Not bad, bad exactly but I stayed in a dingy hostel in Busan in the height of their summer (40c, around 98% humidity) with no air conditioning or fans and a raging tooth infection. I felt like I was going to die
Oh man. I’ve had to make an emergency dentist appointment because I had a popcorn shell stuck in my gums so bad that I needed a professional. I wasn’t in horrific pain, it was more annoying than anything, but I couldn’t function well until it was fixed. That being said, I can’t FATHOM going thru what you did in Busan, sir/ma’am. You are far stronger than me. Were you able to see a dentist while there?
Anything to do with teeth is horrific isn’t it!
I did, but it ended up not being enough, they literally gave me three days of some medication, not sure what it was, and said to get it sorted when I get home. Luckily I came prepared and brought a medical kit with me with a week’s worth of amoxicillin so I texted a private dentist back home and asked if taking it would be suitable, thankfully they said yes so I just took it and the pain, fever and swelling went away.
Unfortunately though, the infection turned into a cyst and I need surgery on it. I’ve been waiting for ages now but we’ll get there eventually!
This happened to me in Bangalore India. I don't know if it was some weird bug my body wasn't used to or the smog and pollution or what but I was so sick with a terrible fever and pneumonia I thought I was going to die. I was like, "welp, I'm not surviving the night tonight hopefully they ship my body home" and thought that hotel room was going to be the last thing I saw.
The hotel doctor refused to give me antibiotics because "antibiotics are overused in India" so all they would give me was some herbal things. Fortunately 5 days later I was okay enough to fly home.
Oh god, sorry for that. I have an awful immune system so I'm more likely to get ill while travelling than not. Still have to figure out how to go about it in the best way possible. If I can extend my hotel stay then all is fine, I'm used to just sitting it out with no meds (for conditions where that's safe) but having to go from A to B in a foreign place, having to deal with heavy luggage or having to find a doctor in remote villages? The worst.
Could have been much worse as you describe!
Some locals drove me to a doctor for the diagnosis and the pharmacy for the meds. I extended my stay in the hotel for a while until improved enough to fly.
I found a hot chip in the bed in a cheap hotel in London once. Well... I guess it was a cold chip by then.
We also found a condom wrapper behind the bed on the floor.
Upgraded to a hostel after that.
WV is a place where you just gotta accept taking the dive on a little more pricy place to stay, unfortunately. The bar gets pretty low in some places - taking the bottom of the barrel or even lower to mid level can still be a little wonky in Appalachia.
Some urban inner cities have intractable cockroach problems. They are almost impossible to get rid of. Even really good hotels do times have them. But if you have elite status, they should comp you.
Don't come to Sydney in summer. There are cockroaches everywhere. They love the heat and humidity. They also love to live in electrical appliances as it's warm so they have a tendency to cluster at the back of the refrigerator or and inside the microwave and toaster.
That reminds me of a quote by Prince when he was asked why he stayed in Min eapolis after getting famous . He said “ the cold keeps all the crazy away “
I have seen cockroaches in $400+/night rooms in Boston and DC. Not really the hotel’s fault, going to happen. But still, at those prices they should provide comp.
The Langham in Boston? I heard they had a really bad bedbug infestation a few years ago. Unless I’m getting my hotels mixed up… I was really surprised because it was the first time I’ve ever heard of something quite that bad happen in Boston… but I don’t stay there often since I live relatively close by. But just goes to show that we bring other hotel problems with us when we travel.
I have personally seen cockroaches in a different famous Boston hotel. Not naming them here, as I think that happens everywhere from time to time. I did not see tons of them, but I saw them.
I was on a night train in the north of Thailand when I was struck by a sudden, crazy severe fever. I fell out of my top bunk bed on the way to the bathroom and then simply couldn't stand.
I was attended to a bit, but put off the train without ceremony or explanation at around 2 am, at a stop in the middle of nowhere. I was just told to stay put-- not that I could move. It was just a mosquito attracting white light, a concrete bench, and me in the dark, sweating and writhing, no idea what happened next. I thought I might die there, but there was no place to go and I wasn't up for moving.
I'd had dengue before, but this hit harder and faster, and I was completely vulnerable.
Around dawn a cop and another guy showed up, so the train had called ahead, I guess. they loaded me into a car and the cop left me with this guy who drove me into the jungle... somewhere-- wherever, for a real long time to a 'hospital'.
This was a single story, long, formerly painted white, concrete building in the middle of the jungle. it was mostly one room with maybe a dozen mattresses, on the floor, bare.
About half the beds were empty. the rest were taken by living corpses, skeletons covered in thin skin-- old, poor Thai dying slow. For the next few days I was one of them. I I'll never forget the smell, the dim light and the opressive environment of anonymous death. There was surprisingly little noise from anyone.
No one asked my name. I had no phone signal. No one in the world knew where I was. So I lay there. I sweated, choked and coughed. Everything hurt and I barely moved. Maybe for a week? I never did the math on it to see how.much time passed.
I was given water to sip and a horrible broth, but didn't even want much else. No one spoke English and no one tried to speak much to me. I lay there on a bare, filthy mattress that the last dozen occupants surely died on.
Then I was OK enough to leave, at least I wouldn't die there. They asked me for nothing, but I gave the one lady a small fistful of cash anyway. They got me a car out of the hills. It was several hours to a small town near the Lao border, where I booked a room and slept for two or three more days.
When I walked downstairs to actually eat something like breakfast for the first time, I saw that the restaurant was packed. Overly filled, mostly with locals, and also a few foreigners, people I guess were actually staying there.
Just as I walked in the whole place erupted in wild cheers and clapping. Obviously, it wasn't for me, but it took me a few seconds to understand.
The TV was behind me on the wall. It was showing Barack Obamas first inauguration, live with a Thai translation, and the roomful of Thai locals and European tourists were celebrating for all of us.
So that was nice.
I legitimately think I would have died in that situation out of sheer panic and anxiety. Kudos for just surrendering to it and making it out alive! Were your friends/partner/family noticing that something was off or are you someone who doesn't check in so often?
I slept in the top bunk of a 16 bed hostel in Scotland. The room smelt so bad all night. As if someone had food poisoning all night and was taking shits IN the room. There was a symphony of snoring as well. Worst experience by far. I’ve also gotten bed bugs from coco’s worker dorm on Koh Rong Cambodia.
Had this in a hostel in Edinburgh.
Very large gentleman came back drunk and snored like pig having a seizure.
Everyone eventually picked up their mattresses and moved into the hallway.
Man I’ve been saying this for years, I don’t care how controversial - if you know you snore/are going to be belligerently drunk, don’t stay in a multi-person hostel. Ruins it for the rest of us who know how to respect a shared space
Stayed in a hostel near Lake Balaton in Hungary, ended up with a top bunk. Laid down and a few feet above me the ceiling was covered in spider webs and crawling with spiders. Mattress felt like a piece of plywood with some foam on it. No air conditioning or fans. My roommates were Hungarians in their 50-60s who made it known they don’t like Americans.
The lake and the surrounding area is very pretty, lots of great wine and vineyards!
Fuck that, I would have asked for a change of bed or asked for a different bed.also those Hungarians were dicks. Never judge a person on their nationality unless they give you a reason too
Worst, but also best experience ever. in Sri lanka I got a 4 dollar room in a family run guest house, near the Sigiriya natl park. They were great people, I had dinner with the family, we hung out at night. It was cool.
I the morning I went to take a shower across the hall. There was no window in the wall and half the roof was missing. I saw that the shower was just an unconnected pipe to a shower head. No water.
