well it's 3:00 a.m. in the morning and I've just arrived and this city
don't really feel like paying full price for a hotel for the night so what I've done
is booked myself in to a capsule , a wee pod as you might know Japan is famous
for it's capsule hotels. As you might also know by just looking around here I'm not actually
in Japan, I'm in Colombo, Sri Lanka so we're gonna find out what a capsule
hotel looks like in Colombo. Let's go have a wee look.
Hello
Let's see if this tuk tuk that's stopping is going to scam me or give me the fair price. Checked on Uber, it should
be 200 rupees.
Hey how much Colombo 3, Galle Face Road?
Galle Face Road?
Yeah, how much?
Colombo 3?
Colombo 3, yeah yeah.
This Capsule Hotel, yeah this 380, number 380 you know?
Colombo 3? Ehh, uhh, three-ehhh, four hundred.
I checked on Uber. Uber 200 for tuk tuk.
Yeah Uber 200, this normal price, right? Give me Uber price 200, ok?
Colombo 3 sir.....
200 yes, 200 ok?
300
200, this Uber price. I wait five minutes for Uber.
okay 200, okay thank you
I thought I'm gonna go cheap stay here Getting stalked, 3:30 in the morning, by tuk tuks.
Ehh, thought it was going to be a cheap stay here, but apparently not
There's a bloody casino next door. As long as I stay out of there it should be a cheap stay.
Right, let's go in, see what's going on here. 8.8 they've got on Booking.com. Dunno if they're even open.
Bloody better be open.
Here we go, just wake the guy up. Everyone's sleeping at this time.
hi sorry to disturb you at this hour but I have a reservation yeah yes
website was in dollars right? You want me to pay in rupees right? 3400 okay
yeah okay 3400. 1,2,3.... 4 okay
I'm whispering right now, because it's 3:30 a.m.
and I don't know how soound proof these things are, well, take a wee look around.
I'm gonna do a wee 360 you can see what's going on here. That's the door, it's locked so we are
secure and private. so let's have a wee look around Reading light, you can change the
brightness of the light, which is nice. same with the mirror. You've got the sleep
mode there, which just turns everything off. Place to charger your phone.
Headphones, because obviously no speakers on this, I think respecting people's right to a quiet
night's sleep and what else, there's actually two headphone jacks. I guess, maybe
sometimes two people sleeping in one of these, although it seems of a small . Anyway for
this little pod I paid $19. 19 American dollars or maybe
$20 depending on what exchange rate is right now. They had a more expensive
one for $25, it's about 50 percent bigger than, that's as a double room but
there's also one that's cheaper than this, about 14 or 15 dollars and it just doesn't
have the TV, so if you really wanted a cheap night's sleep. I don't even
think I'll use the TV, I probably just wasted five dollars but I'm going to have a wee
sleep right now and see how comfy this is. As you can see my whole body does fit in
this pod. If you were any taller than me though, like I'm 185 centimeters
that's about six feet one or so, if you're any taller than me it might be a
little bit small, but for me it's grand, it's perfect
the bed is nice and comfortable, it's firm it's medium to firm, that's how I like it
after many years weather in Asia and yeah
nothing more say than have a wee sleep and we'll see how I rate it in the morning
Good morning. How was my night's sleep? Well let's see, I slept for actually this is wrong
this is the real time here. I slept for about six and a half hours, maybe a little bit
less, and how did I sleep? Well my back is feeling a bit stiff and the reason for
that is, I just realised this mattress is not very thick at all, it's basically like
one of those memory foam mattress toppers rather than an actual mattress
so yeah, it's not brilliant. A couple of other features I noticed about this pod
that I didn't realise last night, was there is the alarm clock there, but I cant't be bothered
setting that to the right time so that was useless and there's pretty nice air
conditioning. It's not that noisy. Coming out of here. I found that very comfortable
I found the air very comfortable and what else I'm realising is I feel really
parched because I don't have any water with me and they didn't provide you with free
water like a hotel does, but not a big deal, I could have went and bought my
own water if I wanted to, although no food and drink in here
No food and drink in here because I guess they don't want to clean it properly and
something else I realised, I was like looking under here to see how clean
is this and there's like bloody fingernails clippings and crumbs and stuff
yeah so they don't even clean the place properly yeah a couple of observations are it's
A couple of other observations are it's definitely not so soundproof you can hear people coming and going
this is just thin plastic basically so it's not soundproof at all, and another thing is
it's not lightproof either. If the I turn off the lights here you can see from the
edges light gets through. Only a little bit of light but your man right here
likes it pitch dark to get to sleep. Wasn't a problem last night but
if I was staying here and there wasn't a absolutely knackered
as I was last night I it might have given me a bit of difficulty
okay so I just checked out of that capsule hotel. Didn't really fancy
taking a shower there. It's the first time I've stayed in something that's basically
a hostel and I'd literally fancy the idea of the
the whole shared shower thing and those showers in there
it was like little cubicles where there was a toilet and a shower in the
same cubical and it smelled like crap and yeah I'm not gonna take a
shower next to where somebody's just taken a big dump, so what I'm doing is I've
got another hotel that I can check in. It's supposed to be 2 p.m. check-in. It's now
about 11 a.m. I'm gonna walk up to my real hotel and see if I can check in.
As for the capsule, 8.8 on booking.com I don't know if I'd give it eight point
eight. I'd probably give it a five to be honest. Would I stay there again? Aye, maybe if
I just wanted like literally five or six hours sleep to save money on a hotel
room. I've never stayed in a hostel before, I guess that is a hostel so I
can no longer snobbishly say oh I've never stayed in the hostel before which
is good because it'll make me seem like less like a snob when I'm
talking to people about travel. yeah I'm not a snob, I just have
always had the money to stay in half-decent hotels and I don't
like sharing bathrooms and stuff like that so I've always went for that but
I'm not beyond roughing it a bit. I did take a rather packed 300 rupee bus
ride from the airport to Colombo fort at like 2 am, just to save a couple of
thousand rupees. Here we're getting stalked again hello hi no worries mate I'm having a
wee walk aye cheers Anyway that's my little review of that wee
capsule hotel, signing off, see ya.
Still getting stalked
No, I'm having a wee walk mate.
For one, ahh two, ahh one hours Five dollars.
No I don't need one hour, I'm just having a wee walk up the road
Where road?
Ahh I'm just walking up the road. Going for a wee walk mate, no worries.
OK, so hopefully that's not gonna be a feature of staying here. Seeya.