Holiday hell: Malta

Condoms, stains, stale smoke and misery in Malta

Topaz Hotel, Bugibba, Malta, Spring 2007

We were part of a 10-day wedding package holiday booked through Travelcare in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire. There were 13 of us each paying around £500 each.
According to the Travelcare website: “The Topaz Hotel is one of the best in its category. The award winning performance is the result of careful attention to detail and standard of service”. Each room has “a mini bar” (nope), “cable TV” (there are two English channels), “fitness room/gym” (err, no) and “tennis courts” (there is one volleyball court).

1. We arrive at 2am to be told there is no room service and therefore we can’t have any alcohol to toast our arrival. Apparently room service is ‘peak season only’. So, we ask for water and are told it’s available to buy from a Pepsi machine. And why is there no tea/kettle facilities in each room? Surely that’s basic for a four star hotel!?

2. Within 60 seconds of entering our room we find a USED CONDOM by the bed. Has the room been cleaned at all we wonder? Whose germs will we be sleeping in tonight? Added to that the patio door doesn’t lock. There is a roof below so it’s a clear security risk. In the morning we report the condom find and are told by the receptionist ‘are you sure it was there when you went in the room?’ Unbelievable. She then says she will have it cleaned up. No. We insist on a room change.

3. The next room we move to is thankfully condom free and the patio door locks. But like the other room and all others in fact, looks like a YMCA. The hotel is badly outdated. It has been a long time since there has been a refurbishment. Clearly.

4. We have to leave a deposit to hire a remote control for the television. A small, very basic TV. It has TWO English channels.

5. We have to pay for the safe in our room. Not a deposit - an actual hiring charge.

6. The shower in our room floods the bathroom every time we have a shower. Simply because the curtain isn’t long enough.

7. The swimming pool loungers fall apart, are filthy and very dated. When was the last time they were replaced? Or even cleaned?

8. The hotel bar -- The Royal Oak -- smells of stale cigarette smoke. It is now ‘no smoking’ but has clearly not been refurbished since the ban came in to force. Or, one assumes, since the 80s.

9. The food in the restaurant is adequate (sometimes very good, other times poor) but the dining room is, again, outdated. There are some very visible stains on a few of the chairs.

10. As well as ourselves, 2 other members of our (wedding) party of 13 insist on moving rooms. One moves three times in three days. This includes the bride and groom. Complaints include: pubic hair in the ‘cleaned’ shower and another unlockable patio door. It is noted that hotel reception is keeping a WAITING LIST for unhappy residents wanting a room change.

11. As part of the wedding package it was arranged that the bride and groom would have a welcome pack. The groom had arranged that his bride-to-be would find in their room flowers and champagne. There is nothing.

12. Three members of our party, us among them, are keen gym-goers and looking forward to the gym facilities in the hotel AS STATED IN THE BROCHURE. Only to find the gym closed. None existent in fact. As a result we sign up to a local gym (I use the term loosely) at £18 each for 7 days. It is so poor -- effectively a room with cheap machines and maybe a dozen free-weights -- that we attend once never to return.

13. Noise in the hotel is phenomenal. Not because of rowdy guests but down to the carpet-free floors and corridors which amplify the slightest sound. The look of it reminds us of a hospital.

14. The games room is basic, shoddy, inadequate.


15. There are three internet terminals in reception -- that you have to pay for.

16. During our 10 day stay we heard of four incidents of guests getting trapped in the veteran lifts.

Aside from the hotel misery, there was little relief to be found in Bugibba itself, a beach free resort that had the look of Beirut - a building site that one wondered was either half finished being built or demolished. And virtually every bar/restaurant bathroom was a despicable sewer.


Following a detailed letter of complaint to Travelcare and their "investigation" in the turd in the crown of Malta, they offered no apology, no refund, no real explanation as to why this appalling hotel remains in their brochure.

Travel: Grenada

July 2004



AS I swung the white Lexus around the next steep corner, I could feel something dripping on my foot. At odd intervals, maybe every 20 minutes, there was just a single drop of clear fluid on my sandaled trotter. Must be water, I thought, and returned to concentrating on the next bend on this narrow coastal road.