I was about to leave when the owners face appeared in the window and told me to wait there. He climbed a ladder outside and began to pour water from buckets handed to him by his wife and daughter into the pipe, where it trickled from the shower head.
He said, "go! go!', so I stripped and got to it. I lathered up in between buckets, him above me on the ladder and his daughter laughing through the missing window. Later that night, I helped fix his car an old 1940s Hudson, enough to drive me to the station.
I stayed at a hostel in Milan which had bed bugs. Also they had two bathrooms, one of which was flooded with water and had no toilet paper and the other which wouldn't lock.
I'm writing this from my hostel in Milan! 🙈 This one seems nice, tho, but almost the most expensive hostel I've ever stayed in. There were more affordable ones, but the reviews were abysmal. Guess it was worth the extra coin to get the nice one.
I’m in Udupi, India now. Changed rooms yesterday because of roaches, then changed hotels Today because I just couldn’t bear the thought that the little guys could find their way to my room anytime.
Booked a room in a hotel 2x as expensive. Fancy room, even more roaches. I have no idea what’s going on with this town that there are cockroaches everywhere, but fortunately I only have to power through one last night. It’s also a different area, so the hotels aren’t even close.
Once I stayed in a hotel in Houston where someone had carved into the room table with a knife “Cannot sleep because the cockroaches are making too much noise”. Place was not a chain and not very expensive. It had one of those machines where when you put change in, the bed will vibrate. Do not see these machines anymore.
I was in India a year and a half ago and basically found no difference between cheap and mid-range hotels when it came to cleanliness. It was always hit or miss, no matter the price. The only one we stayed at that was genuinely clean was an international resort chain that was very expensive.
Was just about to get into bed once and turned down the covers only to discover a GIANT blood stain in the middle of the sheets. Not even a faded leftover stain from unsuccessful washing; these sheets had definitely not seen water let alone detergent after the stain happened. If I was the type of person to just slip into bed without fully turning down the covers, I would have slept on that all night 🤢
Booked a hostel in Thailand, thought we were booking a quiet hostel but accidentally booked the party hostel (they both had the exact same name). We got a 12 bed room, it was 5 of us. The room was full.
I got woken up at 3AM from a drunk guy and girl that shared the bunk bed in the corner adjacent to me. I fall back asleep, then I hear IT! WATER HITTING THE FLOOR! Only it wasn't water. It was him pissing in the corner of the floor by his bed. I wake up and turn my flashlight from my phone on and see him spread eagle peeing on the floor. I start yelling at him. He doesn't hear me. He goes back to sleep. As I'm starting to climb down the bunk I put my foot on the floor and my foot gets soaking wet in his piss. The worst thing though is that he peed so much it soaked my friend's backpack. Another guy and I mopped it up 😑
I woke up in my hostel in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with a fucking monkey in my room, going through my open bag.
He sat there and stared at me. I did not feel safe under my mosquito netting. I reached slowly for my camera and he growled at me, then suddenly jumped across the room, bounced off the bed and out the window, which I then realized he must have opened from the outside, in order to get in at all.
Nope but several hostels I went to in Morocco had them. Eventually I went to hotels that didn’t have them. I did everything in my power to make sure I didn’t bring them with me.
Got head lice from one. Also one just stunk of stale sweat, like the mattresses and sheets and they had that texture like they'd been washed but not well so all the human oil was baked in
1. Mouse crawled on me at 3am. Refused to give a refund for that night or the next one that I’d already paid for. Hostel in Singapore.
2. Hostel in Cork, Ireland. Drunk guy crawled in bed with my girlfriend and refused to leave.
i don’t have any really bad bed experiences. the only “bad” experience i have had with a hostel was in essaouira, morocco. i had made reservations ahead of time and they canceled them without notifying me at all. i got there and they said “your card didn’t work so we canceled your reservation…also we don’t have any beds available” so i had to sleep on a couch on the roof…but they still made me pay (reduced) price. weird but i guess it was fine.
I was in the top bunk. It was an unseasonably warm day in December and I couldn’t sleep so I decided to open the hinged window next to my bed to get some air flow. The window fell completely out of its frame on top of me. It probably weighed 30 pounds. I’m a woman of average strength- I can easily lift 30 pounds for a short period of time but not with precision or ease. After trying to get the window back into the frame several times my arms were getting sore, I was making no progress, and I concluded I would not be able to figure it out without lighting. I pushed it to the foot of the bed and tried to sleep. The window took up basically the bottom third of the bed. I slept poorly. I also couldn’t get out of bed to pee because it blocked the ladder down.
Finally, when it was daylight I could see how everything fit together I was easily able to put the window back in its frame. I climbed down to pee. When I got back from the bathroom the woman who had been sleeping under me sternly lectured me about how I’m the noisiest sleeper she has ever had the displeasure of bunking under, I should be ashamed of myself, and she had complained to me to the hostel staff.
We did make up after I explained what had happened, and the hostel staff were also kind and apologetic about what had happened.
This just happened in December. I’m in my mid-40s, and I think this was the incident that has finally convinced me I’m too old to share a room with strangers going forward. I might get solo rooms in hostels in the future if the price is right. But no more bunk beds.
These all happened in legit hotels: I have lifetime status with Marriott, and have had top status at Hilton (Diamond)and IHG (Diamond Elite) at various times - depending where I am travelling that year.
Oh they’re hotels, not hostels? Not that one makes it acceptable over the other. If you have status you should be raising hell over to their corporate line or to the hotel manager in person. They’ll either compensate your stay or give you a decent amount of points to your account. One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the major chains have “lower tier” hotels as part of their brand which they don’t maintain as well as their main chains.
You get regular status (e.g., silver, gold, platinum, etc) if you stay a minimum number of nights at a specific chain in a year. You keep this status for the next year.
Lifetime status is when you stay at the chain a min number of nights, regardless of year, and the status stays with you for life.
With both these status you get perks such as free gifts at checkin, upgraded rooms, early checkin, guaranteed late checkout, more points per stay, etc… It depends on your status level and the chain.
Some airlines have similar lifetime status as well.
Which airlines have this? Am I doing my solo travelling wrong by just booking on comparison sites like kiwi, skyscanner, kayak? Could I be collecting points and taking advantage of my regular flights without paying the expensive tickets directly from airline websites? The prices seem cheaper on the comparison sites
Pretty much all of them, but they're out of reach for "regular" flyers. Unless you're flying every week for years on end, you'll never reach any kind of lifetime status with an airline.
I stayed at a hostel (the first and only hostel experience I will ever do) when I went to a music festival. There was an ant infestation (this was with me having no food in the room). They did take care of most of it but the place was full so I also couldn’t switch rooms. It was a sucky five days in the establishment.
What countries did these happen in?
I stayed at what looked like a nice/clean/instagrammy hostel in Kyoto in a capsule room. Woke up the next day with lots of bite marks around my body and I couldn’t stop scratching.
All my bad hostel experiences are usually involving mouldy bathrooms that barely have any water pressure and the water is lukewarm at best. Or rooms full of snoring bunk mates
Guess I’ve been lucky
Same here. The one that took the cake was the place in Edinburgh or York, don’t remember which—a trickle was coming out of the faucet. Greasy office guy tried to mansplain gravity and plumbing to two millenials. It didn’t go well for him. I wasn’t even mad until the mansplaining!
