The Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles Serves Chinese Canadian Tea

Elisa Lam was a stupid Canadian student who got lost on her backpacking vacation in Los Angeles looking for the Cecil Hotel’s Swimming Pool. She ended up in a rooftop water tower and drowned, flavoring the drinking water of all of the hotel guests for three weeks.

From HuffPo here:

British tourist Michael Baugh and his wife said water had only dribbled out of the taps at the downtown Cecil Hotel for days.

On Tuesday, after showering, brushing their teeth and drinking some of the tap water, they headed down to the lobby and found out why.

The body of a Canadian woman had been discovered at the bottom of one of four cisterns on the roof of the historic hotel near Skid Row. The tanks provide water for hotel taps and would have been used by guests for washing and drinking.

The remains of Elisa Lam, 21, were found by a maintenance worker at the 600-room hotel that charges $65 a night after guests complained about the low water pressure.

Before she died, hotel surveillance footage showed Lam inside an elevator pushing buttons and sticking her head out the doors, looking in both directions. She was later found in the water tank.

Lam, of Vancouver, British Columbia, traveled alone to Los Angeles on Jan. 26 and was last seen five days later by workers at the hotel.

Lam intended to travel to Santa Cruz, about 350 miles north of Los Angeles. Officials said she tended to use public transportation and had been in touch with her family daily until she disappeared.

Elisa Lam was likely a drug user, given her desire to stay at a hotel on skid row, travel by public transportation and go to pot-smoking-hippie-infested Santa Cruz. And who the hell travels alone to stay at a skid row flophouse? Police suspect foul play, but judging by the series of really bad decisions Lam made, I think she tried to go for a swim while high on bath salts.