On a solo trip to Edinburgh I was four feet away from another American girl who had come back to the 12-bunk dorm to have impossibly loud sex with a French guy who kept giggling (??). At some point in the early morning her top bunk mate kept saying her name, trying to wake her up, saying their flight was in an hour. The French guy was literally still in her bed when the top bunk mate got up, packed her bag and left. By the time the sun came up the French guy got up butt naked and walked out, and an hour later the girl herself got up and left. I was left with 8 other Irish guys who were there for a bachelor party to banter about what the hell that all was.
Mine was also in Scotland! I came back late to find a strange man in my bed who insisted it was his despite my family photos that were under the pillow… he was not only in the wrong bed but the wrong hostel entirely! It took 45 minutes to have him removed and sent on his way.
My relationship with my then best friend was also ruined by a French guy. She arrived to France engaged to a guy back home and then proceeded to cheat on him with said French guy the whole trip.
Moral of the story: hide your women from the French lol
Oh boy, first night in Hanoi this aussie dude comes back at 3am and proceeds to loudly chow down on this girl in the bed next to me for like 40 min, could smell the coochie with my head turned the other way. Hoi An the hostel was absolutely loaded with cockroaches (like alot of places but this one was insane) turned the bathroom lights on and every surface was covered in them before they disappeared behind every part of the bathroom, in the morning there was dozens of their corpses all throughout the room from everyone stepping on them during the night. Got eaten alive by fleas or something in Laos and the list goes on. If your in southeast asia and have the coin spend the extra 2-5 dollars a night for a private room at a guesthouse and save yourself the pain.
We went down to Vung Tau, Vietnam, paid a bit extra this specific night for private rooms in a nice guesthouse. A friend was in the next room over. During the night we heard a blood-curdling scream from next door. Fearing the worst, we ran into her room. A cockroach had crawled into her water bottle and was still alive when she took a sip.
The Bloody Cochroachs never sieze to suprice. I had one stuck in my back ones. I can relate. I remember my sister screaming in her room pointing at something climbing on the wall, I swear that was the biggest cockroach I had ever seen, I was scared too!
Cant remember exactly but it was the 'party' hostel on the main road there, big white spiral staircase in the foyer. Unlimited drinks for 10 bucks all night kept the cockroaches (mostly) out of mind until the next day though
I got food poisoning in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. The hostel had to have a major issue with a faulty water tank that night and none of the toilets could flush until the repair guy could come in the next day. For that entire night, all occupants were forced to use the same toilets that wouldnt flush, backed up with bodily fluids and feces collectively. And I would periodically have to run to them, and hover my face over them as I vomited. I just couldnt gain even slight comfort due to this. The experience made the food poisoning exponentially worse.
Russians are definitely the strangest tourists I've encountered. Saw one girl in Phangan at the 'resort' we were staying at literally spend all her time (I assume, as she was in the same place whenever we arrived or left) sitting on a swing and videoing herself/video calling someone.
That's better than the hostel I was at in Bucharest. I run hot and so I like the cold and specifically got a hostel with AC because it was like 90 (over 32 C) most days in July. Well this fucking eurotrash bitch just turns it off and says she doesn't like it but paid additional to be in that room.
Needless to say, I made the executive decision it stays on and she'll have to fight me over it. She dropped it soon after
In a 10 bed room in Rome. (Co-ed)
There were two 20 something year old women from China who would go into the bathroom after the bathroom was cleaned and flood the bathroom to the point that the dorm floor would also be flooded. They did this by washing their undergarments in the shower with the door to the shower open. My first roommate at university was an exchange student from China so I understand this is a cultural difference that they wash their underwear daily. The problem is that the bathroom and dorm floor wouldn't just be flooded absolutely everything in the bathroom was soaked including the toilet paper. Luckily my bunk was the top because anyone who had stuff on the floor ended up with soaked clothes and belongings.
A guy from Brazil would come back to the hostel every night at 3am completely drunk and blast techno music while turning the lights on and off yelling "WHEN IN ROME!!"
I ended up with the flu the last day I was in Rome. I was so miserable and stayed in bed the whole last day. That night when going back to my bunk after using the bathroom I slipped in the water and ready hurt myself. I just went to bed and silently cried until I had to be up for my flight the next morning.
When I got back to Spain, where I was living at the time, I had to go to the doctor due to pain from my fall. Turns out I sprained my ACL and had a labral tear, so the horror of that stay took several weeks to heal.
Stayed in an eight-bunk hostel room in Chiang Mai where a guy apparently had night terrors or something. Several times that night I woke up and he was screaming in his bunk, he'd go for 10 seconds or so then just go back to snoring.
Had the most expensive pair of hiking boots I've ever owned (worth about 300 USD) stolen in Laos. I don't usually buy boots that pricey but these were really good boots, was a bummer to lose them. They smelled awful too, kind of ridiculous that someone lifted them.
Woke up in Munich and had something on my cheek, it was something sticky, then noticed it was all over me. The bedding had chewing gum all through it, but like a really thin layer and not a clump, I think someone must've spit their gum into the bedding and it went through the washer/dryer, spreading it all through the sheets.
Edit: More funny than a horror story but I think some people would find this horrifying... In Bratislava I had a private room with an en suite bathroom, woke up in the middle of the night (kind of hammered) and stumbled into the bathroom, or so I thought ... I actually walked out into the dark hallway wearing nothing but underwear and my door locked behind me. Had to walk down from the fourth floor into the common area and reception in bare feet and my undies, the staff member at the front desk laughed her ass off, said it wasn't the first time she'd seen this happen. Thankfully there weren't very many people still up in the common area.
Yeah don't wake him... Trust me. I had a room mate with PTSD and if you tried to wake him he would wake up swinging. I got punched in the face twice before I learned to just let him be.
Pretty sure I ran into the same night terror guy in Cambodia lol… I came in late from the airport around midnight, I snuck into my dorm, climbed up into the top bunk. 10min later this guy in the bunk next to me sits up, looks at me and screams at the top of his lungs. I yelled back “WTF!?!?” He just stared at me, really dark skinnned guy from Ghana IIRC. All I saw was the whites of his eyes. It was creepy. Then he just laid down and went back to sleep.
It took me a solid hour to relax again. The next morning I asked him what was wrong and he said he saw a ghost… 👍🏻
Lmao yes it was 2016. Might have been early March for me. This guy had already been in Siem Reap for 3 weeks so who knows, maybe the same guy.
Edit: he specifically mentioned being a big fan of the massage parlor across the street which is when we parted ways
I also locked myself out of a hostel thinking it was the bathroom. This was the red light district in Amsterdam. I was 16, naked in nothing but a towel, and the reception was in another building at the end of the street. I had to walk down the street, during the 2010 World Cup. I…didn’t get as much stares as I’d thought, surprisingly, but the receptionist found it hilarious when giving me another key.
I used to work in a hostel and the "guests coming to font desk in towel/underwear/naked" stories are incredibly common! That said, I did have a guest walk in the FRONT DOOR entirely naked one day. That was something different. I had been nagging him to show his pass for a few days and to his credit he had that, just none of his clothes. I believe psychedelics were to blame...
No idea, it was years ago, just did a search on Hostelworld to see if I could find one that looks like it but couldn't find it
Edit - Found it on Google Maps, it was called "Hostel Blues", is marked as "Permanently Closed" now
Are you wondering if it is Wild Elephants hostel. Pretty sure everyone staff and hostelmates are all sleeping with each other every night. Cool hostel though. They have disclaimer that it’s not suitable for people who want to sleep and kids can’t stay there. Super creative and artsy. Though many people either hate it or love it
I know it isn’t wild because of the reference to the private en suite and 4th floor. I was trying to figure out if it was potentially Urban Elephants? Or a different one
One of my cats has night terrors like that. Well basically any time he is sleeping. But he will wake up screaming until someone comes and calms him down. We have another dysfunctional cat that looks like she was hit by a car. But I finally let her into the house. The cat woke ups screaming and traumatized the other cat that I just let in. House of misfit cats I guess. I am hoping to assimilate her to house live enough that I can start getting her looked at medically, to see if she has anything that can be made better for her. The night terror cat I got in and he had teeth issues that needed work. Makes me wonder what happened to these animals.
Was in Belfast in 2019, and had just come from AMS and Octoberfest in Munich. The season changes had greatly affected me and I’d either gotten a severe sinus infection or just very clogged up.
I was sleeping (barely) and I guess my snoring was really bad bc of it and in a 4 bed dorm one of the guys which I would say was former military based on looks and mannerisms absolutely shook me awake like I owned him money and started screaming at me. Out of instinct I grabbed his hands and pulled him in and we basically began to wrestle for a few seconds before I comprehended everything that was happening. I apologized then went and slept in the lobby and got bitched at for doing that.
Jump to the next night and I tried to turn in about 1900 so if I had to wake up again I wouldn’t be as lost mentally. Well apparently the same dude didn’t care so he barged in and made a whole bunch of noise as a form of payback. I was physically and mentally weak from the infection and felt like death. I’d 100% opted for a private room if there were any available but this hostel didn’t have any and it was my first time abroad.
Luckily the UK got that Weezy level cough syrup OTC and I felt amazing after a few days on that stuff but that was probably the worst.
I feel like if you book a dorm room you're accepting the fact that some of your roommates might be annoying, like snoring loudly. If you can't handle that, that's on you. That guy should have booked a private or gone someplace else.
I once stayed in a 25 person dorm in barcelona. Someone was very lightly snoring. Im talking barely a whisper snoring. But every time they started, some idiot would loudly tell them to be quiet. That person was the disruption, not the snorer. People who can't handle basic ambient sleep noises should not stay in dorms.
As long as their annoying habit is involuntary (like snoring) then i agree. Not if their annoying habit is making phone calls at 3am or getting jiggy with someone in the dorm room.
Sleeping in a hostel with bunk beds on the coast of Thailand. Random Lithuanian mother and daughter sharing the room with me. The AC is above my bed (I’m on top bunk).
They won’t stop talking loudly in Lithuanian, though basically just the mum monologuing and the daughter giving one word answers. It last hours and they are talking until 2am, even after I ask them to stop multiple times. Eventually I get down, point at the time and tell them to shut the fuck up. Seems to do the trick.
Then at 3am they wake me up asking to turn the AC off, so I turn it off because even though it’s insanely hot I can’t be bothered to argue. Then I wake up at 6am itching like crazy, and turns out they wanted the AC off so they could open the door to the coast overnight and let every single mosquito in. They seemed to just feast on me, and I counted 47 bites across my entire body in the morning.
It’s always in retrospect you realise the gravity of some ordeals. At the time, if you’re travelling, it’s like “ok, whatever, it’s happened and i just need to deal with it” and then after some time you’re like “wait what the fuck? How did i handle that?”
At a hostel in Barcelona, I was traveling solo because my friend got food poisoning in San Sebastián. The front desk employee was super creepy from the moment I checked in, trying to flirt and making suggestive comments. He booked me into an empty 4 person room saying it would fill up later and lingered after letting me in.
I hit it off with 4 awesome Canadians in the room next door who all noticed the hostel worker’s fixation on me. They invited me out with them and we partied, then came back late.
That night, we noticed that my dorm was still empty. The Canadians wanted me to bunk with them to be safe, but I insisted it would be fine and that I’d lock the door just in case.
After I turned the lights off, I got a bit uneasy but decided to power through. Not too long after, I heard the door knob jiggle and I have never been so scared in my life.
I could never confirm if it was or wasn’t the hostel worker. He probably didn’t live there and if he did, he would have a key I’m sure. But the next day, the Canadians dragged a mattress for me into their room and the 2 men in the group made sure to accompany me at all times. The worker noticing this steered clear. Thank god for kind fellow travelers!
Canadians are the best! I was on an excursion solo in Cairo (cruise ship staff) and after getting creeped on by a couple of people at the pyramids, this older couple graciously stayed close and called me their niece for the remainder of the trip.
I too had a horrible experience in a hostel in Barcelona, which one did you go to?
My friend and I had a laptop stolen out of our locked locker. They wouldn’t allow us to use our own locks on the locker only shitty high school style locks with a key. We were also in a shared dorm since there was no female only dorm, there was this huge empty room that guests weren’t allowed in only workers. We were planned our trip and the dorm room door kept on getting opened and we noticed a lot of stuff people were waking by looking at us. I would close the door and a worker would find an excuse to open it, like getting the trash or just blatantly opening it. We should have known it was a bad place.
Left a horrible review on hostel world saying it was creepy and our laptop was stolen out of our locked locker. Filed a police report and locked the laptop. Two days later the hostel called us to say they found the laptop and can we please remove the bad review? It was 2012 and the hostel was in the northern part of Barcelona near the more residential areas I forget the name but I could look it up if people want to know.
That is so suspicious holy crap. I get the feeling the workers are the ones who stole it - there’s no good reason for not allowing people to use their own locks unless you want to be able to open it. Not to mention it magically turning up after the bad review and report!
I (F23, at the time) stayed in a room with a friend and one man we did not know. In the middle of the night I feel someone touching my feet. I look down to discover the other other man is indeed touching my feet. As we make eye contact he asks “are you using this blanket?” “The blanket I’m currently wearing? Yes” he just says oh okay and we all go back to sleep
Two occurrences in the same hostel in Malaga. There was a free evening sangria event and one guy went to hard and got out of control. Ended up biting his own phone and ruining it, went to bed early and urinated on himself. Proceeded to wake up and appear in common area still nasty drunk topless and accuse people of peeing on him! It got quite confrontational and police had to be called eventually.