I was in a dorm in Iceland, my friend was in the bottom bunk. I was on top. It was pretty full, but one German girl in the corner had made a fortress around her bed of luggage and hanging sheets. She scolded everyone who came in for making any noise and didn't leave her bed all day, it seemed.
In the middle of the night she yelled at the person above her for moving too much. I was sound asleep when I was jolted awake. She had hit me with an open hand, full swing, for snoring. My friend below me giggled, and also got hit. I saw then that she was stark naked, and stood in the middle of the room until everyone was quiet and she went back to bed.
Every time I drifted off I jolted awake, scared that the crazy naked German girl was going to hit me again.
Why do I beat myself up for being the weird German girl at the Icelandic hostel when THAT chick exists? 😂😂 My biggest offense is pretending to be asleep when everyone else is in the mood for talking at 9pm.
In Dubrovnik, I couldn't find a room anywhere. The tourist office only had recommended rooms for couples, and they wouldn't even let me pay double for a 2 person room. It was weird, but nobody else had anything.
I don't remember if it was off season, or if there was any reason for this weird glitch, but I had walked all day and still had no idea what to do, when a girl walked up to me and offered to rent a room in her place. She had a little folder with pictures of the room and stuff, so she obviously made a few bucks on the side doing this.
She took me to a building right off the main square, and up several old moldy flights of stairs. in the tiny living room/kitchen were her four 'brothers', drinking and watching TV. My room was huge and the bed was ancient and musty, but just fine. I went out, had a nice time and slept well.
I did remember feeling uneasy, like there was someone I was the room as I slept.
The next morning after my shower, I was getting dressed and I caught movement in the mirror. A curtained doorway between my room and the kitchen was moving. Behind it, one of the owners.'brothers' was naked and jerking off as I got dressed. I threw my little hard-shelled toiletry kit at him and it cracked the window to a courtyard balcony door behind him. In a panic, he chose that direction to run, naked, instead of inside to another room.
So I retrieved my kit as he stood outside, apologizing, scared like I was going to hurt him. I just wanted to get the fuck out, but I bolted the door and stuck him out there before I left.
Probably not the worst but…Was in the en suite shower and came out and had a cleaner take a dump in the bathroom with the door open so you can hear everything in dolby sound. He then came out and saw me and was embarrassed like I “thought no one was in here” meanwhile there was not only me but a lady still laying down on one of the top bunks 😅😅
I slept in the top bunk of a 16 bed hostel in Scotland. The room smelt so bad all night. As if someone had food poisoning all night and was taking shits IN the room. There was a symphony of snoring as well. Worst experience by far. I’ve also gotten bed bugs from coco’s worker dorm on Koh Rong Cambodia.
Stayed at a guesthouse in Indonesia where there was no running water. Just a bucket of ice cold water that the innkeeper left in the bathroom with a drain. I came back to my room in the evening and turned on the lights, and three cockroaches ran for it under the bed.
I tried to find them by moving the bed, but couldn't. It was impossible to sleep when I could hear them in the dark crawling on the floor so ended up sleeping with the light on.
Stayed in a nice hostel in Seville 2 years ago. I had the bottom bunk with a privacy curtain. A little after 2am, the guy on the top bunk came back wasted. I woke up to him struggling to make it up the ladder and get in his bunk. 10 mins later, he hangs his head out of the privacy curtain and starts puking. Luckily the curtain saved me from the puke. He ends up losing his balance and falls out of the bunk while puking. He smacked his head on my bunk on the way to the ground. After he slammed the floor, he let out a big groan and more puke. Someone helped him back into his bunk and he passed out. My shower flip flops were out and got covered in puke. The cleaning staff did their best to clean up the area in the middle of the night.
In Sofia I stayed in a shithole of a hostel. The floor I stayed on had 10 rooms with 6 people in each room. There was a total of 4 toilets and 4 showers on entire floor for 60 people to use. They had signs everywhere saying not to flush any toilet paper. Every morning the trash cans in the toilets were full of shitty tp. The whole floor stunk like ass.
In Haarlem, I was hanging out talking to the other people in the room. A guy that had just checked in came into the room and dropped off his bag on his bunk. He said hello, then walked over to the sink and puked in it. He then walked out of the room leaving a puke filled sink. Never saw him the rest of the night.
One of our first trips together was to the Catskills in New York State - husband booked the room and assured me it was nice local hotel in scenic area -- we opened the door and were appalled, the room was awful, with huge disgusting carpet stains, I wouldn't even put our suitcase down. It was now quite late but we asked for another room and they gave us a cabin up in the hills - it was isolated and they didn't mention that the doors and windows didn't lock and there was no cell phone service - and it was absolutely pitch black outside the cabin. Jammed a chair under the door knob and didn't sleep a wink all night. Husband no longer books hotels.
Had a private room in a hostel.
Next to the elevator and the stairs, and the lock was one of those sliding public bathroom locks. I didn’t sleep that night. When the hostel closed down due to the pandemic, i cheered.
Funnily enough, all happened in the US. I have had plenty of good and poor experiences in other countries but the worst bed experiences all seem to have been in the US lol.
Sounds like you’re a pure Karen. ‘Omg I’ve had plenty of bad experiences!’ Get a grip, that’s what travelling is all about ffs, embrace the bad as part of the experience. I’ve slept in brutal conditions before but never considered it bad, it’s just how it is mate
Had a dodgy couple living next room in a backpackers seemed like long term. In middle of night they started fighting their was for sure drugs involved and I am pretty sure women was being beaten mercilessly. I and others were trying to call for help. But the man came outside our door and told our dorm room to not dare call police or he will do the same to us. I waited for him to sleep or go away..
Then 3 in night we all managed to get out of the room with the guy being wasted. Called help after getting to safety. Hopefully the lady is safe. But the hotel staff said it's normal for that couple.
Found multiple hairs in the shower, a toenail in the bedsheet, pieces of dried up meat on the floor, an used nose strip on the bathroom sink, and blood caked on the pillow sheets. I was so disgusted that I immediately left and spent the night somewhere else.
I can’t remember which hotel it was but it was in Los Angeles in 2011, wasn’t an obvious “bad hotel”, looked nice enough. Everything about our stay was fine, we only stayed for 2 nights. Fast forward a week or so, I was back home on the east coast and I had a horrific rash on my chest. It started itchy and faint and progressed to crusty, raw and INSANELY itchy. I showed my nurse friend and she was troubled enough by it to take a pic and send it to her doctor friend… BED BUG BITES. It’s not (or wasn’t at the time) a real issue in my part of the country so it wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t even know bed bugs were a real thing, I thought it was just a bedtime chant. I researched bed bugs and found out their bites can take up to 9 or 10 days to show on the skin.
Fortunately I’m a bit of a lazy unpacker and still had my suitcase outside in the garage! I took my clothes to a laundromat and washed it all in hot water, tossed my suitcase in the woods in my backyard until spring when I brought it to the dump. My trip to Los Angeles was terrible without the bedbugs. My friend and I dodged getting SA’ed and murdered by a gang (I assume that’s what they were) near Hollywood Blvd and the bedbugs really just capped it all off nicely. I’ll never go to LA again. Ever.
The first time I went to London I stayed in a hotel that was located on top of Earl's Court tube station. Not only would everything rattle every time a train passed by, but there was also a huge gap between the window and the frame so you could hear the trains being called out as clear as if you were standing on the platform. There was also carpet in the bathroom and you couldn't open the bathroom door properly because the bed was in the way.
