Hercor Hotel

What would the benefit be of going back and forth? The Cascadas actually fairly decent and Azul had pretty good food.
Seems like the wait time, especially to get back into US would be a buzz kill.

Yes, I agree. it's like what's the point? can you bring the girl to your room?

I have been using Chicago Club a lot more which as best I can tell doesn't have the option of overnight. You also avoid having to wait an hour or more to cross the border in the morning.

Just mentioning it as an option for someone who doesn't want to overnight in Tijuana for whatever reason.

@rugrat, you can definitely stay at CC, the hotel is called Hotel Jalos. Not sure how you go about booking it, you probably have to just call them. From what I've read it's quite dingy and definitely not well maintained as Cascadas, but seems like it would be worthwhile if you were spending all your time at CC.

To @TJVistor23's question, the nicer accommodations might be a reason to stay in San Ysidro. Another reason I've seen other mongers cite for lodging in the US is that they've got someone monitoring their whereabouts with "Find my phone" or whatever. So this tip might be quite useful to some mongers, even though I agree, it would be a buzz kill to deal with the border crossing every night/day.

@ronjax, good point. That’s why I asked, always a situation to consider.

I’m gonna weigh in here, since I am one of the guys who stays on the US side when I visit TJ. This will be kind of lengthy, so if you’re not a TJ monger, I’ll warn you now that this will probably be of little interest to you.

My wife has no idea that I patronize strip clubs, let alone engage in full service and sometimes go to TJ to do so, so I need to maintain some amount of plausible deniability when I travel by myself. I can use my credit cards for food and lodging in the US without any foreign charges showing up on the bill, and it lets me use my stash of cash solely for fun in TJ. I can also make daily check-in calls home from my hotel in the US without a trace.

I stayed in San Ysidro once, but have taken to staying a little bit further north in Chula Vista near the trolley line, which is super convenient. (As far as I know, there are no hotels near the trolley line anywhere in San Ysidro.) In Chula Vista, there are three hotels one block from the E Street station – Howard Johnson/Wyndham, Motel 6, and Sure Stay/Best Western – as well as a Holiday Inn Express another block further. All have free guest parking and there are a handful of restaurants nearby. The trolley is 15 minutes from there to the border, and costs $2.50 each way (even less, if you have a Senior pass).

Keep in mind that different mongers monger differently. Some want to spend all night (toda la noche) with strippers in TJ, and there’s nothing wrong with that. My good friend Puta Tester is the TLN Master and knows all the ins and out of how to achieve that on a consistent and fruitful basis, but my mongering style is a little different.

Because I only club when I travel far from my home on the East Coast and only get to SoCal/TJ sporadically, I’m not much interested in finding any regular providers. In my mongering, I’m more of a “Five F” kind of guy – Find ’em, Feel ’em, Fuck ’em, Fund ’em, and Forget ’em.

In TJ, I’m good with 30 minutes in a room upstairs at Chicago Club, or 40 minutes at Cascadas above Hong Kong. At my age, I’m not gonna be fucking a whole bunch of different chicas all day and all night – if I’m lucky, it’ll be two in a day – so I don’t need a room for long.

That said, at Puta Tester’s suggestion I have, on occasion, gotten a guest room at Cascadas even though I didn’t stay there overnight. Those have been times when I was, in fact, going to be mongering for an extended bit of time and it was early in the week when buying a VIP card gave me an 80% discount on the guest room. The VIP card is good for a few months, but because I live 2,500 miles away, it really only works for me on that particular trip. Having a room there does give me a place to stash a few belongings if I’ve brought any, shower and/or rest between sessions if I want, and saves me from paying the now $40 charge for 40 minutes and dreading the knock on the door when time is up. But you have to do the math to see if it’s worth it. Without the 80% discount on booking the room, it doesn’t make that much sense for me.

Regarding the border crossing (I have always used Ped East at the end of the trolley line), I have never waited long to go from the US into Mexico. Piece of cake, though I have read there have been a couple of recent times when there was a back-up due to unusual circumstances, like a broken turnstile.

Coming back into the US to return to my hotel, I have two things going for me. First, I usually come back late at night, at which time there is almost never a line and the wait time is zero. (Note: the last trolley north from the border is about 12:30 am.) Second, if for some reason I’m returning to the US during the day and lines are long, I have a Global Entry card (similar to Sentri). At 12:30 pm on a Tuesday last September, when I came back to the US after a late-morning arriba session at HK, OMG, the line went on as far as the eye could see, but because of my Global Entry card, I just waltzed to the front of the line and got right through with no wait at all.

As a side note, if you have a car and don’t want to pay for parking in San Ysidro near the Jack-in-the-Box at Ped East or the big pay lot at Ped West, you can park for free at both the E Street and H Street trolley stations in Chula Vista and ride the trolley from there. The H Street lot is not very big, but depending on the day and time, you can probably find a spot. The E Street lot has space for many more cars.

Anyway, my M.O. of staying in the US might not be right (or necessary) for you; I just wanted to help answer the question posed about why anyone might want to do it. As I said, different mongers monger differently. This is what works for me. Regardless of whether you stay in the US, you should get a Global Entry or Sentri card. Easily the best investment I ever made.

And sorry, rugrat, didn’t mean to hijack your very helpful discussion post!

Makes perfect sense, appreciate the detailed explanation. Thanks for the parking and trolley tip also. I don’t have Global entry yet so crossing back in the day was brutal, definitely will be returning very early morning or super late next trip.

My last two crossing at midnight (before the last trolley departure ) there was absolutely no line into the US. Avoiding standing in line for over an hour in the mornings is one of the reasons I like staying on the US side, especially if I have an earlier flight the next morning.

I stayed on the U.S. side my first couple of times going to TJ and stayed at the Motel 6 San Ysidro. It's cheap (I think it was $50-60 back in 2018) and walking distance to the border, closer to PedWest, so it's walking distance to the trolley. This was before I realized how convenient it was to stay at Cascades.