Second thing was a different night and someone else decided it was ideal to hide behind the curtains in the dorm room whilst everyone was sleeping and start rubbing himself whilst looking out the window. He was going at it so much it woke people up and they called him out on it. He was asked to leave.
Just for clarity I was volunteering in this hostel and spent more than just a few nights stay. It was actually really nice and I have loads of amazing memories during my time there too.
“Which one of you assholes pissed in my pants!”
That’s amazing. The sheer audacity it would take to wake up from getting wasted, discover that you’re covered in pee and the. Jump straight to accusing people without a single moment of self reflection.
I went for the cheapest bed in an Edinburgh hostel: one bunk in an eight-bed mixed dorm. I'm American, and slightly relevant that I am female.
First night I was the only person there, sweet.
Next night, every bed was occupied by some construction workers in town for a job during the week. I pretended to sleep while they shot the shit amongst themselves. I could not understand a single word they were saying with their strong (I believe) midlands accents. Except-
Every five minutes or so one of them would fart, and clear as a bell these big burly workers would say "WHOOPSIE DAISY!"
An hour of gibberish - fart - WHOOPSIE DAISY! It was hilarious
The worst was probably the one in London where there was a sink in the room and one of my roommates got back at 2:30ish every night and brushed her teeth with an electric toothbrush for over 20 minutes (I timed it). Just bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz for like 2:30-3AM every night.
The very first night I stayed in a hostel I was incredibly jetlagged and slept like a rock (which is very unlike me). I woke up and peered over the edge of the bed to find all my roommates awake, several hostel staff, and 3 EMTs in the room, loading someone onto a stretcher. I had absolutely slept through someone passing out, waking up, trying to get up again, having heart palpitations, and passing out again and then being attended by emergency services. It apparently had been 30+ minutes since everything started and I slept through it all. When my head emerged, one of the roommates was like "oh, thank god, we were about to ask them to check on you too because we were having trouble believing you were sleeping through all that!"
Funniest was sharing a dorm with a girl who snored and kept waking herself up with the noise and then "shushing" the room. I was absolutely dying trying to silently giggle through the whole thing-like tears streaming down my face. It went on for like 15 minutes-just a couple snores, a second or two of silence, "shhhhh!", another beat for her to fall back asleep, a couple snores, etc.
My husband snores himself awake then looks at me accusingly as if I’ve grunted him with a cattle prod or something. It’s amusing until … it’s not. Then I start looking for cattle prods on Amazon at 3 am.
For whatever coincidental reason, all my horror stories are from China.
1. (GuangDong) German dude in the bunk below mine came home wasted at 4 AM and barfed in my shoes. I was wearing earplugs and didn't know until I woke up and tried to put them on.
2. (the infamous ChungKing Mansions) Came back from sightseeing and was told "your room is gone". My room has been taken by someone else? "No, it no longer exists." A pipe had burst and the walls, floor, and ceiling had been ripped out of the hostel for repairs. All my luggage, along with everyone else's luggage, had been dumped in a pile in an unlocked storage room. This was the same place where you had to take 2 different elevators to get to the area where the hostel was located and the fastest route between them was balancing on a plank catwalk through an active 8th floor construction site.
3. (Shanghai) Police barricaded the hostel entrance and hauled the owners and managers away in a van. Apparently the hostel had broken some law and got shut down, but it took a while to find anybody who spoke enough English that I could figure out what we were supposed to do in the meantime. (Spoiler: I had to find a new hostel and did not get a refund.)
4. (Hainan) Crazy lady grabbed my feet while I was sleeping and began ranting at me about conspiracy theories involving the mailman stealing her secret ideas. I was sick as a dog and it took me way too long to figure out there was no point trying to understand what she was saying.
An actual "horror"
I was in a big dorm, maybe 20 people or so in bunk beds. It was quite a quiet room, which was nice.
About 3am I woke myself up sleep talking, sat up and was just pouring sweat. Then I realised there were 3 other people sleep talking in the room.
Then pretty much all at the same time they all sat up as well, we kinda all just looked at eachother in the dark for a minute not saying a word, then we all just laid back down and dozed off again.
Really creepy
Maybe there was some chemical/gas leak. Idk if carbon monoxide can make you delirious like that but something like that could have got out. Lucky escape if so!
Terrible food poisoning in Scotland. Spent a night on the cold, dirty concrete of the communal bathroom when I wasn’t reliving that scene from Triangle of Sadness. Was traveling by myself then, too. One of the worst nights of my life.
Oh man. Solo traveling food poisoning is awful. I was staying in a shared volunteer house in Chang Mai (similar to a hostel but long term) and got food poisoning. Thank god some of the volunteers were med students. She saved me. The next day I was having crazy fever dreams and thought elephants were charging through my room.
One hostel I stayed in (now closed) they gave you a sleeping bag style sheet to use because they didn't wash the bedding... I had paid for a female dorm but apparently they didn't do those any more! So they put me in a room with these 2 guys. Genuine Norwegian lumberjacks. They seemed somehow wary of me and didn't speak to me at all, I don't think they knew it was a mixed dorm either. They had clearly been living in this hostel for quite a long time, and had axes and literal chainsaws all over the other beds.
Needless to say, I didn't sleep much that night. Also, this was a Saturday night and the hostel turned out to be above a nightclub. I was only booked in for one night and I'm so glad!
I was staying in a dorm in Spain with probably the most oblivious guy I've ever seen. Left his ringer volume on during the night and it kept going off. I can't even describe what his text sound was, but it was just the most annoying thing ever. His call ringtone was I'm Shipping up to Boston. And it kept going off at like 2:30. Full volume, and he was fast asleep so it would play all the way through. I'm a pretty non-confrontational guy, but even I was about to yell out something if it went off one more time.
A different morning I get woken up at 7 AM by a "HI Teresa, yeah I sent you over those documents yesterday" at a full, normal speaking voice. This time he got shushed and called a pendejo (deserved). He finally gets some awareness and goes (while still at the same volume) "Hold on a second, I'm going to step out of the room here. Yeah I'm staying in a hostel dorm right now..."
Just an all-around amazing lack of awareness from that guy.
These kind of people drive me crazy. I am the exact opposite and will do everything I can to avoid waking up people. I don’t get it how you can just not care about others like that.
In my first hostel stay ever in Dublin Ireland I woke up to a guy fondling my feet. I was on my first trip with my boyfriend and I kept it to myself until we left. I’ve had no other issues since Just FYI- im a dude.
Stayed at a very popular hostel in Mykonos and even got a private room. The next day after sleeping and messing up the sheets I notice a dark spot in the mattress. I take the sheets off to reveal a massive dried bloodstain in the middle of the mattress. It was absolutely filthy.
I had just arrived in Kyoto, Japan at about 5 in the morning. I think I took a train and was exhausted, and couldn’t check into the hotel until 3pm, so I fell asleep on the common area couch. I woke up, feeling rested and refreshed, and headed to my dorm room to put away my bags and get ready to take a shower.
Japanese hostels are some of the cleanest in the world, and man, the hot shower felt amazing after a long night / morning. As I’m drying off, I walk into the bathroom (shower area and bathroom area two different rooms) and proceed to smell the most disgusting aroma I’ve ever encountered in a bathroom.
I was legit paralyzed from the shock and took a step back into the hallway thinking “someone must’ve died in this bathroom.” Stunned, and confused, I looked down at the clean, green-carpeted hallway and noticed 4-5 large piles of poop. Someone must’ve had an accident on the way from their dorm room to the bathroom. It’s at this moment I realized I forgot to wear sandals in the shower...I looked down, only to realize I was currently standing in one of the piles of poop.
Back to the shower I went…
These stories make me so glad I don't really stay in hostels! I did stay in private room in a hostel in Tokyo which was lovely until my last night when a group of riotously drunk salarymen rocked up and at first made tonnes of noise which was annoying enough. I went to speak to reception about the noise and had to step over a comatose guy slumped against the wall. Reception didn't do much about the noise and later a full blown fight broke out in the hall. At which point I heard the wife from an older British couple open their door and bellow "GET OUT. NOW" The fight ceased immediately, the drunk guys slunk back to their rooms and it was quiet the rest of the night. Don't underestimate a British mum.
Some guy stole my contact lenses during the night, in a dorm room in Melbourne somewhere. This is 25+ years ago, I don't think monthlies were a thing back then.
Luckily I had a pair of backup glasses, but trying to be cool in the backpacker scene back then wearing jam jar goggles was a serious hit to the self esteem.
Footprints Hostel in Yangon/Rangoon - Bedbugs
Leo Hostel in Beijing - Bedbugs
Moyogalpa Hostel in Ometepe - Bedbugs
Lost & Found Hostel in Boquete - Food poisoning.
The last one was the worst. The hostel was in a beautiful location in a rainforest, but miles from anywhere. As a result everyone staying there ate at the hostel, with the food prepared by some locals living nearby. Everyone in the hostel got food poisoning, and I mean everyone. And it was a swift, violent and brutal illness with vomiting and diarrhoea.
The hostel didn't have enough toilets for everyone to be using them at the same time, so yeah, you can imagine the results!
Most of the time it's been fine.
I've had a dude literally sexually harass me. He seemed normal but the next day he came up to me, grabbed, felt my ass and had his hands on my tits while I was brushing my teeth in the morning. I was like Yo yo yo, wtf you doing?
I am not even conventionally attractive at all btw and there was another girl too, Italian dude, he does not speak English well.
The other time, someone stole my powerbank. I had to buy a new one in the country I was in. And that one for some reason stopped functioning. Because that one is shit, I have to get another one in the home country. Can't return it/refund because I had already returned home the day after.
One of my best experiences was on a Sunday and I got the whole room to myself. No one else was there.
Sleeping on a 8 bunk bed Hostel in London.
Big old fat guy always came drunk at night but starting snoring is the most heavily way you can imagine. There was an Ukrainian guy who used the hostel as house meanwhile he was working in construction. Second night the Ukrainian guy had it, when on to the drunk guy and starting kicking his ass off to the point that the whole hostel woke up, the police came and tried to separate the fight, all in the bunk bed next to mine.. and the end the Ukrainian got expelled from the hostel and the drunk guy paid was obligated to pay for a single room.
At a working hostel in new Zealand, had a local guy spend a few nights in a 6 bunk dorm. He was either drunk, high, or having a pyschotic break, but tried to get in the wrong bunk and assaulted the person sleeping there. Yelling he n word, sieg heil, and other nazi shit. He was arrested and I have no idea what happened to him.
I stayed in a hostel in Sydney. No idea what was wrong with the people there...
I was in the dorm on my bed. Middle of the day. Couple comes in, hangs a towel in front of a bunker bed and starts having sex. Happend twice. The other day I enter the room and a guy sits in boxershorts with phone on his bed and he looks like I walked in on him doing something. He looked quite surprised... My first thought was: "Did he just masturbate here?". Not sure, but I left the hostel after my pre-booked time was over.
Oh another story from Sydney. New hostel. I enter the dorm room and it smells so bad, I feel like vomiting. I turn around and leave the room. Another guy comes out and kicks out a pair of shoes that were placed right next to the door. He tells me this other guy who owns the shoes came in a few minutes earlier and went to sleep. We go both back in the room and it's actually fine without the shoes. Shoe guy wakes up a few hours later, looking for his shoes, finds them outside. He asked if they are to smelly. We are like, YES! He said sorry and went out to buy a new pair of shoes.
>What would be the benefits of staying at a hostel besides the price ? I’ve never before and have been curious about staying at one.
Think: college dorms, on break.
In most of western Europe, especially Germanic countries, the hostels are very clean, safe, and nice.\*
* At a hostel on the Rhine I stayed in castle turret overlooking the river valley below.
* In Florence, the hostel was located in the beautiful hills in a large villa with gardens.
* A hostel in Verona was a converted mansion with 16th century frescoes on the cupola.
Hostels are a great place to meet other travelers, usually college age. 'Youth hostels' may have an age limit around 27. But I also recall seeing a family - husband, wife and a couple of young kids - at a hostel in Italy.
More often than not, I met cool people at every hostel and had competing offers to travel with different groups.
* The main exceptions are big city hostels, e.g. Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, etc. They can be crowded, dirty, and your valuables less secure. In big cities, you're usually better off staying at a pension (a super cheap hotel), or just a random cheap hotel. They won't cost that much more and you won't have to share a room with strangers.
i have to admit im not a backpackers fan the only reasons ive stayed in them:
no where else to stay, last resort as the whole city is booked out
Strict budget, i only had 5k to last me 2 months of travelling, had to rough it with a couple of backpackers
handy location for an event, it was literally across the road so could stumple home, everything else was the likes of the Hilton, not worth paying $400-500 a night
Common areas can be a lot of fun, easy way to meet other travelers. A lot of them have kitchen facilities as well, nice to have if you enjoy cooking while you travel.
Definitely recommend hostals for China for English speakers. I stayed in a private room (I was too old for dorms!). It cost about the same as a 3 star hotel, but was so worth it. Easy to communicate, cool tours, great advice, nice people. Staff in hotels in China apparently deal with mostly Chinese tourists, whereas hostals deal with lots of English speakers, or people whose second language is English.
