A late-night hotel check-in in Cairo reminded a comedian from California of a popular horror movie franchise. Gabby Lamb posted a TikTok video showing herself and her mother arriving at the hotel around 4:30 a.m. On-screen text in the clip stated, “It’s 4:30 am my mom and I are checking into the scam hotel in Cairo that she booked for us.”
The camera pointed at a grimy, scuffed elevator door with a large hole in the floor in front of it. Lamb described the scene as “Scary a– s–t” as the doors opened. She said, “What the f–k? I feel like I’m in Saw.” She then counted, “Saw 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. What the f–k is that?” A Bugs Bunny poster inside the elevator held a sign that read “Fourth floor 4.”
She added, “Oh hell no,” and pressed her hand against a mold-stained wall. The video then cut to the front desk, where Lamb’s mother, a gray-haired woman in a blue striped shirt, stood at a black marble counter. On-screen text noted that the front desk clerk in a yellow shirt told her mother that her old phone belonged in the Egyptian Museum.
Front desk conversation and mother’s stories about her father
The clerk said, “They put inside the Egyptian Museum.” Lamb called it “Roasted,” and her mother replied, “I like it; it’s small. I don’t want one big like this.” Lamb’s mother asked, “Okay, are we on this floor?” The clerk confirmed, “Yeah, on this floor.”
On-screen text stated that she began telling him her father was from Cairo even though no one had asked and it was 4:30 a.m. She said her father had “a very nice apartment, on one of these streets here in the old section when they were beautiful like Paris, because there are a lot of these buildings look like They were modeled after Parisian buildings.”
The clerk sat behind the counter looking at his phone while she spoke. On-screen text read, “He’s not paying attention, and this is the funniest s–t I’ve ever seen.” She then asked, “Are all these rooms filled?” The clerk said, “What do you do? Help me, please.” She repeated the question, and he confirmed, “All right, all the rooms are filled here. Yeah.” She noted, “He said, ‘Help me, please.”
The clerk said, “I need to study another time.” Lamb’s mother replied, “You’re going to get us kicked out of Egypt. You’re going to get us kicked out of Egypt.” The scene later moved outdoors, where the mother said, “This is all very fancy and great,” and Lamb answered, “No, it’s very fancy and stupid.” Getting around Cairo can be just as chaotic, as one traveler’s Uber driver dropped off blocks from the pyramids.
At a papyrus shop, the mother told the shopkeeper, “My father was born in Cairo.” He asked, “Baba?” She confirmed, “My Baba. Yeah, Baba.” She pointed to a map and said her father was born “in Cairo, here, like probably in this old section.” The shopkeeper asked if her father was Egyptian, and she replied, “Yes, Kaleb is my name.”
Back at a restaurant table, Lamb asked her mother, “Are you going to tell everybody in this restaurant that your dad was from Cairo?” Her mother said, “No, I don’t think so, unless somebody asks.” She then role-played a stranger asking, “By the way, ma’am, where did your father live? Where was he born?” and answered herself, “Well, he was born right here in Cairo.”
The video ended with Lamb indoors touching her forehead and saying, “That’s when you go, Alhamdulillah,” repeating the phrase several times before looking at the camera and saying, “Look at that.”
One commenter noted the unexpected Bugs Bunny poster and wrote, “bugs bunny just randomly appearing.” Another said they would avoid the place, writing, “I would never ever go there.” A third suggested an assertive parent can help while traveling and wrote, “lowkey sometimes you need an assertive mama when you’re traveling lol.”
One viewer called the elevator condition common and wrote, “Normal for older elevators in Egypt.” Another described a difficult trip to Egypt but said they would return, writing, “I’ve done a fair bit of traveling but I’ll be honest Egypt was difficult, met some wonderful people but overall was treated pretty poorly. We did much better in Istanbul than Egypt oddly enough. But 100% would go again!!”
Published: Nov 8, 2026 04:15 pm