How we got to today’s itinerary: a series of emails in all their typo filled glory that followed from the one I posted last night.
March 3, 2018 – 3:55 PM Tunisian Time. Email from Joshua, Tour Operator
Dear Kevin,
We are very sorry to hear about your negative experience during the tour. We will discuss with our Tunisian travel partner to follow-up with the issues mentioned in your email about the hotels, the driver Mohamed and tour guide Nader.
We want to assure you that we do not want your tour to end on a negative note. Having said that, I would like to propose the following schedule for tomorrow and would like hear your feedback. Khaled will pick you up at your hotel at 12 tomorrow. He will take you to La Goulette where you can enjoy lunch at a nice restaurant. The cost of your lunch will be covered by [REDACTED]. Afterwards, you will get a guided tour of panoramic Carthage and Sidi Bou Said before being dropped off at your self-booked hotel in Tunis.
Please let me know what you think of this schedule. Once again, we are very sorry for your disappointment and really hope you will have an incredible last day tomorrow.
Best regards,
Joshua
***
March 3, 2018 – 5:44 PM Tunisian Time. Email from me back to Tour Operator
I appreciate your email. I’m actually still so disappointed in the whole thing I’m not sure I’d enjoy more of the tour. That might be cutting off my nose to spite my face. I know I wouldn’t need a lunch as I’m probably better off skipping that and just eating dinner on my own. I’m tempted by the tour albeit I ran a marathon through Carthage and Sidi Bou Said just before flying to Djerba so that’s probably not as intriguing to me.
My general feedback on my tour guides were that while the transportation was useful it was exceptionally pricey given the guided tour components. At times I felt like I’d have been better off with Wikipedia. I did appreciate what I could glean from Nader (I thought that was his name but my info sheet said “Mondher” — maybe that’s pronounced “Nader”). He was capable of speaking several languages but clearly English was not his go-to. As he and I discussed about my rudimentary French if one doesn’t use a language it gets rusty very quickly. Because he was speaking to Mohammed (his English by the way was on par with Nader and I want to be clear they both were good speakers) in French/Arabic and to other people in those languages, I think it sometimes took time to switch over to English for me… and it sometimes wasn’t worth the effort to fully switch over if it was just a one-off moment. Sometimes I’d ask a question and he’d answer latching onto a keyword that wasn’t THE keyword to the question and tell me something I’d consider non sequitur. But it got to be too hard to keep trying to ask a question and thus I grew quieter as they continued talking in Arabic/French. I obviously had nothing to contribute to those conversations. One dinner in particular was beyond awkward; they had come to keep me company because they felt sorry for me being alone. I already felt weird to have them sitting there watching me eat. But then they were mostly speaking to someone they’d just met at a neighboring table from Russia. If you’ve been told it’s sad you’re traveling alone and so folks want to keep you company, there’s nothing quite so isolating and humiliating as being relegated to the corner like a naughty child and told to eat his dinner while the grown ups talk.
Maybe though it’s more humiliating to be told there’s breakfast only AFTER you’re leaving. Or to have breakfast and it consists of a basket of bread, salt and pepper, and a packet of butter. Or to be told you have to pay for the hotel as you’re checking out but at least then you put your foot down and refuse after having paid thousands of dollars. Or it might be more demoralizing to have no idea how long the day will last so on two days you fully expect to be all day both end by 1 pm (including this one). Or maybe it’s when you’re told the night before that you’ll be dropped off and “someone” will take you the next day back to Tunis “at some point; the boss will tell us.”
Actually, it’s hard to pick what’s the most humiliating and demoralizing moment that made me think, “gosh, I really got screwed paying for this tour.”
No, no. I’m pretty sure it was being shown what I could have seen an hour AFTER visiting the Medina. That was pretty terrible.
I know I haven’t answered your question about tomorrow. I guess really right now I feel like I’ve been so beaten down by this tour package’s disrespect for me as a person that I’m hesitant to commit to more potential letdowns.
I know again this is being written in anger and disappointment but I suspect that feeling isn’t going to go away any time soon. It was an epically bad way to end a very expensive tour.
***
March 3, 2018 – 7:36 PM Tunisian Time – Email from Me to Tour Operators
Dear Kevin and Josh,
Have you ever vetted or stayed at these hotels?
This one might actually be the worse yet. I’m attaching an audio clip of the lobby.
I’m at the buffet dinner now and I’ve been yelled at for not using the right plate (they’re out of the plates I’m supposed to use by the way) and as people shove to get to plates as they’re put out, children run past and spill food onto me.
If there is a tenth layer of hell, this might be it.
I should note that the audio file does not do justice to the swirling cigarette smoke haze and the children running around playing tag in the lobby while their parents check their cell phones and young people anxiously await the dance party at the hotel’s discotheque.
Imagine a foul, cigarette stained Pinocchio Pleasure Island themed cruise ship crashing into shore, its hull overturned and immovable. Imagine the crew and the passengers deciding that. “Hey… let’s keep this party going!” and revelries continue unabated on land and the survivors only occasionally making their ways back to their cabins to shelter through the night… but mostly acting as if they’re in a staged play of a 1950s romantic comedy, doors slamming at each entry and exit in rapid succession all through the night. That’s what this hotel is like. That’s the best description I can come up with for the El Fell Hotel in Hammamet, Tunisia.
***
March 3, 2018 – 7:59 PM Tunisian Time – Email from Tour Operators to Me.
