Okay, I am irritated. More than that, I have a bad, bad taste in my mouth that won't go away. Following close on the heels of the great food poisoning incident of 2004, we now have its evil twin: the grossly unfair hotel blackmail manoeuvre of 2005.

Something happened this afternoon at the upper-end-of-budget (in fact, trying for an air of really-fancy-and-professional to boot) hotel where we are staying in Bangkok that was out of order.

Two staff were involved, and an embarassing fiasco ensued which I will not go into here (because some people who read this know me in real life - and the thought of divulging said situation makes me blush! It was that mortifying.)

At any rate, the situation was bad enough to warrant us making a formal complaint. The manager of the hotel was summoned, and she agreed that the incident was unacceptable.

When we asked for a refund of tonight's accommodation, she readily agreed - but then carried on to say, 'Yes, yes, we will fully compensate you - by docking the wages of the maid who cleans your room.'

WHAAAT?

The maids at this hotel are treated like the lowest of the low. They are made very aware of the fact that they fall at the bottom of the hotel foodchain, and I imagine that their pay is less than a pittance.

Although the maid was present at the time, she was accompanied by a senior staff member from the front desk who should have taken full responsibility for what happened - but no!

I could not believe this! Something goes seriously awry with the hotel's guest relations, and a cleaner is going to be punished as a result?

'That's totally unacceptable,' said Andrew. 'The only thing that's going to make us happy is if you pay the compensation out of the hotel's profits.'

No, no, no - they were adamant that the only monies paid would be garnisheed off their poorest employee. Totally disgusting ...

So we of course said we didn't want any compensation, and the hotel have suffered no repercussions whatsoever for their shoddy management practices. Ick, ick, ick!

What's most upsetting is seeing something like this and suddenly feeling like it's just the tip of the iceberg - and that this kind of stuff is going on all the time, unbeknownst to the naive outsider. Very, very distressing indeed.