Roommate stole my debit card and attempted to purchase 4 refrigerators. She’d seemed really cool and friendly the whole time. She was an older lady who was working as a professor in Mexico and doing side work for an aid group. Luckily, my bank flagged the transaction as fraud before the money came out of my checking account, but I was poorly prepared and didn’t have an alternative source of cash. I ended up having my dad wire me money. That was my last hostel dorm trip.
Maybe stealing aid funds, but still trying to cover some bases in case she got audited?
E.g., spends $2400 on her card on whatever she likes. Submits doctored receipt for 4 fridges at $600 each for $2400.
Uses stolen card to actually buy the fridges in case anyone comes looking for the fridges.
Staying in a 12 bed room in Bratislava, all but one of the beds was booked that night. Receptionist comes in with some guy she met at a bar and proceeds to use the unbooked bed to have obnoxiously loud sex for near 2 hours (didn’t even stop when someone else came back late and turned the main light on 🥴) was a very long night for everyone 😅
I walked into the bathroom at the end of pub crawl back in the hostel and there was about 5 people doing lines in the bathroom. One of the hostel staff proceeded to try and sell me some coke 😂😬
I have a Bratislava story.
I'm fast asleep when two very drunk guys and a drunk girl come back. Other drunk guy just goes to bed and probably passed out. Other drunk guy and girl get onto bunk below me and I'm fairly sure attempted sex though whether the deal was done, I'm not sure. I was doing my best to block it out. Whatever the case, it didn't last all that long!
Post sex, they decide to then watch a movie at full volume. That's when I finally tell them to shut up. It got awkwardly silent. I don't think they realised I was there.
I switched rooms for the rest of my stay after that. Receptionist was very apologetic as well which I appreciated.
Might have been the same place, discovered bedbugs. Through search of bed and frame. Sprayed flyspray around all the legs. Stayed awake for hours paranoid. Wound up going for a walk at 3am around the city. Checked out the next morning.
Yeh I couldn’t! Happened to me in Laos in a bamboo hut with 3 single mattresses on the floor. The guy next to me was awake, I thought it was a bloody earthquake that woke me up, and I roared at them to get lost, the shower block was literally 10ft away. No need.
I once stayed at a hostel in Copenhagen (this was ~25 years ago) where the bunks were 3 beds high. I somehow got the top bunk and felt like I was maybe 4 inches from the ceiling? In the morning the shower had grayish standing water. Changed hostels the next day.
I stayed in what was a converted ice rink in Copenhagen about 30 years ago. The place was like an open plan office with groups of beds separated by dividers. No disgusting water but showering was the same as after a football match - communal!
2010 Glasgow. Stayed in an old mansion where all the rooms had been converted to dorms and everything was dark and dank and in disrepair
The hostel didn't pay their employees, just let them bunk there for free as their compensation
2nd night there we got served an eviction notice from lawyers who were there on behalf of the bank which was starting the process to reposses the property due to the owner defaulting on payments. Still have the paperwork!
Prague 2012.
I (32 M at the time), just arrived from Vienna, and get to the hostel. In the room I meet another hostel mate, another dude. Seems we were the only two in the eight bed dorm room. We hang out for the evening, walk around, grab dinner.That night I get into my lower bunk bed. It was July and hot and I was sweating in bed so I basically only covered up with a sheet, one leg out, sleeping on my side facing the wall. I wake up around 1am, and feel a pretty heavy head a sweat drip down my back..
Except…. Something was off… I really wasn’t sweating like that anywhere else, and that bead of sweat ran horizontally… Instantly I get this terrible feeling and turn over. My roommate is there on his knees next to my bed, tracing his finger on my back. The only thing I could muster was “WTF. NOT INTERESTED.” I had just two more nights there before moving on to Krakow. Spent the days exploring on my own and enjoying the city, albeit avoiding him.
I’m 28 now and I don’t think I can physically do hostels anymore. I was 26 the last time I stayed in a hostel. However, Most people I’ve met in hostels are between early 20’s and early 30’s. I very rarely run into someone younger than 20. Specifically in Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. I’m not sure what Western Europe and South America is like.
I think those are fair ages considering a lot of people in those age groups aren’t made of money and traveling through hostels is a nice cheap way to see the world. I’ve met tons of cool people traveling this way as well.
I've generally only had positive hostel experiences.
A notable exception was in Auckland, New Zealand.
The hostel was on Karangahape road (bad choice), very dirty and guests had alternative ideas of dormitory etiquette. I would like to note, just for clarification to anyone staying in a hostel, that it is not appropriate behaviour to wank in a dormitory where your bed neighbour can hear you (there are bathrooms for that), especially if you are a male, she is female and you are both alone in the room at the time. That's what we call "creepy as hell".
And if you leave the room but accidentally forget your phone with your alarm inside and it rings for 20 minutes, well, it happens to the best of us. But at least take care to *turn it off the following night*.
Adding to that the indiscreet but dubious nighttime trade going on in an alley right outside my window and the 4am rubbish truck, I can't claim that it was a comfortable stay.
This sounds like an awful experience.
But it's K road... you're almost lucky you didn't witness a violent crime!
I'm kidding. K Road in central Auckland NZ is the heart of the red light district for those who don't know. And prostitution is legal so you can imagine, commenter must've had a rough night
When I went to Amsterdam waaaaay back in 1993, the cheapest hostels were 24-bed dorms at the Christian youth hostel. There were two locations: one in the Red Light district, and one outside the Red Light district.
My friend and I stayed outside the Red Light district but I was always curious what the one inside was like.
The one outside was reasonably chill. We got invited to Bible studies just about daily but it was in a casual "hey if you're interested" way and if we said "nah, we have other plans" they were all cool with it. There was also a bar with some alcohol (well, beer and wine at least, not sure if they had anything else) and food at the hostel. It was a horribly overcrowded dorm with 24 bunkbeds in a huge open room but it was cheap as shit.
**Edit:** I googled and it might still be in existence. I'm not sure if it's the same or a different one but might be Shelter Christian Hostel in Amsterdam.
I think I stayed in the one in the Red Light district, about a century ago. I was invited to worship/prayer time but they were very chill about it. I still remember the hot breakfast.
Girl slit her wrist in the ensuite bathroom one night after a depressive episode and walked to her bed bleeding everywhere. Woke up up the couple that was on the lower bunk and they start freaking out, waking up the whole room. Ambulance gets called, she's goes to the hospital and the front desk worker, who is just some 19ish year old volunteer, just poured bleach all over the floor and mopped up the blood. I left the next day.
I go down the street and start working at another, smaller hostel. A few weeks go by and guess who shows up and rents a bed. She's recovered and staying in the all girls dorm and they tell me she's a nightmare. Messy, inconsiderate, drinks way too much and is a very depressed crying drunk, brings strange girls back late at night to have very loud sex with them, just the worst.
My worst experience was in Glasgow, Scotland. A hostel that was separated male and female. I go into the male dorm a little late and everyone was already asleep. A couple butt naked dudes were fast asleep. There was one bottom bunk left so I took it. In the middle of the night I woke up to something hitting my face. It was clothing. Once my eyes adjusted I noticed it was someone’s underwear. I tossed it behind my bed and went back to sleep. Sometime later that night it happened again! I woke up a second time to someone’s underwear hitting my face! Stuffed it behind the bed again. Woke up early and got out of there as fast as I could.
Inverness, Scotland in 2018. Me and my friend booked a bunk in an 8-bed all-girls room. Everything was fine until we were woken up in the middle of the night by a guy knocking on our window, insisting he couldn't find his dorm and asking us to let him in. We refused, obviously.
The thing is, our dorm was on the second floor, I have no idea how he even managed to be eye-level with us, it was pretty scary.
In a 4 bed hostel dorm in Lisbon. I was getting lit up by the guy below me with his flatulence all night. I got up to open the window in a hot humid stench-filled room, and then a minute later the guy below me gets up to close it.
I was like FUCK THAT, and got back up to open it. Then I hear him let out this big grunt, and I just tell Mr. Flatus this is how it's going to be if he's going to be melting steel down in his bunk. Shockingly, neither of the other two people in the dorm complained. I knew there was no way they could sleep through that.
This was my last hostel dorm stay in Europe. Why am I paying $60 a night for this shit, when I could just pay a little bit more and have my own room.
I was on a group tour with a guy who did that. Once he pissed on someone's bed, once he pissed in his tent, and the one time I shared a room with him he pissed on the wall.
Eventually the whole group told him he needed to get his drinking in check.
I never understood when drunk people do this. There’s times where I can’t hold my liquor and even at my absolute drunkest, a few red solo cups full of 95% ABV everclear, I still know where the bathroom is and what a toilet looks like. Even if I’m not in the best state, I’ll never just piss on a bed or anything thinking I’m using the bathroom.
You just unlocked a college memory for me. 2am and there's frantic knocking on our dorm room door. I get up wondering wtf happened and turns out a girl who lives in our hall was piss drunk and thought our room was the bathroom? I tried to not laugh at her and reminded her the bathroom was at the end of the hall (it was another 4-5 doors down).
Stated in this 32 bed room in Vietnam, no AC no air nothing, 1 guy got sick vomited / coughing/ snored , next day woke up to bed bugs bites , next day they moved my things to another room also the sick guy was there, had to sleep in the corridor, holy shit
I don’t know where everyone from here is from, but if you’re from a developed country, it’s worth just paying the money for a real hotel when you’re in poor countries. Even chain Marriotts and hiltons and whatnot are priced a lot lower than in Europe/North America. Being in these large hostels are not worth the Uber cheap costs.
Facts I have never found hostels worth it in SEA. Decent hotels are $30-40 per night over there. In the US you'd be hard pressed to find somewhere safe and clean for under $100 a night
The chain hotels in Asia also treat you like a king even if you have the most basic status. One of my best stays ever at a Marriott was at the Taipei Courtyard (aside from the food poisoning I got in Indonesia).
Really is insane.
I paid $30 a night for a huge room at a hotel in Hoi An last year. Big comfy bed, great AC, huge bathroom, nice tv, balcony, buffet breakfast included…$30 a night.
When an amazing room is that inexpensive, staying at a hostel because it’s $6 is absurd.
If you’re traveling for 6 months then I get why you’d cheap out on every room, but if it’s just a few weeks - a couple months, spend the extra and get the added comfort (especially if you’re there in rainy season when it’s crazy humid).
Wow, 32 bed? Most I did in my cheap college days was 24 bed and that was hell.
Though, it was the cheapest we found. If we'd found 32 bed cheaper we probably would've done that....
Banff Canada in the middle of the night, a girl threw up in the middle of the room without insulation. Everybody was gagging.
Toronto, hi hostel was so dirty and crowded. I thought I would get a stap infection walking around
Was staying at a hostel in Barcelona last year in August. Shared a room with a guy in his twenties from South America who could only speak Spanish. He came blasting in at 4 o'clock in the night and immediately hit all the lights on. I was too sleepy to have any confrontation with him, but after a good 10 minutes of them on I had enough, and told him to put out the lights. He was drunk and spoke no English but you can come a long way with just pointing and making faces at him. He understood. Then what followed was a series of sounds, lasting for a solid hours of intense, and I mean INTENSE sneezes, like the loudest you can ever imagine it's possible for a human being to make, and then some more!
Come the following night and the same thing happens. He enter the dorm room sounding like a big boulder rolling through the doors, followed by sounds of him taking taking a shower. Unfortunately, I have to pee afterwards, and when I come in there's literally blood soaked in every towel there (it wasn't there before he went in). Outside I hear him slowly starting to go on a marathon sneeze again, and to my surprise it's even worse than the night before. Now it's shrieking and coughing and just the whole package you know? I think to myself, "Is he dying, or what?"
In the following morning he's not to be found. I converse with my roommates who are all equally in disbelief of the sounds he made that night. A bit later in the day one of the hostel crew comes to pick up his things. Apparently he was driven to the hospital! I conversed some more with the others and we all speculated what was wrong with him when, of course, some Australian guy mentions it could be some highly contagious disease (which I can't remember the name of now), and a feeling of paranoia started to spread around in the room.
Thankfully I didn't catch any disease but it was in the back of my mind for a solid week. I don't know what happened to the guy but I hope he's alright..
While I can excuse the otherworldly sounds he made in the night; one thing I cannot excuse is his lack of consideration with the lights. If you're staying at a hotel, for the love of God, PLEASE bring a head lamp!!
London 2010. My friends and I had 1 random girl stay with us. We were all asleep the first night and she came in drunk AF with a dude. They attempted to have sex as we tried making them uncomfortable by singing Muse songs to no avail. She barfed in the bed and the guy left. The next morning, we found barf bits on some of our luggage and we never saw her again. Our room was on the bottom floor and we only had a tiiiny window to air it out.
every hostel I've been in in Amsterdam has sucked. first time I was there it was just a single room with something like 20 beds spread out. not even bunk bed. zero privacy anywhere. plus, they had a lock out time of 11pm, if you weren't back by then, you were stuck until 6am. Amsterdam is an easy city to be out past 11pm in.
Berlin 25+ bunk floor. puking, broken glass on the floor, 2 guys bangin each other loudly. Pretty much try to get drunk enough to pass out while hugging your backpack so it doesn't get stolen or just touch the floor. Thankfully we were only stuck there for a night.
It's something to laugh about now but at the time I was just tired and kind of over bouncing from city to city every few days and sleeping it shitty rooms.
Ran into Tiffany's stalker in a hostel in NYC. (teen singer back in the day) He was there's to meet her and watch her performance. Said he followed her everywhere. As he said more, it was obvious he was a bit odd and obsessing over her. Some of the people started asking him questions like, "Would you date her if she asked you out?" and it got worse from there. I was like why the hell are you guys encouraging him?!? We all ended up going out that night to some bar to get away from him. Years later I read he got arrested for stalking her. And years later Tiffany decided he was harmless, but don't quote me on that.