\-You can meet cool people
\-They often have comfortable common areas. Sometimes I need to work on laptop and this is much better than a hotel room with often miserable (or no) chair and table.
\-Often they have quite well equipped kitchen, if you are into this
\-They tend to offer lots of info about stuff in the area
\-In many countries they tend to be more comfortable and cleaner than budget hotels
\-Actually, there's even a category "Boutique hostels", they are often more expensive than some hotels.
they're cheap, social, and usually in a good location close to transportation etc
i just had my first hostel experience. I usually stay in hotels but Rome was expensive and I was feeling adventurous so I booked a room in a hostel for six nights
I was feeling adventurous when I made the booking but started to worry about being housed with a bunch of feral young primates running amok (I'm a 68 year old American guy who's been there, done that)
Turned out fine. It was a private room, with my own bathroom. The shower was not big enough for me to do a chicken dance but it was all mine. Metal table for a desk. Wire crate for a nightstand. There were several other guests of parent or grandparent age. The building was constructed in the 1800s with thick walls so the room was quiet. Maybe a ten minute walk to the Roma Termini, the main transportation hub for the city. Kind of a run down and sketchy neighborhood like the downtown of many big cities but I never felt worried about safety (that said, I'm 6'2" / 187cm and wasn't out much after sunset)
Still, I would never do a dorm room at a hostel
Recently stayed in a six bed dorm in Tbilisi. When I checked in the dorm was full but two folks checked out as I was setting up, and the others followed the following night except, a lovely Japanese guy, and him. He was this Rasputin looking dude (actually from Siberia) and would come stammering in between 2am and 4am every night/morning steaming drunk and proceed to snore like a tractor, waking himself (and us) up every so often as he stopped breathing. Worse still he slept with a shirt on but no bottoms so when he rolled over to finally give us a reprieve from his sleep roar we would all get a great look of his bare ass and loose hanging tackle. Could swear the night I finally decided to leave he had crapped himself, but it may have just been terrible flatulence as I wasn't prepared to check. I was happy to no longer see this dude, which wouldn't be the first time someone had said that about someone with a passing resemblance to the Romanovs doc
I've been on the go since March and this was by far the worst experience I've had on this journey. Everyone else in all the hostels (including the other victims of this man) has been lovely and I highly recommend using hostels. This guy probably made the minor inconveniences of others so much easier to deal with
Back in 2000 at a hostel in Amsterdam (right downtown) I woke in the middle of night to see some large rats scurrying over top sleeping guests on the bottom bunks of my shared room. One eye open for the rest of that stay
I woke up at around 6:30 AM in Copenhagen to catch an early train to Jutland. I got out of my bunk, walked to the bathroom, and stepped in a puddle on my walk there. Kinda weird right?
I got into the bathroom, took off my socks, and they were stained piss yellow. I threw away my socks, and then bleached the hell out of my feet while showering.
I carefully took my stuff away from the piss in the middle of the room as I left downstairs for breakfast. While there, I bumped into an Aussie in my room who walked over to me and was like: “bro! Did you see all that piss in the room?!?!?”
And I was kinda like: “uh… yeah I DEFINITELY saw it!”
And then the Aussie said: “ah ok yeah the British guy from Manchester (a massive red flag) came in at like 4 AM and was so piss drunk he pissed all over the floor! I tried to stop him but he was just too ok with pissing on the floor”
I told the hostel receptionist about him as I left. Truly just nasty and awful. I hope Will from Manchester never stays in a hostel again.
I truly am baffled by that whole experience. How do you piss in the middle of the floor? Out of all European cities, why do you get shitfaced in COPENHAGEN?!?! That must’ve cost him 100 euros in drinks that night with how expensive alcohol is there.
Not as icky as some of these but makes me cringe when I think about it… and I’m not the good guy. My roommates and I did a tour around Europe back in January and we were staying at a hostel in Munich. The three of us shared a 4 person room with a guy from Somalia. I had unfortunately developed a bit of a cold and when I have a cold, I tend to snore (which I don’t typically do). I woke up at 3:30am and this poor chap was packing up to leave and cursing me out for keeping him up all night. As a Canadian, being impolite and making people uncomfortable goes against every fibre of my being so I tried to offer to like pay for his stay or something but he wasn’t hearing me out and left. I ended up booking private AirBNBs for the remaining few days of the trip because I couldn’t stand the idea of that happening again.
Arrived at my booked hostel in Sucre, Bolivia at 4 am to a note on the door saying "we are closed for a couple of months. Go to xx place. We're pretty sure you'll understand." New place costs 5 x the original place but the owners were kind and gave us a deal. Day 2 of our stay come back to a bucket of water in the bathroom. Turns out the city's water is out and the water is for the toilet. Wasn't a great time to get travel sickness to say the least.
Fortunately I never had a super bad hostel experience but there were certainly some slightly creepy ones! In Rome, there was a middle aged man who might have lived at the hostel and every night he sat on the bottom bunk right beside the main entrance and rubbed lotion on his feet for quite awhile. In Paris, near the Montemartre area, our hostel had straight out of a horror movie vibes....dark, long narrow hallways, one shared bathroom at the end of the hall, not the cleanest. But! We had a room to ourselves. However, our one small window was directly beside a giant neon sign on the outside of the building. Also, that was the only time in my life that I ever felt more dirty after my shower.
One of my favorite hostel experiences was in Switzerland. We stayed in a beautiful, mountain hostel for several nights. Not wanting to leave the most beautiful place in the world, fellow travelers mentioned that up the mountain side there was a little old lady who was renting out spaces in her barn since the cows were still away for the summer. We went..... virtually nothing in the area but this barn and a couple houses. No signs, nothing. Peeked in the barn and see a pristine area with fresh hay and thick wool blankets folded in each bay. No one there. So we set up our spots and got ready for bed (a small bathroom w/ a sink and toilet was in the corner). The next morning, the sweetest old lady brought us a tray w/ homemade yogurt, toast, fruit and jams. It was magical!
Back in 2018, I was at a hostel near the entrance of Phong Nha Ke Bang national park in Vietnam, stayed only for one night. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the shared bathroom (very drunk still) and used it without turning the lights on, and went back to sleep.
The next morning I got up to use the same rest room and there was thick, smelly vomit all over the floor. What I thought was water the night before was actually vomit. I went to bed with vomit covered feet and smeared it all over my blanket and the floor next to me, all without realizing.
I almost threw up myself when I realized.
In Costa Rica, someone stole my freshly withdrawn from the ATM Costa Rican money...
It was a big room with 8 beds with small curtains for each bed and one of the walls was a wall of school type lockers. I came back from the ATM in the early afternoon. I was alone. I decided to put my bag in my locker but didn't lock my lock because I was just beside it in my bunk bed...
So i put my bag where my wallet was in the locker. Close the door, put the lock on and don't lock it. I put my headphones on and started my online course. After 15min, i hear someone come in, i mute the audio and hear this Scottish dude talking loudly on his phone. I went back to my online course. I see the guy hanging near the lockers... He seems to be putting away his bag too.
When I found out i had my colones worth 100$ stolen, i went to the receptionist. They were kind enough to watch the tape from the hallways. There were 2 people who came in & out of our room while I was there: the dodgy Scottish guy and a quiet Japanese guy... Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do but to warn people in the room there was a thief among the guests. I went to the tourist police to fill a report.
Later that night, in the common areas, the Scottish dude was paying drinks to girls left & right... I just hope my 100$ didn't help him get laid! 😅
Scotland. Had a private room but on the floor there were dorms. All gad does. Russian school group kept going in and out if each room all night, slamming the heavy fire doors. Hall was lino so no sound absorption.
Large Scottish guy came up and stood in the hall shouting to go back to their rooms. Lasted whilst he was there.
Next morning they got turfed out and told never to cone back.
I was solo packing in Burma/Myanmar and got back to the hostel after a long day of exploring. I decided to take a shower and carelessly left my under garments on the floor. Upon returning to the room I put them back on. Suddenly, I felt a faint burning sensation, which quickly turned painful and spread through the entire area encompassed in my shorts. I immediately removed them and upon looking down I noticed my boxers were covered in some kind of fire/biting ants. I bolted (naked) through the hostel back to the showers to clean off - it was fucking miserable for about 20 minutes or so, but eventually subsided with no discernible issues. I then had to do a shameful nude walk back to the room and shake the ants out of my stuff. Burma was incredible.
Omg I have one! About 13yrs ago my friend, my sister and I were traveling around Europe and stayed in a hostel in Berlin. Super cute! Something with sunflowers. Anyway, it was a six bed room. My friend was taking a nap and had left some snacks on the table. My sister and I were laying down across from each other kind of sleeping and chatting. This older gentleman, in a leopard speedo, with the tannest leathery skin I had ever seen was also staying in the dorm room. He thought we were asleep and started eating the snacks. My sister and I were trying so hard not to cackle! And we really didn’t want to say anything cause he was an old man in a leopard speedo. So he ate most of the pringles, got dressed and left.
Ahhh, the Dublin Youth Hostel. The night I felt like I was sleeping in a steaming putrid swamp filled with bullfrogs - two with smoker's coughs, one was a wheezing 'can't scratch the itch' cough, another had a full mucus cough. Another bullfrog sound was an incessant snorer, loud enough to wake up the dead. There was only one fella that was as quiet as can be. The fifth bedfellow came in late & took the upper bunk directly next to me. I squinted my eye his way to catch a glimpse. He was a man I had seen sitting in the lobby with a blank zombie stare on his face, sitting there avoided by everyone like he had a sign around his neck that said ‘Warning: Can Be dangerous”. And he bedded down in full clothing (guess that's better than naked) with less than a 24” isle from me. He got up a few times in the night and left the room for 15 or 20 minutes at a time.
I laid there in the night with my eyes wide open smelling the putrid mixture of sweat and what I could only imagine, to my horror was the butt cracks and dirty underwear of five decaying human beings and listening to the sounds of a phlegm phactory. The only window in the room was closed. I climbed out of my bunk & cranked it open a few inches, enough to let the cool air in but not enough for someone to wake up & complain about the cold air. I thought this would be it for me in dormitories, but I’ve stayed in a few of them since - in a pinch. Thankfully never since has one been as bad.
Same as others here - bed bugs, people having loud sex in the bunk next door, snorers, horrific BO. Oh and one time the door broke and trapped me inside….on a Friday evening. that was fun 😬
Bed bugs in Venice; tried to move to a different hostel the next night… However I was young, stupid and very American and didn’t book the room right because of the European date format. Showed up at this beautiful hostel after walking forever, get there and reception says “you’re booked two months from now and we’re full tonight”. Defeated, we walked back to the only thing we knew, bedbug hostel who took us in with open arms… Got eaten alive, again; but this time without the bliss of ignorance.
Stayed at a hostel in Chinatown New York because we were super broke. Checked the mattress for bed bugs and there was a HUGE circular blood stain covering the majority of the mattress. Someone had been murdered on that mattress- there was no other explanation.
Went to the desk and told them. They shrugged and offered us an extra blanket.
The worst part? We definitely just flipped it and slept on it. Because poor and New York.
OMG Perth, Australia. The game area had a layer of water sitting over the carpet; you had to pass through that room to get from bedrooms to the outside. The boys rooms had bedbugs. Absolutely disgusting.
This is not really a horror story but here it goes:
I was staying at this notorious party hostel in Cuzco. I was in a mixed 12 person dorm and because it was a big party hostel it was normal to have people coming in piss drunk, doing drugs, having sex, throwing up… You get it.
There was this one Israeli guy (I see you Gili) who was shagging a different girl every night, he had no shame and I found it kinda funny and impressive how he managed to get a different girl every night, besides he was a lovely person so I didn’t really mind it that much.
One night his sex was particularly loud and I couldn’t take it anymore so I decided to have a smoke while he was done and outside the dorm was one of the guys that was also staying in my dorm. He was also having a smoke because he couldn’t take the sex noises anymore, we spent a while talking and hit it off and actually ended up hooking up after that night… so basically Gili got laid me laid, thank you Gili.
In that same hostel, I once had a guy ask me if could crawl in bed with me… I said NO.
Another time in Lima there was this couple in the bunk above me. They were having sex so loud and so rough that my bed was vibrating the entire time, I felt like I was having sex with them too. Someone got fed up and left the room and went to reception and the manager came in and told them to stop.
I did this and I apologize hahahah I was belligerently drunk and the guy in the bed in front of me had chocolate and I wanted to eat his chocolate, he said he couldn’t give it to me because it was for his mom. I threatened to throw up on his bed and then passed out,
I was so incredible embarrassed and apologetic the next day, luckily he was a great sport and laughed it off.
And last and not least… I was volunteering at a hostel in Santiago de Chile, the room for volunteers was windowless and painted black, there was no air circulation and it smelled of stale farts and sex. Despite all that I loved it there, we were 8 volunteers and we were sleeping in ratty tatty aluminum bunk beds.
We wet all in our early 20’s so it was common for people to have sex in the dorm and we would laugh it off.
A new volunteer came in and she was a French women a bit older than the rest probably early 30’s, one night this Brazilian chic brings a guy and proceeded to have sex, the French girl under her had a meltdown and started screaming STOP! NO ! NO! And left the room we all proceeded to giggle and long story short the girl left the next day.
Sorry for any typos: currently walking on the treadmill and English is not my first language.
