good thoughts about my health and strength, and we headed out in an attempt to do a walking tour. Pretty quickly, it was clear that I was in no way well enough to walk the 100-degree streets, so we took me home. Before heading up to the room, we stopped again into the hotel restaurant in the basement (where we'd eaten for days....great and cheap Indian food), and then the plan was to get me back into bed. That was the plan anyway.

So after lunch, I willed my aching sick legs to take me up two flights of stairs, and all I could think was bed bed bed bed.

We got up to our room, Matt turned the key, pushed the door, and it didn't budge. We looked at each other. Matt pushed harder, and it became apparent that the door was locked with the deadbolt from the inside. That's weird.

(Matt)

Let me jump in here for a moment. When we made the determination that it was deadbolted, I knew someone had to be in the room. That was the only answer possible. But I was thinking that someone was inside cleaning and just hadn't had time to come to the door to let us in...or maybe they wanted to put things back in order after rummaging through our stuff.

Granted, locking the door from the inside while cleaning would be weird and suspicious, but this is India man--everything is weird. So at this point, we started banging on the door, pushing the door to the point that it was about to break in half because of the amount of twisting torque that we were putting on the deadbolt, which was at the top of the door, not on the side. Deadbolts here often latch bottom to top, across the upper threshold of the door, not left to right near the knob.

(Amber)

We tried and tried to get in, hoping that we could get the deadbolt to fall, and then Matt ran down to get help at reception.

When Matt was downstairs, I felt like someone was on the other side of the door  pushing to keep it shut....but that would just be too crazy. Surely, the lock had just defied gravity and locked itself somehow. Surely.

(Matt)

When I returned there was one bellhop and Amber still pushing and beating on the door. My thoughts kind of came together at that point, and I knew that no other explanation was possible. Someone had locked himself in our room with all of our possessions--all of our valuables, our passports, our credit cards, our iPods, my guitar, the word processor that we type on everyday, everything that we have here--and the person was, certainly at this point, refusing to open the door. This was a thief caught in the act.

That is when I started knocking loudly, banging, and yelling to the person inside that the jig was up and to open the door. But he didn't. We were starting to draw a small group of employees now, and I noticed a few other people peek out of their rooms to check out what the commotion was all about.

(Amber)

Matt then backed up, looked under the door, and said..."I see someone's feet under that door! There is someone in our @#$%@#$ room!!!" A small bellhop and I got on the floor to look under the door, and sure enough, we saw feet scurrying around our room doing something but not answering the door.

Matt then sprinted back down the stairs and demanded that a manager come up.

(Matt)

This manager, as we would soon find out, was "Mr. Damage Control," and his token Gringos had just become a potential source of embarrassment in front of a packed house of Indians who were looking on in the lobby.

In this second conversation, he kept trying to make it somehow my fault that there was someone locked inside my room, when of course the only person that could have a key to my room, other than Amber or me, would have to be a person linked somehow to his hotel. Finally, he was convinced that we must have lost our key and, therefore, invited this madness into our room. Of course, we hadn't. [Amber: And by the way, if we had lost our key...which we didn't....was that a good reason for the man under the bed?] So he came up to the room with me and began to join us in banging and yelling into the room in the local language. They speak 200 languages here, so we rarely know which it is at the moment.

I then became concerned that the culprit would attempt to leave out the window and climb out onto the concrete slab, which covered the walkway into the hotel, which was just under our window. For several minutes, I was running around the front of the hotel trying to find a way to climb up on this structure and apprehend the thief as he was trying to climb out. This was the only possible exit. In the excitement, however, I had forgotten that there were bars on the insides of the windows. The thief's only exit was the door. So he was trapped.

(Amber)

At this point, about six hotel men arrived. About three were management-types, and the others were luggage carriers, elevator runners, etc.... They all played with the door, assuring me (Matt wasn't there anymore...he had run downstairs to try to climb the building) that the lock had indeed defied gravity and locked itself. To lock itself, the bolt would have had to slide upwards at least 3 inches.

Matt got back up, now requesting that someone call the police. When they wouldn't, he sent me down to look for cops. Adrenaline was rushing in me at this point, but I'm sick as a dog and now running around trying desperately to find something like a policeman. I couldn't find one, and I couldn't get anyone to call one, so I went back upstairs.

About that time, the men successfully jiggled the door open and were happily assuring us that the issue was just a faulty lock. Stupid tourists....worried that someone is in the room when it's really just a self-locking, gravity-defying lock...these Gringos are SO stupid.

Matt walked in, looked immediately under the two twin beds pushed up next to each other, and exclaimed to the manager standing next to him, "There is a @#$%&# @#$%#%$ guy under our bed!!" Matt repeated this as he pulled the twin beds apart to reveal a man curled up next to the wall furthest from door. The hotel staff dragged him by the legs and arms out from under the bed, but the guy was feigning unconsciousness, as if his story would be that he passed out under the beds while accidentally there or something along those lines. His final story, it turns out, was equally stupid.

He wouldn't respond to everyone yelling at him and only "came to" when the manager started dumping water on him, kicking him, and slapping him. Then, he pretended to rub his eyes, "wake up," and look confused, like "What am I doing here? Where am I?"