At every other turn a red mini-bus — Grenada’s version of Nottingham City Transport — would veer towards us at an unreasonable speed and in the middle of the road.

Grenada, an island smaller than Notts but with a few more bananas, has a single road that follows the coastline. Veer off it and you’ll get lost. Even with a map. You see they don’t do many road signs. Our host had been keen that we go on one of the mini-bus trips around the island. Now we see why.

“You will have trouble finding anything,” he warned. He was right. But what was there to find anyway? A rum factory, sugar plants, a chocolate factory, cocoa plant, a fort... nothing to really entice you away from the picture postcard Grand Anse beach just 60 seconds from our apartment.

Of course, the white sandy beaches, the tepid aqua waters and the year-round sweltering heat is what attracts folk to the Caribbean. So each island competes to attract tourists to its uniqueness. The fact that Grenada is less developed and less tourist savvy than Barbados or Trinidad is its key attraction. You feel like you are in someone else’s country rather than a resort. Cows and goats wander across roads. Villages aren’t full of English bars or American restaurants. They’re for locals not tourists. As you pass through, locals tend to hang around a lot, sitting by the roadside watching the world pass by.

At times they’ll hail you to give them a lift. Schoolchildren in uniform do the same. It’s obviously the culture as few in the villages have their own cars. So, when in Rome....erm, not likely. A natural suspicion of strangers means I feign ignorance and accelerate away. Talking of which, half-way round the island, easing down a steep incline with a few cars backed up behind, I sensed the brakes were a touch spongy. Spotting a lay-by up ahead, I decide to pull in only to find the brakes ineffective and had to skid on the handbrake into the foot of a rock face, with just inches to spare.

“Don’t wish to worry you love, but I think the brake fluid is leaking.” Whether it was, we don’t know. Taking it steady we made it back to our hotel and swapped it for a hipper Jeep.

There’ll be plenty more Jeeps whipping round Grenada in another decade. Tourism growth is part of a long-term plan to boost the economy that is currently based on nutmeg (the world’s second largest supplier); bananas and cocoa. Grenada was actually one of the first islands in the eastern Caribbean to feel the waves of tourism in the 1960s but during the 1970s its people were consumed with the notion of independence and a general strike closed the place down. Independence was granted in 1974. As we are doing the history...



Columbus happened upon the island in 1498 though he didn’t have a proper look round because he missed all the spices and the Carib Indians (some say were cannibals). The last of those were driven over a cliff (Carib’s Leap) by the French 200 years later. The Brits and the French squabbled over the island until the 1783 Treaty of Versailles gave it to the Brits. Less than a decade after independence was granted, the Americans intervened to help quell a Castro-backed uprising.

If you’re worried whether it is safe or not, don’t be. Everyone is genuinely friendly and glad to have you over. Though some are too keen on flogging you T-shirts, sarongs, jewellery, etc. A man with a walking stick sells us hand-carved pendants on the beach, insisting they were made by local blind people, like himself. Though he saw us coming. It DOES get on your nerves and there’s nowhere worse for it than St George, the main town. It is here that all island traffic descends, including cruise liners with thousands of tourists ready for the plucking by local beggars and Del-Boys.

Hopping off a bus, within a minute we were hassled by some idiot trying to convince us to get on his “reggae bus” for a trip into the rainforest and it would cost only one dollar. It had Crimewatch written all over it. After spotting a dead dog lying by the roadside, we decided to scurry back to the bliss of the Grand Anse beach.

We saw C-list celeb couple Vernon Kay and Tess Daly, but it appeared they were too busy worrying about being spotted to enjoy their holiday, scampering into hiding at the sign of any white folk. They were staying on the beach at the Spice Island beach resort, the posher sister hotel of our Blue Horizons Cottage Hotel, just 30 seconds away. The pair are owned by brothers Arnold and Royston Hopkin. All guests get to barbecue at Royston’s lavish home a mile away in the posh district of True Blue. It’s typical of the hospitality.



