Labe Hotels

Hotel L'Independence: L'Independence... cheap, but smelly

This is probably the largest of Labe's hotels... and the cheapest. My room was pretty large, but it was smelly and overall pretty funky. I slept with all of my clothes on as the bed was so stinky and looked like it might have little critters living in the sheets. My pillow smelled like stale perspiration and I put one of my old T-Shirts over it to cover it. I slept in my clothes, nasty as they were, because I did not want my skin to come into contact with the bedware!

The guys at the front desk were decent enough, but they wanted to hold onto my passport. I did not like the idea of this, so I gave them a laminated copy of my passport instead, which they accepted begrudgingly.

The bathroom was a joke. No running water. Be prepared for a bucket bath (hey, this IS Africa!) and a toilet that you will have to dump a a bucket of water in to flush. I did bathe in the tub, but I refused to use the towels to dry myself (did I mention that everything in this room stank?) and did jumping jacks in the middle of the room in between the insects crawling around on the floor so that I would not be cold as I dried off.