I had a beer in the bar of the Shangri-La hotel in Jakarta with a colleague and we wanted to order something small before dinner. So I asked for the snack menu, which they promptly gave me. I ordered some nachos but a minute later they told me that they did not have nachos. Can happen, so I wanted to order something else from the snack menu. I looked at it again but then the waiter informed me that nothing on the snack menu was available, because you could only order snacks later at night. Great, I thought (but did not say), why did you give me the menu then in the first place? Probably because I asked for the snack menu, which they indeed gave me – without any further thoughts about the reason why I asked for it.
But that was not all, because then I asked if they had another menu from which I could order. Yes they did, I could order from the normal dinner menu. And guess what was listed among the starters? The exact same nachos! So I ordered the nachos again, just from a different menu and the waiter said “no problem, misterrr, we have”. Interesting logic!
Hmm, sounds like my adventures at the Shangri-la in Chengdu……I'm not sure if this is a Indonesia issue, or a Shangri-la training issue.
In my case I stayed in the Shangri-la in Chengdu during the tib*t riot anniversary, and when the police did an ID check with the hotel to confirm my identity they told the police I'm from New Zealand (not the Netherlands) which resulted in an interesting situation with local law enforcement. Followed by a problem with their arranging of a taxi (price and instructions to the taxi driver were wrong)
Fantastic, well not so long ago happened to me in Madrid, Spain that I asked for the menu to eat something but when I was going to order the reply was:
"We don't open the kitchen till 9PM"
Great, then why you gave me the menu in the first place.