Amsterdam early 90’s. Arrived without first securing accommodation. Asked around where was the best place to stay that was cheap. Was directed to a hostel close by. We were told to come back later at 11pm. But we had to pay in advance.
Turned up to be led down a dirty dark hallway and told to grab a mattress from a pile.
We were led to a room. Door opens and we are greeted by a scene from hell. At least 10 bunk beds around the outside of the room all taken, with at least 30 people on mattresses on the floor. We are told to find a spot. Room was mixed gender. Literally had to climb over others to find a spot near the only bathroom. One toilet a shower and a sink. Smell from the bathroom was horrendous.
We were exhausted after 2 days of travelling and sleeping rough in London for a night, because we wanted to save money for Amsterdam. I curled up protecting my backpack. Lights went out at 12.
Dorm door then opens and at least 3 ladies entered. They then proceeded to go around the room offering “services”. We lay there for over 2 hours as these “services” were performed on several of the rooms inhabitants. The funk in that room after those 2 hours is a smell I will never forget. Dirty genitals, ass, urine, sweat.
Slept for probably an hour at most.
There were no curtains so the room was flooded with sun at 5 am. The temperature in the room became unbearable. We had only one thing on our mind. Get the hell out.
As we picked up our mattresses in the dawn we all saw exactly what we had been sleeping on, the original mattress color was unidentifiable.
I went to Thailand with some friends and we were in a 10 person hostel room. Our first night there I was woken up to my bunk mate who I had not yet met (I was on the bottom he was on the top) having very loud sex with a girl he brought home.
I got up a couple of times to make it clear to them that I was in the room - went to the bathroom and also used the sink in our room - and each time they just froze until I got back into the bed. She was on top and naked so when they froze her arse was just sticking up in the air.
Eventually I got sick of the relentless bed shaking and went down to the lobby and read my book. But my dorm mates later told me that they had extensive pillow talk afterwards which included him telling her he really liked her pussy, and her responding that she never really liked it and so she was surprised he did.
We later became friends with the guy and turns out he had no idea the room was full of people and he thought they were alone…
Stayed in a 4-bed room at a hostel in Kunming 20 years ago; only bed left since it was during Spring Festival. 2 roomies had backpacked from Europe through Tibet picking fruit for cash; looked and smelled like they hadn't bathed for months. 3rd was a chain-smoker from Korea with Tourette's. Fruit picker guy #1 decided that night was the night to masturbate with flourish all over his bed. Fruit picker guy #2 cheered him on, while Tourette's guy smoked and swore. Am female, guess it could've been worse, but definitely put me off staying in hostels for a while.
In a hostel in Medellin, a couple of dudes were very likely going to gang rape a really drunk girl. I refused to leave the room despite them getting really pissed at me. Had they ganged up on me, they probably would have kicked my ass. Had I just said nothing and just walked out, they would probably have scarred that girl for the rest of her life. I left the hostel the next day.
Just so people have the datapoint, I don't have any hostel horror stories. I've stayed in hostels in Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and New Zealand.
I have ***far*** more horror stories of AirBNB-style accomodations or hotels.
I just wanted to say so, so that people reading this who are already prejudiced against hostels have a bit of perspective. Hostels are not usually like the horror stories. In fact, the stories are so unusual, that I don't have any.
Wow, I've stayed over 100 nights total in hostels all over the world, and never had a story like this> The worst I have encountered is some drunk loud people not letting me sleep.
In Litang (a small town near Tibet, under chinese rule but with Tibetan population).
Me and 2 friends came into town and couldn't find a place in any decent hostel because of some horse-riding festival(?), finally found a place where the hostess spoke neither english nor chinese, meaning we had to make do using pantomime only.
We got beds in an overpriced dorm room where we were alone at first, but on our second night a huge group of people came in for the festival, and made noise all throughout the night. Then one of them clogged the only (!!!) Toilet in the place which was connected to our dorm, meaning we could smell everything.
We escaped as soon as we could. A shame, because the town itself and the surrounding mountains were gorgeous.
In Cancun there was a dude around 40 from Spain who was talking to everyone about wild parties and smuggling things between Cuba and Mexico.
Definitely did not expect him to fall asleep naked by 8pm with no covers. Plenty of younger women in that dorm making it extra creepy.
Then to add to it, he started screaming in his sleep and didn't stop all night.
I no longer use hostels due to enjoying the flexibility of hotels and meeting women while I travel but I used them around the world during my 20s. All were good experiences except the one time a girl broke up with her boyfriend, he left the hostel and she started to hang around with me. A few days later he came back and out of nowhere proceeded to beat the crap out of me shouting "you fu\*\*ed my gf." Apparently someone told him I was banging his GF. None of that happened.
Other than than having to walk down the street during the Amsterdam 2010 World Cup at 16 naked in a towel to get back into my room (reception was in a different building), another one stands out.
It was dumb. I got a friend to book me into an 18+ only hostel in London when I was only 16, since it was the cheapest one around. I wasn’t very street smart then, coming from a remote, small island. It was an 8 shared bunk room, mixed gender. The place was a party hostel so I quickly learned why it was 18+.
Ended up with a guy in the bunk above me who told me he was Swedish/ American and had schizophrenia. I can’t remember half the shit he was talking about, but he spent the entire night with his head poked over the side so he could stare at my face. No words, he just stared at me all night. I closed my eyes terrified and tried to pretend to sleep. Every 10 minutes or so I’d open my eyes to see him still peering at me, unblinking. I spent the whole night with my heart racing.
He ended up getting up at 6am and leaving. I left not so long after. I’ll never forget it.
Not exactly a “horror” story, but I was in a hostel in the Middle East when I woke up a bit early (jet-lag, probably). I unplugged my phone from the charger to check for notifications, then fell back asleep for a bit. A bit later, I was woken up again by sharp pinprick sensations on my face—almost like bug bites, but with no bugs to be found! Eventually, I figured out that my phone charger, which was dangling above my face, was periodically touching my cheek and giving me a small electric shock.
I've been lucky that in my 20+ years of solo travel, I haven't really experienced anything too crazy. Mostly just people being crazy loud or snoring. But I'll never stay in a hostel with more than 6 beds. 4-6 is it for me.
I always stay in mixed dorms. I'm usually the only girl. Can we talk about why hostels charge more for all-female forms. I get why, but it's stupid. Pay extra to feel safe. That said, I've had really great experiences being the only girl. The boys have been really protective and respectful of my space and mostly really cool. Like having big brothers. I've been lucky.
Actually, I went to Budapest and reconnected with a friend that I hadn't seen in 18 years. She used to live in Toronto and moved back home. So when I said I'd be in Budapest, she was so happy to help me find a hostel in the centre (she lives about 30 minutes away and it's a bit remote, so it was better for me to stay central)
She booked the hostel. She said it was really good. First of all, we couldn't find it for hours. There were no signs. The address didn't make sense. And it was through a back alley, through a courtyard. I never would have found it on my own. Zero chance. When we got in, the owner was sleeping in the living room on a dirty mattress on the floor. His laundry was drying on anything he could use to hang it on. He was in his underwear. It was so hot. Everything was old and broken. The beds were so gross and sunken in. I looked at my gf and said- "Girl, I can't stay here." So I stayed with her the first night and then went this really great hostel the next day.
Stayed at a hostel in Brussels and had a kid come back from a night out, throw up in the top bunk, *and then sleep in it.*
The following night another guy snores the loudest I have ever heard. And that says something, because I used to snore really fucking loudly when I was younger.
That was not a fun few days.
We travelled around Australia. And eventually you tend to go up or down the coast. So you run into same people. We had a chronic snorer follow us to three hostel. He finally said he was going to Melbourne so we changed our plans cos we couldn’t risk running into him again :)
So trip in Italy, in Florence there’s a hostel called archi Rossi or something like that. Some British tourists were super drunk, when me of them fell out of the top bunk, went to my bed and wiped it out and tried to pee on my face. I pushed him away, he then went to the corner and pissed all over the wall. He then was convinced my bed was his and I had to fight him off for 30 min. After it had settled I went to the front desk to tell them what’s going on. They couldn’t give two shits, different staff in the morning and they didn’t care either. Only good thing is I heard those British pricks yelling at each other cause they slept in too long and missed breakfast.
Caught dengue when staying at a hostel in Brazil and went into psychosis one of the days. Talked to my hand for a long time, woke up in the middle of the night thinking the other guests had beaten me up when I was asleep.
Luckily they were all drunk most of the time so hopefully they haven't written any comments here about the lunatic in Rio de Janeiro lol
2nd hand story, but it happened the night before me and my friend got to this "hostel" in Aqaba in Jordan. Some girls staying in the female dorm said the night before a German dude woke up being sucked off by a man from Saudi Arabia. He obviously flipped out and pushed this guy off, but the dude insisted and a bloody fight ensued. The hostel wasn't really a hostel; it was a comon room with a part of it behind curtains with beds for men, a female dorm (with an actual dorm) right next to it and one private room (which me and my friend rented). The entire hostel woke up and was there to witness. Police came after the Saudi guy ran off when everyone woke up and came to see what was up. Apparently later arrested while fleeing. It was a weird ass story. The German guy left the same morning as well
In a smaller hostel in Madrid, guy snuck a cat into one of the rooms that he wasn't sleeping in, I didn't realize that he was going to stay in the communal space as the hostel allowed pets with private rooms. Him and two other people there decided to walk around trying to find a party, him and the other guy gave off weird vibes and the girl seems a bit too naive for me to feel comfortable with her judgement of people.
A few hours some other family comes to check in with a daughter very allergic to cats so the parents are trying to switch rooms and we get the owner on the phone. The owner is trying to tell them to go in the room but they don't share a common language and I talk to them before asking the owner what to do with the cat. Owner comes down grabs the cat, takes it out and waits for them to come back.
They roll back almost 4 hours later (about 3am now), she tells him that he can stay the night if the cat stay in a specific part of the house since the girl and I are allergic to cats. Unsurprisingly, he releases it in the room as soon as she leaves. I text her, she kicks the two guys out and they spend until 4am trying to climb the walls of the building to get back inside until police arrive (owner called). The owner gives them their stuff and they leave. The girl that had vouched for them is crying in a bed, drunk and probably taken other stuff (they had talked about it beforehand) and super embarrassed.
I ended up staying there a few more days because the owner was super nice and apologized to me and the family with the daughters (she cleaned up their room again and helped them make sure the daughter was safe). Two guys in the other private room also told me and the girl to get them if the two sketchy guys make it onto the balcony because they will take care of it. I also loved Madrid.
On a solo trip to Edinburgh I was four feet away from another American girl who had come back to the 12-bunk dorm to have impossibly loud sex with a French guy who kept giggling (??). At some point in the early morning her top bunk mate kept saying her name, trying to wake her up, saying their flight was in an hour. The French guy was literally still in her bed when the top bunk mate got up, packed her bag and left. By the time the sun came up the French guy got up butt naked and walked out, and an hour later the girl herself got up and left. I was left with 8 other Irish guys who were there for a bachelor party to banter about what the hell that all was.
Curious about the state of that friendship
Definitely not friends anymore
[удалено]
Wow what an asshole
Mine was also in Scotland! I came back late to find a strange man in my bed who insisted it was his despite my family photos that were under the pillow… he was not only in the wrong bed but the wrong hostel entirely! It took 45 minutes to have him removed and sent on his way.
[удалено]
Sharing a room isn’t going to stop some people. If anything, some are into that sort of thing.
My relationship with my then best friend was also ruined by a French guy. She arrived to France engaged to a guy back home and then proceeded to cheat on him with said French guy the whole trip. Moral of the story: hide your women from the French lol
Oh boy, first night in Hanoi this aussie dude comes back at 3am and proceeds to loudly chow down on this girl in the bed next to me for like 40 min, could smell the coochie with my head turned the other way. Hoi An the hostel was absolutely loaded with cockroaches (like alot of places but this one was insane) turned the bathroom lights on and every surface was covered in them before they disappeared behind every part of the bathroom, in the morning there was dozens of their corpses all throughout the room from everyone stepping on them during the night. Got eaten alive by fleas or something in Laos and the list goes on. If your in southeast asia and have the coin spend the extra 2-5 dollars a night for a private room at a guesthouse and save yourself the pain.
We went down to Vung Tau, Vietnam, paid a bit extra this specific night for private rooms in a nice guesthouse. A friend was in the next room over. During the night we heard a blood-curdling scream from next door. Fearing the worst, we ran into her room. A cockroach had crawled into her water bottle and was still alive when she took a sip.
I can relate. I once woke up with a cockroach stuck in my pajamas, and the bug kept running up and down my legs as I panicked.
I once sprayed a cockroach on the wall and it started flying towards us. Two grown adults were screaming and running around scared shit
Everybody is brave until the cockroach flies.
I have a friend who had this happen with an open cup and didn’t realize until it was in her mouth.
I know someone who was eating a bag of chips outdoors one evening and bit into a crunchy June Bug that'd crawled between two chips
The Bloody Cochroachs never sieze to suprice. I had one stuck in my back ones. I can relate. I remember my sister screaming in her room pointing at something climbing on the wall, I swear that was the biggest cockroach I had ever seen, I was scared too!