Hi Kevin,
Once again, we are very sorry for your negative experience. On behalf of Kevin and I, we want to thank you for your feedback and also assure you that we will both be seriously looking into all of these issues you mentioned.We would still like to treat you to a free lunch and provide a guided tour tomorrow if you are still interested. Would you please let us know by 9pm if you are interested in the lunch or the tour or both? Otherwise, you will be picked up at 12 and then be transferred to your self-booked hotel tomorrow.Joshua
***
March 3, 2018 – 8:08 PM Tunisian Time – Email from Me to Tour Operators.
I’ve complained to the staff here about the dinner. They tell me to come back at 9 pm and it should be quieter. They offered to get me a plate but I didn’t even know what was on offer. This truly is a terrible, terrible, awful, no good way to end a trip.
It’s almost funny how catastrophically badly this is being handled so ya know what? Sure. Let’s bet the trifecta and see how bad tomorrow can go. Set me up with whatever you like. Please let me know what it is BEFORE HAND so I can at least have an idea of what I’m getting into.
I’ve run a marathon in 30 countries. I’ve stayed in high class joints and places I’d deem a murder hotel, in that the odds were SOMEBODY was murdered there. This hotel is actually he worst I’ve ever been at. The lobby is like I’ve been shrunk down in size and shoved into a giant ashtray — I recoil at cigarette smoke but except it as I travel yet this place is worse than any other I’ve encountered. The cacophony of noise trumps even the bus load of Chinese tourists who traipsed into the Sidi Driss hotel at 11:30 PM the night I was there and tried to break into my room. There at least there was the kitsch and nostalgia factor of the Star Wars set location. The appeal here is totally lost on me.
I’ll ask you again — have you vetted or stayed in these places? Because I might take some small “misery loves company” if you have… or I might take even more umbrage if you stayed here and thought this was remotely a good place to put a traveler.
The ripples of negativity and awfulness reverberate into the past and damage the experience perhaps irreparably.
But let’s see what tomorrow brings! Feel free to provide whatever tour you see fit. But again, please let me know just WHAT I’m getting myself into BEFORE the tour.
Regards,
Kevin Hanna
***
March 3, 2018 – 8:56 PM Tunisian Time – Email From Tour Operators to Me
Hi Kevin,
We had stayed in most hotels but we had not stayed in Hotel El Fell in Hammamet. We hope your late dinner there would be a better experience.
You will be picked up at your hotel at 12pm tomorrow. Then you will travel to La Goulette, which is the port of Tunis and famous for their fresh seafood. You will enjoy a lunch at a restaurant there. After your lunch, you will get a guided panoramic tour of Carthage. This will be a one hour tour that takes you around Carthage in the vehicle to learn about its history. Afterwards, you will get a guided tour of Sidi Bou Said before being transferred to your hotel. We really hope you will enjoy the last day of the tour.
Best regards,
Joshua
***
2:50 AM – Tunisian Time. I can’t sleep so I thought I’d start putting together today’s blog post.
There’s a scene in Return of the Jedi where the Rebels need to take out a couple of Speeder Bike Stormtroopers. Han and Chewie volunteer to do it. Luke admonishes the space pirate, “Quietly!” With a not-so-scruffy cockeyed grin, the scoundrel turns to his old friend and says, “Hey… it’s me!” I’ve thought a lot about that line recently only recontextualized it and re-animated it as a “it’s not you… it’s not a problem for you… it’s me. It’s my fault. I’m to blame. Hey… it’s me.”
And it must be me. I must be to blame. I keep having problems with tours and people. I must be the bad guy in all these stories. I must be unreasonable. I’m to blame. Clearly. There can’t be this many terrible tours in the world can there?
When I got to dinner a little before 9 at the maître’ d’s suggestion for a better experience, the buffet was picked over like the remnants of a Viking bacchanalian fest. Or do Vikings have saturnalian fests? It was picked over to say the least:
What I didn’t followup on with the tour operators was that ten minutes after I got there, they closed down the place and removed even the scraps that were left and starting turning off the lights. I was exasperated and frtustrated and once again asked to see a manager because this is what I get when I come back at the time they tell me? Scraps and rushed out the door? One of the servers tells me, “no, no. It’s not shut down.” I crack. I march over to the empty, darkened serving buffet table and say, “this isn’t shut down?” I point to the row of empty chaffing dishes. “This isn’t shut down?!” He says, well, yes, it’s shut down. But they can cook me anything I like. That’s what he meant. I wasn’t looking for special treatment or to instinctively know that I was coming after hours to get food. I just wanted to be treated like everyone else – with dignity and respect. I was fine doing a buffet but I couldn’t understand the rules. Just tell me how this is supposed to work, I had said the first time I arrived and was yelled at for using the wrong plate. I’m not looking for special treatment; I’m just looking for common decency.
But it’s not a problem. It’s not their fault that when I do what they tell me I didn’t understand correctly. It’s not a problem. It’s me. I’m to blame. I should’ve known or done better. I’m so upset I’ve lost my appetite and frankly just want to escape this Twilight Zone-ian version of a personal hell as quickly as possible.
And as I said in my email to the tour group above, let’s go ahead and bet the trifecta. It couldn’t get any worse, right?
It’s going to be worse. Of course it’s going to be worse. But at this point the morbid curiosity and dark humor almost REQUIRES me to see what happens next.
I await the dawn.