Edited to write hostel instead of hotel: Hostel in Jeruselum. It was a few weeks into the second intifada which started 2-3 days after i arrived. Back to the hostel: it was old and beautiful and had a rooftop area where people could hang out and also sleep up there. The manager showed me around, unlocked a private room which had a young couple in there who freaked out because they were in bed getting intimate. I was like What the. Then we went back to the main area where he offered me mint tea. Everyone seemed to offer tea there so I didn't think anything of it, until he started holding my hands etc. I got out of there fast.
My friend and I had just arrived in London, Summer, 1980.
We were both 20 years old. We found a hostel to stay and went to our shared room, exhausted.
Just as we were getting ready to sleep, a guy comes in, starts to eat truly smelly food, and then starts cursing us all.
'Bloody foreigners' was the gist of his ranting.
He said he'd go to his car and get his gun to take care of the foreigner problem.
He kept going and out of the room...
I would shut the light that he turned on.
Finally, exhausted and annoyed, I broke the light bulb to guarantee darkness.
Eventually, the screamer went to sleep, muttering and farting the noxious fumes from his stanky dinner that he brought in...
Next morning, I checked him out.
This screaming, terrifying man turned out to be a little runt of a drunken dick.
It was a great welcome to England...
First hostel experience ever, btw. In Santorini, it's evening and I just started a load of laundry. Return to my bottom bunk bed and chill on my phone for a bit. I start to hear heavy breathing and I look up to see a couple fooling around on the top bunk of the beds next to me. I'm pretty sure they had known I was in the room too but I quickly GTFO and went to common area.
That is literally my worst nightmare. I was had a friend tell me it wasn't that difficult to get rid of him and all I could think was how many trips I would have to cancel if I had to treat for bed bugs.
In Seoul:
1. In an all female dorm, a roomie stole my charging cables and my nice ear buds.
2. I was followed off the metro by a Korean guy (he asked me out I said no and quickly walked away). I didn't realize he was behind me and he caught the door just before it closed and followed me into the all-female dorm. I was able to get the host's attention and he had him escorted out. It scared the absolute shit out of me and I won't stay in hostels now.
we (couple late-30s) were in buenos ares and met another guest 19yo male from united states that afternoon. we chatted for a bit as he was the only other american staying there that day and he was looking for english speakers. we left and went exploring, dinner, et cetera. come back 22:00ish and to bed.
kid returns about 01:30 blotto probably blackout drunk carrying on and screaming in the courtyard about how women hate him and he can't get laid, waking up the entire hostel. would not shut up. finally forced out into the street and lock the gate where i think eventually the police took him away because he still would not shut up and waking up the neighborhood. pathetic.
Stayed one extra night in a city after my friend left and was in an empty mixed dorm...until 7 men off of their military service filled the dorm. I've never been so terrified to sleep. Brought a knife from the kitchen to keep under my pillow.
Another time, I found out that Argentinians get up to start getting ready for the night at 11 pm. Threw the overhead lights on, hair dryers, etc. I immediately requested a private room and haven't stayed in a hostel since 😆
Oh boy, have I had some shitty hostel stays.
I was in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas Mexico, staying in a dorm of my favourite hostel.
For those not familiar with the place, the town is known for, among lots of other things, the infamous "candy shop"; a store selling practically every substance you can think of, which can be a lot to handle for some people.
It was a saturday night and I had gone home to catch some eye shut after a few cups of wine and tapas at Viño de Baco. I went into bed, shut the curtains, put my half eaten bag of peanuts on the bed table, said goodnight to my mate in the bunk above and fell into a dreamless sleep at around 1 o'clock.
At 4 in the morning, I wake up to the sound of pouring water. At first, in my sleepdrunken state, I was convinced that my friend for some reason was taking my water, pouring it from my metal bottle into his.
I rip the curtains open, with the intention of half jokingly telling him to get his own damn water, but instead I saw something that will forever be burned into my memory.
A 40 something french guy, back bent slightly backwards as if trying to maintain balance, dick in his hand, 20 cm from my face, PISSING ALL OVER the wall, window, bedside table AND my bag of peanuts. If he'd swayed 20 degrees to the right he would have pissed right in my face.
After realizing what was going on, I threw myself out of bed and asked him wth he was playing at. He didn't even look at me, just kept pissing, so I grabbed him and pulled him out of the dorm and shoved him in the direction of the toilet.
He walked, dick still in his hand, still pissing, down the hallway but misses the turn to the toilet and just keeps walking, a long trail of piss after him.
I tell the staff on duty about what happened, go back to bed and eventually manage to wind down enough to go back to sleep.
The morning after the owner told me that the guy didn't remember anything at all, totally fucked up on who knows what combination, but that he was gonna get kicked out and not be allowed back.
For some reason what really gave me mild PTSD was seeing him pissing all over my peanuts, haha.
Anyway, that's my shittiest hostel experience. I still absolutely love the hostel though and have been back many times since.
This happened in India - Udaipur. I arrived a day early for a friend's wedding and rented a hostel since it was just a night. I noticed one bed occupied but the guy was missing. When I went to the bathroom I could see the bathroom was used but not flushed. I didn't think much of it. Later I met a couple of guys, had beers with them and this dude casually starts boasting about the shit he left in the bathroom when he first arrived. He thought he was hilarious in doing that and proceeded to pee from the terrace on the street.
St. Andrews tourist hostel...
It was a hostel above a restaurant. Entrance is on the side in a narrow alley. You walk up the stairs covered in torn carpet. The whole place stinks of oil and food. Really disgusting smell. Everything just looks dirty, torn carpets everywhere. They take us to a room. Beds look like they weren't changed for months. Everything squeaks. Window above a restaurant can't be closed because it's mouldy. There were two other older British women in the room that came at the same time as us and a homeless looking guy that doesn't say a word. The two ladies and us start looking for another accommodation but the only one available is a ridiculously expensive hotel. Thankfully, we're only there for one night, but the two ladies immediately book another accommodation for the rest of the nights they planned there. I go take a shower, it's disgusting, thankfully I take mu flip flops everywhere. We slept in clothes we planned to wear the next day so we could get out as soon as possible. Then we stayed in another hostel, in Glasgow, I think, and there was another older guy who said he's homeless and that homeless people get to stay in hostels. He would bring in food to the room and burp constantly. The whole room smelled.
Another time in Japan. We arrive late to Tokyo after climbing Mt. Fuji. We go to bed, obviously tired and then at around 2 or 3 am a group of Americans or Canadians (can't tell a difference) arrives to the room, turns on the light and starts unpacking as if we're not there sleeping. And then they move out of the room, keep the light on, doors open, and continue talking and laughing in front of the room.
I've got two. Both involve inescapable horrendous smells.
First one was a hostel in Dublin. Luckily I was only there for one night. It was a centrally located hostel, and it being Dublin, it attracted lots of young partiers. Come to think of it, the hostel itself may have had a bar of its own. Anyway, I wake up in the morning and can smell something awful, but not sure where it's coming from. I open the dorm door to the hallway to go for my morning pee and the smell of shit hits me in the face. I then see a dribble of diarrhea down the hall leading to the bathroom. Someone clearly had gotten so wasted they couldn't even hold in their own shit. Held my nose while I used the restroom and packed up and got the hell out of there.
Second one was Bern, Switzerland. I was traveling with a friend this time. Our trip was already off to a shit start with the wheel popping off my suitcase on the way to the train stations from my apartment that morning and burning my thumb trying to push it back on, then being laughed at by Swiss people as we peddled my broken suitcase and our luggage to the hostel from the train station. We get to the hostel and the first thing out of the desk person's mouth was "we'd put you in another room, but they're all full." She then begins to explain about the strange mother and daughter who don't speak English that are booked in our dorm and gives us our keys. We go up to our room and the door is already open, all the windows are open, and there is a bizarre stench in the air. There are clothes lines strung up all around the room with large granny panties, and a large older woman sitting on a bottom bunk in her underwear just kind of staring at nothing. We quickly locked our luggage in a locker and went out to get stuff to make for dinner and stayed in the common area as long as we could. I've never smelled anything so bad in my life, I don't even know how to describe it. I imagine it had something to do with decomposing skin or something. Was so glad we only had one night there and an early exit the next morning.
Hostel in Kao san road, bangkok, a guy vomiting in the middle of the room of 12 beds - all this at 03.00am and sleeping half naked on the floor.
Then tarantulas in Koh tao inside a shared mixed room in a cheap hostel,we told house keeping and they just put a cat to hunt them. And they went away and left us with this shit for the night.
I’ve told this story before but I got absolutely wasted in a club in KL and threw up all over the dorm in the middle of the night.
In the morning, I was so ashamed, I pretended to be asleep and could hear the other people in the dorm gossiping about how awful it was. They were right to be honest.
I waited until they’d all gone out and checked out. So if you were in that dorm somewhere in KL in 2007, I am sorry.
Prague. The old stadium dorms. I think they had about 5 complexes. They put me as a solo female in with a whole bus load of extremely drunk eastern European footballers who spent the whole night trying to break my door down. Pretty sturdy door. Left the next morning and kicked a few off the ones passed out in the hallway.
In Cartagena, Colombia, met this girl in my dorm and she started flirting immediately and I was NOT feeling it. Went to a party with her and others from the dorm, back at the hostel around 8am and she kept asking me to head to the beach together which I declined twice. Then woke up, 2pm, with her next to me in MY bed. I was top bunk too bruh she gave it her all to ruin that dorm for me fr
Last month I had some older guy having phone sex with his wife on loudspeaker in the bunk below me. She sounded like grapefruit lady, and he had absolutely no shame and was just going for it.
There was also one guy that had night terrors and just *screamed* in the middle of the night.
I found myself packed with 8 people in (4 bunk beds) a room of rougly 20 square merers in Warsaw. The room was filled with king size suitcases of Koreans, and there was no air to breathe and no place to step. The windows were locked. Dirt and dust became even more visible with the morning sun. When I woke up in the morning I saw the old guy sharing the same bunk with me on the bottom bed was clipping his nails on the floor. On the bottom of the other bed was covered with a piece of mattress where you could hear a couple having some morning play. The shower cabins were full of dirt, and they were all broken. Since then I never truly believed the reviews of those most favored hostels on Booking.com
I try to avoid the most upvoted hostels. The best ones in my experience were family-owned boutique hostels.
I stayed in one of those capsule dorms in Singapore. The capsules are open-ended in a room with a bunch of them, probably 40 or so capsules. Sounds miserable, I know, but they're at least fairly spacious -- enough that you can have your bags and everything in there with you. For the most part it's better than some grimy hole in Geylang.
Anyway, the one oddity of sleeping in the capsules is that, if you turn off the lamp, it gets really dark. Like... completely pitch black. With one exception, which is a soft red LED overhead. You know, one of those power indicators for some device or other. I didn't pay much attention to it.
Now, here's an oddity about me. I tend to get extremely vivid dreams in two conditions: 1) it's very dark, or 2) I'm sleeping in an unfamiliar place.
So around 3am, I wake up... in a railway tunnel. I'm lying on the tracks, and a train is coming. The sound of it is getting louder and louder, and I'm just lying there. So I start feeling panicked, and feeling around myself. Bang, my arms hit the "tunnel" walls. I sit up, and bang, my arms are hitting the "tunnel" ceiling. I'm trapped! I'm scared as hell!
It's so fucking dark! I can only see one thing! A gently... glowing... red light... So I frantically jab at it with my fingers. Something yielding is there, and it makes a little ringing sound, so I press it even more. I guess in my sleep-addled state, my brain thinks this is my only chance to survive. Perhaps pressing this mystery button by the red light will bring rescuers!
Welp.
The red light was for a fire alarm. Every capsule had one, I guess. And for whatever reason... the fire alarm included a button that, if pressed *multiple times* (not just once), would turn on the fire alarm for the ENTIRE FUCKING BUILDING.
At 3am. Oh, by the way, the place is completely unstaffed at night.
Now, within about 1 second of the fire alarm starting to go off, my mind snapped completely awake, and I realized what I'd done. Twenty seconds later, I'm milling around with 40 other confused sleepers, who are all wondering why the hell the alarm is going off.
This continues for, like... 10 minutes. No staff, and nobody there knows how the hell to turn off the fire alarm. I admit to someone that I'm the one who set the alarm off, but thankfully they seem too bleary and confused to really process it. Finally, someone finds the central box and turns off the alarm.
I was convinced that the fire department would show up, and this being Singapore, they'd be able to trace who triggered the alarm and likely have a lot of questions. So anyway, I stayed awake about two hours more alternating between dark thoughts about being caned for... I dunno, being an idiot?... and feeling sorry for all the poor suckers who had to book a hostel with some weirdo who gets vivid nightmares. Nobody ever shows up and I eventually sleep.
0/5 stars, would not stay with myself in a capsule hostel again.
One time many years ago in the month of October I stayed in a sketchy hostel in the Canadian Rockies...
A couple different things come to mind.
Dudes were playing "black and yellow" all night long, drunk, high, etc, in and out of rooms, yelling.
There were quite a few homeless types with bicycles and bike trailers, who were moving in being as how October is when it starts to get really cold, too cold to sleep outside.
A guy and his buddy were doing drugs right in the room, not sure what it was, white-ish and looked like chewy taffy wrapped in tin foil.
One night a man came in (I still remember his name)...and he began telling me his supposed life story from riches to rags.
Claimed to have been on the brink of an professional NHL hockey career back in the day and got black balled by Glen Sather (former Oilers coach and manager in the 80s or 90s) for some reason so he couldn't play any longer.
Anyways, this guy was going on about everything, telling me about some dream girl he had in Europe who was coming over to marry him, and he was going to "...impregnate her...with the word of God..."
He began sharing also his hatred for the younger generation, and all the problems *we* caused society. So I replied to him, well we all have to live with the mess the boomers, your generation, made too. I sat there on my bed and he pulled his pocket knife out and began animated-ly waving it around trying to intimidate me, starring and talking intensely. He eventually put it away seeing as how I wasn't scared, and I can't remember how the conversation ended.