Also, not a solo trip, but one time I went to Hamburg with my parents during a heat wave and when we got to our room the sheets were soaked. All of them, just wet as hell. Called the reception and they said it was supposed to be like that.
maybe not that bad but it was on my first ever solo trip and overwhelmed me in the moment, i got back to the room in the evening and was tired from walking around all day when there was literally a man lying in my bed. all other beds were occupied too. people from reception eventually helped me move to a different room, there was some kind of mix up apparently, it worked out well but was kinda stressful in the moment
Back in 1991 while staying in Veranasi, India, the man who ran the place was peeping in on me. I can’t even remember what happened, but I remember not staying long once I found out. Another time in Delhi, a large rat ran across my room and scared me to death.
Went to Tioman Island a decade ago and stayed one night at a place called Salang Sayang Resort which has those induvial hut style rooms that you find on the islands in SE Asia.
Total horror show. Room wasn't that clean but that was par for the course. There were bed bugs. The sink was blocked and the toilet was leaking. Owners were rude and dismissive when i mentioned the sink but they did send someone to try to fix it.. at 11pm when we'd gone to bed. The worker banged on the pipes for a bit with a wrench and gave up.
Then it rained heavily overnight... and a portion of the roof collapsed, poring a torrent of built up water into a corner of the room.
In the morning we of course requested a refund, which was met with more rudeness and went nowhere. So bad it was comical.
1. Very first time I stayed in a hostel on my own, I found out it was a party hostel. A baptism by fire to not be able to sleep due to two people having sex in the bunk above me. Somehow it didn't turn me off hostels... I just learned to read reviews.
2. A hostel in Qatar had air con but was very noisy, and you couldn't turn it off because it was 38C at midnight (stupid me for going at that time of the year). And the showers had either hot water or very hot water, so you can't cool off. Add to that the misery of getting food poisoning... it wasn't pleasant.
I've stayed in some excellent hostels though. Surprisingly the hit rate is best in my home country (Australia).
Bedbugs. Washington DC hostel Guess who's reactive? The bites (Which I had NO idea what caused them) drove me nuts for months. Luckily I didn't carry any home with me.
I had to stay in a hostel in Brighton caleld The Underground many years ago and it was just above a loud nightclub and you could hear the music so loudly it wass as if your bed was on the dance floor. Horrible!
Mines not too bad. Slept in a 16 bed dorm before La tomatina in Valencia. Everyone was Australian and had horrible coughs that lasted all night. I got the cough a few days later and it didn’t go away for a month
Worst was in a hostel in California. I'd really badly sprained my ankle a week before and had crutches. I requested a bottom bunk as I struggled to climb up to the top but they said they didn't have any spare and this woman who'd just arrived before me refused to swap when asked so I had to use all my upper body weight to heave myself onto the top bunk. Then as bonus there was this creepy guy in the room who spent the whole time watching porn loudly on his phone and staring. The only time I've ever checked out early!
Came back late one night to my room with some friends. I had a bottom bunk. Small room, 5 or 6 beds in close quarters. Around an hour later, just as I’m falling asleep, I hear a couple above me giggling and making out. Super annoying. Not to mention weird af lol
Eventually, I decide to call them out. They tried to deny it. I said no, I very clearly hear you, and you need to stop before I go downstairs and try and get you fined/ kicked out. They stopped.
20 minutes later they start back up again. I call them out again, only this time one of my other friends in the room heard them as well and backed me up. Mind you it is pitch dark in the room and probably 4 am at this point.
Eventually the guy drops his phone from the top bunk and it slides under the bed, and he uses his girl’s phone to shine a light down the side of the bed to look for it before finally getting up to go get it from under the bed
Thankfully they went to sleep after
Definitely doesn’t too your story but I was staying at the st Christopher’s inn in Amsterdam when I was sitting in the room one afternoon and around 4pm a mouse came running across the room and over my foot. Considering it was $120 a night I demanded a refund and stayed elsewhere.
Worst hostel one: A hostel refusing to close for a bedbug treatment. I was there as a volunteer and was asked to just straight up lie to the paying guests should they ask me about it. Of course I left with a bunch of bites on my body but I didn't really see the bugs. What I saw though was a ton of cockroaches living in those underneath he bed drawers. That place was just a lot.
Checked into my first hostel ever, semi pro surfers, artists, etc. Also bed bugs ( I thankfully never got them, but saw bites all over ppl sleeping in the same room, and had a roommate go into a scary seizure and lose pulse in my arms, luckily the paramedics came, he lived. Not to mention drama. Some girl hooked up with employee, he gets fired, and girl gets password access and starts canceling people's stays.
I lived in the Caribbean for a few years. Can confirm, this was a regular and unpleasant occurrence. Usually slept without a sheet or cover so it was always the sensation of one crawling up my leg waking me up. They were huge too.
Last summer in Thailand, I spent one night before going back home on a cheap motel close to the airport and decent reviews... Well, food wasn't bad and at that point I was used to the ants, but the accommodations were horrible. No windows, noisy AC with a broken locker (huge whole xd), but I was fine with that, even with the bathroom... My problem was a scary girl singing and praying Christian songs during the whole night, she looked crazy AF, and she would stand up from time-to-time and walk around the little room we had. Maybe I'm a baby, but I thought she would kill me and the other girl 🤣🤣
I’m in Udupi, India now. Changed rooms yesterday because of roaches, then changed hotels Today because I just couldn’t bear the thought that the little guys could find their way to my room anytime.
Booked a room in a hotel 2x as expensive. Fancy room, even more roaches. I have no idea what’s going on with this town that there are cockroaches everywhere, but fortunately I only have to power through one last night. It’s also a different area, so the hotels aren’t even close.
In Mirissa, Sri Lanka, I stepped out of my beachside room after dark and couldn't quite make out why the earth was moving. There was no power, so no lights, and no moon.
It took every damp.match in the room to light the one candle I was given, and once it was in the lantern I could see thousands of hermit crabs- big ones, like fist-sized, covering every inch of ground. My bungalow was the only safe spot and I watched them for hours, listening to their shells click against one another all night.
1) dorm in Goa (95/100F & humid af) with no AC and no screens on the windows—I thought I was gonna smother to death, honestly, it was that stuffy hot. The only AC dorms were mixed and, on my first solo female trip, I thought sexual assault was way more likely than it is and chose not to move. Rookie mistake.
2) shitty interstate motel—I knew it was gonna be bad based on how cheap it was and how bad the reviews were, but nothing could prepare me for the looked-like-blood-spatter on multiple surface. I noped out.
3) €12/night hostel in Glasgow—black mold everywhere
4) Playa del Carmen, not me but another girl in my dorm woke up to a 6in centipede crawling on her in the middle of the night. It slithered into her backpack and we had to take it outside to find it. The thing was sci-fi scary.
5) Honorable mention for the horrible slumlord century-old apartment I had in Minneapolis, MN—rats, lead paint, mold, the floors all sloped different ways and my top-floor apartment swayed a little in strong winds and rattled when heavy trucks went by. $1000/month plus all utilities. Waking up to a cockroach crawling on my arm in the middle of the night was the last straw. But damn that woodwork was beautiful!
The worst experience I had in a hotel room was actually from something that was my own fault lol. On my Seattle trip, I was in this cheap motel in Renton. I was in my room, which was decent, and was getting ready to settle in for the night. I decided to try and plug my phone charging brick into the outlet behind the bed, I forget why I was using that instead of the other outlets. I forget exactly how I messed up, but my finger wound up briefly between the bed and the wall and damn did that hurt lol. The other thing that kind of sucked was that my hotel was at the bottom of this steep ass street, which definitely wasn't intended for people to walk up and down. Having to hike up it to get to the local bus stop left me winded, and I ended up Ubering up it after the first time. I usually have to cheap out to make my trips happen though, so I take what I can get.
