“This is your captain speaking. Our day of armchair traveling initiates in the Maldives…”

So, this place called Cocoa Island is a buncha floating water suites with private diving reefs.

hotelmaldiveshotchick

hotelmaldives

It looks like a dream. Yet, I’m just curious to know if I’d be as excited if they’d shown a fat old man in the photo, stumbling gracelessly through those waters with the gait of a corpulent corpse – instead of, ya know, that schmexy lady.

Then there’s this other Maldives hotel – The Conrad Maldives Hotel.

After a 30-minute private seaplane trip, you arrive to a feast of a kajillion types of kinds of cheeses and wines to eat, while a kajillion types of sea creatures wish they could do the same to you, and settle for undressing you with their eyes.

hotel-maldivesfish

(“Undressing you from your skin suit, that is, Cla-deeece. FFFff-fFFFuuhfFFF!”)

I’m just thinking about those nights I wake up at 3 A.M., certain that satan’s waiting at the end of my bed – knife and a fork in hand, and a napkin tucked neatly into his collar. Somehow a sudden awakening to levitating teeth with fins seems worse.

Next!

I like this idea of a “star bed” that rolls in and outta the shelters in Kenya.

hotelkenyastarbed

Stargazing’s amazing and what better place to do it than somewhere you can actually see the heavens sans light pollution?

But before we start, can you contact the concierge about keeping my outdoor bed outside and sending up a second one that stays inside? I don’t need tarantula stowaways, thanks. Also, can I get upgraded to the mosquito net option? I just watched “Mary and Martha” and I’m worried the man in the sky will see this as an opportunity to fulfill my “I’d die to weigh ten pounds less” prayer from last year.

Next!

I dunno where this is, but I’m equally enthused and worried for her.

#tooclosetotheedge #makingmeanxious #ruiningthisfantasy

hotelbali

(Ubud Hanging Gardens, Bali)

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ONTO THE NEXT!!!

Funny, I have this exact color scheme, but I want to be in their arrangment instead.

hotel-southaf

Maybe that’s ’cause I’m not in South Africa.

hotel-elephants

(Phinda Homestead, South Africa)

Or ’cause I’m missing the elephants casually loitering in the periphery.

NEXT ONE!

Tree Hotel in Sweden (no, really – that’s what they called it) looks pretty nifty:

hotel-treesweden

“What’s in the baaax??!

What’s in the BAA– Oh…

Me? I go in the box? Mmkay.”

Photos from TreeHotel, Harads, Arctic Sweden

There’s so much yes transpiring here, that I’m having trouble making fun of it (except for the decor looking a bit like the inside of Clockwork Orange rapee’s house.)

Also in Sweden, there’s the Icehotel. Yep, again. That’s the actual name.

icehotel2

I know what you’re thinking. Yes. Simple name. But the Swedish make the sweetest shit, so they don’t have to have extravagant names f- Ohhh you were thinking, “How do folks fckk without melting the bed?”

Yeah. I think this place is more of a novelty visit than copulation locale.

Too chilly to bone.

icehotel1

Also, when I saw this, I remembered that song “The New Zero”.

The lyrics talk about going to a “ice hotel” and for years I thought Rasputina was giving a metaphor where the “new zero” was a new low of ending up in a crack house (“Ice hotel”).

Turns out, nope. I was just overanalyzing shiz as usual.

For example, these actual ice hotels. That exist. In Sweden.

I reduced a beautiful song about a beautiful place to a meth reference … for a decade. That’s how small-minded and pessimistic I a-

OH WAIT.

The French save the day with this pop-artist decorated hotel in Marseille…

hotel-graffiti

(Hotel Au Vieux Panier, France)

Graffiti? Gang signs? frenetically strewn tags ‘cross the walls?

Just as I thought. A luxury… CRACKHOUSE.

And the world I’ve yet to travel – makes sense again already.

“Thank you for flying the free skies. We’re preparing for our descent back into reality, so please put on your seat belts, tip your dancers, and stow your belongings – including any expectations about the life you thought you should’a had.”