"Guest of the Week"

I was more or less randomly selected to be Guest of the Week last week at my hotel. If this happened in the States, I would expect something like a free beer at the bar or something else sort of cool, but not worth making a fuss about. This hotel, however, really does it right. They delivered a bottle of red wine and chocolate cake to my room, and gave me a voucher for a dinner for 2 (including alcohol) at any of the hotel restaurants, as well as any one service from the salon or spa.

I found out about this the day I flew back from London, and I had the rest of the afternoon to spare anyhow, so I took advantage of the free services immediately. I booked myself for a 1 hour massage at the spa, which I thoroughly enjoyed after laying out by the pool for about an hour, and made a reservation for dinner at the Chinese restaurant downstairs.

I’ve had extremely bad luck with food in general at restaurants in India, particularly at Chinese restaurants, so I figured that at least this way, if I didn’t like something, I could just keep ordering more, and not have to worry about paying for it. We ordered appetizers, mains, and drinks, and it was all much better than I had expected. One thing I have a distaste for is food where the sauce is “gludgy” which is the only way I can describe it. I’ve ordered “grilled fish” and it comes out in a pan of yellow sticky gludgy sauce that I didn’t even bother trying it.

Anyhow, here we got lobster, scallops and honey pork ribs for appetizers, and then fried duck rolls (I forget what it’s called – the ones you make yourself with the hoisin sauce and the really really thin pancake-like tortillas), fried rice, vegetables, etc, along with a few rounds of cocktails. I couldn’t believe it – it really was free! And the food was good!

Being Guest of the Week rocks!