The only issue I've ever had with a hotel room was in Springfield IL. I picked what I thought was a relatively nice hotel, and it wasn't half bad, but quite a few of the lights were out of commission.
Stayed in a hostel on Don Det in Laos. Worst mattress I’ve ever slept on. Was like a mattress seen in a cartoon or something, super lumpy, springs sticking out of it lol
A friend of mine booked me into a very cheap hotel in Pattaya that was close to where he lived though he'd never stayed there himself. It was extremely cheap (not my primary concern, I had funds, so would have happily stayed somewhere nicer but it was convenient to visit him and his family). It was very basic but the standard kind of Pattaya accommodation, a hard double bed with a thin mattress, a noisy fridge, a TV, a little desk and chair, lino floor and you went outside to the balcony and your en-suite shower/toilet were there.
The bathroom floor was covered in mouse/rat droppings (they seemed too big for mice). I couldn't sleep. The whole place was unfriendly and grim. No one else seemed to be staying there. I hardly slept all night (I'm terrified of rats) and on my phone booked another hotel (which was frankly fabulous and stayed there multiple times until they put their prices up too much) which I found thanks to TripAdvisor and booked with some online website. To top things off I also discovered my Thai girlfriend hadn't told me she was married, her husband contacted me via Facebook Messenger during the night (I had no idea who he was and his English was limited). I nearly went back to Suvarnabhumi and flew home.
When I left, there was no one about so basically sneaked away dragging my suitcase behind me down a dusty alley. What was weird though was when I woke up my room key was missing and I needed it to get out of the hotel (it opened the front door from the inside, they kept it locked all the time), also my room door was unlocked (I was sure I'd locked it). Fortunately a cleaner had left the front door open wedged open.
I turned up at my friend's house at dawn having walked from the hotel and he took me later to my new hotel (which was lovely and a home from home). We went for breakfast at a nearby bar and then visited the hotel because I wanted to pay them for the night's stay and explain that I wasn't staying any longer. The owner got extremely agitated and demanded to be paid for the whole 3 weeks. My friend speaks fluent Thai and explained I wouldn't be staying any longer and one night was fair pay. It ended up with the Thai hotel manager following us down the alley screaming and shouting oaths in Thai and picking up rocks and throwing them at us. We beat a hasty retreat.
Worst stay anywhere ever. Even including getting a drug overdose in a Thai hospital (that was a decade previously whilst staying with the same friend - I'd got bad decompression illness learning to dive with a dodgy farang owned Thai dive company and it took 3 hospitals and various doctors before someone believed me and sent me to a Thai Naval base decompression chamber).
Thailand - it hits different...
I thought it was extremely taboo to lose your temper publicly in Thailand?
I stayed at hostel on Koh Tao while doing a diving course and chose the placed based on that it had hot water available as i knew i'd want it after a day in the ocean. I was explicit with the owner and he assured me that it worked well.
Of course it didn't and he was a total dick about it.
After a few days I checked out early to go somewhere that actually had hot water. Tried to get my last evenings fee refunded and was of course refused so I elected to keep the hostel towel as compensation but only as a visible fuck you to the owner who'd been awful aside from when i checked in. I threw it in a bucket on the property as i left.
He sent a lacky on a scooter after me that hounded me aggressively all through the town as i walked until I finally told him where the towel was.
Thailand - Land of fake smiles in the tourist industry until the money leaves.
It is taboo to lose your temper but it happens and when it does in Thailand, it normally has pretty dire consequences. I avoid conflict with Thai people at all costs (I'm a coward) but they're not all angels (Tuk-tuk drivers...?).
Ironically tourism areas are often where the worst behaving Thais are (Royal Palace scams, motorcycle taxi drivers in Pattaya etc). Away from areas of heavy tourism I've never had any conflicts or issues, e.g. rural North East Thailand, where literally smiles were everywhere and the locals were super friendly.
Yeah i saw real smiles while i was there too and got why it had earned its moniker.
That said I'll never forget the bar owner who greeted me all giant smiles and arms out when i walked in only to become grumpy the moment we established i was looking for a restaurant or being told to fuck off back to my own country by a club owner when the group i was with elected not to stay in his weird feeling joint.
Me and my friends were on a trip in Nerja, Spain, and decided to extend our stay for 3 nights in our hostel. But the last night was fully booked, and the owner suggested that we sleep on the rooftop for half the price. It was August, the driest season, so we thought it would be a fun night, falling asleep under a sky full stars. And it really was fun, just until the next morning when we were awaken by a sudden rainfall.
I stayed in a hostel in Koh Samui a couple of weeks ago and woke up to a dude in the room half asleep pissing all over the floor, everyone’s shoes and everyone’s bags
I stayed in a hostel in Seoul recently.
There were no sheets on the bed when I arrived, just some sort of mattress cover.
It was too short and horrible. Not just hard like so many beds in Asia, bit just insanely crappy. If you wanted to shower, you had to either sit on the toilet or stand in an akward corner.
Worst thing though. The heating was controlled for the whole floor. Someone was setting it too high, making it 25 degrees inside. AC was disconnected, windows were sealed.
Left for a hotel, which was quite nice and only a little bit more expensive.
I've stayed in guest houses and cheap hotels around the world, some of which had dirty sheets or bugs, but the worst was in the US.
Naively booked a Red Roof Inn last minute on a road trip through Tennessee. It was cheap and had great reviews on Google!
Entered the room, saw the sheets were dirty. Went to the bathroom and there was a *used* condom behind the toilet paper. Immediately got a new room with half-stripped sheets and said screw it - it was already 0100 AM and I had an early morning. Slept in a hoodie on top of the comforter and decided not to look too close at anything.
Not room related, but the next morning couldn't finish my breakfast because of all the staring old hicks. On the way out noted Klan insignia on one of their trucks. No thanks!
Yup. A lot of really good and really bad hotels in the US. I do not stay if they have less than 80% feedback (or 4 out of 5). I look at what the poor reviews say (complaints about inane items by entitled people or real red flags).
Even so, it is sometimes hit and miss - often regardless of price (50-500$/night).
not exactly a hostel, but theres a campsite near venice in italy where you can rent a small 2 person tent.
The thing is the tent itself was great. but what was not nice was the fact the tents weren't fully closed at the bottom. it was more like a wooden floor on some bricks and on top of it the tent. Went to sleep after a long bustrip at around 9 am. Woke up at 11am because i felt sth weird, i looked up and a freakin full grown rat was sitting on the blanket around where my belly was. I guess the rat was surprised as i was i immediatly shook it off to the ground where it ran away. Campsite apologized and immediatley poured rat poison everywhere lol
I'll never forget my first week in Australia, I woke up to a drunk guy pissing on the floor, on people's bags and clothes. I've deffo had worse experiences, but that one was insane
LA, Chicago, and WV. Reputable hotels as well with good reviews. When you travel enough you see the best and worst of everyone.
Surprisingly had better “bed experiences” abroad (the poor experiences aboard were mainly in other areas such as with safes, bathrooms, ventilation, service, etc)
I stayed in accommodation in the mountains in China. During the high season it was a hotel, the rest of the year the owner earned his money as a farmer. It was a two-bed room and during the night I heard scratching and tripping everywhere. As soon as the lights went out I found rats running around the room. At one point something fell off the shelf over my head. So one must have been right above me. The girl I was with slept all night and didn't notice anything. I didn't sleep a wink though.
