I wasn't sure whether to laugh or to cry. My room in the Spinghar Hotel in downtown Jalalabad was filthy with a mattress on the floor as the bed. There were no sheets or blankets. Stocks had run out due to the booming business from the influx of foreign media to the city.
"This is Afghanistan. Boom! Boom! Boom!" an apologetic hotel staff member said in halting English. What he was really saying was: Afghanistan is a country that has been at war for 23 years. What did I expect. The Ritz? It was 7 p.m. on Saturday evening when we arrived in Jalalabad. It was with huge relief we finally made it into Afghanistan after spending 36 hours haggling with the Pakistan authorities in Peshawar for a permit to travel through the tribal areas to the border.
The Spinghar is the main hotel in this once thriving east Afghanistan trading town, just 60 km from the North Pakistan border. At one time it was considered luxurious and grand.
Now it is a throwback to something out of the cold war era . . . dark and uninviting with brown dΘcor and harsh marble floors.
The grounds are overgrown and unkept. Young men, jubilant at the departure of the Taliban last Wednesday, roamed around the gardens with Kalashnikov rifles slung over their shoulders.
There was a sign outside the once grand front door, with a picture of a Kalashnikov, which read: "No guns allowed inside".
When we arrived we were initially told there was no room at the inn for the small group of journalists I had travelled with from Pakistan. The place was already swarming with foreign reporters.
Eventually we were told we were in luck. A local mujahideen commander and some of his men agreed to move out of the two rooms they were using in a run down guest-house at the back of the hotel so we could be accommodated.
Until a week ago, when Jalalabad was in the hands of the Taliban, a local Taliban commander, Mohammad Halaem Mullah, occupied the rooms, and has since fled the city.
It was at 3 p.m. on Saturday when we eventually left Peshawar with our passes to drive through the tribal areas for the 60-km drive to Torkham. When we arrived, with the border and Afghanistan in our grasp, we had to go through another bureaucratic hoop, and had to have our passports stamped.
As I didn't have a multiple entry visa for Pakistan, the surly official warned me I would not be let back into Pakistan once I crossed over to Afghanistan. I will worry about that when the time comes, I thought.
Stepping onto Afghanistan soil for the first time after 5 p.m. we were greeted by little children eager to hold our rucksacks and laptops while we went to hire a car to bring us onward to Jalalabad.
A man who claimed to be the brother of the former Mujahideen commander, Abdul Haq - executed by the Taliban a month ago while on a mission to build support for a new government - told us it was unsafe to continue our journey. "I am an Afghani and I am only concerned for your safety. You should not go on without organising proper security," he said.
Our driver, an Afghan Pashtun, who had his AK47 tucked between him and the gear stick, turned on the tape deck in the car radio set and we were treated to blaring Afghan music as we set out on our journey.
After 10 minutes he started to sing along. A week ago he wouldn't have dared. The Taliban had banned the playing and performing of music when they took power in 1996.
There was little traffic along the dark unlit road to Jalalabad. We passed villages demolished during the Soviet war and more recent civil conflicts.
Small groups of men were gathered along the route with rifles on their laps, manning check points. Children played in the dark along the side of the roads.
A rusting Soviet tank, a reminder of a previous war, lay in ruins in a field.
For our translator, Hasmad Sidique, it was an emotional journey. Now 21, he left Kabul with his family weeks after the Taliban took the city in 1996. This was his first visit back to his homeland since then.
"I feel really good about coming back. The journey refreshed my memories of my homeland. I can see that the people are already cheering up. When I left five years ago people did not smile," he said.
Hasmad studies computers and teaches English at the Oxford English Language Centre in Peshawar. It is his intention to move back to Afghanistan once there is peace. This is also the dream of living with his parents and brothers and sister.
He is not so sure if that time has come yet. "We will see. I think there is a long way to go before we have total peace."
He gave me a quote: "A wise man once said that your homeland is like a second father and mother. Those who forget their homeland, in fact, forget their parents."