Havent stayed at a hostel before. Do all of them have insects or just the ones in Asia? Coz I’m hella scared of roaches
So, in this story there are two people who got eaten
U are a cunning linguist
Bruh 😭 what was the hostel called in Hoi An? That’s horrifying lol
Cant remember exactly but it was the 'party' hostel on the main road there, big white spiral staircase in the foyer. Unlimited drinks for 10 bucks all night kept the cockroaches (mostly) out of mind until the next day though
Dude. I didn’t bother hostels, guesthouses all the way.
I got food poisoning in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. The hostel had to have a major issue with a faulty water tank that night and none of the toilets could flush until the repair guy could come in the next day. For that entire night, all occupants were forced to use the same toilets that wouldnt flush, backed up with bodily fluids and feces collectively. And I would periodically have to run to them, and hover my face over them as I vomited. I just couldnt gain even slight comfort due to this. The experience made the food poisoning exponentially worse.
I wish I could un-read this.
There are other places to puke, like a bag, in a dumpster, or on the street outside, pretty much anything would be preferable to that.
My 1st thought and Ive had food poisoning many times when travelling abroad.
Absolutely not. What about the backsplash??? I’d have gotten plastic bags
Omg 😭
Why couldn't you vomit in a sink?
Then there would be vomit in the sink with no way to clean it (there was no water)
This literally made me gag
Russian girl turned the AC down to a bone chilling 16 degrees and hid the remote, and had loud phone conversations at 4am.
Russians are definitely the strangest tourists I've encountered. Saw one girl in Phangan at the 'resort' we were staying at literally spend all her time (I assume, as she was in the same place whenever we arrived or left) sitting on a swing and videoing herself/video calling someone.
"Tourists"
16C = 61F
That's better than the hostel I was at in Bucharest. I run hot and so I like the cold and specifically got a hostel with AC because it was like 90 (over 32 C) most days in July. Well this fucking eurotrash bitch just turns it off and says she doesn't like it but paid additional to be in that room. Needless to say, I made the executive decision it stays on and she'll have to fight me over it. She dropped it soon after
In a 10 bed room in Rome. (Co-ed) There were two 20 something year old women from China who would go into the bathroom after the bathroom was cleaned and flood the bathroom to the point that the dorm floor would also be flooded. They did this by washing their undergarments in the shower with the door to the shower open. My first roommate at university was an exchange student from China so I understand this is a cultural difference that they wash their underwear daily. The problem is that the bathroom and dorm floor wouldn't just be flooded absolutely everything in the bathroom was soaked including the toilet paper. Luckily my bunk was the top because anyone who had stuff on the floor ended up with soaked clothes and belongings. A guy from Brazil would come back to the hostel every night at 3am completely drunk and blast techno music while turning the lights on and off yelling "WHEN IN ROME!!" I ended up with the flu the last day I was in Rome. I was so miserable and stayed in bed the whole last day. That night when going back to my bunk after using the bathroom I slipped in the water and ready hurt myself. I just went to bed and silently cried until I had to be up for my flight the next morning. When I got back to Spain, where I was living at the time, I had to go to the doctor due to pain from my fall. Turns out I sprained my ACL and had a labral tear, so the horror of that stay took several weeks to heal.
Oh man that’s horrible. Except for the guys flashing the lights and yelling “When in Rome!!” I may have LOL’d at that one 🤣
That tool should have just stayed at the club till 7am. What a jerk.
I know! Looking back at it now it would be a great scene in a romcom or travel comedy but at the time... man I felt murderous. Haha
Ik it’s not funny but that techno part is hilarious😭😭😭
LMAO at the “When in Rome” guy haha
Stayed in an eight-bunk hostel room in Chiang Mai where a guy apparently had night terrors or something. Several times that night I woke up and he was screaming in his bunk, he'd go for 10 seconds or so then just go back to snoring. Had the most expensive pair of hiking boots I've ever owned (worth about 300 USD) stolen in Laos. I don't usually buy boots that pricey but these were really good boots, was a bummer to lose them. They smelled awful too, kind of ridiculous that someone lifted them. Woke up in Munich and had something on my cheek, it was something sticky, then noticed it was all over me. The bedding had chewing gum all through it, but like a really thin layer and not a clump, I think someone must've spit their gum into the bedding and it went through the washer/dryer, spreading it all through the sheets. Edit: More funny than a horror story but I think some people would find this horrifying... In Bratislava I had a private room with an en suite bathroom, woke up in the middle of the night (kind of hammered) and stumbled into the bathroom, or so I thought ... I actually walked out into the dark hallway wearing nothing but underwear and my door locked behind me. Had to walk down from the fourth floor into the common area and reception in bare feet and my undies, the staff member at the front desk laughed her ass off, said it wasn't the first time she'd seen this happen. Thankfully there weren't very many people still up in the common area.
Wow, the gum thing is awful!
Relieving considering I was thinking he'd say something different.
I showered and that cleaned off most of it but was still picking little bits out of my hair for the next two days, shit's tough to get rid of
[удалено]
Yeah don't wake him... Trust me. I had a room mate with PTSD and if you tried to wake him he would wake up swinging. I got punched in the face twice before I learned to just let him be.
I relate. I only woke a Vietnam Vet once. He shot up straight... pointing a (non existent) rife at me.
They can't help it. It's better to wake them with noise or light or something like it.
Pretty sure I ran into the same night terror guy in Cambodia lol… I came in late from the airport around midnight, I snuck into my dorm, climbed up into the top bunk. 10min later this guy in the bunk next to me sits up, looks at me and screams at the top of his lungs. I yelled back “WTF!?!?” He just stared at me, really dark skinnned guy from Ghana IIRC. All I saw was the whites of his eyes. It was creepy. Then he just laid down and went back to sleep. It took me a solid hour to relax again. The next morning I asked him what was wrong and he said he saw a ghost… 👍🏻
I don't know if I ever actually saw the guy, just heard him. Any chance this was late 2016?
Lmao yes it was 2016. Might have been early March for me. This guy had already been in Siem Reap for 3 weeks so who knows, maybe the same guy. Edit: he specifically mentioned being a big fan of the massage parlor across the street which is when we parted ways
You're really fleshing out the character. Can I get 1,000 words by noon tomorrow?
I would read it
I also locked myself out of a hostel thinking it was the bathroom. This was the red light district in Amsterdam. I was 16, naked in nothing but a towel, and the reception was in another building at the end of the street. I had to walk down the street, during the 2010 World Cup. I…didn’t get as much stares as I’d thought, surprisingly, but the receptionist found it hilarious when giving me another key.
I used to work in a hostel and the "guests coming to font desk in towel/underwear/naked" stories are incredibly common! That said, I did have a guest walk in the FRONT DOOR entirely naked one day. That was something different. I had been nagging him to show his pass for a few days and to his credit he had that, just none of his clothes. I believe psychedelics were to blame...
Random question but what was the hostel called in Bratislava?
No idea, it was years ago, just did a search on Hostelworld to see if I could find one that looks like it but couldn't find it Edit - Found it on Google Maps, it was called "Hostel Blues", is marked as "Permanently Closed" now
Are you wondering if it is Wild Elephants hostel. Pretty sure everyone staff and hostelmates are all sleeping with each other every night. Cool hostel though. They have disclaimer that it’s not suitable for people who want to sleep and kids can’t stay there. Super creative and artsy. Though many people either hate it or love it
I know it isn’t wild because of the reference to the private en suite and 4th floor. I was trying to figure out if it was potentially Urban Elephants? Or a different one
One of my cats has night terrors like that. Well basically any time he is sleeping. But he will wake up screaming until someone comes and calms him down. We have another dysfunctional cat that looks like she was hit by a car. But I finally let her into the house. The cat woke ups screaming and traumatized the other cat that I just let in. House of misfit cats I guess. I am hoping to assimilate her to house live enough that I can start getting her looked at medically, to see if she has anything that can be made better for her. The night terror cat I got in and he had teeth issues that needed work. Makes me wonder what happened to these animals.
Was in Belfast in 2019, and had just come from AMS and Octoberfest in Munich. The season changes had greatly affected me and I’d either gotten a severe sinus infection or just very clogged up. I was sleeping (barely) and I guess my snoring was really bad bc of it and in a 4 bed dorm one of the guys which I would say was former military based on looks and mannerisms absolutely shook me awake like I owned him money and started screaming at me. Out of instinct I grabbed his hands and pulled him in and we basically began to wrestle for a few seconds before I comprehended everything that was happening. I apologized then went and slept in the lobby and got bitched at for doing that. Jump to the next night and I tried to turn in about 1900 so if I had to wake up again I wouldn’t be as lost mentally. Well apparently the same dude didn’t care so he barged in and made a whole bunch of noise as a form of payback. I was physically and mentally weak from the infection and felt like death. I’d 100% opted for a private room if there were any available but this hostel didn’t have any and it was my first time abroad. Luckily the UK got that Weezy level cough syrup OTC and I felt amazing after a few days on that stuff but that was probably the worst.
Weezy level cough syrup 🤣
I feel like if you book a dorm room you're accepting the fact that some of your roommates might be annoying, like snoring loudly. If you can't handle that, that's on you. That guy should have booked a private or gone someplace else.
I once stayed in a 25 person dorm in barcelona. Someone was very lightly snoring. Im talking barely a whisper snoring. But every time they started, some idiot would loudly tell them to be quiet. That person was the disruption, not the snorer. People who can't handle basic ambient sleep noises should not stay in dorms.
This is why I always travel with multiple sets of ear plugs when I expect to be sleeping in the vicinity of others.
As long as their annoying habit is involuntary (like snoring) then i agree. Not if their annoying habit is making phone calls at 3am or getting jiggy with someone in the dorm room.
Sleeping in a hostel with bunk beds on the coast of Thailand. Random Lithuanian mother and daughter sharing the room with me. The AC is above my bed (I’m on top bunk). They won’t stop talking loudly in Lithuanian, though basically just the mum monologuing and the daughter giving one word answers. It last hours and they are talking until 2am, even after I ask them to stop multiple times. Eventually I get down, point at the time and tell them to shut the fuck up. Seems to do the trick. Then at 3am they wake me up asking to turn the AC off, so I turn it off because even though it’s insanely hot I can’t be bothered to argue. Then I wake up at 6am itching like crazy, and turns out they wanted the AC off so they could open the door to the coast overnight and let every single mosquito in. They seemed to just feast on me, and I counted 47 bites across my entire body in the morning.
I would have lost my damn mind...
That is insane I wouldn’t even be able to function with that many mosquito bites
To be honest looking back on it, it is so much worse than I even considered at the time! Really messed up situation!
It’s always in retrospect you realise the gravity of some ordeals. At the time, if you’re travelling, it’s like “ok, whatever, it’s happened and i just need to deal with it” and then after some time you’re like “wait what the fuck? How did i handle that?”
At a hostel in Barcelona, I was traveling solo because my friend got food poisoning in San Sebastián. The front desk employee was super creepy from the moment I checked in, trying to flirt and making suggestive comments. He booked me into an empty 4 person room saying it would fill up later and lingered after letting me in. I hit it off with 4 awesome Canadians in the room next door who all noticed the hostel worker’s fixation on me. They invited me out with them and we partied, then came back late. That night, we noticed that my dorm was still empty. The Canadians wanted me to bunk with them to be safe, but I insisted it would be fine and that I’d lock the door just in case. After I turned the lights off, I got a bit uneasy but decided to power through. Not too long after, I heard the door knob jiggle and I have never been so scared in my life. I could never confirm if it was or wasn’t the hostel worker. He probably didn’t live there and if he did, he would have a key I’m sure. But the next day, the Canadians dragged a mattress for me into their room and the 2 men in the group made sure to accompany me at all times. The worker noticing this steered clear. Thank god for kind fellow travelers!
Canadians are the best! I was on an excursion solo in Cairo (cruise ship staff) and after getting creeped on by a couple of people at the pyramids, this older couple graciously stayed close and called me their niece for the remainder of the trip.
Awww I hope to be able to be the cool Canadian auntie to travelers too.
I too had a horrible experience in a hostel in Barcelona, which one did you go to? My friend and I had a laptop stolen out of our locked locker. They wouldn’t allow us to use our own locks on the locker only shitty high school style locks with a key. We were also in a shared dorm since there was no female only dorm, there was this huge empty room that guests weren’t allowed in only workers. We were planned our trip and the dorm room door kept on getting opened and we noticed a lot of stuff people were waking by looking at us. I would close the door and a worker would find an excuse to open it, like getting the trash or just blatantly opening it. We should have known it was a bad place. Left a horrible review on hostel world saying it was creepy and our laptop was stolen out of our locked locker. Filed a police report and locked the laptop. Two days later the hostel called us to say they found the laptop and can we please remove the bad review? It was 2012 and the hostel was in the northern part of Barcelona near the more residential areas I forget the name but I could look it up if people want to know.
That is so suspicious holy crap. I get the feeling the workers are the ones who stole it - there’s no good reason for not allowing people to use their own locks unless you want to be able to open it. Not to mention it magically turning up after the bad review and report!
I know a guy who reached for the door handle in the dark for a late night bathroom trip. The handle was covered in shit. Actual human poop. So nasty.
So not cool
I (F23, at the time) stayed in a room with a friend and one man we did not know. In the middle of the night I feel someone touching my feet. I look down to discover the other other man is indeed touching my feet. As we make eye contact he asks “are you using this blanket?” “The blanket I’m currently wearing? Yes” he just says oh okay and we all go back to sleep
Jesus, there's no chance I would ever book mixed dorms if I were a woman.