Blue Horizons is set into the hillside so all apartments are sea facing. And you are on the edge of a rainforest. Not bad, eh? The in-house La Belle Creole restaurant serves incredible food. If you feel like making an effort there are rainforest guided walks, scuba diving, boat trips, whale and dolphin-watching, a rum distillery, nutmeg plant, herb and spice garden. But from sipping rum punch on your seaview balcony to lounging around on the paradise beach there’s little else you really need.

Travel: Florida

July 2003

Jesus unblocked my toilet. No, really. Third day in and after a couple of near misses I finally managed to plug the sub-standard porcelain bowl. Don’t wish to labour the point but Yank toilets lack the depth of a good British model. So, there we are, bathroom awash with...
Anyway, we report it to reception and leg it in to the Florida heat. On our return all is clean, including the $10 tip I left. On the cistern is a bright orange compliment card. “We believe we have corrected the problem but if not please call the front desk, dial 0. Thank You. Jesus Erng...” The surname was indecipherable.
As it turned out it wasn’t the only small miracle the missus and I were to experience during seven days at Lake Buena Vista, near Orlando. The Sunshine State is now one of the most popular destinations for sun and fun-seeking Britons. One of the reasons they come to Orlando — sorry, the main reason — is Disney. And yet we never saw Mickey Mouse once. Apart from a fridge magnet in the airport on the way home, that is.

Being first-timers we had a vague idea that Orlando probably was Disney World with a few surplus attractions. Not so. Over the space of one week we had the best of times without setting foot in one of the Disney theme parks. We did make it to Downtown Disney — the free bit with its cinemas, nightly fireworks display, Virgin Megastores, the House of Blues, fridge magnet shops and Planet Hollywood, the movie-themed restaurant co-owned by Arnie, Sly and Bruce Willis. Great if you like plain food and queuing. We simply didn’t have time to try the county-sized empire that contains four separate Disney parks: Epcot, MGM Studios, Animal Kingdom and that one with the iconic castle, Magic Kingdom.
So what did we spend so much time doing apart from sweating and saying “blimey, it’s too hot”? Well, shopping for starters. Ahh, the shopping. Call me a big girl but faced with cheap designer clothes I’m like a big girl faced with cheap designer clothes. We must have gone every day and filled an extra suitcase with stuff. That’s a Samsonite suitcase (£40), filled with Timbaland shoes (£12), Ralph Lauren jean shorts (£10), RL T-shirts (£6), a gents brown leather case (£50)... like the food it is all so chirping well cheap.

Anyway, we did do some sightseeing. There was Seaworld, a huge park full of sea lion shows, a few rides, a few whales and dolphins, which didn’t come and say hello because those pesky kids were in the way. The Kennedy Space Centre was disappointing but only because after spending an hour getting there by car, it was a two-hour trip on a coach to get to the interesting bits at Cape Canaveral. We settled for a look in the Space Shuttle (claustrophobic) and a few dormant rockets. Universal Studios is an astonishing, mad place and you could easily spend a week just going round that. So turning up at 9pm when it shut at 10pm wasn’t getting our money’s worth. Still, we saw the nightly fireworks display (which made our bonfire night spectacle on The Forest look like a damp sparkler) and a meal in the Hard Rock Cafe.

Most Orlando visitors stay on International Drive, three miles from where we were somewhat isolated at Lake Buena Vista (we had to hire a car). It’s the better location because you can walk to attractions like Wet n Wild, some upside down house (Ripley’s Believe It Or Not), The Hard Rock Vault and the one place well worth avoiding... an English pub called The Cricketers Arms. Vile place. Dirty. Poor beer. Stay clear.

Talking of filth, when we arrived the Orlando Sentinel carried the headline “Beachgoers swim in sewage: Stomach-churning but surprisingly non-stinky sewage plagued beachgoers and lifeguards in south Brevard County”. Not that we were disturbed by that. The beach doesn’t really figure in Orlando. The hotel pools are mighty fine if you want a dip and there are better things to do in-land than swimming. Too much in fact. A week really isn’t long. You’d struggle to get it all in in a month. So we’ll be back. We’re just praying now for a financial miracle.