Chasing Amy-Lou

Choosing the right hostel is like choosing the perfect wedding dress (I imagine…or maybe not…); you have to read the reviews, take into consideration the location, find out what amenities are on offer, do they have free wifi (so important in this day and age), what the prices are like, whether or not it has a bar, how big the overall capacity is, and so on and so forth.

It’s an intricate stealth operation that can’t be taken lightly; one mistake and a whole trip can be ruined, a city tainted and terrible memories forever etched into the mind. Select a hostel too big and you can feel swamped, alone, like a tiny bird in the middle of a migration where no face is familiar and new people join the flock every day. Choose a tiny hostel though and you run the risk of always bumping into the same people whether you like it or not. This of course, could be ideal, it just depends on the person and the location.

I’ve always found that being in a smaller, more intimate hostel has the best benefits: backpackers are thrown together, forced to share the same bathroom, forced to share cooking facilities and forced to interact in the common room. I have met some great friends while staying in smaller hostels and will always strive to stay in similar places whenever I can. That said though, when a 400 person capacity hostel has the cheapest dorm rooms in town, then I’m always gonna go with the sensible option.

The hostel I’m in at the moment is such a place: huge, impersonal, with corridors that look like mazes and resemble something out of The Shining. I find it difficult to form close bonds in these type of hostels as there are so many people, each with their own agenda; some staying for two days, some for two months, some passing through, some seeking work. You find groups of travelling friends who’ve been together for weeks, and then there’s the lone wolf, like myself, who is eager for company but doesn’t always find it in such a massive venue.

However it’s easy to make friends if you get involved. I’ve met a lovely couple of German girls so far who I feel quite close to, and there’s a few English guys knocking about, as well as other familiar faces I bump into from time to time. I’ve taken numbers and Facebook details in order to contact others once we reach our next destinations further along on our travels. I suppose it’s all down to how much effort you want to put in.

That’s not what the premise of this particular post is about though. Here, I’m going to attempt to begin a series documenting the lessons I’ve learned from staying in hostels. As I enter my third week in the same one (the longest I’ve ever stayed in one backpacker venue), I can safely say I’ve already discovered some interesting things:

1) People will steal your shit: Not literally steal your excrement, but people will genuinely steal your belongings. They’ll steal your food, your clothes, your valuables; you name it, if it’s slim pickings and sitting there for the taking then it’s anyone’s. In the first week I stayed here, I bought myself a huge box of washing powder. Not cheap crap either, Surf 2in1 that cost me $10. At the end of the week I asked to switch rooms and had to leave my belongings in the luggage store while waiting for my new room to be ready. In the three hours my bags sat there, my big pink box of washing powder had been tea-leafed. I shit you not. Now, it wasn’t exactly an inconspicuous box; it was massive. And it was pink! The lady on reception even saw me take it into the luggage store. To this day I have no idea who took it. Just goes to show, when you’re on a budget and desperate, even washing powder has its value.

2) You’ll be the oldest person there: Ok, not strictly true if you’re younger than 25 but any older and yep, you’ll feel way too mature, too motherly and quite frankly past it. Save for the old guy who looks like Father Christmas and the 50 year old Chinese lady who cooks spaghetti and salad for breakfast, you might just be the most elderly traveller in your hostel. I went on the infamous Base bar crawl in my first week and slowly discovered I actually was the oldest person there, out of about 50 faces. Seriously depressing.

3) There’ll be lots of noise. Get used to it ‘cos no-one cares about your whinging: Unless you’re rich enough to be able to afford a single dorm (and let’s face it, who wants that when they’re travelling alone? Certainly not me), you’re gonna have to get used to putting up with noise. At all hours of the day and night. No one cares if you only got in at 7am and now, because you’re room mates are getting up at 11am you’re having trouble sleeping; so what, deal with it. No one cares if you start work at 6am and haven’t been able to sleep because of people coming in at silly hours of the morning, or the incessant never changing AWFUL playlist from the bar keeps you awake; so what, deal with it. No one cares if you’re trying to get an afternoon power nap and your dorm mates come in after a day at the beach; so what, deal with it. Get my drift?

4) Any issues with personal hygiene and personal space will need to be eradicated: You’re gonna get times when all you need is to shower to get the days stench off you, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t stay clean because it’s so god damn hot (not complaining about the heat by the way). There will be people sharing your room who have obviously never heard of deodorant. There will be fellow backpackers whose clothes haven’t seen the inside of a washing machine for weeks. There’ll be travellers who’ve been to that many places and have been on the road for so long that they’ve developed a natural linger all of their own. And don’t even get me started on the size of the dorm rooms. Some will be spacious and some will be tiny but when two Swedish girls decide to dump ALL their stuff right in the middle of the floor and expect you to perform acrobatics in order to get out the door then you know it’s seriously time to have a word about spacial etiquette.

5) You will meet people form such a brief time that they will either make an impact on you or not: When I was in China, I spent two days with a girl and two days with another two guys and they have made the biggest impact on me out of the majority of my fellow travellers. I spent a day and a couple of drunken nights with some Aussies in Poland and now we’re planning to meet up as soon as I hit Sydney; we’ve been texting and skyping for over two years! I’ve also met people who I’ve never felt any kind of connection with; people who have walked into my life and who I will probably never see again. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a part of the mad, unpredictable life of a backpacker.

6) The bar, the kitchen or organised tours are probably the best place to meet new people: There’s been plenty of times where I’ve rocked up at a hostel and thought, ‘right, what the hell do I do now and who am I gonna talk to?’ Your room mates are the obvious first port of call but if they’re not your type of people, or you happen to get stuck with the full-time, Mon-Fri workers then you’re not in the best position to hang out with them during the day. The next best thing then, I’d suggest, is heading down to the bar. If this fails, then participate in some of the hostel activities. I attended the walking tour and met the two German girls I’d now consider myself to be quite good friends with. I also went to the movie night and got chatting to some other backpackers. The weekly bar crawl is again, fab for getting to know your counterparts, and it can be a damn good laugh too. You might even end up getting to know some of them in more ways than one (never happened to me, not once, nope…)

This is certainly not an exhaustive list and I will endeavour to continue adding to it as I go along, inevitably discovering more weird and wonderful things as the weeks progress. I hope to be able to add some positive and happy findings to the hostelling experience as sometimes I feel I can get bogged down with the negative or shitty things about shared dorm lifestyles. Hostelling is part and parcel of backpacking; you will either love it or hate it. I in fact, don’t mind hostelling at all. I find it social, fun and a great way to travel. New cultures can be experienced, your eyes can be opened and ultimately, new friends can be made and adventures can be had. It’s all about remaining positive and more often than not, making the most out of a not so ideal situation.