(Matt)

Right away, I had this feeling like the management was not going to call the cops. So I sent Amber to get the cops. As soon as the guy "came to," I demanded that he empty his pockets, take off his shirt, and I even made the guy drop his pants and show me that there wasn't anything hidden in with his underwear. At some point during this, the manager reluctantly told me that the guy was one of his employees. I was not surprised by this.

I noticed that the guy was not emptying his left pocket. I told him to empty it. He hesitated, and the fat guy calling himself security slapped the guy hard across the face, and finally a wad of keys with room numbers on them emerged from the pocket. Judging by the number of keys, it looked to be every key in the hotel. In response to the keys surfacing, more slapping of the guy went on and more yelling, but there was no move to arrest him or call the cops. That was clear.

(Amber)

At this point, a semi-mob scene of yelling, slapping, yelling, and punching....started. The man-under-the-bed stood there while Matt demanded he strip to make sure that he didn't have anything of ours on him. It was revealed that he had a key to every room in the hotel. At the time, this was a huge surprise to the manager-types, so they yelled and slapped him some more. Matt sent me again to find cops, and I was again unable....and still so sick, running around in the sun, trying to find cops speaking a language that no one understands.

(Matt)

Then the incredible thing happened: the manager turned to me after his interrogation and said, "He was just cleaning the room." Even now, hours later, this really pisses me off. The manager was next to me when I found this guy hiding under the bed. He knows that the guy was absolutely NOT cleaning the room, though he may have intended to "clean out" the room of all its valuables. The manager was already working on the cover-up.

(Amber)

It was at this point that I started quietly crying. I am usually really calm even in bad situations. But I'm sick, and I'm tired, and there's a man-under-the-bed being slapped by screaming, and now lying hotel managers in my room. When Matt saw me, he got even more furious and started screaming, "You've scared my wife you @#$% @#$%! What were you doing in my room?!" To which the manager-types slapped the guy again.

It sounds crazy, right? Well, it got much crazier. At the point that they realized that Matt and I were furious and wanted to call the police, and for all they knew could be travel writers (we were the only non-Indians in the hotel)...the ridiculous cover-up was launched. Before leaving, the main slapping manager said to us, "He was just cleaning the room." To which I yelled, "We may be American, but we are not @#$%@# stupid!!! You @#$%# @#$%@#$!" Out of respect for some of the people reading this blog, I've bleeped out some of the specifics, but use your imagination. It sounded something along the lines of "you dumb shits!"

Finally, tired of the mob scene, unable to breathe, and needing to just get out of this hotel, I said to all of them "Get OUT of our room!"

The parade of morons shuffled out of our room, and I lost it. Not only the invasion of having the man in our room....but the cover-up, the refusal to call the cops (who in all honesty would have probably made it worse anyway, but we asked repeatedly for them to be called and were flat-out refused), the fact that Matt was about to leave me in the room alone (what if he had and the man was under the bed?!), and that they so insulted our intelligence by claiming that we misunderstood the situation. It all left me feeling livid, shaken, and really, really vulnerable.

They left, and we quickly packed, and headed to check out. While we packed, I was a bit hysterical.....I mean, I was in this room all day by myself yesterday. This is insane. I've traveled the world and never had something this bizarre and ridiculous happen. I'm obviously not a skittish type, but this was over the top. I was sick in the bed by myself all day yesterday. And with the way the management "handled" this situation.....well, we were officially in crazy land with only each other to depend on. Maybe that's the theme of this trip....I guess if I'm counting my blessings today, it's that we really can depend on each other and that we take good care of each other. Good thing too.

Some of our bags were open and stuff had clearly all been rummaged through, but as far we can tell (and we searched him), he didn't get anything. Thank goodness our valuables (cameras, plane tickets, passports, money, cards, etc...) were locked up to the bars on the window in the PacSafe room safe. (Please go to http://www.pacsafe.com/ and support the best product line to ever happen to Indian travelers since anti-malarial medication.)

But did I mention that we pulled a man from under our bed??? This place is beyond insane.

We went downstairs to check out and demand our money back, which they gave us. The manager who had been in our room begged for ten minutes of our time. We told him to save it, but he insisted on telling us this was all just a big misunderstanding. The man in our room was the maid. Mind you, this man had no cleaning supplies, the room was not cleaned, he had no towels or sheets with him, he was dressed in street clothes, the man locked himself in the room, he was feigning a coma under our bed when we busted in the door, and he was slapped when caught with a wad of room keys. But he was definitely the maid. Makes sense now, doesn't it? OH! In that case, sign us up for a few more nights here!

Anyway, we told the manager to lie to himself or someone else but not to us. We were done. Amazingly, he gave us one night's tariff back. We grabbed the cash without a thank you and stormed out...I was still sick, still in the heat, still sort of crying, still appalled and with visions of the mob-scene in our room dancing in my head....to find another room.

I am fine.....but am admittedly shaken up....I'm not gonna' lie. And I still sort of want my mom and that buttery grilled cheese.

For the few photos we took, click here: http://share.shutterfly.com /action/welcome?sid=8AatmbZk0Zt FHq4