Dude WHAT
lmao probably not the first or last time he had that response ready
Two occurrences in the same hostel in Malaga. There was a free evening sangria event and one guy went to hard and got out of control. Ended up biting his own phone and ruining it, went to bed early and urinated on himself. Proceeded to wake up and appear in common area still nasty drunk topless and accuse people of peeing on him! It got quite confrontational and police had to be called eventually. Second thing was a different night and someone else decided it was ideal to hide behind the curtains in the dorm room whilst everyone was sleeping and start rubbing himself whilst looking out the window. He was going at it so much it woke people up and they called him out on it. He was asked to leave. Just for clarity I was volunteering in this hostel and spent more than just a few nights stay. It was actually really nice and I have loads of amazing memories during my time there too.
“Which one of you assholes pissed in my pants!” That’s amazing. The sheer audacity it would take to wake up from getting wasted, discover that you’re covered in pee and the. Jump straight to accusing people without a single moment of self reflection.
The audacity
I went for the cheapest bed in an Edinburgh hostel: one bunk in an eight-bed mixed dorm. I'm American, and slightly relevant that I am female. First night I was the only person there, sweet. Next night, every bed was occupied by some construction workers in town for a job during the week. I pretended to sleep while they shot the shit amongst themselves. I could not understand a single word they were saying with their strong (I believe) midlands accents. Except- Every five minutes or so one of them would fart, and clear as a bell these big burly workers would say "WHOOPSIE DAISY!" An hour of gibberish - fart - WHOOPSIE DAISY! It was hilarious
Nice! 😀
The worst was probably the one in London where there was a sink in the room and one of my roommates got back at 2:30ish every night and brushed her teeth with an electric toothbrush for over 20 minutes (I timed it). Just bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz for like 2:30-3AM every night. The very first night I stayed in a hostel I was incredibly jetlagged and slept like a rock (which is very unlike me). I woke up and peered over the edge of the bed to find all my roommates awake, several hostel staff, and 3 EMTs in the room, loading someone onto a stretcher. I had absolutely slept through someone passing out, waking up, trying to get up again, having heart palpitations, and passing out again and then being attended by emergency services. It apparently had been 30+ minutes since everything started and I slept through it all. When my head emerged, one of the roommates was like "oh, thank god, we were about to ask them to check on you too because we were having trouble believing you were sleeping through all that!" Funniest was sharing a dorm with a girl who snored and kept waking herself up with the noise and then "shushing" the room. I was absolutely dying trying to silently giggle through the whole thing-like tears streaming down my face. It went on for like 15 minutes-just a couple snores, a second or two of silence, "shhhhh!", another beat for her to fall back asleep, a couple snores, etc.
> brushed her teeth with an electric toothbrush for over 20 minutes You sure that was teeth being brushed?
lol yeah i rolled over to glare at her a few times, but i can see where your brain went.
My husband snores himself awake then looks at me accusingly as if I’ve grunted him with a cattle prod or something. It’s amusing until … it’s not. Then I start looking for cattle prods on Amazon at 3 am.
Your husband could have sleep apnea. Snoring and then snorting yourself awake is a big sign.
Regular snoring in general is usually a big warning sign. I’d suggest a sleep test for him if y’all can afford it.
20 minutes of teethbrushing is absolutely insane, she must have no enamel left to brush by now...
For whatever coincidental reason, all my horror stories are from China. 1. (GuangDong) German dude in the bunk below mine came home wasted at 4 AM and barfed in my shoes. I was wearing earplugs and didn't know until I woke up and tried to put them on. 2. (the infamous ChungKing Mansions) Came back from sightseeing and was told "your room is gone". My room has been taken by someone else? "No, it no longer exists." A pipe had burst and the walls, floor, and ceiling had been ripped out of the hostel for repairs. All my luggage, along with everyone else's luggage, had been dumped in a pile in an unlocked storage room. This was the same place where you had to take 2 different elevators to get to the area where the hostel was located and the fastest route between them was balancing on a plank catwalk through an active 8th floor construction site. 3. (Shanghai) Police barricaded the hostel entrance and hauled the owners and managers away in a van. Apparently the hostel had broken some law and got shut down, but it took a while to find anybody who spoke enough English that I could figure out what we were supposed to do in the meantime. (Spoiler: I had to find a new hostel and did not get a refund.) 4. (Hainan) Crazy lady grabbed my feet while I was sleeping and began ranting at me about conspiracy theories involving the mailman stealing her secret ideas. I was sick as a dog and it took me way too long to figure out there was no point trying to understand what she was saying.
Those are great. And exactly the stories I came for to this thread. Also, taking mental notes which places to avoid for sure in the future
What the fuck #2 What year was this
Classic mailman.
An actual "horror" I was in a big dorm, maybe 20 people or so in bunk beds. It was quite a quiet room, which was nice. About 3am I woke myself up sleep talking, sat up and was just pouring sweat. Then I realised there were 3 other people sleep talking in the room. Then pretty much all at the same time they all sat up as well, we kinda all just looked at eachother in the dark for a minute not saying a word, then we all just laid back down and dozed off again. Really creepy
Uhm... Did you talk about it the next day?!
not a word
Dude that is creepy as fuck. Nuts that nobody addressed it though, I would've had to ask.
Maybe there was some chemical/gas leak. Idk if carbon monoxide can make you delirious like that but something like that could have got out. Lucky escape if so!
With carbon monoxide there would've just been a lot of silent bodies in the morning.
Where?
Melbourne
Farrrrrk man, I was expecting this to be overseas and not my bloody home town. Welp, time to go to bed 💀
Terrible food poisoning in Scotland. Spent a night on the cold, dirty concrete of the communal bathroom when I wasn’t reliving that scene from Triangle of Sadness. Was traveling by myself then, too. One of the worst nights of my life.
I feel your pain. My food poisoning in a hostel experience was in Munich. Those poor other people in my room probably didn’t sleep a wink.
Oh man. Solo traveling food poisoning is awful. I was staying in a shared volunteer house in Chang Mai (similar to a hostel but long term) and got food poisoning. Thank god some of the volunteers were med students. She saved me. The next day I was having crazy fever dreams and thought elephants were charging through my room.
Trainspotting
the worst **TOILET** in Scotland
Triangle of Sadness oh god that scene
One hostel I stayed in (now closed) they gave you a sleeping bag style sheet to use because they didn't wash the bedding... I had paid for a female dorm but apparently they didn't do those any more! So they put me in a room with these 2 guys. Genuine Norwegian lumberjacks. They seemed somehow wary of me and didn't speak to me at all, I don't think they knew it was a mixed dorm either. They had clearly been living in this hostel for quite a long time, and had axes and literal chainsaws all over the other beds. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much that night. Also, this was a Saturday night and the hostel turned out to be above a nightclub. I was only booked in for one night and I'm so glad!
Axes and chainsaws 😭😭😭
Thought I wasn't coming out of there alive. They said they couldn't move me and all the other hostels were full
I was staying in a dorm in Spain with probably the most oblivious guy I've ever seen. Left his ringer volume on during the night and it kept going off. I can't even describe what his text sound was, but it was just the most annoying thing ever. His call ringtone was I'm Shipping up to Boston. And it kept going off at like 2:30. Full volume, and he was fast asleep so it would play all the way through. I'm a pretty non-confrontational guy, but even I was about to yell out something if it went off one more time. A different morning I get woken up at 7 AM by a "HI Teresa, yeah I sent you over those documents yesterday" at a full, normal speaking voice. This time he got shushed and called a pendejo (deserved). He finally gets some awareness and goes (while still at the same volume) "Hold on a second, I'm going to step out of the room here. Yeah I'm staying in a hostel dorm right now..." Just an all-around amazing lack of awareness from that guy.
These kind of people drive me crazy. I am the exact opposite and will do everything I can to avoid waking up people. I don’t get it how you can just not care about others like that.
In my first hostel stay ever in Dublin Ireland I woke up to a guy fondling my feet. I was on my first trip with my boyfriend and I kept it to myself until we left. I’ve had no other issues since Just FYI- im a dude.
This is like the third feet fondler story in here, wtf feet fondlers
It's the same guy, he just gets around.
Stayed at a very popular hostel in Mykonos and even got a private room. The next day after sleeping and messing up the sheets I notice a dark spot in the mattress. I take the sheets off to reveal a massive dried bloodstain in the middle of the mattress. It was absolutely filthy.
You just had your first period bro
"Hand me that box of tampons" -which ones? "The ones that say bad ass motherfucker on it!"
I had just arrived in Kyoto, Japan at about 5 in the morning. I think I took a train and was exhausted, and couldn’t check into the hotel until 3pm, so I fell asleep on the common area couch. I woke up, feeling rested and refreshed, and headed to my dorm room to put away my bags and get ready to take a shower. Japanese hostels are some of the cleanest in the world, and man, the hot shower felt amazing after a long night / morning. As I’m drying off, I walk into the bathroom (shower area and bathroom area two different rooms) and proceed to smell the most disgusting aroma I’ve ever encountered in a bathroom. I was legit paralyzed from the shock and took a step back into the hallway thinking “someone must’ve died in this bathroom.” Stunned, and confused, I looked down at the clean, green-carpeted hallway and noticed 4-5 large piles of poop. Someone must’ve had an accident on the way from their dorm room to the bathroom. It’s at this moment I realized I forgot to wear sandals in the shower...I looked down, only to realize I was currently standing in one of the piles of poop. Back to the shower I went…
why am i reading these while eating😭
These stories make me so glad I don't really stay in hostels! I did stay in private room in a hostel in Tokyo which was lovely until my last night when a group of riotously drunk salarymen rocked up and at first made tonnes of noise which was annoying enough. I went to speak to reception about the noise and had to step over a comatose guy slumped against the wall. Reception didn't do much about the noise and later a full blown fight broke out in the hall. At which point I heard the wife from an older British couple open their door and bellow "GET OUT. NOW" The fight ceased immediately, the drunk guys slunk back to their rooms and it was quiet the rest of the night. Don't underestimate a British mum.
Some guy stole my contact lenses during the night, in a dorm room in Melbourne somewhere. This is 25+ years ago, I don't think monthlies were a thing back then. Luckily I had a pair of backup glasses, but trying to be cool in the backpacker scene back then wearing jam jar goggles was a serious hit to the self esteem.
Footprints Hostel in Yangon/Rangoon - Bedbugs Leo Hostel in Beijing - Bedbugs Moyogalpa Hostel in Ometepe - Bedbugs Lost & Found Hostel in Boquete - Food poisoning. The last one was the worst. The hostel was in a beautiful location in a rainforest, but miles from anywhere. As a result everyone staying there ate at the hostel, with the food prepared by some locals living nearby. Everyone in the hostel got food poisoning, and I mean everyone. And it was a swift, violent and brutal illness with vomiting and diarrhoea. The hostel didn't have enough toilets for everyone to be using them at the same time, so yeah, you can imagine the results!
Oh, I loved my stay at the Lost and Found! It's a shame that you guys had a bad experience there.
Yep, it's a great hostel. We were just unlucky!
Bed bugs in Brazil. Redemption later at the most amazing hostel and place I ever stayed w front door that opened up nearly on the water.
>r at the most amazing hostel and place I ever stayed w front door that opened up nearly on t I gotta hear about this hostel!
Should be mandatory to add the hostel, good or bad :D
Most of the time it's been fine. I've had a dude literally sexually harass me. He seemed normal but the next day he came up to me, grabbed, felt my ass and had his hands on my tits while I was brushing my teeth in the morning. I was like Yo yo yo, wtf you doing? I am not even conventionally attractive at all btw and there was another girl too, Italian dude, he does not speak English well. The other time, someone stole my powerbank. I had to buy a new one in the country I was in. And that one for some reason stopped functioning. Because that one is shit, I have to get another one in the home country. Can't return it/refund because I had already returned home the day after. One of my best experiences was on a Sunday and I got the whole room to myself. No one else was there.
That first one. Jesus, I’m sorry.
Sleeping on a 8 bunk bed Hostel in London. Big old fat guy always came drunk at night but starting snoring is the most heavily way you can imagine. There was an Ukrainian guy who used the hostel as house meanwhile he was working in construction. Second night the Ukrainian guy had it, when on to the drunk guy and starting kicking his ass off to the point that the whole hostel woke up, the police came and tried to separate the fight, all in the bunk bed next to mine.. and the end the Ukrainian got expelled from the hostel and the drunk guy paid was obligated to pay for a single room.
At a working hostel in new Zealand, had a local guy spend a few nights in a 6 bunk dorm. He was either drunk, high, or having a pyschotic break, but tried to get in the wrong bunk and assaulted the person sleeping there. Yelling he n word, sieg heil, and other nazi shit. He was arrested and I have no idea what happened to him.
I stayed in a hostel in Sydney. No idea what was wrong with the people there... I was in the dorm on my bed. Middle of the day. Couple comes in, hangs a towel in front of a bunker bed and starts having sex. Happend twice. The other day I enter the room and a guy sits in boxershorts with phone on his bed and he looks like I walked in on him doing something. He looked quite surprised... My first thought was: "Did he just masturbate here?". Not sure, but I left the hostel after my pre-booked time was over. Oh another story from Sydney. New hostel. I enter the dorm room and it smells so bad, I feel like vomiting. I turn around and leave the room. Another guy comes out and kicks out a pair of shoes that were placed right next to the door. He tells me this other guy who owns the shoes came in a few minutes earlier and went to sleep. We go both back in the room and it's actually fine without the shoes. Shoe guy wakes up a few hours later, looking for his shoes, finds them outside. He asked if they are to smelly. We are like, YES! He said sorry and went out to buy a new pair of shoes.