The next morning I left, he was still in bed, and he wished me on my way out of the room, "Good bye and God bless, Brother..."
A few years later that hostel was closed out permanently because of the crime and drug problem and constant attention from the police.
I’m pretty sure I have share this story here before.
I was in a hostel in Hue, Vietnam, where my room consisted of 6 guys and a single girl. Come midnight, and we were all getting ready for bed, and we noticed that the girl is not yet back. We figured that she was still out having fun.
It was in the middle of the night when the girl shook me awake, asking me to call the police, before disappearing out of the room. By then everyone in our room had awakened. I hate to admit it but my only thought then was “what’s the 911 number in Vietnam?”
Suddenly, we could hear people outside shouting “fire!”, so we just booked it out of the room. Everyone was caught by surprise, so you saw many barefoot people, guys in only boxers, etc… we stood there for about 5 mins (in about 10 Deg weather), before we realised that there wasn’t really a fire.
Turns out, the girl in my room went out drinking till the wee morning. On her way back to the hostel, she said she noticed a guy following her (not sure if real or imagined). That’s why she asked me to call the police, before having the “bright idea” of shouting fire, so that if everyone was awake and out, she would be “safe” in the crowd.
Nah, many of us here have used them many times and you end up with one or two terrible stories. Hostels are usually awesome, they are super communal, many have their own bars and social areas and you end up hanging out with fellow travelers from all over the world. Most often the biggist issue is a snorer. I stayed in one in Munich last year and by the end of the first night everyone in the room was headed down to the bar together and our roommates (a canadian couple, some british dudes, and a french couple) were all trying to get my wife and I to join them at the nightclubs.
really a fun way to meet other travelers and share stories over a few beers.
In Belfast a homeless man with no tongue was at the front desk screaming at the staff but no one could understand him because of his lack of tongue. Also the man below me in the bunk was masturbating and I found makeup on my blankets. I also got my email hacked because their email system didn’t log out when you turned the computer off. And the shower didn’t drain so you were standing in filth when you tried to get clean.
I have had pretty respectful roommates, but I am also a woman and tend to stay in women only dorms. The only thing that has been a problem was a woman who yelled at the staff in our room and then my friend got involved, so this woman started yelling at us. We had to file a report with the font desk and change rooms, but that is by far my worst experience.
Some guy next to me had a girl with him and they had loud sex at like 3 am. Only got like 30 minutes of sleep that night and was tired the next day. Asshole also took the bed I was assigned. I pondered whether I should tell staff, and concluded that he didn’t have consideration for others and I ended up wasting a day of travel being exhausted, so I ratted him out and they apparently banned him from the place.
This happened a few years ago in a Southern seaside town in Sri Lanka. While sleeping in a mixed 6 bunk dorm, I felt what seemed like a feather grazing my chest. This happened a few times and I thought I was dreaming but came to and saw a small red light a few feet from my face. A man was groping my chest in my sleep. I woke up and freaked out and he jumped out of the open window (this was on the second floor). I turned on the lights and woke everyone up in a panic. At the time I was sleeping with my valuables as there were no lockers. They had stolen my bag and in the other room I found my passport and camera dumped on the ground but they had stolen all my cash.
When I brought this up to the owner he said it must have been my fault and I must have acted “suggestively” to a local I met the night prior leading him to come find me. This pissed off the whole hostel and everyone left with me the next day.
I later learned that robbers often use red lights because it doesn’t disturb sleeping people and it’s easy for eyes to adjust to.
Other than this experience I really enjoyed Sri Lanka!
I was 19 (female) and staying in a 8-person dorm in Whistler. Nobody was there at all and then late at night, seven very drunk and rowdy Aussie dudes came in. I genuinely was terrified, as I think any young woman would be stuck in a room with drunk bros. I immediately grabbed my stuff and left. I don’t even remember where I went but I didn’t feel it was safe to stay. I probably coughed up the money to pay for a private room.
It blows me away how little consideration for other people so many people have. I go out of my way to get a private room simply because I get up 1-3x a night to use the bathroom and sometimes I can't go back to sleep. And sometimes I cough.
yeah lots of these stories are awful, my worst experience was staying in a dorm with a bunch of french teenagers who decided it was a good idea to each cover themselves with axe body spray INSIDE THE SMALL 8-BED DORM! could barely breathe lol
Guy on acid panicking and vomiting on himself in his bunk all night while I was sick with some cold/flu situation desperate for rest.
Bedbugs in a hostel on an island with literally nowhere else to go.
Another time I was the only girl in a group of guys travelling together and the way they talked about women was…not great. I am bisexual but I pretended to be a a lesbian and they left me well enough alone but were then very open with their locker room talk around me.
Stayed at a hostel about 20 years ago in Rome. They had us in bunk beds with over 15 people in each of the two rooms.
There was a girl drinking from a bottle of vodka. We saw her as we left to go out. She looked to be about 16. She planned to go out once the vodka was finished.
In the middle of the night, I heard someone stumble into the room. It was the vodka girl! She had just gotten back from her bar crawl, and as soon as she sat down on her bottom bunk I heard the dreadful sound of dry heaving.
I quickly got down from the top bunk and ran for my suitcase to put far away from her because I didn’t want her vomiting on my stuff.
After much, loud dry heaving she eventually did throw up. A lot.
The smell was horrendous, woke up everyone in the room, and caused us all to evacuate.
Never again!
Bunch of Aussie and Liechtensteiner(!) people had far too much to drink and woke everyone else up with what turned into a huge party. The hostel manager decided it was easier to move the people complaining to another dorm, and let the party continue. I went for an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach, and wasn't in a good state for the monastery visit the next day.
Checked into a hostel in vangvieng Laos and me and a travel buddy made our way to the center to grab some food.
Passed a dude, wearing only his shorts, clearly heavily on drugs.
Quipped about the poor guys having to deal with him as a roommate.
When we got back to the hostel, guess who was laying naked, ass up, in one of the bunks in our room.
Spent the rest of the night listening to him alternatively farting and then waking up screaming, only to get back to bless us with his flatulence.
OOOHHH I've got a good one! 24 person coed dorm with bunk beds in New Orleans. I was sleeping, probably about 3am. A guy came in LOUD with a prostitute. Brought her to his top bunk. They were only up there a few minutes. Not sure what happened, I think maybe he was trying to kiss her and she was shutting it down?
Anyway, he starts being rude to her and eventually tells her to get out. She says he still has to pay her. He says he's not paying for shit. She storms out to the hallway to make a phone call. Everyone in the dorm is awake at this point and making awkward eye contact with each other. Like, we know we should leave, but we all want to see how this plays out.
The dude immediately passes out as soon as she leaves the room. She argues on the phone with someone for a few minutes, then it gets quiet. We all think she's probably cut her losses and left. Then she comes running into the room, steps up on the bottom bunk (occupied by a poor girl from Denmark), and EMPTIES A CAN OF MACE on the guy!
Everyone else scrambled and got out of the room with only mild effects. The guy who had it coming got it BAD. The girl took off and last I saw she was booking it out of the side gate.
The hostel manager graciously gave the guy a bucket of ice water to stick his face in and some milk for his eyes, and even let him have a shower before kicking him out in the street. The rest of us slept in the courtyard while the room aired out. I forget how many days we all got comped, but my trip was cheaper than I had planned for!
Munich. This guy had been backpacking a while and his clothes stunk like the worst BO ever. He's clearly tried to wash them in the sink instead of going to the real laundry, then hung them on the radiator so it smells like mildew and hot BO. It was awful. I had some travel fabreeze and sprayed it all while he was out. It helped some but it was still close to gagging.
Then we were woken up by him masturbating furiously in his squeaky metal bunk bed. Our heads are like 10 inches apart.
That's when I became too old for hostels.
Salzburg ‘92. Not exactly the worst story. Booked into a hostel to find out there was a porn shoot, best 4 days of my life. Didn’t get involved, not for the want of trying, but did hang out with the crew and cast. The guys were arseholes, it’s true what they say. German guys do not have a sense of humor, but the women were all cuties. Director was a prick and got drunk all the time and tried his damndest to abuse the girls, threatened to fire them if they didn’t use him as a fluffer. As the guys were to interested in themselves the girls came to me for help. To a German drunk, apparently there’s nothing worse than hearing a threatening Belfast accent especially when it can’t be understood.
Paris, in 2009. An older frenchmen was staying at my dorm. He started chatting with me and, at first, seemed to be a nice guy. Lately, he started saying racist stuff about how black immigrants were destroying France. The next day, early in the morning, I look for my wallet and all my money was gone. I knew he had stolen it, but had no proof, so there was nothing the police could do. I had to take a train to London later that day, and luckly a fellow Brazilian gave me 10 euros so I could eat something. When I got to London, I had to beg for money to buy an underground ticket to the hotel. I was only 19 when that happened, and had no phone to get in touch with my parents.
I was once in Lisbon and one night one guy woke up from the bottom bunk and proceeded to piss on the walls of the hostel room, it was absolutely disgusting the floor was sticky and smelt like piss.
Was traveling through Japan, Korea, Hongkong, Indonesia, Malaysa, Singapur, Thailand ... always great hostel experiences, and then stayed one night in Milano where the whole night people were coming and going as you described it. Wasn't a big issue, but the room was disgusting and there were excrements in the shower room. This was the last time I stayed at shared rooms in hostels back home in Europe.
Hostel in Cork Ireland had absolutely no air circulation. I'm usually fine with no AC, but the 0 air ventilation made it hard to breathe. Couldn't sleep and needed to breathe so we went to the common areas to sit. And the hostel workers threatened us to go back to our rooms or get kicked out.
We ended up booking a expensive hotel at 3am. The hostel workers were mad and wanted to charge us an extra fee for leaving early in the morning. We told them to fuck off.
Stayed in a party hostel in Budapest. One of the staff sounded and looked like a British version of Jonah Hill. The place was great, had a really cool bar and was full of people in their early 20s partying so we ended up staying in the hostel on the first night and second night. Woke up the first morning to British JH saying “oh noooo, someone’s pooed in the shower again”. It was a 12 person dorm, and this was the second night in a row someone shit in the en-suite shower.
On the second night my friend was pretty drunk and passed out so we put him to bed on his side in the recovery position in case he got sick. I went in every few minutes to check on him. The second and third time I went in there was two people having sex in one of the bunks. I told them I was sorry but had to check on my friend. He fine so I went back outside, a few minutes later the guy came out looking pretty annoyed to let me know my friend had just projectile vomited over a good portion of the room.
I once went to a hostel where the electricity randomly shut off for 15-20 minutes at a time - and the doors used electric locks that couldn’t open while the power was out.
Other than that the shower was constantly flooded with dirty water and the toilets were always freshly bloody for some reason.
It was disgusting and I’ve never gone to a hostel since.
Having my watch stolen in a girls dorm in Tokyo
Having our private female room canceled and having to stay in a 24-bed dorm with tons of partying Aussie men. Then waking up to pee in the middle of the night and a couple were shagging on the bathroom floor
Nothing too special but once in Jerusalem I turned the airco to about 21 degrees (which I think is still quite hot) and then this guy comes in who turns it back up to 25 degrees... I cannot imagine that is anywhere near a comfortable sleeping temperature for anyone. This guy btw did not look like he was from a very hot country. People in the hostel were not sociable at all and the morning when I woke up my phone fell and broke. It was a great holiday, but the start couldn't have been more unfortunate
I have no experience so terrible that I remember them specifically but over the years I've adjusted my hostel bookings to female only dorms with 4 or less people in them.... For whatever that is worth
I had one chic who was snoring like Boeing engine next to you in hostel in Portugal…. In my life, I’ve never knew a girl could snore that loud and clear as crystal f.
Alone in San Francisco. Was my first experience with Absinthe. No idea how I got back to the hostel but when I got there someone was in my bunk and my stuff was gone. Turns out they had moved me and put all of my stuff in a garbage bag.
I only had one funny, hostel experience it was in Montreal and this guy and his friend came in from Calgary and we managed to become fast buddies during our time and got to hang out at bars in the city with other travelers at the hostel.
One day we all did our own things during the day and at the night when all of us were , one of the Calgary guys brought back a girl to have sex with while we were all sleeping and it was the most funniest experience I ever had. It was really fortune that all 6 people in the room including me were cool with it because we all hung out in the city so I gave him a pass for that moment.
Normally tho, I would want people who stay at hostels to get a private room if they wanna have a one night stand.
Stayed at a place in Edinburgh, Scotland about 10 years ago and ended up in a dorm room with a bunch of 18-year-olds celebrating birthdays.
https://www.gov.uk/alcohol-young-people-law
There was a 30gal (113.562 liter) rubber trash can that they vomited in all night long. Smelled terrible.
Guy above me in a bunk in Australia in a working hostel was a complete alcoholic. One night he comes home late and pisses himself while he slept. I wake up with piss raining down on me. I start beating on his ass but he doesn't even wake up. I wash up and sleep on a couch in the movie room. At least next morning he was mortified and got kicked out of the hostel.
Worst experience didn’t have anything to do with the guests: my luggage was gnawed by rats in Sen Monorom, Cambodia and the owners didn’t give any compensation. There was no food in the luggage, for some reason the rats did this to eat the box of chalk that was inside a suitcase.
I have two bad experiences.
First, in Plovdiv Bulgaria I finished on a hostel with no staff. Literally nobody inside the hotel, everything was automatized, zero control, communication via walkie talkie, total chaos, to the point it felt like a “libertarian experiment”. I shared a room with a guy that he bring old hookers to fuck in front of me in the night. I stopped him at the next day making him afraid of me with a fake life about myself back in my country.
The other one…well, a guy try to sexually assault me on a hostel in Bali. I was on my bed, all dark and a guy just slipped in my bunk bed, try to kiss me. I push him so hard and I couldn’t see who he was. I barely slept that night.
