My Night in a Pod
The good new is this was the first time I’ve ever paid for a hotel room by the hour. The bad news is that I slept in a pod.
I had never slept in a pod before, so I was kind of excited. No, really! Pod sleeping is totally in line with my LivingMini philosophy. So when I was facing an 18-hour layover at the Delhi International Airport and saw the “Sams Snooze at my Space” sign – I jumped at the chance.
I reserved a pod for 5 hours at $10 an hour and got the 6th hour free. So I paid about $56 with taxes. I reasoned that this is cheaper than a hotel room, plus taxi fare to and from the airport. And it was conveniently located right in the terminal…
Pod Pros: The list of pod amenities was fairly impressive:
- A private room
- An ergonomically designed bed
- Flat screen TV with DVD player, and several movies
- A desk to work at and a comfy chair
- Electrical outlets to charge devices
- Free WiFi
- Small refrigerator
- Complimentary bottle of water
Pod Cons: The drawbacks, however, became apparent pretty quickly:
- No bathroom – You use the general airport facilities like everyone else
- No sound-proofing – The room was open to the ceiling, allowing light and noise to enter (eg: airport loudspeaker announcements were heard all night long)
- No Wifi – The desk staff said the network was down throughout the entire airport – not true!
- Unfriendly staff – They work me up half hour early because they “forgot” to calculate my free time. This is sort of a big deal when you’re paying for the bed by the hour.
Pod Pooper!
Honestly, the new Delhi airport had pretty spiffy lounges in the departure hall that would have worked just as well as the pod. The free lounges and the pods shared the same facilities and everyone was making themselves pretty comfy on them, removing their shoes and snoring away.
And I was already prepared to spend the night in the airport. I had a shawl to use as a blanket, an inflatable pillow, and my sleep mask and ear plugs. So sleeping on the open-air lounges wouldn’t have been so bad.
The true irony of the situation was that I didn’t need to book the airport pod to have a pod-like experience. My “private room” at the hostel in Singapore’s Chinatown the next night was even smaller than the pod!
Tags: airport pods, pod sleeping
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 12th, 2012 and is filed under Home.