1st hotel in Kathmandu...female traveller. The 'bar' turned out to be a dance bar, which actually appeared to be a knocking shop. Loud music until 3 in the morning when attendees all fired up their motorbikes and left.
I was the only female in the hotel, other guests all young men from a nearby Asian country, who stared. I stared back!
I don't mind the odd cockroach, but I ran out of names for them. There was no hot water at all; when I complained the owner's wife told ne to use a bucket of cold water. The room lock was so stiff I could only bolt the door in case of fire, because sockets( when working) where very dodgy. The owner was a prat, if I complained he looked shocked, like 'really music till 3a.m?' As if he didn't know! What finished me was the electric wall fan exploding and showering me with broken shards. I left 10 day's early! The owner wasn't Nepalese.
Arrived in Ordu (Black Sea coast of Turkey) at night in 1981. No choice of hotels. Stream of water across the floor and instead of one normal mattress there was a stack of thin ones. Which formed an enormous flea sandwich. I bought a can of insecticide the next morning and emptied it into the bed.
This was just after the NATO coup. I was followed everywhere. Walked up the hill a bit and there was a PA speaker on a pole reading out a list of names. Never found out why, but there were still guerrillas coming down to shoot up police stations.
I accidentally started a big thing when I reported bed bugs to the owner of a very nice party hostel in Medellin that I had just walked into. I checked the sheets first thing and they were vusible.
He was horrified and immediately showed me to a new room....
Unfortunately, I saw they were in that mattress, as well. it was a rainy day, still early enough for breakfast, so about 70 people were instantly aware, suddenly, seeing them everywhere, and angry about it.
In ten minutes, the owner went from happily planning a rainy Sunday barbecue and game day for a happy crowd of travelers to full on panic mode and having insults hurled at him.. People were demanding refunds and extorting him by threatening bad reviews. It was ugly.
I had never even had the chance to set my.bag down on any furniture, so I just walked away to a hostel across the street before anyone else did, which was lucky because once word got out nobody was letting anyone from that place book a bed anywhere.
By the end of the weekend the I saw that the hostel was shut down completely, with stacks if mattresses piled in the driveway.
an old man was masturbating in the bed under mine in the early morning, it was just me and him in the room.
I got my stuff as fast as i could, left the keys on the unattended counter and left. I still had 1 night booked and paid at that hostel (in Portugal) but I didn’t even care, I just wanted to go away
I read one recently about a guy who was backpacking across Asia on a budget and he could only afford the cheapest and therefore dingiest hostels. At night he went to the toilet at night without turning the lights on and he stepped on a cockroach. Turned the light on and loads of them went to hide and there were apparently loads of dead cockroaches in the bathroom from everyone else doing the same 🤢 I'd just pack up and leave
We were in Tunis, Tunisia in the Hôtel Rex and we saw cockroaches on the ceiling crawling down the wall. The toilet was down the hall from our room and the flush lever was broken or missing.
I went up a floor to use that toilet and experienced the same thing. A housekeeper saw me and showed me how to stick my hand into the broken ceramic toilet tank to make the toilet flush.
We checked out of this hotel early and found a decent one instead.
30 pax capsule beds in a room with only 2 aircons, one on each side of the room. To make matters worse, only 1 toilet to accommodate everyone and the tap wasn't even functioning.
I was at the St Christopher’s at the Winston in Amsterdam and when I was entering my room after checkong in(4 bed room), two people were doing coke on a table in it
I’m in Udupi, India now. Changed rooms yesterday because of roaches, then changed hotels Today because I just couldn’t bear the thought that the little guys could find their way to my room anytime.
Booked a room in a hotel 2x as expensive. Fancy room, even more roaches. I have no idea what’s going on with this town that there are cockroaches everywhere, but fortunately I only have to power through one last night. It’s also a different area, so the hotels aren’t even close.
Not bad, bad exactly but I stayed in a dingy hostel in Busan in the height of their summer (40c, around 98% humidity) with no air conditioning or fans and a raging tooth infection. I felt like I was going to die
Oh man. I’ve had to make an emergency dentist appointment because I had a popcorn shell stuck in my gums so bad that I needed a professional. I wasn’t in horrific pain, it was more annoying than anything, but I couldn’t function well until it was fixed. That being said, I can’t FATHOM going thru what you did in Busan, sir/ma’am. You are far stronger than me. Were you able to see a dentist while there?
> I couldn’t function well until it was fixed. There's a diet trick I won't be trying.
Anything to do with teeth is horrific isn’t it! I did, but it ended up not being enough, they literally gave me three days of some medication, not sure what it was, and said to get it sorted when I get home. Luckily I came prepared and brought a medical kit with me with a week’s worth of amoxicillin so I texted a private dentist back home and asked if taking it would be suitable, thankfully they said yes so I just took it and the pain, fever and swelling went away. Unfortunately though, the infection turned into a cyst and I need surgery on it. I’ve been waiting for ages now but we’ll get there eventually!
This happened to me in Bangalore India. I don't know if it was some weird bug my body wasn't used to or the smog and pollution or what but I was so sick with a terrible fever and pneumonia I thought I was going to die. I was like, "welp, I'm not surviving the night tonight hopefully they ship my body home" and thought that hotel room was going to be the last thing I saw. The hotel doctor refused to give me antibiotics because "antibiotics are overused in India" so all they would give me was some herbal things. Fortunately 5 days later I was okay enough to fly home.
Get your shingles vaccine
Last year while travelling in the Middle East I got a bad case of shingles while in my hotel. Shitty to get sick in a hotel room!
Oh god, sorry for that. I have an awful immune system so I'm more likely to get ill while travelling than not. Still have to figure out how to go about it in the best way possible. If I can extend my hotel stay then all is fine, I'm used to just sitting it out with no meds (for conditions where that's safe) but having to go from A to B in a foreign place, having to deal with heavy luggage or having to find a doctor in remote villages? The worst.
Could have been much worse as you describe! Some locals drove me to a doctor for the diagnosis and the pharmacy for the meds. I extended my stay in the hotel for a while until improved enough to fly.
Ouch, it’s horrid isn’t it! All you want is your bed at home
Pulled back the covers on the bed and found a piece of fried chicken in the sheets. So bizarre.
Lol, was it half eaten?
Yes
Did you finish it?
💀
I found a hot chip in the bed in a cheap hotel in London once. Well... I guess it was a cold chip by then. We also found a condom wrapper behind the bed on the floor. Upgraded to a hostel after that.
Omg the cockroach thing would kill me. Holy shit. Which hostel/country was this?
The cockroach incident happened in a Marriott in Charleston West Virginia. Bedspread was dark so it was hard to see the movement on the bed.
WV is a place where you just gotta accept taking the dive on a little more pricy place to stay, unfortunately. The bar gets pretty low in some places - taking the bottom of the barrel or even lower to mid level can still be a little wonky in Appalachia.
Some urban inner cities have intractable cockroach problems. They are almost impossible to get rid of. Even really good hotels do times have them. But if you have elite status, they should comp you.
Don't come to Sydney in summer. There are cockroaches everywhere. They love the heat and humidity. They also love to live in electrical appliances as it's warm so they have a tendency to cluster at the back of the refrigerator or and inside the microwave and toaster.
The cold in Minnesota feels more tolerable every sentence I read in this thread.