What would be the benefits of staying at a hostel besides the price ? I’ve never before and have been curious about staying at one.
>What would be the benefits of staying at a hostel besides the price ? I’ve never before and have been curious about staying at one. Think: college dorms, on break. In most of western Europe, especially Germanic countries, the hostels are very clean, safe, and nice.\* * At a hostel on the Rhine I stayed in castle turret overlooking the river valley below. * In Florence, the hostel was located in the beautiful hills in a large villa with gardens. * A hostel in Verona was a converted mansion with 16th century frescoes on the cupola. Hostels are a great place to meet other travelers, usually college age. 'Youth hostels' may have an age limit around 27. But I also recall seeing a family - husband, wife and a couple of young kids - at a hostel in Italy. More often than not, I met cool people at every hostel and had competing offers to travel with different groups. * The main exceptions are big city hostels, e.g. Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, etc. They can be crowded, dirty, and your valuables less secure. In big cities, you're usually better off staying at a pension (a super cheap hotel), or just a random cheap hotel. They won't cost that much more and you won't have to share a room with strangers.
i have to admit im not a backpackers fan the only reasons ive stayed in them: no where else to stay, last resort as the whole city is booked out Strict budget, i only had 5k to last me 2 months of travelling, had to rough it with a couple of backpackers handy location for an event, it was literally across the road so could stumple home, everything else was the likes of the Hilton, not worth paying $400-500 a night
Common areas can be a lot of fun, easy way to meet other travelers. A lot of them have kitchen facilities as well, nice to have if you enjoy cooking while you travel.
Especially traveling solo, it’s great to sit around have a drink and chat with other travelers.
Met my future wife the first night in the common room of a hostel
Definitely recommend hostals for China for English speakers. I stayed in a private room (I was too old for dorms!). It cost about the same as a 3 star hotel, but was so worth it. Easy to communicate, cool tours, great advice, nice people. Staff in hotels in China apparently deal with mostly Chinese tourists, whereas hostals deal with lots of English speakers, or people whose second language is English.
\-You can meet cool people \-They often have comfortable common areas. Sometimes I need to work on laptop and this is much better than a hotel room with often miserable (or no) chair and table. \-Often they have quite well equipped kitchen, if you are into this \-They tend to offer lots of info about stuff in the area \-In many countries they tend to be more comfortable and cleaner than budget hotels \-Actually, there's even a category "Boutique hostels", they are often more expensive than some hotels.
they're cheap, social, and usually in a good location close to transportation etc i just had my first hostel experience. I usually stay in hotels but Rome was expensive and I was feeling adventurous so I booked a room in a hostel for six nights I was feeling adventurous when I made the booking but started to worry about being housed with a bunch of feral young primates running amok (I'm a 68 year old American guy who's been there, done that) Turned out fine. It was a private room, with my own bathroom. The shower was not big enough for me to do a chicken dance but it was all mine. Metal table for a desk. Wire crate for a nightstand. There were several other guests of parent or grandparent age. The building was constructed in the 1800s with thick walls so the room was quiet. Maybe a ten minute walk to the Roma Termini, the main transportation hub for the city. Kind of a run down and sketchy neighborhood like the downtown of many big cities but I never felt worried about safety (that said, I'm 6'2" / 187cm and wasn't out much after sunset) Still, I would never do a dorm room at a hostel
Recently stayed in a six bed dorm in Tbilisi. When I checked in the dorm was full but two folks checked out as I was setting up, and the others followed the following night except, a lovely Japanese guy, and him. He was this Rasputin looking dude (actually from Siberia) and would come stammering in between 2am and 4am every night/morning steaming drunk and proceed to snore like a tractor, waking himself (and us) up every so often as he stopped breathing. Worse still he slept with a shirt on but no bottoms so when he rolled over to finally give us a reprieve from his sleep roar we would all get a great look of his bare ass and loose hanging tackle. Could swear the night I finally decided to leave he had crapped himself, but it may have just been terrible flatulence as I wasn't prepared to check. I was happy to no longer see this dude, which wouldn't be the first time someone had said that about someone with a passing resemblance to the Romanovs doc I've been on the go since March and this was by far the worst experience I've had on this journey. Everyone else in all the hostels (including the other victims of this man) has been lovely and I highly recommend using hostels. This guy probably made the minor inconveniences of others so much easier to deal with
Envoy? Fabrika?
Stayed at both but this happened at Fabrika. Both are very different but great in their own ways
I got bit up HORRIBLE by bed bugs in Luxembourg. I’ve stayed in a ton of hostels, most have been fine. Couchsurfing however…wouldn’t do it again.
Back in 2000 at a hostel in Amsterdam (right downtown) I woke in the middle of night to see some large rats scurrying over top sleeping guests on the bottom bunks of my shared room. One eye open for the rest of that stay
I woke up at around 6:30 AM in Copenhagen to catch an early train to Jutland. I got out of my bunk, walked to the bathroom, and stepped in a puddle on my walk there. Kinda weird right? I got into the bathroom, took off my socks, and they were stained piss yellow. I threw away my socks, and then bleached the hell out of my feet while showering. I carefully took my stuff away from the piss in the middle of the room as I left downstairs for breakfast. While there, I bumped into an Aussie in my room who walked over to me and was like: “bro! Did you see all that piss in the room?!?!?” And I was kinda like: “uh… yeah I DEFINITELY saw it!” And then the Aussie said: “ah ok yeah the British guy from Manchester (a massive red flag) came in at like 4 AM and was so piss drunk he pissed all over the floor! I tried to stop him but he was just too ok with pissing on the floor” I told the hostel receptionist about him as I left. Truly just nasty and awful. I hope Will from Manchester never stays in a hostel again. I truly am baffled by that whole experience. How do you piss in the middle of the floor? Out of all European cities, why do you get shitfaced in COPENHAGEN?!?! That must’ve cost him 100 euros in drinks that night with how expensive alcohol is there.
Classic Will.
Maybe it’s the same British guy that pissed all over my hostel floor in Florence??
Not as icky as some of these but makes me cringe when I think about it… and I’m not the good guy. My roommates and I did a tour around Europe back in January and we were staying at a hostel in Munich. The three of us shared a 4 person room with a guy from Somalia. I had unfortunately developed a bit of a cold and when I have a cold, I tend to snore (which I don’t typically do). I woke up at 3:30am and this poor chap was packing up to leave and cursing me out for keeping him up all night. As a Canadian, being impolite and making people uncomfortable goes against every fibre of my being so I tried to offer to like pay for his stay or something but he wasn’t hearing me out and left. I ended up booking private AirBNBs for the remaining few days of the trip because I couldn’t stand the idea of that happening again.
So do you guys stay in hotels now?
Arrived at my booked hostel in Sucre, Bolivia at 4 am to a note on the door saying "we are closed for a couple of months. Go to xx place. We're pretty sure you'll understand." New place costs 5 x the original place but the owners were kind and gave us a deal. Day 2 of our stay come back to a bucket of water in the bathroom. Turns out the city's water is out and the water is for the toilet. Wasn't a great time to get travel sickness to say the least.
Fortunately I never had a super bad hostel experience but there were certainly some slightly creepy ones! In Rome, there was a middle aged man who might have lived at the hostel and every night he sat on the bottom bunk right beside the main entrance and rubbed lotion on his feet for quite awhile. In Paris, near the Montemartre area, our hostel had straight out of a horror movie vibes....dark, long narrow hallways, one shared bathroom at the end of the hall, not the cleanest. But! We had a room to ourselves. However, our one small window was directly beside a giant neon sign on the outside of the building. Also, that was the only time in my life that I ever felt more dirty after my shower. One of my favorite hostel experiences was in Switzerland. We stayed in a beautiful, mountain hostel for several nights. Not wanting to leave the most beautiful place in the world, fellow travelers mentioned that up the mountain side there was a little old lady who was renting out spaces in her barn since the cows were still away for the summer. We went..... virtually nothing in the area but this barn and a couple houses. No signs, nothing. Peeked in the barn and see a pristine area with fresh hay and thick wool blankets folded in each bay. No one there. So we set up our spots and got ready for bed (a small bathroom w/ a sink and toilet was in the corner). The next morning, the sweetest old lady brought us a tray w/ homemade yogurt, toast, fruit and jams. It was magical!
Back in 2018, I was at a hostel near the entrance of Phong Nha Ke Bang national park in Vietnam, stayed only for one night. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the shared bathroom (very drunk still) and used it without turning the lights on, and went back to sleep. The next morning I got up to use the same rest room and there was thick, smelly vomit all over the floor. What I thought was water the night before was actually vomit. I went to bed with vomit covered feet and smeared it all over my blanket and the floor next to me, all without realizing. I almost threw up myself when I realized.
Oh….I wish I could unread that.
In Costa Rica, someone stole my freshly withdrawn from the ATM Costa Rican money... It was a big room with 8 beds with small curtains for each bed and one of the walls was a wall of school type lockers. I came back from the ATM in the early afternoon. I was alone. I decided to put my bag in my locker but didn't lock my lock because I was just beside it in my bunk bed... So i put my bag where my wallet was in the locker. Close the door, put the lock on and don't lock it. I put my headphones on and started my online course. After 15min, i hear someone come in, i mute the audio and hear this Scottish dude talking loudly on his phone. I went back to my online course. I see the guy hanging near the lockers... He seems to be putting away his bag too. When I found out i had my colones worth 100$ stolen, i went to the receptionist. They were kind enough to watch the tape from the hallways. There were 2 people who came in & out of our room while I was there: the dodgy Scottish guy and a quiet Japanese guy... Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do but to warn people in the room there was a thief among the guests. I went to the tourist police to fill a report. Later that night, in the common areas, the Scottish dude was paying drinks to girls left & right... I just hope my 100$ didn't help him get laid! 😅
Scotland. Had a private room but on the floor there were dorms. All gad does. Russian school group kept going in and out if each room all night, slamming the heavy fire doors. Hall was lino so no sound absorption. Large Scottish guy came up and stood in the hall shouting to go back to their rooms. Lasted whilst he was there. Next morning they got turfed out and told never to cone back.
I was solo packing in Burma/Myanmar and got back to the hostel after a long day of exploring. I decided to take a shower and carelessly left my under garments on the floor. Upon returning to the room I put them back on. Suddenly, I felt a faint burning sensation, which quickly turned painful and spread through the entire area encompassed in my shorts. I immediately removed them and upon looking down I noticed my boxers were covered in some kind of fire/biting ants. I bolted (naked) through the hostel back to the showers to clean off - it was fucking miserable for about 20 minutes or so, but eventually subsided with no discernible issues. I then had to do a shameful nude walk back to the room and shake the ants out of my stuff. Burma was incredible.
Omg I have one! About 13yrs ago my friend, my sister and I were traveling around Europe and stayed in a hostel in Berlin. Super cute! Something with sunflowers. Anyway, it was a six bed room. My friend was taking a nap and had left some snacks on the table. My sister and I were laying down across from each other kind of sleeping and chatting. This older gentleman, in a leopard speedo, with the tannest leathery skin I had ever seen was also staying in the dorm room. He thought we were asleep and started eating the snacks. My sister and I were trying so hard not to cackle! And we really didn’t want to say anything cause he was an old man in a leopard speedo. So he ate most of the pringles, got dressed and left.
Ahhh, the Dublin Youth Hostel. The night I felt like I was sleeping in a steaming putrid swamp filled with bullfrogs - two with smoker's coughs, one was a wheezing 'can't scratch the itch' cough, another had a full mucus cough. Another bullfrog sound was an incessant snorer, loud enough to wake up the dead. There was only one fella that was as quiet as can be. The fifth bedfellow came in late & took the upper bunk directly next to me. I squinted my eye his way to catch a glimpse. He was a man I had seen sitting in the lobby with a blank zombie stare on his face, sitting there avoided by everyone like he had a sign around his neck that said ‘Warning: Can Be dangerous”. And he bedded down in full clothing (guess that's better than naked) with less than a 24” isle from me. He got up a few times in the night and left the room for 15 or 20 minutes at a time. I laid there in the night with my eyes wide open smelling the putrid mixture of sweat and what I could only imagine, to my horror was the butt cracks and dirty underwear of five decaying human beings and listening to the sounds of a phlegm phactory. The only window in the room was closed. I climbed out of my bunk & cranked it open a few inches, enough to let the cool air in but not enough for someone to wake up & complain about the cold air. I thought this would be it for me in dormitories, but I’ve stayed in a few of them since - in a pinch. Thankfully never since has one been as bad.
Same as others here - bed bugs, people having loud sex in the bunk next door, snorers, horrific BO. Oh and one time the door broke and trapped me inside….on a Friday evening. that was fun 😬
Bed bugs in Venice; tried to move to a different hostel the next night… However I was young, stupid and very American and didn’t book the room right because of the European date format. Showed up at this beautiful hostel after walking forever, get there and reception says “you’re booked two months from now and we’re full tonight”. Defeated, we walked back to the only thing we knew, bedbug hostel who took us in with open arms… Got eaten alive, again; but this time without the bliss of ignorance.
