playa del carmen

its 4:40 am i'm sitting in bed in playa del carmen, there's no power in the hotel, no a/c, no fan, so its sweaty hot, and the dance club next door has not shown any sign of stopping for the nite.  i can't remember being this miserable since i've left.  andy is sleeping peacefully, oblivious to everything, as a good traveler should be doing.

i went downstairs to find out what was going on and found an older woman working the nite crew, unable to answer any questions, such as 'why is it hotter than hell in my room?' and 'where are the free earplugs?'  she went pseudo zen on me and asked me to calm down (i asked all my questions in an amazingly cool voice, and told her how much this hotel sucked with a smile, i'm sure she missed that though since there are no lights), and she further told me that i should look at this as an opportunity to learn about myself.  ok cool so i am fucking miserable when we pay for a nice room and the a/c doesn't work and the bar next door keeps me up all nite.  i knew that.  that's essentially why i'm in a nice room, because i knew these things a long long time ago.  so i learned that i haven't changed.

i need to figure out what the club's schedule is and maybe this is just the saturday nite all-nite-long thing, and they'll fix the power issue and all will be fine in this hotel.  that's my best case scenario, which i'm hoping for, since i don't want to find another hotel and move tomorrow, a waste of an entire day.  and i've been looking forward to doing yoga here, i haven't been to yoga in a week and i can feel it.  i'm beginning to think that yoga is essential for travelling, all the aches and pains need to be worked out.  wouldn't it be just perfect if this crazy bitch from downstairs is the yoga instructor?  i can just imagine that.  great.

but i need to go back to this encounter tonite, it really makes me mad.  i'm wandering around the hotel by the light of my cell phone, in my underwear, whispering so i don't wake up anyone else to share my misery, and i get told to calm down.  this makes me ridiculously fucking mad.  in fact i had to ask 3 times what she was saying because i couldn't grasp the idea that she was telling me to calm down.  but its also a sign that she's had to deal with very angry guests before, which is not good for this hotel.  maybe that's why they chose their zen master for the nite crew, no one else could handle all the 5am complaints.

what i wanted to write about was the awesome time that pam and i had on isla mujeres, that andy stopped by and we saw more whale sharks, that we moved to playa del carmen for scuba diving and got the most awesomely bad beach massages, and everything is super chill.  but i think i have to save that for another time.  i haven't been downstairs in an hour and i'm going to calmly make that woman wish tonite was her nite off.

the calmest picture i could find