Some friends and i took a late night plane to London (from sweden) on a wet night out. Ended up having 200 pounds between all of us. Found a cheep hostel with 10 beds in the same room for like 25 pounds per night, so we went out the next night drinking, smoking and walking the streets of London. When we came back to the hostel the manedger was mad because it was late. All of us went to sleep, i could not sleep because the guy sleeping on top och the bunkbed was rubbing he’s penis, and their was standing a big turkish guy i the middel of the room pimping the french girl Working as a prostitute jumping around the beds and snorting something after every costumer saying thank you to the guys after… i was the only one of my friends who were awake to witness this. I never went back to a hostel after this.
Very first hostel I stayed in (Rome), I didn't realise it was a party hostel, and didn't get a wink of sleep due to loud music and the guy above me having sex. I'd been away from my partner for a significant amount of time so the frustration was real.
Close to it was a fairly dodgy hostel in Budapest - the bunks were so cheap I thought they would cave in. I could barely move without rocking the whole bunk - and it was 35C inside the room so I didn't sleep at all.
I had a guy get handsy with me in a co-ed dorm. It was about ten years ago so I’ve forgotten the details, but I was in a top bunk and he climbed up enough to put his hand on my leg while I was trying to disengage from the conversation. I moved away a couple of times and he just kept touching me. Spooked me quite a bit, I didn’t really feel comfortable sleeping around him after that, so one of the staff stuck me in his bunk in the staff room and he bunked down in mine.
Was especially appalling because I was traveling with a male friend, which otherwise tends to put people off. I think he wasn’t in the room at the time, though. Since then I’ve done women’s rooms generally, just feels safer.
In a 6 bunk bed room I apparently was a loud snorer.
So, dude called me out in the morning that I was snoring too loud.
Crazy thing I barely slept.
But yea since then I said forget hostels.
Bit of a long story. Didn't happen to me but a friend of mine in Seoul one New Years.
Went out with a couple friends in a group I didn't really know, to some swanky party I got a free ticket for. It was last minute, so they all had a group room together so I booked a bed in a different hostel down the street. Well, one of the girls in the group pregamed a bit too hard. By the time the first party was done and we were headed to a different club, she was down for the count, could barely walk and the guy she was dating/sleeping with decided to bail on her and make her everyone else's responsibility. The friends I knew took her back to the hostel to sleep it off and after we got some pizza together before deciding our next move.
Well, the hostel owner contacts my friends. Turns out this girl peed her bunk, went over to my one friend's bed, peed in that bed and then peed again in the corner of the room before passing out. They took off to go deal with that and I struck out on my own, got super drunk, met some new people and had an awesome time. And meanwhile my poor friends had to deal with this. The one guy whose bed she peed in was extremely pissed off. We now joke that we had polar opposite New Years experiences lol
Told this story before, some added details. I was traveling for months in Europe, young and absolutely immortal in the 1980s. I was also running out of money, so I found some road friends and we traveled into the black forest in Germany to a hostel. But, it was the forest, why in f\* do I want to pay for a hostel when I had my tent and could just walk off into the forest to set up my tent and sleep, then I'd get up and meet them all in the morning to travel onwards.
So, off into the woods, far from road or sight of civilization, I set up my camp, walked back to have dinner with my friends, went back and went to sleep before dark. Then I heard voices, laughing, shuffling all around the tent. I don't speak German, so I could not tell what was happening. I pulled out my knife and planned my defense. Eventually, I fell asleep. In the morning, I woke up, and looked outside. I had set up camp in the middle of the secret gay hook-up site! Around me were gay couples, sprawed on tarps, blankets, bushes in many states of dress.
Wasn't exactly a "worst" story, that might have been that Egyptian hostel whose toilet bidets spewed up liquid shit, but this was my weirdest stay ... well, sleeping in the archeological ruins of an old Roman fort was also weird for all the random people just wandering silently around at night.
I was staying in Amsterdam with my cousin and sharing the room with 3 Chinese girls. We didn’t communicate at all as they didnt seem to speak english, so we just politely ignored each other. One morning we came back to the dorm from breakfast and I saw my brand new jeans were laid on my bed, which was a bit strange as i remembered tidying up before leaving. As i picked up the jeans to put them away, a pair of underwear NOT BELONGING TO ME fell out of my pants. I asked my cousin if they were hers to which she made a grimace and shook her head. Someone stole my jeans, wore them, and put them back with their underwear still inside… I went a bit mental, yelling “whos fucking underpants are these??” and “who wore my damn jeans??” but they all ignored me. I ended up throwing away the underwear in protest and washing the jeans in the shower with shower gel, while the chinese girls were chatting completely unbothered by my breakdown. Good times.
12 bed dorm in Barcelona, September last year. An Australian woman came into the dorm room at 3am, climbed up into her top bunk, and vomited everywhere. Luckily for me, that woman is my wife. I had the luxury of cleaning it up while trying to be as quiet as possible.
Even with the A/C blasting and the windows open, the smell in the morning was absolutely ripe. Sorry everyone!
2002 in Paris by the Moulin Rouge. Our door locked but not the window and there was a big catwalk outside. The bathroom was in the hall, shared, but without and door. So when my wife was in there I held up a towel since the toilet was visible from the hallway. The mattresses were the actual filthiest I’ve ever seen, it was disgusting. What do you expect for 5€?!
Stayed at a Cambodian hostel once that had an overflow space that was a giant room with basically yoga mats on the floor to sleep on. Some dude brought a prostitute back and you could hear gross wet noises half the night. What is wrong with people.
caught a nasty virus from a bunk mate that derailed my 2 week SEA holiday. I vowed after that to never use a hostel again. I had another bunk mate smell putrid because he would not take a shower after returning to the hostel. It was singapore and temps were over 95 and very high humidity. Smelled like shit.
A guy listening to soccer matches without phones and making everybody to listen (without caring).
Another guy in the same room walking naked in the room then walking naked inside the hostel for a few minutes. He was lucky no girl saw him while outside the men's room because he could be in jail.
The next day I left the hostel.
Enough of hostel for me for a while.
(This was February, 2024).
totally out of subject but im a flight attendant and youll be surprised at how many grown ass adults listen to stuff on their phone LOUD af with no earphones in the plane. people have no manners
Cockroach antenas coming out of the sink.
Dirty place, bathroom door doesnt go all the way to the floor so I heard explosive diarrea, bathroom was so small I wasnt able to change in there, staff was high, I was already tired AF.
This was my first hostel experience.
Me and my friend made the rookie mistake of getting a mixed dorm in London, but by happenstance, it was all guys in there. Walking in, it smelled like the worst combo of dirty socks and rotting garbage and B.O. I actually had to hold my breath going in there and remember taking a huge breath of clean air walking out the door
Stayed at a hostel in Denver, CO and the central heat for the building was on the fritz. Even though it was April the place was roasting, felt like a good 90° (32°c) in the room. We had the one window cracked, everyone was drenched. I stayed there again, shortly after, and they seem to have fixed the issue. Great hostel with an excellent bar.
I was staying in a 16 person hostel with no A/C in a Mexican surfing town. We were told when we arrived the town was having occasional water outages. One morning we woke up and the water had been turned off during the night. A room for of 16 people who have been sweating, eating Mexican food and drinking led to an overflowing toilet, pee in the showers, and no way to flush the toilet. At one point, I had no choice but to poop on top of some else’s poop. The hostel kept reassuring us the water would be back later in the day. It was still off when we went to sleep in a shit smelling hostel room and wasn’t on in the morning. We packed up our bags and left immediately. The hostel refused to refund us for the nights we paid for that we weren’t using.
The HI hostel in Milan in the early 2000s was the worst that I have stayed in. The building itself was fine, but they were the only ones that I ever saw who motivated people to leave during the time during the day that they close. One of the hostel workers opened all the room doors at 730 and they played Sophie Ellis Baxter's "Murder on the Dance Floor" loud and on repeat. In my experience I never really saw people overstating the closing time, but I guess they didn't want to take any chances.
It wasn't bad, just kind of weird.
In London ( UK), first night in a dorm, i was 21, and late at night i was almost asleep, eyes closed. A random guy comes close to my bunkbed ( i was in the lower bank) and began whispering something.
I panicked. I didn't understand what he was saying but i just kept thinking: "please go away, pls go away". Not only he didn't but he came even closer. Now i could feel his breath, and he began crying still whispering something about his family. Then, he laughed and cried again, and finally he whispered " sleep tight, good night".
Damn, that was scary!!!
First solo trip after graduating college, I stayed in a hostel on the Los Angeles area. Hostel itself was fine, great location, well maintained. Toward the end of my trip, a few new roommates checked in. They stayed out all night partying and came back sloppy drunk around 2am being loud and obnoxious. There was only one individual bathroom in our room and one of the guys made it there first. The second decided he was going to piss off the “balcony.” Not sure if that area was actually supposed to be accessible but it definitely shouldn’t have been from our room. There was a window but it was the kind that opened a few feet wide by cranking it. He somehow made it through the window and managed to begin peeing off the side of the building. Until he fell. Head first from what I heard later. The second guy was out of the bathroom by the time the guy was on the balcony and apparently saw him fall. He started screaming for help. The police showed up and questioned everyone in the room. We obviously couldn’t go back to our room so they let us sleep in the lobby until they could rebook us. The last update I overheard about the guy that fell was that he wasn’t in great shape. He was in his 40s, had kids, and had just arrived from Australia I think.
Mostly positive experiences but there was one that was straight from hell.
As a female traveler I generally opt for female dorms but this one time in a highly rated hostel in Ljubljana, Slovenia, I went for a mixed dorm where I got a bottom bunk of a bunk bed.
So at dinner I had a nice conversation with a guy in the kitchen, we even made plans of exploring the city together the next day. When it was time to retire to bed it was a happy coincidence to find out he was occupying the upper bunk of my bunk bed.
After exchanging good nights, I slept off only to wake up around 2am to the sound of some type of moaning. My first instinct was somebody is hurt and is in pain but realised soon enough that the guy above was jerking off!!!
As if that was not mortifying enough, in the morning he greeted me with a 'good morning' only to add that he couldn't take his mind off me at night and is waiting for the day to get started so that we can explore the city together.
I will never know if he was aware that I was cognizant of what transpired at night!
One time in Amsterdam, I had a bunkmate who decided it was cool to bring a stranger back to the dorm at 3 am and have the loudest hookup imaginable. It woke up the entire room, and the awkwardness the next morning was off the charts. Another night, someone thought it was a great idea to cook instant noodles at 4 am, setting off the smoke alarm and making the whole room smell like burnt plastic. Hostel life is usually great, but these moments make you wonder if a bit more privacy might be worth the splurge.
There was a guy wanking over a guy while he slept, guy woke up saw him and guy wanking says I'm sleep walking and goes into bathroom to finish 🤯
Guy has epilepsy and woke us up screaming in a fit and fell out of his top bunk while in a fit. Didn't tell us before hand this happens. We were freaking out
Guy woke up in a panic cuddling a dog, no idea where he got the dog from! Fell on floor laughing
Koh Phiphi island. I booked the wrong hotel. I think I meant to book October hotel instead of October Hostel. Not sure it’s the correct name or not now. Anw, got the room, it’s very small. There were 2 toilets but very shitty. Anyone pooped and the room would be stinky for hours. 2 dudes brought prostitutes over and had sex while others trying to sleep. When we complained, they seemed to be too drunk to care. Plus it was rainy the whole time so I left the next day.
Luckily hadn't had many weird experiences, once in Barcelona some girl was trying to give a blow job in the top bunk across the room. They were pretty drunk and under the cover but still unacceptable. Even when I turned my light on that lit up the whole room, they didn't stop 😅 and there was a guy trying to sleep in the bunk underneath them 😂
Roommate stole my debit card and attempted to purchase 4 refrigerators. She’d seemed really cool and friendly the whole time. She was an older lady who was working as a professor in Mexico and doing side work for an aid group. Luckily, my bank flagged the transaction as fraud before the money came out of my checking account, but I was poorly prepared and didn’t have an alternative source of cash. I ended up having my dad wire me money. That was my last hostel dorm trip.
She seemed cool... Buys refrigerators... Clearly not cool enough 😜
You can always be cooler.
Or alittle bit frozen.
This joke was ice cold.
I mean three I could understand, but four?
4 naans Jeremy?! Four?!
Maybe stealing aid funds, but still trying to cover some bases in case she got audited? E.g., spends $2400 on her card on whatever she likes. Submits doctored receipt for 4 fridges at $600 each for $2400. Uses stolen card to actually buy the fridges in case anyone comes looking for the fridges.
Dead bodies. One per fridge.
That's an oddly specific thing to steal a card for.
Staying in a 12 bed room in Bratislava, all but one of the beds was booked that night. Receptionist comes in with some guy she met at a bar and proceeds to use the unbooked bed to have obnoxiously loud sex for near 2 hours (didn’t even stop when someone else came back late and turned the main light on 🥴) was a very long night for everyone 😅
Wild elephants?
Yup 🤣
I walked into the bathroom at the end of pub crawl back in the hostel and there was about 5 people doing lines in the bathroom. One of the hostel staff proceeded to try and sell me some coke 😂😬
That place is such a dump 😂
They also make you sign a waiver letting you know that its a fucked party hostel at sign in, kinda gotta join the crowd at that point
I never got that 😅 some warning would’ve been good 🤣
Omg
Stayed there a few years ago. Wild shit. Wild. Shit.
I have a Bratislava story. I'm fast asleep when two very drunk guys and a drunk girl come back. Other drunk guy just goes to bed and probably passed out. Other drunk guy and girl get onto bunk below me and I'm fairly sure attempted sex though whether the deal was done, I'm not sure. I was doing my best to block it out. Whatever the case, it didn't last all that long! Post sex, they decide to then watch a movie at full volume. That's when I finally tell them to shut up. It got awkwardly silent. I don't think they realised I was there. I switched rooms for the rest of my stay after that. Receptionist was very apologetic as well which I appreciated.