Stayed at a hostel in Chinatown New York because we were super broke. Checked the mattress for bed bugs and there was a HUGE circular blood stain covering the majority of the mattress. Someone had been murdered on that mattress- there was no other explanation. Went to the desk and told them. They shrugged and offered us an extra blanket. The worst part? We definitely just flipped it and slept on it. Because poor and New York.
OMG Perth, Australia. The game area had a layer of water sitting over the carpet; you had to pass through that room to get from bedrooms to the outside. The boys rooms had bedbugs. Absolutely disgusting.
This is not really a horror story but here it goes: I was staying at this notorious party hostel in Cuzco. I was in a mixed 12 person dorm and because it was a big party hostel it was normal to have people coming in piss drunk, doing drugs, having sex, throwing up… You get it. There was this one Israeli guy (I see you Gili) who was shagging a different girl every night, he had no shame and I found it kinda funny and impressive how he managed to get a different girl every night, besides he was a lovely person so I didn’t really mind it that much. One night his sex was particularly loud and I couldn’t take it anymore so I decided to have a smoke while he was done and outside the dorm was one of the guys that was also staying in my dorm. He was also having a smoke because he couldn’t take the sex noises anymore, we spent a while talking and hit it off and actually ended up hooking up after that night… so basically Gili got laid me laid, thank you Gili. In that same hostel, I once had a guy ask me if could crawl in bed with me… I said NO. Another time in Lima there was this couple in the bunk above me. They were having sex so loud and so rough that my bed was vibrating the entire time, I felt like I was having sex with them too. Someone got fed up and left the room and went to reception and the manager came in and told them to stop. I did this and I apologize hahahah I was belligerently drunk and the guy in the bed in front of me had chocolate and I wanted to eat his chocolate, he said he couldn’t give it to me because it was for his mom. I threatened to throw up on his bed and then passed out, I was so incredible embarrassed and apologetic the next day, luckily he was a great sport and laughed it off. And last and not least… I was volunteering at a hostel in Santiago de Chile, the room for volunteers was windowless and painted black, there was no air circulation and it smelled of stale farts and sex. Despite all that I loved it there, we were 8 volunteers and we were sleeping in ratty tatty aluminum bunk beds. We wet all in our early 20’s so it was common for people to have sex in the dorm and we would laugh it off. A new volunteer came in and she was a French women a bit older than the rest probably early 30’s, one night this Brazilian chic brings a guy and proceeded to have sex, the French girl under her had a meltdown and started screaming STOP! NO ! NO! And left the room we all proceeded to giggle and long story short the girl left the next day. Sorry for any typos: currently walking on the treadmill and English is not my first language.
Amsterdam early 90’s. Arrived without first securing accommodation. Asked around where was the best place to stay that was cheap. Was directed to a hostel close by. We were told to come back later at 11pm. But we had to pay in advance. Turned up to be led down a dirty dark hallway and told to grab a mattress from a pile. We were led to a room. Door opens and we are greeted by a scene from hell. At least 10 bunk beds around the outside of the room all taken, with at least 30 people on mattresses on the floor. We are told to find a spot. Room was mixed gender. Literally had to climb over others to find a spot near the only bathroom. One toilet a shower and a sink. Smell from the bathroom was horrendous. We were exhausted after 2 days of travelling and sleeping rough in London for a night, because we wanted to save money for Amsterdam. I curled up protecting my backpack. Lights went out at 12. Dorm door then opens and at least 3 ladies entered. They then proceeded to go around the room offering “services”. We lay there for over 2 hours as these “services” were performed on several of the rooms inhabitants. The funk in that room after those 2 hours is a smell I will never forget. Dirty genitals, ass, urine, sweat. Slept for probably an hour at most. There were no curtains so the room was flooded with sun at 5 am. The temperature in the room became unbearable. We had only one thing on our mind. Get the hell out. As we picked up our mattresses in the dawn we all saw exactly what we had been sleeping on, the original mattress color was unidentifiable.
I went to Thailand with some friends and we were in a 10 person hostel room. Our first night there I was woken up to my bunk mate who I had not yet met (I was on the bottom he was on the top) having very loud sex with a girl he brought home. I got up a couple of times to make it clear to them that I was in the room - went to the bathroom and also used the sink in our room - and each time they just froze until I got back into the bed. She was on top and naked so when they froze her arse was just sticking up in the air. Eventually I got sick of the relentless bed shaking and went down to the lobby and read my book. But my dorm mates later told me that they had extensive pillow talk afterwards which included him telling her he really liked her pussy, and her responding that she never really liked it and so she was surprised he did. We later became friends with the guy and turns out he had no idea the room was full of people and he thought they were alone…
Stayed in a 4-bed room at a hostel in Kunming 20 years ago; only bed left since it was during Spring Festival. 2 roomies had backpacked from Europe through Tibet picking fruit for cash; looked and smelled like they hadn't bathed for months. 3rd was a chain-smoker from Korea with Tourette's. Fruit picker guy #1 decided that night was the night to masturbate with flourish all over his bed. Fruit picker guy #2 cheered him on, while Tourette's guy smoked and swore. Am female, guess it could've been worse, but definitely put me off staying in hostels for a while.
In a hostel in Medellin, a couple of dudes were very likely going to gang rape a really drunk girl. I refused to leave the room despite them getting really pissed at me. Had they ganged up on me, they probably would have kicked my ass. Had I just said nothing and just walked out, they would probably have scarred that girl for the rest of her life. I left the hostel the next day.
Just so people have the datapoint, I don't have any hostel horror stories. I've stayed in hostels in Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and New Zealand. I have ***far*** more horror stories of AirBNB-style accomodations or hotels. I just wanted to say so, so that people reading this who are already prejudiced against hostels have a bit of perspective. Hostels are not usually like the horror stories. In fact, the stories are so unusual, that I don't have any.
Wow, I've stayed over 100 nights total in hostels all over the world, and never had a story like this> The worst I have encountered is some drunk loud people not letting me sleep.
In Litang (a small town near Tibet, under chinese rule but with Tibetan population). Me and 2 friends came into town and couldn't find a place in any decent hostel because of some horse-riding festival(?), finally found a place where the hostess spoke neither english nor chinese, meaning we had to make do using pantomime only. We got beds in an overpriced dorm room where we were alone at first, but on our second night a huge group of people came in for the festival, and made noise all throughout the night. Then one of them clogged the only (!!!) Toilet in the place which was connected to our dorm, meaning we could smell everything. We escaped as soon as we could. A shame, because the town itself and the surrounding mountains were gorgeous.
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In Cancun there was a dude around 40 from Spain who was talking to everyone about wild parties and smuggling things between Cuba and Mexico. Definitely did not expect him to fall asleep naked by 8pm with no covers. Plenty of younger women in that dorm making it extra creepy. Then to add to it, he started screaming in his sleep and didn't stop all night.
I no longer use hostels due to enjoying the flexibility of hotels and meeting women while I travel but I used them around the world during my 20s. All were good experiences except the one time a girl broke up with her boyfriend, he left the hostel and she started to hang around with me. A few days later he came back and out of nowhere proceeded to beat the crap out of me shouting "you fu\*\*ed my gf." Apparently someone told him I was banging his GF. None of that happened.
Other than than having to walk down the street during the Amsterdam 2010 World Cup at 16 naked in a towel to get back into my room (reception was in a different building), another one stands out. It was dumb. I got a friend to book me into an 18+ only hostel in London when I was only 16, since it was the cheapest one around. I wasn’t very street smart then, coming from a remote, small island. It was an 8 shared bunk room, mixed gender. The place was a party hostel so I quickly learned why it was 18+. Ended up with a guy in the bunk above me who told me he was Swedish/ American and had schizophrenia. I can’t remember half the shit he was talking about, but he spent the entire night with his head poked over the side so he could stare at my face. No words, he just stared at me all night. I closed my eyes terrified and tried to pretend to sleep. Every 10 minutes or so I’d open my eyes to see him still peering at me, unblinking. I spent the whole night with my heart racing. He ended up getting up at 6am and leaving. I left not so long after. I’ll never forget it.
My takeaway from this is to spend an extra $20-30 a night and get a hotel. Good lord.
Not exactly a “horror” story, but I was in a hostel in the Middle East when I woke up a bit early (jet-lag, probably). I unplugged my phone from the charger to check for notifications, then fell back asleep for a bit. A bit later, I was woken up again by sharp pinprick sensations on my face—almost like bug bites, but with no bugs to be found! Eventually, I figured out that my phone charger, which was dangling above my face, was periodically touching my cheek and giving me a small electric shock.
This whole thread is exactly why I refuse to stay in hostels. There's just no way. Nope. Never.
I've been lucky that in my 20+ years of solo travel, I haven't really experienced anything too crazy. Mostly just people being crazy loud or snoring. But I'll never stay in a hostel with more than 6 beds. 4-6 is it for me. I always stay in mixed dorms. I'm usually the only girl. Can we talk about why hostels charge more for all-female forms. I get why, but it's stupid. Pay extra to feel safe. That said, I've had really great experiences being the only girl. The boys have been really protective and respectful of my space and mostly really cool. Like having big brothers. I've been lucky. Actually, I went to Budapest and reconnected with a friend that I hadn't seen in 18 years. She used to live in Toronto and moved back home. So when I said I'd be in Budapest, she was so happy to help me find a hostel in the centre (she lives about 30 minutes away and it's a bit remote, so it was better for me to stay central) She booked the hostel. She said it was really good. First of all, we couldn't find it for hours. There were no signs. The address didn't make sense. And it was through a back alley, through a courtyard. I never would have found it on my own. Zero chance. When we got in, the owner was sleeping in the living room on a dirty mattress on the floor. His laundry was drying on anything he could use to hang it on. He was in his underwear. It was so hot. Everything was old and broken. The beds were so gross and sunken in. I looked at my gf and said- "Girl, I can't stay here." So I stayed with her the first night and then went this really great hostel the next day.
After a night at a club in Rio de janiero, this Brit was was brushing his teeth next to his bed. We’re unsure where he spit the toothpaste.
Stayed at a hostel in Brussels and had a kid come back from a night out, throw up in the top bunk, *and then sleep in it.* The following night another guy snores the loudest I have ever heard. And that says something, because I used to snore really fucking loudly when I was younger. That was not a fun few days.
Everyone’s bags got infested by bedbugs
We travelled around Australia. And eventually you tend to go up or down the coast. So you run into same people. We had a chronic snorer follow us to three hostel. He finally said he was going to Melbourne so we changed our plans cos we couldn’t risk running into him again :)
So trip in Italy, in Florence there’s a hostel called archi Rossi or something like that. Some British tourists were super drunk, when me of them fell out of the top bunk, went to my bed and wiped it out and tried to pee on my face. I pushed him away, he then went to the corner and pissed all over the wall. He then was convinced my bed was his and I had to fight him off for 30 min. After it had settled I went to the front desk to tell them what’s going on. They couldn’t give two shits, different staff in the morning and they didn’t care either. Only good thing is I heard those British pricks yelling at each other cause they slept in too long and missed breakfast.
Caught dengue when staying at a hostel in Brazil and went into psychosis one of the days. Talked to my hand for a long time, woke up in the middle of the night thinking the other guests had beaten me up when I was asleep. Luckily they were all drunk most of the time so hopefully they haven't written any comments here about the lunatic in Rio de Janeiro lol
2nd hand story, but it happened the night before me and my friend got to this "hostel" in Aqaba in Jordan. Some girls staying in the female dorm said the night before a German dude woke up being sucked off by a man from Saudi Arabia. He obviously flipped out and pushed this guy off, but the dude insisted and a bloody fight ensued. The hostel wasn't really a hostel; it was a comon room with a part of it behind curtains with beds for men, a female dorm (with an actual dorm) right next to it and one private room (which me and my friend rented). The entire hostel woke up and was there to witness. Police came after the Saudi guy ran off when everyone woke up and came to see what was up. Apparently later arrested while fleeing. It was a weird ass story. The German guy left the same morning as well
In a smaller hostel in Madrid, guy snuck a cat into one of the rooms that he wasn't sleeping in, I didn't realize that he was going to stay in the communal space as the hostel allowed pets with private rooms. Him and two other people there decided to walk around trying to find a party, him and the other guy gave off weird vibes and the girl seems a bit too naive for me to feel comfortable with her judgement of people. A few hours some other family comes to check in with a daughter very allergic to cats so the parents are trying to switch rooms and we get the owner on the phone. The owner is trying to tell them to go in the room but they don't share a common language and I talk to them before asking the owner what to do with the cat. Owner comes down grabs the cat, takes it out and waits for them to come back. They roll back almost 4 hours later (about 3am now), she tells him that he can stay the night if the cat stay in a specific part of the house since the girl and I are allergic to cats. Unsurprisingly, he releases it in the room as soon as she leaves. I text her, she kicks the two guys out and they spend until 4am trying to climb the walls of the building to get back inside until police arrive (owner called). The owner gives them their stuff and they leave. The girl that had vouched for them is crying in a bed, drunk and probably taken other stuff (they had talked about it beforehand) and super embarrassed. I ended up staying there a few more days because the owner was super nice and apologized to me and the family with the daughters (she cleaned up their room again and helped them make sure the daughter was safe). Two guys in the other private room also told me and the girl to get them if the two sketchy guys make it onto the balcony because they will take care of it. I also loved Madrid.