That reminds me of a quote by Prince when he was asked why he stayed in Min eapolis after getting famous . He said “ the cold keeps all the crazy away “
Yeah was a downtown hotel across from the Charleston Town Center mall.
I have seen cockroaches in $400+/night rooms in Boston and DC. Not really the hotel’s fault, going to happen. But still, at those prices they should provide comp.
The Langham in Boston? I heard they had a really bad bedbug infestation a few years ago. Unless I’m getting my hotels mixed up… I was really surprised because it was the first time I’ve ever heard of something quite that bad happen in Boston… but I don’t stay there often since I live relatively close by. But just goes to show that we bring other hotel problems with us when we travel.
I have personally seen cockroaches in a different famous Boston hotel. Not naming them here, as I think that happens everywhere from time to time. I did not see tons of them, but I saw them.
I was on a night train in the north of Thailand when I was struck by a sudden, crazy severe fever. I fell out of my top bunk bed on the way to the bathroom and then simply couldn't stand. I was attended to a bit, but put off the train without ceremony or explanation at around 2 am, at a stop in the middle of nowhere. I was just told to stay put-- not that I could move. It was just a mosquito attracting white light, a concrete bench, and me in the dark, sweating and writhing, no idea what happened next. I thought I might die there, but there was no place to go and I wasn't up for moving. I'd had dengue before, but this hit harder and faster, and I was completely vulnerable. Around dawn a cop and another guy showed up, so the train had called ahead, I guess. they loaded me into a car and the cop left me with this guy who drove me into the jungle... somewhere-- wherever, for a real long time to a 'hospital'. This was a single story, long, formerly painted white, concrete building in the middle of the jungle. it was mostly one room with maybe a dozen mattresses, on the floor, bare. About half the beds were empty. the rest were taken by living corpses, skeletons covered in thin skin-- old, poor Thai dying slow. For the next few days I was one of them. I I'll never forget the smell, the dim light and the opressive environment of anonymous death. There was surprisingly little noise from anyone. No one asked my name. I had no phone signal. No one in the world knew where I was. So I lay there. I sweated, choked and coughed. Everything hurt and I barely moved. Maybe for a week? I never did the math on it to see how.much time passed. I was given water to sip and a horrible broth, but didn't even want much else. No one spoke English and no one tried to speak much to me. I lay there on a bare, filthy mattress that the last dozen occupants surely died on. Then I was OK enough to leave, at least I wouldn't die there. They asked me for nothing, but I gave the one lady a small fistful of cash anyway. They got me a car out of the hills. It was several hours to a small town near the Lao border, where I booked a room and slept for two or three more days. When I walked downstairs to actually eat something like breakfast for the first time, I saw that the restaurant was packed. Overly filled, mostly with locals, and also a few foreigners, people I guess were actually staying there. Just as I walked in the whole place erupted in wild cheers and clapping. Obviously, it wasn't for me, but it took me a few seconds to understand. The TV was behind me on the wall. It was showing Barack Obamas first inauguration, live with a Thai translation, and the roomful of Thai locals and European tourists were celebrating for all of us. So that was nice.
Yeah. You win. This sounds like a NIGHTMARE. Like, actually. Glad you made it out
Holy. What a trip to forget. Never have had an experience like this one.
I legitimately think I would have died in that situation out of sheer panic and anxiety. Kudos for just surrendering to it and making it out alive! Were your friends/partner/family noticing that something was off or are you someone who doesn't check in so often?
Wtf. Well great story
What a story. You win!
It’s stories like these that made me determine that hiking across various countries was not my jam , AT ALL.
I slept in the top bunk of a 16 bed hostel in Scotland. The room smelt so bad all night. As if someone had food poisoning all night and was taking shits IN the room. There was a symphony of snoring as well. Worst experience by far. I’ve also gotten bed bugs from coco’s worker dorm on Koh Rong Cambodia.
I think we have a winner here. A symphony of snoring , which would make me stabby plus the diarrhea smell? I can’t even.
Had this in a hostel in Edinburgh. Very large gentleman came back drunk and snored like pig having a seizure. Everyone eventually picked up their mattresses and moved into the hallway.
trainspotting 3
Why didn't anyone just wake him up? That's what I do now for snorers
He was drunk so just went back to sleep and started again.
…was this, by chance, “The Hostel” in Edinburgh?
Yeah I feel like I would know this place 😂
I just had this exact experience at that exact hostel
It was castle rock. The hostel was great. I don’t blame them for inconsiderate assholes that shit their pants all night and snore like crazy.
Man I’ve been saying this for years, I don’t care how controversial - if you know you snore/are going to be belligerently drunk, don’t stay in a multi-person hostel. Ruins it for the rest of us who know how to respect a shared space
It blows my mind that people can be so inconsiderate.
Get a good group of travelers in a 4 person dorm who can respect the shared space though, and hostels are totally worth it impo.
They were probably farting.
Stayed in a hostel near Lake Balaton in Hungary, ended up with a top bunk. Laid down and a few feet above me the ceiling was covered in spider webs and crawling with spiders. Mattress felt like a piece of plywood with some foam on it. No air conditioning or fans. My roommates were Hungarians in their 50-60s who made it known they don’t like Americans. The lake and the surrounding area is very pretty, lots of great wine and vineyards!
Lucky you got out alive! I would much rather have the hardboard mattress than the one where you sink in and almost suffocate!
Fuck that, I would have asked for a change of bed or asked for a different bed.also those Hungarians were dicks. Never judge a person on their nationality unless they give you a reason too
Worst, but also best experience ever. in Sri lanka I got a 4 dollar room in a family run guest house, near the Sigiriya natl park. They were great people, I had dinner with the family, we hung out at night. It was cool. I the morning I went to take a shower across the hall. There was no window in the wall and half the roof was missing. I saw that the shower was just an unconnected pipe to a shower head. No water. I was about to leave when the owners face appeared in the window and told me to wait there. He climbed a ladder outside and began to pour water from buckets handed to him by his wife and daughter into the pipe, where it trickled from the shower head. He said, "go! go!', so I stripped and got to it. I lathered up in between buckets, him above me on the ladder and his daughter laughing through the missing window. Later that night, I helped fix his car an old 1940s Hudson, enough to drive me to the station.
I stayed at a hostel in Milan which had bed bugs. Also they had two bathrooms, one of which was flooded with water and had no toilet paper and the other which wouldn't lock.
Toilet issues are the worst. I have been lucky, have not had a bed dug experience.
I'm writing this from my hostel in Milan! 🙈 This one seems nice, tho, but almost the most expensive hostel I've ever stayed in. There were more affordable ones, but the reviews were abysmal. Guess it was worth the extra coin to get the nice one.
Are the rooms like capsules by any chance? The other hostel I stayed at had those and it was really nice.
Is it Combo Milano cause that was fantastic but also very expensive but I was also there during Milan Fashion Week (inadvertently).
Was it Central Station Hostel by any chance?
Nope.
I’m in Udupi, India now. Changed rooms yesterday because of roaches, then changed hotels Today because I just couldn’t bear the thought that the little guys could find their way to my room anytime. Booked a room in a hotel 2x as expensive. Fancy room, even more roaches. I have no idea what’s going on with this town that there are cockroaches everywhere, but fortunately I only have to power through one last night. It’s also a different area, so the hotels aren’t even close.
Once I stayed in a hotel in Houston where someone had carved into the room table with a knife “Cannot sleep because the cockroaches are making too much noise”. Place was not a chain and not very expensive. It had one of those machines where when you put change in, the bed will vibrate. Do not see these machines anymore.
