Moving out of the Hotel

I’ve been stuck in a hotel in Doha for almost four months now whilst the wheels in the Ministry of Interior slowly turned. Well, they have now found me a nice place to live near Landmark in Doha. Its a bit far out of town but anything is better than living in a hotel.

I’ve been staying in the Rejaj Al Rayyan hotel. Its a reasonable place but the rooms lack the essentials for a long term stay (a serviced apartment would be much better) and they sometimes have problems in thinking things through.

• One afternoon I had stuck the “Do not disturb” sign on my door so they decided to telephone me and ask if I wanted the room cleaning, at least they didn’t knock on the door.
• Another night I had to change room at 00:15 because of a leak in the bathroom (these things happen) and one of staff members decided to wake me up in my new room by hammering on he door at 01:45 to enquire about a discrepancy in the minibar in the old room (I had never touched it). As if the question couldn’t have waited to the morning.

They have a few silly problems too, two of the three rooms I was in over the period had water leaks in the bathrooms, in the second case I complained three times before I ended up dragging a member of staff into the room to see the water dripping from the ceiling. At that point things finally happened. Also all the bathrooms have shaver points but none of them work in the entire place (whats the betting they failed to put the wiring in place).

That said, the staff were friendly and I’ll kinda miss them.