My husband and I tried to book a room in the Abou Nawas in Djerba in May 2008.

The Abou Nawas was like a military compound. In order to get to the hotel, you had to pass through a security gate. We were stopped by the guard at the gate and when we told him we wanted to stay at the hotel, he looked us up and down and sneered at us. We were not dressed in our Sunday finest as we had just come from a tour in the desert but my husband and I make good money and affording a room at the Abou Nawas would have been no problem for us. He said he would see if there were any rooms available.

He called the front desk and had a conversation with them. He came back and asked us where we were from. We told him Canada and he went back to his conversation at the front desk. He came back and said that the hotel was fully booked, that there were no rooms for us and that we could not enter onto the the hotel property. His tone of voice was incredibly rude.

We went... more