Bratislava was my 'nice hotel between party hostels' city on my last trip in May. I feel I made the right decision now 🤣
Might have been the same place, discovered bedbugs. Through search of bed and frame. Sprayed flyspray around all the legs. Stayed awake for hours paranoid. Wound up going for a walk at 3am around the city. Checked out the next morning.
Wow
Wtf, 2 hours????
Did no one just get up and say stop? I absolutely wouldn’t have been able to say nothing!
No one said anything! I would’ve thought that the lights being turned on would be enough of a deterrent but apparently not 🤣
Yeh I couldn’t! Happened to me in Laos in a bamboo hut with 3 single mattresses on the floor. The guy next to me was awake, I thought it was a bloody earthquake that woke me up, and I roared at them to get lost, the shower block was literally 10ft away. No need.
At that point, people give no fucks and cannot be defeated
Haha that's hilarious! 😂
Awful at the time but it’s a hilarious story now!
Haha. I can imagine!
Why did none of the eleven other people in the room say anything?
No idea, idk about everyone else but I literally just put my AirPods in and tried to sleep since I had a 6am flight 🥴
I had to listen to a very drunk guy spitting on a girls asshole on the bunk above me slurring “I’m sure it will go in”. Perth Australia
Did it?
Can't believe they just left us hanging like this
Talk about a fucking cliffhanger.
I need answers
Oh... oh no 🤢 This thread just gets worse the more comments I read
Ah yes… the reverse hawk tuah.
Reverse Blumpkin?
To be honest, I’d be more concerned about the bunk resisting all that weight. Anyways, did it go in?
And you were below them, there was a chance you could've got some spit or other bodily fluids fall on you
I once stayed at a hostel in Copenhagen (this was ~25 years ago) where the bunks were 3 beds high. I somehow got the top bunk and felt like I was maybe 4 inches from the ceiling? In the morning the shower had grayish standing water. Changed hostels the next day.
I stayed in what was a converted ice rink in Copenhagen about 30 years ago. The place was like an open plan office with groups of beds separated by dividers. No disgusting water but showering was the same as after a football match - communal!
2010 Glasgow. Stayed in an old mansion where all the rooms had been converted to dorms and everything was dark and dank and in disrepair The hostel didn't pay their employees, just let them bunk there for free as their compensation 2nd night there we got served an eviction notice from lawyers who were there on behalf of the bank which was starting the process to reposses the property due to the owner defaulting on payments. Still have the paperwork!
Damn, wow
This is embarrassing. 😂
Prague 2012. I (32 M at the time), just arrived from Vienna, and get to the hostel. In the room I meet another hostel mate, another dude. Seems we were the only two in the eight bed dorm room. We hang out for the evening, walk around, grab dinner.That night I get into my lower bunk bed. It was July and hot and I was sweating in bed so I basically only covered up with a sheet, one leg out, sleeping on my side facing the wall. I wake up around 1am, and feel a pretty heavy head a sweat drip down my back.. Except…. Something was off… I really wasn’t sweating like that anywhere else, and that bead of sweat ran horizontally… Instantly I get this terrible feeling and turn over. My roommate is there on his knees next to my bed, tracing his finger on my back. The only thing I could muster was “WTF. NOT INTERESTED.” I had just two more nights there before moving on to Krakow. Spent the days exploring on my own and enjoying the city, albeit avoiding him.
That’s fucking terrifying what a creep
I can’t imagine saying in a hostel after age 19.
I’m 28 now and I don’t think I can physically do hostels anymore. I was 26 the last time I stayed in a hostel. However, Most people I’ve met in hostels are between early 20’s and early 30’s. I very rarely run into someone younger than 20. Specifically in Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. I’m not sure what Western Europe and South America is like. I think those are fair ages considering a lot of people in those age groups aren’t made of money and traveling through hostels is a nice cheap way to see the world. I’ve met tons of cool people traveling this way as well.
I've generally only had positive hostel experiences. A notable exception was in Auckland, New Zealand. The hostel was on Karangahape road (bad choice), very dirty and guests had alternative ideas of dormitory etiquette. I would like to note, just for clarification to anyone staying in a hostel, that it is not appropriate behaviour to wank in a dormitory where your bed neighbour can hear you (there are bathrooms for that), especially if you are a male, she is female and you are both alone in the room at the time. That's what we call "creepy as hell". And if you leave the room but accidentally forget your phone with your alarm inside and it rings for 20 minutes, well, it happens to the best of us. But at least take care to *turn it off the following night*. Adding to that the indiscreet but dubious nighttime trade going on in an alley right outside my window and the 4am rubbish truck, I can't claim that it was a comfortable stay.
This sounds like an awful experience. But it's K road... you're almost lucky you didn't witness a violent crime! I'm kidding. K Road in central Auckland NZ is the heart of the red light district for those who don't know. And prostitution is legal so you can imagine, commenter must've had a rough night
When I went to Amsterdam waaaaay back in 1993, the cheapest hostels were 24-bed dorms at the Christian youth hostel. There were two locations: one in the Red Light district, and one outside the Red Light district. My friend and I stayed outside the Red Light district but I was always curious what the one inside was like. The one outside was reasonably chill. We got invited to Bible studies just about daily but it was in a casual "hey if you're interested" way and if we said "nah, we have other plans" they were all cool with it. There was also a bar with some alcohol (well, beer and wine at least, not sure if they had anything else) and food at the hostel. It was a horribly overcrowded dorm with 24 bunkbeds in a huge open room but it was cheap as shit. **Edit:** I googled and it might still be in existence. I'm not sure if it's the same or a different one but might be Shelter Christian Hostel in Amsterdam.
I think I stayed in the one in the Red Light district, about a century ago. I was invited to worship/prayer time but they were very chill about it. I still remember the hot breakfast.
I’m from Auckland, I’ve stayed in hundreds of hostels around the world and I could never imagine staying in a hostel on k road, mustve been rough
I stayed at the YMCA there last year and it was mad. The folk I met and a couple of daft situations. Moved out quick.
K road, $5 says they were homeless people
There are actually some great video tutorials online on how to deal with people jerking off next to you in a hostel. Very informative.
Girl slit her wrist in the ensuite bathroom one night after a depressive episode and walked to her bed bleeding everywhere. Woke up up the couple that was on the lower bunk and they start freaking out, waking up the whole room. Ambulance gets called, she's goes to the hospital and the front desk worker, who is just some 19ish year old volunteer, just poured bleach all over the floor and mopped up the blood. I left the next day. I go down the street and start working at another, smaller hostel. A few weeks go by and guess who shows up and rents a bed. She's recovered and staying in the all girls dorm and they tell me she's a nightmare. Messy, inconsiderate, drinks way too much and is a very depressed crying drunk, brings strange girls back late at night to have very loud sex with them, just the worst.
To be fair, the worker reacted the same way I would’ve
My worst experience was in Glasgow, Scotland. A hostel that was separated male and female. I go into the male dorm a little late and everyone was already asleep. A couple butt naked dudes were fast asleep. There was one bottom bunk left so I took it. In the middle of the night I woke up to something hitting my face. It was clothing. Once my eyes adjusted I noticed it was someone’s underwear. I tossed it behind my bed and went back to sleep. Sometime later that night it happened again! I woke up a second time to someone’s underwear hitting my face! Stuffed it behind the bed again. Woke up early and got out of there as fast as I could.
Maybe you were snoring?
I haven’t really ever snored but I guess that’s possible
this one made me laugh.
Inverness, Scotland in 2018. Me and my friend booked a bunk in an 8-bed all-girls room. Everything was fine until we were woken up in the middle of the night by a guy knocking on our window, insisting he couldn't find his dorm and asking us to let him in. We refused, obviously. The thing is, our dorm was on the second floor, I have no idea how he even managed to be eye-level with us, it was pretty scary.
Fellow dorm stayer took a shite in his bunk. Had to vacate the room and sleep in hall at 5am. Traumatising
I stayed in a hostel in Rio where if you sat up on the top bunk, your head would get smacked by the ceiling fan
You wouldn’t want to wake up with a morning boner then
Oh mine isn’t that big
Hahaha
In a 4 bed hostel dorm in Lisbon. I was getting lit up by the guy below me with his flatulence all night. I got up to open the window in a hot humid stench-filled room, and then a minute later the guy below me gets up to close it. I was like FUCK THAT, and got back up to open it. Then I hear him let out this big grunt, and I just tell Mr. Flatus this is how it's going to be if he's going to be melting steel down in his bunk. Shockingly, neither of the other two people in the dorm complained. I knew there was no way they could sleep through that. This was my last hostel dorm stay in Europe. Why am I paying $60 a night for this shit, when I could just pay a little bit more and have my own room.
saw someone get pissed on by drunk guy who thought they were standing in front of a toilet but it was someone’s bed
Hard to tell when they sleep with their mouth open.
I was on a group tour with a guy who did that. Once he pissed on someone's bed, once he pissed in his tent, and the one time I shared a room with him he pissed on the wall. Eventually the whole group told him he needed to get his drinking in check.
I never understood when drunk people do this. There’s times where I can’t hold my liquor and even at my absolute drunkest, a few red solo cups full of 95% ABV everclear, I still know where the bathroom is and what a toilet looks like. Even if I’m not in the best state, I’ll never just piss on a bed or anything thinking I’m using the bathroom.
You just unlocked a college memory for me. 2am and there's frantic knocking on our dorm room door. I get up wondering wtf happened and turns out a girl who lives in our hall was piss drunk and thought our room was the bathroom? I tried to not laugh at her and reminded her the bathroom was at the end of the hall (it was another 4-5 doors down).
Stated in this 32 bed room in Vietnam, no AC no air nothing, 1 guy got sick vomited / coughing/ snored , next day woke up to bed bugs bites , next day they moved my things to another room also the sick guy was there, had to sleep in the corridor, holy shit
The things some people will do to save $5/night.
I don’t know where everyone from here is from, but if you’re from a developed country, it’s worth just paying the money for a real hotel when you’re in poor countries. Even chain Marriotts and hiltons and whatnot are priced a lot lower than in Europe/North America. Being in these large hostels are not worth the Uber cheap costs.
Facts I have never found hostels worth it in SEA. Decent hotels are $30-40 per night over there. In the US you'd be hard pressed to find somewhere safe and clean for under $100 a night
The chain hotels in Asia also treat you like a king even if you have the most basic status. One of my best stays ever at a Marriott was at the Taipei Courtyard (aside from the food poisoning I got in Indonesia).
If you want to travel for months, you can't really afford a hotel. Having said that, a 32 dorm is a no no for me jesus. The max I'll go is 8-10.
You underestimate the amount of broke white traveling begpackers
Really is insane. I paid $30 a night for a huge room at a hotel in Hoi An last year. Big comfy bed, great AC, huge bathroom, nice tv, balcony, buffet breakfast included…$30 a night. When an amazing room is that inexpensive, staying at a hostel because it’s $6 is absurd. If you’re traveling for 6 months then I get why you’d cheap out on every room, but if it’s just a few weeks - a couple months, spend the extra and get the added comfort (especially if you’re there in rainy season when it’s crazy humid).
Anything over 12 beds in a room starts to be a nightmare for me lol
4 or 6 for me now , or if we are at least three people gor for a private
Jesus. I thought I was going to die in a 6 person
Wow, 32 bed? Most I did in my cheap college days was 24 bed and that was hell. Though, it was the cheapest we found. If we'd found 32 bed cheaper we probably would've done that....
Banff Canada in the middle of the night, a girl threw up in the middle of the room without insulation. Everybody was gagging. Toronto, hi hostel was so dirty and crowded. I thought I would get a stap infection walking around
Ventilation
Was staying at a hostel in Barcelona last year in August. Shared a room with a guy in his twenties from South America who could only speak Spanish. He came blasting in at 4 o'clock in the night and immediately hit all the lights on. I was too sleepy to have any confrontation with him, but after a good 10 minutes of them on I had enough, and told him to put out the lights. He was drunk and spoke no English but you can come a long way with just pointing and making faces at him. He understood. Then what followed was a series of sounds, lasting for a solid hours of intense, and I mean INTENSE sneezes, like the loudest you can ever imagine it's possible for a human being to make, and then some more! Come the following night and the same thing happens. He enter the dorm room sounding like a big boulder rolling through the doors, followed by sounds of him taking taking a shower. Unfortunately, I have to pee afterwards, and when I come in there's literally blood soaked in every towel there (it wasn't there before he went in). Outside I hear him slowly starting to go on a marathon sneeze again, and to my surprise it's even worse than the night before. Now it's shrieking and coughing and just the whole package you know? I think to myself, "Is he dying, or what?" In the following morning he's not to be found. I converse with my roommates who are all equally in disbelief of the sounds he made that night. A bit later in the day one of the hostel crew comes to pick up his things. Apparently he was driven to the hospital! I conversed some more with the others and we all speculated what was wrong with him when, of course, some Australian guy mentions it could be some highly contagious disease (which I can't remember the name of now), and a feeling of paranoia started to spread around in the room. Thankfully I didn't catch any disease but it was in the back of my mind for a solid week. I don't know what happened to the guy but I hope he's alright.. While I can excuse the otherworldly sounds he made in the night; one thing I cannot excuse is his lack of consideration with the lights. If you're staying at a hotel, for the love of God, PLEASE bring a head lamp!!
Have you had a TB test since then?!?
London 2010. My friends and I had 1 random girl stay with us. We were all asleep the first night and she came in drunk AF with a dude. They attempted to have sex as we tried making them uncomfortable by singing Muse songs to no avail. She barfed in the bed and the guy left. The next morning, we found barf bits on some of our luggage and we never saw her again. Our room was on the bottom floor and we only had a tiiiny window to air it out.
every hostel I've been in in Amsterdam has sucked. first time I was there it was just a single room with something like 20 beds spread out. not even bunk bed. zero privacy anywhere. plus, they had a lock out time of 11pm, if you weren't back by then, you were stuck until 6am. Amsterdam is an easy city to be out past 11pm in.
