What's your worst hostel experience?!

[ABLO]

I've spent more time than I'd like to think about doing things like staring at the poorly carved graffiti underneath of a bunk bed, or someone else's dirty socks on the floor, or being woken by someone slamming the door.

Hostels can be great and interesting places to meet bright, fun and interesting people and bed down (cheaply) for the night. But they can also be miserable health-hazards full of weirdos, eager to ruin things for everyone else.

I spent two months travelling across Canada in 2006, and I stayed mainly in hostel dorm rooms. Bad experiences included; a guy from France barging his way loudly into the dorm room and then just silently glaring at me at every opportunity for the next 24hrs, an Italian and a Brit deciding they don't like each other (for no apparent reason) and then almost coming to blows in Toronto, a fiftysomething oriental man in Calgary stanring down at me as I was half asleep and rudely accusing me of stealing his allocated bed, and finally - a hostel room in Vancouver populated by a very large family of mice. I also had two different but equally nauseating experiences of hearing random strangers 'make love' during my journey.

All the 'good' people I met while travelling told me I'd laugh about all that type of stuff in years to come.....ah, if only that was true.

So, come one, share your bad hostel experience(s)?!

ABLO

[Cynthia]

Dear ABLO,

Oh my, I've never stayed at a Canadian hostel but I'm sorry to hear that you did not have a pleasant experience. I hope your trip across Canada was still enjoyable and that apart from the few not-so-nice hostels you stayed at, you would still consider coming back to visit Canada is such a beautiful country.

I must admit, I laughed when I saw this topic as a few memories rushed back to my mind.

I spent 3 weeks in the UK travelling with my mom, staying mostly at B&Bs along the way. For our last night, I decided to book a room at a hostel in Glasgow as we had to leave at 2am to get to the airport for our flight (I figured it would make more sense (and would be a lot cheaper) to get a few hours of sleep at a hostel instead). My mom had never stayed in a hostel before so I assured her that although some hostels can be a little noisy, we would have our own room and bathroom so it wouldn't seem to far from a normal room at a B&B (mind the bunk bed, or course). So, we ended up arriving at the hostel around 9pm and make a couple phone calls to back home before heading upstairs to our room. Since we were on the 5th floor and had our baggage, we decided to take the elevator. After about a 5-10 wait, the elevator doors finally open, so we go in along with one.. two .. three.. four....... seven.. eight other people. I checked the little sign in the elevator that read MAX Capacity 10. I was like, oh boy, we're right at the limit. Sure enough, about 15 seconds after the elevator starts going up, the elevator stops. In one way, I couldn't believe it and in another, I was not surprised. I looked back at my mom, who I knew did not like elevators, and tried to re-assure her (although I think in reality, I was probably more anxious than she was). Ten minutes go by, people are starting to take off their jackets as it's starting to feel pretty warm in there and a bit hard to breathe since the elevator was pretty packed. One guy jumps up and down, we all shout to stop! One guy starts pressing all the buttons in the elevator like a mad man. There is of course no working phone in the elevator. Finally we are able to force the doors open by using our hands. We were halfway between two levels so we had to help each other crawl out of the elevator. Needless to say, we weren't able to get much sleep before we had to leave again. We were concerned that the elevator would stop again when we were going back down with our luggage. Luckily all was good in the end. I laugh about it now though, things like this always add a bit of adventure and the unexpected to a trip and give you good stories to talk about later.

Also, when I was travelling through Australia, I stayed at hostels every night and like many other backpackers, I got some bed bugs at some of the hostels. It's hard to avoid those sometimes if you are going for cheap accomodation. I also remember seeing the odd mouse or once remember seeing an old retainer covered with hair and dust on the floor of my room (that was gross!). The ceiling fan sounded like it was going to fall off too. I just couldn't help but laugh.

Anyways, that's all I can think of right now.

Cynthia