Hotel Room Service

Cancun was supposed to be easy.

Spring break, turquoise water, wristbands, all-inclusive meals, a week of not thinking. That was the deal. You fly in, put on your shorts and fancy shades, and forget who you are for a while. The city is built to make that happen. Every street bends gently toward American comfort — dollars accepted everywhere, menus translated before anyone even asks, music loud enough to drown out anything that might feel complicated.

I stayed in a huge property owned by a Spanish hotel chain that I do not wish to name. It had basically everything — four or five restaurants, pools, bars, concert rooms, private beaches, and probably more. But the most interesting attraction was the swarms of college kids from the northeast, performing the “all-inclusive spring-break experience” with religious fervor. My friends kept bumping into ghosts from their past; I didn't. I’m a prick, after all—I prefer my ghosts brand new.

The hotel had an air of fraudulence to it. The whole place, including the beach, smelled like the “Ocean Breeze” air freshener I have in my room and nothing like the actual fish-and-salt smell that most normal beaches I know tend to have. It looked like the Kerala beaches I’m used to, but felt unnecessarily polished, like it was trying to hide what it actually is. Armed guards paced the sand for "safety," their presence a scary admission that paradise required a perimeter.I was already uneasy after the first couple of hours, and that unease deepened when I saw an old lady selling beads being escorted out of the property by the same armed guards, hence neutralizing the threat of anything real being brought into that beach. 

The food was an endless, numbing loop. Buffets stretching into the horizon, cuisines I couldn't name.  And yet everything I ate there tasted like money — literally. Chewing on those meals felt like chewing on $20 bills—optimized for consumption, devoid of soul. It was food that had passed through too many indifferent hands. Everything about that place made me hate myself a little more, so I decided to go out with my friends and see the rest of the city. After all, there is only so much tequila can solve.

At night, Cancun changed outfits. Neon, music, small groups of American partygoers that reminded me of Friday nights on campus. Prostitution was everywhere; everyone was selling something or haggling. The city seemed to have quietly agreed that this was part of the décor. Somewhere behind all that, I kept hearing stories — trafficking, cartels, things that don’t belong in vacation photos. None of it showed up on the beach. That was the deal. Foreign citizens get paradise. Someone else handles the mess.

A few blocks away, I found a small taco stand that didn’t even have a card reader. I had to borrow a couple of dollars from a friend. The person behind the grill didn’t look at any of us much — he just kept flipping tortillas, smoke rising into the warm night. And those were the best tacos I have ever eaten. Good meat. Real heat. Something about them felt honest. I only had one, and I’ve regretted it every day.

I realized I hated how much I loved it. Let’s face it — things only taste that good and cost that little when someone else is paying for it with their time, with their exhaustion, with their life. And I couldn’t tell where appreciation ended and exploitation began. I didn’t know if enjoying that taco made me human or an accessory to something ugly.

Everyone else seemed to have a much simpler relationship with the place. Most of them were there for the parties — one every night, sometimes more. They were on a never-ending loop of forgetting — pool parties, beach parties, club parties.I watched them laugh, sunburnt and careless, and I couldn’t decide if that made them merciful to themselves, or maybe just smarter than fools like me.

I wished I could quiet my brain long enough to enjoy the illusion. Instead, questions with no answers began to gnaw at my peace. Every time I tasted something cheap and beautiful, I tasted the sweat of the hands that made it possible. Every time the bass thumped through the walls, I thought of the invisible army waiting for the music to stop—the ones who scrub the floors and bleach away the sins of a crowd just passing through. This land was being swallowed, forced into a Tommy Bahama shirt and coached on how to look American—one bar-crawl and one party at a time. Tequila can only drown so much, so I turned to the waves—the only thing in Cancun that didn't feel like it was lying to me.

I went back to my hotel that night, humming Pitbull’s Hotel Room Service, the taste of smoke and corn still on my tongue, the music still thudding in the distance. I had eaten something real in a city designed to feel fake. And I didn’t know whether that made me grateful or guilty. Probably both.

Anyway — damn you, Pitbull. Why are your songs so catchy?