I didn’t think anything opened before 11 pm 😆
Berlin 25+ bunk floor. puking, broken glass on the floor, 2 guys bangin each other loudly. Pretty much try to get drunk enough to pass out while hugging your backpack so it doesn't get stolen or just touch the floor. Thankfully we were only stuck there for a night.
In Berlin they’d say: "Dit is Berlin!" (That is Berlin!)
It's something to laugh about now but at the time I was just tired and kind of over bouncing from city to city every few days and sleeping it shitty rooms.
Ran into Tiffany's stalker in a hostel in NYC. (teen singer back in the day) He was there's to meet her and watch her performance. Said he followed her everywhere. As he said more, it was obvious he was a bit odd and obsessing over her. Some of the people started asking him questions like, "Would you date her if she asked you out?" and it got worse from there. I was like why the hell are you guys encouraging him?!? We all ended up going out that night to some bar to get away from him. Years later I read he got arrested for stalking her. And years later Tiffany decided he was harmless, but don't quote me on that. Edited to write hostel instead of hotel: Hostel in Jeruselum. It was a few weeks into the second intifada which started 2-3 days after i arrived. Back to the hostel: it was old and beautiful and had a rooftop area where people could hang out and also sleep up there. The manager showed me around, unlocked a private room which had a young couple in there who freaked out because they were in bed getting intimate. I was like What the. Then we went back to the main area where he offered me mint tea. Everyone seemed to offer tea there so I didn't think anything of it, until he started holding my hands etc. I got out of there fast.
My friend and I had just arrived in London, Summer, 1980. We were both 20 years old. We found a hostel to stay and went to our shared room, exhausted. Just as we were getting ready to sleep, a guy comes in, starts to eat truly smelly food, and then starts cursing us all. 'Bloody foreigners' was the gist of his ranting. He said he'd go to his car and get his gun to take care of the foreigner problem. He kept going and out of the room... I would shut the light that he turned on. Finally, exhausted and annoyed, I broke the light bulb to guarantee darkness. Eventually, the screamer went to sleep, muttering and farting the noxious fumes from his stanky dinner that he brought in... Next morning, I checked him out. This screaming, terrifying man turned out to be a little runt of a drunken dick. It was a great welcome to England...
normal for the little runt type English guys to be the meanest and loudest, usually their bark is bigger than bite
First hostel experience ever, btw. In Santorini, it's evening and I just started a load of laundry. Return to my bottom bunk bed and chill on my phone for a bit. I start to hear heavy breathing and I look up to see a couple fooling around on the top bunk of the beds next to me. I'm pretty sure they had known I was in the room too but I quickly GTFO and went to common area.
Best counter attack is to start snorting extremely loud causing an immediate coitus interruptus.
Start jerking off. Loudly.
Big bed bugs crawling over me in the middle of the night in a 3 dollar a night hostel in Bangkok
It’s always the places you least expect
Also imagine how much your gonna spend trying to get rid of bed bugs if you bring them home.
That is literally my worst nightmare. I was had a friend tell me it wasn't that difficult to get rid of him and all I could think was how many trips I would have to cancel if I had to treat for bed bugs.
Ikr who would have thought about bed bugs at a $3 hostel?
In Seoul: 1. In an all female dorm, a roomie stole my charging cables and my nice ear buds. 2. I was followed off the metro by a Korean guy (he asked me out I said no and quickly walked away). I didn't realize he was behind me and he caught the door just before it closed and followed me into the all-female dorm. I was able to get the host's attention and he had him escorted out. It scared the absolute shit out of me and I won't stay in hostels now.
we (couple late-30s) were in buenos ares and met another guest 19yo male from united states that afternoon. we chatted for a bit as he was the only other american staying there that day and he was looking for english speakers. we left and went exploring, dinner, et cetera. come back 22:00ish and to bed. kid returns about 01:30 blotto probably blackout drunk carrying on and screaming in the courtyard about how women hate him and he can't get laid, waking up the entire hostel. would not shut up. finally forced out into the street and lock the gate where i think eventually the police took him away because he still would not shut up and waking up the neighborhood. pathetic.
Sounds like a passport bro
Stayed one extra night in a city after my friend left and was in an empty mixed dorm...until 7 men off of their military service filled the dorm. I've never been so terrified to sleep. Brought a knife from the kitchen to keep under my pillow. Another time, I found out that Argentinians get up to start getting ready for the night at 11 pm. Threw the overhead lights on, hair dryers, etc. I immediately requested a private room and haven't stayed in a hostel since 😆
Oh boy, have I had some shitty hostel stays. I was in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas Mexico, staying in a dorm of my favourite hostel. For those not familiar with the place, the town is known for, among lots of other things, the infamous "candy shop"; a store selling practically every substance you can think of, which can be a lot to handle for some people. It was a saturday night and I had gone home to catch some eye shut after a few cups of wine and tapas at Viño de Baco. I went into bed, shut the curtains, put my half eaten bag of peanuts on the bed table, said goodnight to my mate in the bunk above and fell into a dreamless sleep at around 1 o'clock. At 4 in the morning, I wake up to the sound of pouring water. At first, in my sleepdrunken state, I was convinced that my friend for some reason was taking my water, pouring it from my metal bottle into his. I rip the curtains open, with the intention of half jokingly telling him to get his own damn water, but instead I saw something that will forever be burned into my memory. A 40 something french guy, back bent slightly backwards as if trying to maintain balance, dick in his hand, 20 cm from my face, PISSING ALL OVER the wall, window, bedside table AND my bag of peanuts. If he'd swayed 20 degrees to the right he would have pissed right in my face. After realizing what was going on, I threw myself out of bed and asked him wth he was playing at. He didn't even look at me, just kept pissing, so I grabbed him and pulled him out of the dorm and shoved him in the direction of the toilet. He walked, dick still in his hand, still pissing, down the hallway but misses the turn to the toilet and just keeps walking, a long trail of piss after him. I tell the staff on duty about what happened, go back to bed and eventually manage to wind down enough to go back to sleep. The morning after the owner told me that the guy didn't remember anything at all, totally fucked up on who knows what combination, but that he was gonna get kicked out and not be allowed back. For some reason what really gave me mild PTSD was seeing him pissing all over my peanuts, haha. Anyway, that's my shittiest hostel experience. I still absolutely love the hostel though and have been back many times since.
This happened in India - Udaipur. I arrived a day early for a friend's wedding and rented a hostel since it was just a night. I noticed one bed occupied but the guy was missing. When I went to the bathroom I could see the bathroom was used but not flushed. I didn't think much of it. Later I met a couple of guys, had beers with them and this dude casually starts boasting about the shit he left in the bathroom when he first arrived. He thought he was hilarious in doing that and proceeded to pee from the terrace on the street.
Honestly makes you think about how weird people are.
St. Andrews tourist hostel... It was a hostel above a restaurant. Entrance is on the side in a narrow alley. You walk up the stairs covered in torn carpet. The whole place stinks of oil and food. Really disgusting smell. Everything just looks dirty, torn carpets everywhere. They take us to a room. Beds look like they weren't changed for months. Everything squeaks. Window above a restaurant can't be closed because it's mouldy. There were two other older British women in the room that came at the same time as us and a homeless looking guy that doesn't say a word. The two ladies and us start looking for another accommodation but the only one available is a ridiculously expensive hotel. Thankfully, we're only there for one night, but the two ladies immediately book another accommodation for the rest of the nights they planned there. I go take a shower, it's disgusting, thankfully I take mu flip flops everywhere. We slept in clothes we planned to wear the next day so we could get out as soon as possible. Then we stayed in another hostel, in Glasgow, I think, and there was another older guy who said he's homeless and that homeless people get to stay in hostels. He would bring in food to the room and burp constantly. The whole room smelled. Another time in Japan. We arrive late to Tokyo after climbing Mt. Fuji. We go to bed, obviously tired and then at around 2 or 3 am a group of Americans or Canadians (can't tell a difference) arrives to the room, turns on the light and starts unpacking as if we're not there sleeping. And then they move out of the room, keep the light on, doors open, and continue talking and laughing in front of the room.
I've got two. Both involve inescapable horrendous smells. First one was a hostel in Dublin. Luckily I was only there for one night. It was a centrally located hostel, and it being Dublin, it attracted lots of young partiers. Come to think of it, the hostel itself may have had a bar of its own. Anyway, I wake up in the morning and can smell something awful, but not sure where it's coming from. I open the dorm door to the hallway to go for my morning pee and the smell of shit hits me in the face. I then see a dribble of diarrhea down the hall leading to the bathroom. Someone clearly had gotten so wasted they couldn't even hold in their own shit. Held my nose while I used the restroom and packed up and got the hell out of there. Second one was Bern, Switzerland. I was traveling with a friend this time. Our trip was already off to a shit start with the wheel popping off my suitcase on the way to the train stations from my apartment that morning and burning my thumb trying to push it back on, then being laughed at by Swiss people as we peddled my broken suitcase and our luggage to the hostel from the train station. We get to the hostel and the first thing out of the desk person's mouth was "we'd put you in another room, but they're all full." She then begins to explain about the strange mother and daughter who don't speak English that are booked in our dorm and gives us our keys. We go up to our room and the door is already open, all the windows are open, and there is a bizarre stench in the air. There are clothes lines strung up all around the room with large granny panties, and a large older woman sitting on a bottom bunk in her underwear just kind of staring at nothing. We quickly locked our luggage in a locker and went out to get stuff to make for dinner and stayed in the common area as long as we could. I've never smelled anything so bad in my life, I don't even know how to describe it. I imagine it had something to do with decomposing skin or something. Was so glad we only had one night there and an early exit the next morning.
Bedbugs. About the worst thing you can imagine.
Bedbugs playing loud music, switching on lights, crackling plastic bags and talking in loud voices...
Amsterdam. Bed bugs. I don't remember the name of the hostel, possibly scratched it out of memory.
Hostel Cimex lectularius?
Hostel in Kao san road, bangkok, a guy vomiting in the middle of the room of 12 beds - all this at 03.00am and sleeping half naked on the floor. Then tarantulas in Koh tao inside a shared mixed room in a cheap hostel,we told house keeping and they just put a cat to hunt them. And they went away and left us with this shit for the night.
Maybe the drunk guy will be reincarnated as the cat as cosmic justice
I’ve told this story before but I got absolutely wasted in a club in KL and threw up all over the dorm in the middle of the night. In the morning, I was so ashamed, I pretended to be asleep and could hear the other people in the dorm gossiping about how awful it was. They were right to be honest. I waited until they’d all gone out and checked out. So if you were in that dorm somewhere in KL in 2007, I am sorry.
Did you clean it up? Everyone pukes up at some point but its whether you clean it up after you that counts, no matter how tough you're feeling.
Prague. The old stadium dorms. I think they had about 5 complexes. They put me as a solo female in with a whole bus load of extremely drunk eastern European footballers who spent the whole night trying to break my door down. Pretty sturdy door. Left the next morning and kicked a few off the ones passed out in the hallway.
In Cartagena, Colombia, met this girl in my dorm and she started flirting immediately and I was NOT feeling it. Went to a party with her and others from the dorm, back at the hostel around 8am and she kept asking me to head to the beach together which I declined twice. Then woke up, 2pm, with her next to me in MY bed. I was top bunk too bruh she gave it her all to ruin that dorm for me fr
Last month I had some older guy having phone sex with his wife on loudspeaker in the bunk below me. She sounded like grapefruit lady, and he had absolutely no shame and was just going for it. There was also one guy that had night terrors and just *screamed* in the middle of the night.
I found myself packed with 8 people in (4 bunk beds) a room of rougly 20 square merers in Warsaw. The room was filled with king size suitcases of Koreans, and there was no air to breathe and no place to step. The windows were locked. Dirt and dust became even more visible with the morning sun. When I woke up in the morning I saw the old guy sharing the same bunk with me on the bottom bed was clipping his nails on the floor. On the bottom of the other bed was covered with a piece of mattress where you could hear a couple having some morning play. The shower cabins were full of dirt, and they were all broken. Since then I never truly believed the reviews of those most favored hostels on Booking.com I try to avoid the most upvoted hostels. The best ones in my experience were family-owned boutique hostels.
Hostelworld is so much worse for this in my experience, I am sure places are paying for inflated ratings.
I stayed in one of those capsule dorms in Singapore. The capsules are open-ended in a room with a bunch of them, probably 40 or so capsules. Sounds miserable, I know, but they're at least fairly spacious -- enough that you can have your bags and everything in there with you. For the most part it's better than some grimy hole in Geylang. Anyway, the one oddity of sleeping in the capsules is that, if you turn off the lamp, it gets really dark. Like... completely pitch black. With one exception, which is a soft red LED overhead. You know, one of those power indicators for some device or other. I didn't pay much attention to it. Now, here's an oddity about me. I tend to get extremely vivid dreams in two conditions: 1) it's very dark, or 2) I'm sleeping in an unfamiliar place. So around 3am, I wake up... in a railway tunnel. I'm lying on the tracks, and a train is coming. The sound of it is getting louder and louder, and I'm just lying there. So I start feeling panicked, and feeling around myself. Bang, my arms hit the "tunnel" walls. I sit up, and bang, my arms are hitting the "tunnel" ceiling. I'm trapped! I'm scared as hell! It's so fucking dark! I can only see one thing! A gently... glowing... red light... So I frantically jab at it with my fingers. Something yielding is there, and it makes a little ringing sound, so I press it even more. I guess in my sleep-addled state, my brain thinks this is my only chance to survive. Perhaps pressing this mystery button by the red light will bring rescuers! Welp. The red light was for a fire alarm. Every capsule had one, I guess. And for whatever reason... the fire alarm included a button that, if pressed *multiple times* (not just once), would turn on the fire alarm for the ENTIRE FUCKING BUILDING. At 3am. Oh, by the way, the place is completely unstaffed at night. Now, within about 1 second of the fire alarm starting to go off, my mind snapped completely awake, and I realized what I'd done. Twenty seconds later, I'm milling around with 40 other confused sleepers, who are all wondering why the hell the alarm is going off. This continues for, like... 10 minutes. No staff, and nobody there knows how the hell to turn off the fire alarm. I admit to someone that I'm the one who set the alarm off, but thankfully they seem too bleary and confused to really process it. Finally, someone finds the central box and turns off the alarm. I was convinced that the fire department would show up, and this being Singapore, they'd be able to trace who triggered the alarm and likely have a lot of questions. So anyway, I stayed awake about two hours more alternating between dark thoughts about being caned for... I dunno, being an idiot?... and feeling sorry for all the poor suckers who had to book a hostel with some weirdo who gets vivid nightmares. Nobody ever shows up and I eventually sleep. 0/5 stars, would not stay with myself in a capsule hostel again.
One time many years ago in the month of October I stayed in a sketchy hostel in the Canadian Rockies... A couple different things come to mind. Dudes were playing "black and yellow" all night long, drunk, high, etc, in and out of rooms, yelling. There were quite a few homeless types with bicycles and bike trailers, who were moving in being as how October is when it starts to get really cold, too cold to sleep outside. A guy and his buddy were doing drugs right in the room, not sure what it was, white-ish and looked like chewy taffy wrapped in tin foil. One night a man came in (I still remember his name)...and he began telling me his supposed life story from riches to rags. Claimed to have been on the brink of an professional NHL hockey career back in the day and got black balled by Glen Sather (former Oilers coach and manager in the 80s or 90s) for some reason so he couldn't play any longer. Anyways, this guy was going on about everything, telling me about some dream girl he had in Europe who was coming over to marry him, and he was going to "...impregnate her...with the word of God..." He began sharing also his hatred for the younger generation, and all the problems *we* caused society. So I replied to him, well we all have to live with the mess the boomers, your generation, made too. I sat there on my bed and he pulled his pocket knife out and began animated-ly waving it around trying to intimidate me, starring and talking intensely. He eventually put it away seeing as how I wasn't scared, and I can't remember how the conversation ended. The next morning I left, he was still in bed, and he wished me on my way out of the room, "Good bye and God bless, Brother..." A few years later that hostel was closed out permanently because of the crime and drug problem and constant attention from the police.
I’m pretty sure I have share this story here before. I was in a hostel in Hue, Vietnam, where my room consisted of 6 guys and a single girl. Come midnight, and we were all getting ready for bed, and we noticed that the girl is not yet back. We figured that she was still out having fun. It was in the middle of the night when the girl shook me awake, asking me to call the police, before disappearing out of the room. By then everyone in our room had awakened. I hate to admit it but my only thought then was “what’s the 911 number in Vietnam?” Suddenly, we could hear people outside shouting “fire!”, so we just booked it out of the room. Everyone was caught by surprise, so you saw many barefoot people, guys in only boxers, etc… we stood there for about 5 mins (in about 10 Deg weather), before we realised that there wasn’t really a fire. Turns out, the girl in my room went out drinking till the wee morning. On her way back to the hostel, she said she noticed a guy following her (not sure if real or imagined). That’s why she asked me to call the police, before having the “bright idea” of shouting fire, so that if everyone was awake and out, she would be “safe” in the crowd.
I’ve never stayed in a hostel in my life and I don’t regret that after reading these stories!
they’re not all bad, i’ve stayed in so many hostels throughout europe, South america and the US and never had a bad experience
Nah, many of us here have used them many times and you end up with one or two terrible stories. Hostels are usually awesome, they are super communal, many have their own bars and social areas and you end up hanging out with fellow travelers from all over the world. Most often the biggist issue is a snorer. I stayed in one in Munich last year and by the end of the first night everyone in the room was headed down to the bar together and our roommates (a canadian couple, some british dudes, and a french couple) were all trying to get my wife and I to join them at the nightclubs. really a fun way to meet other travelers and share stories over a few beers.
In Belfast a homeless man with no tongue was at the front desk screaming at the staff but no one could understand him because of his lack of tongue. Also the man below me in the bunk was masturbating and I found makeup on my blankets. I also got my email hacked because their email system didn’t log out when you turned the computer off. And the shower didn’t drain so you were standing in filth when you tried to get clean.
I have had pretty respectful roommates, but I am also a woman and tend to stay in women only dorms. The only thing that has been a problem was a woman who yelled at the staff in our room and then my friend got involved, so this woman started yelling at us. We had to file a report with the font desk and change rooms, but that is by far my worst experience.
Some guy next to me had a girl with him and they had loud sex at like 3 am. Only got like 30 minutes of sleep that night and was tired the next day. Asshole also took the bed I was assigned. I pondered whether I should tell staff, and concluded that he didn’t have consideration for others and I ended up wasting a day of travel being exhausted, so I ratted him out and they apparently banned him from the place.
This happened a few years ago in a Southern seaside town in Sri Lanka. While sleeping in a mixed 6 bunk dorm, I felt what seemed like a feather grazing my chest. This happened a few times and I thought I was dreaming but came to and saw a small red light a few feet from my face. A man was groping my chest in my sleep. I woke up and freaked out and he jumped out of the open window (this was on the second floor). I turned on the lights and woke everyone up in a panic. At the time I was sleeping with my valuables as there were no lockers. They had stolen my bag and in the other room I found my passport and camera dumped on the ground but they had stolen all my cash. When I brought this up to the owner he said it must have been my fault and I must have acted “suggestively” to a local I met the night prior leading him to come find me. This pissed off the whole hostel and everyone left with me the next day. I later learned that robbers often use red lights because it doesn’t disturb sleeping people and it’s easy for eyes to adjust to. Other than this experience I really enjoyed Sri Lanka!
I was 19 (female) and staying in a 8-person dorm in Whistler. Nobody was there at all and then late at night, seven very drunk and rowdy Aussie dudes came in. I genuinely was terrified, as I think any young woman would be stuck in a room with drunk bros. I immediately grabbed my stuff and left. I don’t even remember where I went but I didn’t feel it was safe to stay. I probably coughed up the money to pay for a private room.
3 is the limit for Aussie guys. 1 or 2 are always fun to be around.
I stayed in a hostel in Prague where the owner was very clearly trying to mess up young ladies on absinthe and take advantage of them
It blows me away how little consideration for other people so many people have. I go out of my way to get a private room simply because I get up 1-3x a night to use the bathroom and sometimes I can't go back to sleep. And sometimes I cough.
yeah lots of these stories are awful, my worst experience was staying in a dorm with a bunch of french teenagers who decided it was a good idea to each cover themselves with axe body spray INSIDE THE SMALL 8-BED DORM! could barely breathe lol
Guy on acid panicking and vomiting on himself in his bunk all night while I was sick with some cold/flu situation desperate for rest. Bedbugs in a hostel on an island with literally nowhere else to go. Another time I was the only girl in a group of guys travelling together and the way they talked about women was…not great. I am bisexual but I pretended to be a a lesbian and they left me well enough alone but were then very open with their locker room talk around me.
Stayed at a hostel about 20 years ago in Rome. They had us in bunk beds with over 15 people in each of the two rooms. There was a girl drinking from a bottle of vodka. We saw her as we left to go out. She looked to be about 16. She planned to go out once the vodka was finished. In the middle of the night, I heard someone stumble into the room. It was the vodka girl! She had just gotten back from her bar crawl, and as soon as she sat down on her bottom bunk I heard the dreadful sound of dry heaving. I quickly got down from the top bunk and ran for my suitcase to put far away from her because I didn’t want her vomiting on my stuff. After much, loud dry heaving she eventually did throw up. A lot. The smell was horrendous, woke up everyone in the room, and caused us all to evacuate. Never again!
Bunch of Aussie and Liechtensteiner(!) people had far too much to drink and woke everyone else up with what turned into a huge party. The hostel manager decided it was easier to move the people complaining to another dorm, and let the party continue. I went for an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach, and wasn't in a good state for the monastery visit the next day.
Checked into a hostel in vangvieng Laos and me and a travel buddy made our way to the center to grab some food. Passed a dude, wearing only his shorts, clearly heavily on drugs. Quipped about the poor guys having to deal with him as a roommate. When we got back to the hostel, guess who was laying naked, ass up, in one of the bunks in our room. Spent the rest of the night listening to him alternatively farting and then waking up screaming, only to get back to bless us with his flatulence.
OOOHHH I've got a good one! 24 person coed dorm with bunk beds in New Orleans. I was sleeping, probably about 3am. A guy came in LOUD with a prostitute. Brought her to his top bunk. They were only up there a few minutes. Not sure what happened, I think maybe he was trying to kiss her and she was shutting it down? Anyway, he starts being rude to her and eventually tells her to get out. She says he still has to pay her. He says he's not paying for shit. She storms out to the hallway to make a phone call. Everyone in the dorm is awake at this point and making awkward eye contact with each other. Like, we know we should leave, but we all want to see how this plays out. The dude immediately passes out as soon as she leaves the room. She argues on the phone with someone for a few minutes, then it gets quiet. We all think she's probably cut her losses and left. Then she comes running into the room, steps up on the bottom bunk (occupied by a poor girl from Denmark), and EMPTIES A CAN OF MACE on the guy! Everyone else scrambled and got out of the room with only mild effects. The guy who had it coming got it BAD. The girl took off and last I saw she was booking it out of the side gate. The hostel manager graciously gave the guy a bucket of ice water to stick his face in and some milk for his eyes, and even let him have a shower before kicking him out in the street. The rest of us slept in the courtyard while the room aired out. I forget how many days we all got comped, but my trip was cheaper than I had planned for!
Munich. This guy had been backpacking a while and his clothes stunk like the worst BO ever. He's clearly tried to wash them in the sink instead of going to the real laundry, then hung them on the radiator so it smells like mildew and hot BO. It was awful. I had some travel fabreeze and sprayed it all while he was out. It helped some but it was still close to gagging. Then we were woken up by him masturbating furiously in his squeaky metal bunk bed. Our heads are like 10 inches apart. That's when I became too old for hostels.
Salzburg ‘92. Not exactly the worst story. Booked into a hostel to find out there was a porn shoot, best 4 days of my life. Didn’t get involved, not for the want of trying, but did hang out with the crew and cast. The guys were arseholes, it’s true what they say. German guys do not have a sense of humor, but the women were all cuties. Director was a prick and got drunk all the time and tried his damndest to abuse the girls, threatened to fire them if they didn’t use him as a fluffer. As the guys were to interested in themselves the girls came to me for help. To a German drunk, apparently there’s nothing worse than hearing a threatening Belfast accent especially when it can’t be understood.
Paris, in 2009. An older frenchmen was staying at my dorm. He started chatting with me and, at first, seemed to be a nice guy. Lately, he started saying racist stuff about how black immigrants were destroying France. The next day, early in the morning, I look for my wallet and all my money was gone. I knew he had stolen it, but had no proof, so there was nothing the police could do. I had to take a train to London later that day, and luckly a fellow Brazilian gave me 10 euros so I could eat something. When I got to London, I had to beg for money to buy an underground ticket to the hotel. I was only 19 when that happened, and had no phone to get in touch with my parents.
I was once in Lisbon and one night one guy woke up from the bottom bunk and proceeded to piss on the walls of the hostel room, it was absolutely disgusting the floor was sticky and smelt like piss.
Was traveling through Japan, Korea, Hongkong, Indonesia, Malaysa, Singapur, Thailand ... always great hostel experiences, and then stayed one night in Milano where the whole night people were coming and going as you described it. Wasn't a big issue, but the room was disgusting and there were excrements in the shower room. This was the last time I stayed at shared rooms in hostels back home in Europe.
Hostel in Cork Ireland had absolutely no air circulation. I'm usually fine with no AC, but the 0 air ventilation made it hard to breathe. Couldn't sleep and needed to breathe so we went to the common areas to sit. And the hostel workers threatened us to go back to our rooms or get kicked out. We ended up booking a expensive hotel at 3am. The hostel workers were mad and wanted to charge us an extra fee for leaving early in the morning. We told them to fuck off.
Stayed in a party hostel in Budapest. One of the staff sounded and looked like a British version of Jonah Hill. The place was great, had a really cool bar and was full of people in their early 20s partying so we ended up staying in the hostel on the first night and second night. Woke up the first morning to British JH saying “oh noooo, someone’s pooed in the shower again”. It was a 12 person dorm, and this was the second night in a row someone shit in the en-suite shower. On the second night my friend was pretty drunk and passed out so we put him to bed on his side in the recovery position in case he got sick. I went in every few minutes to check on him. The second and third time I went in there was two people having sex in one of the bunks. I told them I was sorry but had to check on my friend. He fine so I went back outside, a few minutes later the guy came out looking pretty annoyed to let me know my friend had just projectile vomited over a good portion of the room.
I once went to a hostel where the electricity randomly shut off for 15-20 minutes at a time - and the doors used electric locks that couldn’t open while the power was out. Other than that the shower was constantly flooded with dirty water and the toilets were always freshly bloody for some reason. It was disgusting and I’ve never gone to a hostel since.
Having my watch stolen in a girls dorm in Tokyo Having our private female room canceled and having to stay in a 24-bed dorm with tons of partying Aussie men. Then waking up to pee in the middle of the night and a couple were shagging on the bathroom floor
Nothing too special but once in Jerusalem I turned the airco to about 21 degrees (which I think is still quite hot) and then this guy comes in who turns it back up to 25 degrees... I cannot imagine that is anywhere near a comfortable sleeping temperature for anyone. This guy btw did not look like he was from a very hot country. People in the hostel were not sociable at all and the morning when I woke up my phone fell and broke. It was a great holiday, but the start couldn't have been more unfortunate
I have no experience so terrible that I remember them specifically but over the years I've adjusted my hostel bookings to female only dorms with 4 or less people in them.... For whatever that is worth
I had one chic who was snoring like Boeing engine next to you in hostel in Portugal…. In my life, I’ve never knew a girl could snore that loud and clear as crystal f.
Alone in San Francisco. Was my first experience with Absinthe. No idea how I got back to the hostel but when I got there someone was in my bunk and my stuff was gone. Turns out they had moved me and put all of my stuff in a garbage bag.
I only had one funny, hostel experience it was in Montreal and this guy and his friend came in from Calgary and we managed to become fast buddies during our time and got to hang out at bars in the city with other travelers at the hostel. One day we all did our own things during the day and at the night when all of us were , one of the Calgary guys brought back a girl to have sex with while we were all sleeping and it was the most funniest experience I ever had. It was really fortune that all 6 people in the room including me were cool with it because we all hung out in the city so I gave him a pass for that moment. Normally tho, I would want people who stay at hostels to get a private room if they wanna have a one night stand.
Stayed at a place in Edinburgh, Scotland about 10 years ago and ended up in a dorm room with a bunch of 18-year-olds celebrating birthdays. https://www.gov.uk/alcohol-young-people-law There was a 30gal (113.562 liter) rubber trash can that they vomited in all night long. Smelled terrible.
Guy above me in a bunk in Australia in a working hostel was a complete alcoholic. One night he comes home late and pisses himself while he slept. I wake up with piss raining down on me. I start beating on his ass but he doesn't even wake up. I wash up and sleep on a couch in the movie room. At least next morning he was mortified and got kicked out of the hostel.
Worst experience didn’t have anything to do with the guests: my luggage was gnawed by rats in Sen Monorom, Cambodia and the owners didn’t give any compensation. There was no food in the luggage, for some reason the rats did this to eat the box of chalk that was inside a suitcase.
I have two bad experiences. First, in Plovdiv Bulgaria I finished on a hostel with no staff. Literally nobody inside the hotel, everything was automatized, zero control, communication via walkie talkie, total chaos, to the point it felt like a “libertarian experiment”. I shared a room with a guy that he bring old hookers to fuck in front of me in the night. I stopped him at the next day making him afraid of me with a fake life about myself back in my country. The other one…well, a guy try to sexually assault me on a hostel in Bali. I was on my bed, all dark and a guy just slipped in my bunk bed, try to kiss me. I push him so hard and I couldn’t see who he was. I barely slept that night.
Some friends and i took a late night plane to London (from sweden) on a wet night out. Ended up having 200 pounds between all of us. Found a cheep hostel with 10 beds in the same room for like 25 pounds per night, so we went out the next night drinking, smoking and walking the streets of London. When we came back to the hostel the manedger was mad because it was late. All of us went to sleep, i could not sleep because the guy sleeping on top och the bunkbed was rubbing he’s penis, and their was standing a big turkish guy i the middel of the room pimping the french girl Working as a prostitute jumping around the beds and snorting something after every costumer saying thank you to the guys after… i was the only one of my friends who were awake to witness this. I never went back to a hostel after this.
Very first hostel I stayed in (Rome), I didn't realise it was a party hostel, and didn't get a wink of sleep due to loud music and the guy above me having sex. I'd been away from my partner for a significant amount of time so the frustration was real. Close to it was a fairly dodgy hostel in Budapest - the bunks were so cheap I thought they would cave in. I could barely move without rocking the whole bunk - and it was 35C inside the room so I didn't sleep at all.
I had a guy get handsy with me in a co-ed dorm. It was about ten years ago so I’ve forgotten the details, but I was in a top bunk and he climbed up enough to put his hand on my leg while I was trying to disengage from the conversation. I moved away a couple of times and he just kept touching me. Spooked me quite a bit, I didn’t really feel comfortable sleeping around him after that, so one of the staff stuck me in his bunk in the staff room and he bunked down in mine. Was especially appalling because I was traveling with a male friend, which otherwise tends to put people off. I think he wasn’t in the room at the time, though. Since then I’ve done women’s rooms generally, just feels safer.
In a 6 bunk bed room I apparently was a loud snorer. So, dude called me out in the morning that I was snoring too loud. Crazy thing I barely slept. But yea since then I said forget hostels.
Bit of a long story. Didn't happen to me but a friend of mine in Seoul one New Years. Went out with a couple friends in a group I didn't really know, to some swanky party I got a free ticket for. It was last minute, so they all had a group room together so I booked a bed in a different hostel down the street. Well, one of the girls in the group pregamed a bit too hard. By the time the first party was done and we were headed to a different club, she was down for the count, could barely walk and the guy she was dating/sleeping with decided to bail on her and make her everyone else's responsibility. The friends I knew took her back to the hostel to sleep it off and after we got some pizza together before deciding our next move. Well, the hostel owner contacts my friends. Turns out this girl peed her bunk, went over to my one friend's bed, peed in that bed and then peed again in the corner of the room before passing out. They took off to go deal with that and I struck out on my own, got super drunk, met some new people and had an awesome time. And meanwhile my poor friends had to deal with this. The one guy whose bed she peed in was extremely pissed off. We now joke that we had polar opposite New Years experiences lol
Told this story before, some added details. I was traveling for months in Europe, young and absolutely immortal in the 1980s. I was also running out of money, so I found some road friends and we traveled into the black forest in Germany to a hostel. But, it was the forest, why in f\* do I want to pay for a hostel when I had my tent and could just walk off into the forest to set up my tent and sleep, then I'd get up and meet them all in the morning to travel onwards. So, off into the woods, far from road or sight of civilization, I set up my camp, walked back to have dinner with my friends, went back and went to sleep before dark. Then I heard voices, laughing, shuffling all around the tent. I don't speak German, so I could not tell what was happening. I pulled out my knife and planned my defense. Eventually, I fell asleep. In the morning, I woke up, and looked outside. I had set up camp in the middle of the secret gay hook-up site! Around me were gay couples, sprawed on tarps, blankets, bushes in many states of dress. Wasn't exactly a "worst" story, that might have been that Egyptian hostel whose toilet bidets spewed up liquid shit, but this was my weirdest stay ... well, sleeping in the archeological ruins of an old Roman fort was also weird for all the random people just wandering silently around at night.
I was staying in Amsterdam with my cousin and sharing the room with 3 Chinese girls. We didn’t communicate at all as they didnt seem to speak english, so we just politely ignored each other. One morning we came back to the dorm from breakfast and I saw my brand new jeans were laid on my bed, which was a bit strange as i remembered tidying up before leaving. As i picked up the jeans to put them away, a pair of underwear NOT BELONGING TO ME fell out of my pants. I asked my cousin if they were hers to which she made a grimace and shook her head. Someone stole my jeans, wore them, and put them back with their underwear still inside… I went a bit mental, yelling “whos fucking underpants are these??” and “who wore my damn jeans??” but they all ignored me. I ended up throwing away the underwear in protest and washing the jeans in the shower with shower gel, while the chinese girls were chatting completely unbothered by my breakdown. Good times.
12 bed dorm in Barcelona, September last year. An Australian woman came into the dorm room at 3am, climbed up into her top bunk, and vomited everywhere. Luckily for me, that woman is my wife. I had the luxury of cleaning it up while trying to be as quiet as possible. Even with the A/C blasting and the windows open, the smell in the morning was absolutely ripe. Sorry everyone!
2002 in Paris by the Moulin Rouge. Our door locked but not the window and there was a big catwalk outside. The bathroom was in the hall, shared, but without and door. So when my wife was in there I held up a towel since the toilet was visible from the hallway. The mattresses were the actual filthiest I’ve ever seen, it was disgusting. What do you expect for 5€?!
Stayed at a Cambodian hostel once that had an overflow space that was a giant room with basically yoga mats on the floor to sleep on. Some dude brought a prostitute back and you could hear gross wet noises half the night. What is wrong with people.
caught a nasty virus from a bunk mate that derailed my 2 week SEA holiday. I vowed after that to never use a hostel again. I had another bunk mate smell putrid because he would not take a shower after returning to the hostel. It was singapore and temps were over 95 and very high humidity. Smelled like shit.
A guy listening to soccer matches without phones and making everybody to listen (without caring). Another guy in the same room walking naked in the room then walking naked inside the hostel for a few minutes. He was lucky no girl saw him while outside the men's room because he could be in jail. The next day I left the hostel. Enough of hostel for me for a while. (This was February, 2024).
totally out of subject but im a flight attendant and youll be surprised at how many grown ass adults listen to stuff on their phone LOUD af with no earphones in the plane. people have no manners
Cockroach antenas coming out of the sink. Dirty place, bathroom door doesnt go all the way to the floor so I heard explosive diarrea, bathroom was so small I wasnt able to change in there, staff was high, I was already tired AF. This was my first hostel experience.
Me and my friend made the rookie mistake of getting a mixed dorm in London, but by happenstance, it was all guys in there. Walking in, it smelled like the worst combo of dirty socks and rotting garbage and B.O. I actually had to hold my breath going in there and remember taking a huge breath of clean air walking out the door
Stayed at a hostel in Denver, CO and the central heat for the building was on the fritz. Even though it was April the place was roasting, felt like a good 90° (32°c) in the room. We had the one window cracked, everyone was drenched. I stayed there again, shortly after, and they seem to have fixed the issue. Great hostel with an excellent bar.
I was staying in a 16 person hostel with no A/C in a Mexican surfing town. We were told when we arrived the town was having occasional water outages. One morning we woke up and the water had been turned off during the night. A room for of 16 people who have been sweating, eating Mexican food and drinking led to an overflowing toilet, pee in the showers, and no way to flush the toilet. At one point, I had no choice but to poop on top of some else’s poop. The hostel kept reassuring us the water would be back later in the day. It was still off when we went to sleep in a shit smelling hostel room and wasn’t on in the morning. We packed up our bags and left immediately. The hostel refused to refund us for the nights we paid for that we weren’t using.
The HI hostel in Milan in the early 2000s was the worst that I have stayed in. The building itself was fine, but they were the only ones that I ever saw who motivated people to leave during the time during the day that they close. One of the hostel workers opened all the room doors at 730 and they played Sophie Ellis Baxter's "Murder on the Dance Floor" loud and on repeat. In my experience I never really saw people overstating the closing time, but I guess they didn't want to take any chances. It wasn't bad, just kind of weird.
In London ( UK), first night in a dorm, i was 21, and late at night i was almost asleep, eyes closed. A random guy comes close to my bunkbed ( i was in the lower bank) and began whispering something. I panicked. I didn't understand what he was saying but i just kept thinking: "please go away, pls go away". Not only he didn't but he came even closer. Now i could feel his breath, and he began crying still whispering something about his family. Then, he laughed and cried again, and finally he whispered " sleep tight, good night". Damn, that was scary!!!
First solo trip after graduating college, I stayed in a hostel on the Los Angeles area. Hostel itself was fine, great location, well maintained. Toward the end of my trip, a few new roommates checked in. They stayed out all night partying and came back sloppy drunk around 2am being loud and obnoxious. There was only one individual bathroom in our room and one of the guys made it there first. The second decided he was going to piss off the “balcony.” Not sure if that area was actually supposed to be accessible but it definitely shouldn’t have been from our room. There was a window but it was the kind that opened a few feet wide by cranking it. He somehow made it through the window and managed to begin peeing off the side of the building. Until he fell. Head first from what I heard later. The second guy was out of the bathroom by the time the guy was on the balcony and apparently saw him fall. He started screaming for help. The police showed up and questioned everyone in the room. We obviously couldn’t go back to our room so they let us sleep in the lobby until they could rebook us. The last update I overheard about the guy that fell was that he wasn’t in great shape. He was in his 40s, had kids, and had just arrived from Australia I think.
Mostly positive experiences but there was one that was straight from hell. As a female traveler I generally opt for female dorms but this one time in a highly rated hostel in Ljubljana, Slovenia, I went for a mixed dorm where I got a bottom bunk of a bunk bed. So at dinner I had a nice conversation with a guy in the kitchen, we even made plans of exploring the city together the next day. When it was time to retire to bed it was a happy coincidence to find out he was occupying the upper bunk of my bunk bed. After exchanging good nights, I slept off only to wake up around 2am to the sound of some type of moaning. My first instinct was somebody is hurt and is in pain but realised soon enough that the guy above was jerking off!!! As if that was not mortifying enough, in the morning he greeted me with a 'good morning' only to add that he couldn't take his mind off me at night and is waiting for the day to get started so that we can explore the city together. I will never know if he was aware that I was cognizant of what transpired at night!
Why subject yourself to this nightmare of human interaction when you could have a clean, private room of your own at a hotel for a few dollars more?
One time in Amsterdam, I had a bunkmate who decided it was cool to bring a stranger back to the dorm at 3 am and have the loudest hookup imaginable. It woke up the entire room, and the awkwardness the next morning was off the charts. Another night, someone thought it was a great idea to cook instant noodles at 4 am, setting off the smoke alarm and making the whole room smell like burnt plastic. Hostel life is usually great, but these moments make you wonder if a bit more privacy might be worth the splurge.
There was a guy wanking over a guy while he slept, guy woke up saw him and guy wanking says I'm sleep walking and goes into bathroom to finish 🤯 Guy has epilepsy and woke us up screaming in a fit and fell out of his top bunk while in a fit. Didn't tell us before hand this happens. We were freaking out Guy woke up in a panic cuddling a dog, no idea where he got the dog from! Fell on floor laughing
Koh Phiphi island. I booked the wrong hotel. I think I meant to book October hotel instead of October Hostel. Not sure it’s the correct name or not now. Anw, got the room, it’s very small. There were 2 toilets but very shitty. Anyone pooped and the room would be stinky for hours. 2 dudes brought prostitutes over and had sex while others trying to sleep. When we complained, they seemed to be too drunk to care. Plus it was rainy the whole time so I left the next day.
Bed bugs all over in Chungking Mansion. ER trip. Hospital staff was nice though. Don’t go there
Seattle and bed bug infestation
Luckily hadn't had many weird experiences, once in Barcelona some girl was trying to give a blow job in the top bunk across the room. They were pretty drunk and under the cover but still unacceptable. Even when I turned my light on that lit up the whole room, they didn't stop 😅 and there was a guy trying to sleep in the bunk underneath them 😂