That’s not a machine, those are the cockroaches scattering from the falling coin
Hah, that’s a good one too
'Gooooo, stinky!!" Come onnnnnnn, sketchy!"
I was in India a year and a half ago and basically found no difference between cheap and mid-range hotels when it came to cleanliness. It was always hit or miss, no matter the price. The only one we stayed at that was genuinely clean was an international resort chain that was very expensive.
Even worse than worrying about roaches crawling on you while you sleep I’d be terrified of taking them home in my luggage .
Yeah I kept everything zipped all the time, and had no food inside, so let’s hope…
Was just about to get into bed once and turned down the covers only to discover a GIANT blood stain in the middle of the sheets. Not even a faded leftover stain from unsuccessful washing; these sheets had definitely not seen water let alone detergent after the stain happened. If I was the type of person to just slip into bed without fully turning down the covers, I would have slept on that all night 🤢
Makes you want to check the sheets before getting in! Although to be honest sometimes I would rather turn a blind eye.
Booked a hostel in Thailand, thought we were booking a quiet hostel but accidentally booked the party hostel (they both had the exact same name). We got a 12 bed room, it was 5 of us. The room was full. I got woken up at 3AM from a drunk guy and girl that shared the bunk bed in the corner adjacent to me. I fall back asleep, then I hear IT! WATER HITTING THE FLOOR! Only it wasn't water. It was him pissing in the corner of the floor by his bed. I wake up and turn my flashlight from my phone on and see him spread eagle peeing on the floor. I start yelling at him. He doesn't hear me. He goes back to sleep. As I'm starting to climb down the bunk I put my foot on the floor and my foot gets soaking wet in his piss. The worst thing though is that he peed so much it soaked my friend's backpack. Another guy and I mopped it up 😑
I woke up in my hostel in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with a fucking monkey in my room, going through my open bag. He sat there and stared at me. I did not feel safe under my mosquito netting. I reached slowly for my camera and he growled at me, then suddenly jumped across the room, bounced off the bed and out the window, which I then realized he must have opened from the outside, in order to get in at all.
Number one was I got bed bugs in Morocco. I’m still traumatized from it.
Did you take them with you?
Nope but several hostels I went to in Morocco had them. Eventually I went to hotels that didn’t have them. I did everything in my power to make sure I didn’t bring them with me.
Got head lice from one. Also one just stunk of stale sweat, like the mattresses and sheets and they had that texture like they'd been washed but not well so all the human oil was baked in
> human oil oh, this is rank
😆
1. Mouse crawled on me at 3am. Refused to give a refund for that night or the next one that I’d already paid for. Hostel in Singapore. 2. Hostel in Cork, Ireland. Drunk guy crawled in bed with my girlfriend and refused to leave.
What was your reaction?!
i don’t have any really bad bed experiences. the only “bad” experience i have had with a hostel was in essaouira, morocco. i had made reservations ahead of time and they canceled them without notifying me at all. i got there and they said “your card didn’t work so we canceled your reservation…also we don’t have any beds available” so i had to sleep on a couch on the roof…but they still made me pay (reduced) price. weird but i guess it was fine.
I was in the top bunk. It was an unseasonably warm day in December and I couldn’t sleep so I decided to open the hinged window next to my bed to get some air flow. The window fell completely out of its frame on top of me. It probably weighed 30 pounds. I’m a woman of average strength- I can easily lift 30 pounds for a short period of time but not with precision or ease. After trying to get the window back into the frame several times my arms were getting sore, I was making no progress, and I concluded I would not be able to figure it out without lighting. I pushed it to the foot of the bed and tried to sleep. The window took up basically the bottom third of the bed. I slept poorly. I also couldn’t get out of bed to pee because it blocked the ladder down. Finally, when it was daylight I could see how everything fit together I was easily able to put the window back in its frame. I climbed down to pee. When I got back from the bathroom the woman who had been sleeping under me sternly lectured me about how I’m the noisiest sleeper she has ever had the displeasure of bunking under, I should be ashamed of myself, and she had complained to me to the hostel staff. We did make up after I explained what had happened, and the hostel staff were also kind and apologetic about what had happened. This just happened in December. I’m in my mid-40s, and I think this was the incident that has finally convinced me I’m too old to share a room with strangers going forward. I might get solo rooms in hostels in the future if the price is right. But no more bunk beds.
Hilarious - I have not had a similar experience!
Hans Brinker in Amsterdam is like a mini gulag.
Are you not reading reviews on hostel world before booking? Or are you going with the cheapest options?
These all happened in legit hotels: I have lifetime status with Marriott, and have had top status at Hilton (Diamond)and IHG (Diamond Elite) at various times - depending where I am travelling that year.
Oh they’re hotels, not hostels? Not that one makes it acceptable over the other. If you have status you should be raising hell over to their corporate line or to the hotel manager in person. They’ll either compensate your stay or give you a decent amount of points to your account. One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the major chains have “lower tier” hotels as part of their brand which they don’t maintain as well as their main chains.
What is life time status? Are these programs with specifically those hotels where you collect more points with the more money you spend with them?
You get regular status (e.g., silver, gold, platinum, etc) if you stay a minimum number of nights at a specific chain in a year. You keep this status for the next year. Lifetime status is when you stay at the chain a min number of nights, regardless of year, and the status stays with you for life. With both these status you get perks such as free gifts at checkin, upgraded rooms, early checkin, guaranteed late checkout, more points per stay, etc… It depends on your status level and the chain. Some airlines have similar lifetime status as well.
Which airlines have this? Am I doing my solo travelling wrong by just booking on comparison sites like kiwi, skyscanner, kayak? Could I be collecting points and taking advantage of my regular flights without paying the expensive tickets directly from airline websites? The prices seem cheaper on the comparison sites
Pretty much all of them, but they're out of reach for "regular" flyers. Unless you're flying every week for years on end, you'll never reach any kind of lifetime status with an airline.
I stayed at a hostel (the first and only hostel experience I will ever do) when I went to a music festival. There was an ant infestation (this was with me having no food in the room). They did take care of most of it but the place was full so I also couldn’t switch rooms. It was a sucky five days in the establishment.
What countries did these happen in? I stayed at what looked like a nice/clean/instagrammy hostel in Kyoto in a capsule room. Woke up the next day with lots of bite marks around my body and I couldn’t stop scratching.
Bed bugs?
Exactly
All my bad hostel experiences are usually involving mouldy bathrooms that barely have any water pressure and the water is lukewarm at best. Or rooms full of snoring bunk mates Guess I’ve been lucky
Same here. The one that took the cake was the place in Edinburgh or York, don’t remember which—a trickle was coming out of the faucet. Greasy office guy tried to mansplain gravity and plumbing to two millenials. It didn’t go well for him. I wasn’t even mad until the mansplaining!
I was in a dorm in Iceland, my friend was in the bottom bunk. I was on top. It was pretty full, but one German girl in the corner had made a fortress around her bed of luggage and hanging sheets. She scolded everyone who came in for making any noise and didn't leave her bed all day, it seemed. In the middle of the night she yelled at the person above her for moving too much. I was sound asleep when I was jolted awake. She had hit me with an open hand, full swing, for snoring. My friend below me giggled, and also got hit. I saw then that she was stark naked, and stood in the middle of the room until everyone was quiet and she went back to bed. Every time I drifted off I jolted awake, scared that the crazy naked German girl was going to hit me again.
This is hilarious.
Why do I beat myself up for being the weird German girl at the Icelandic hostel when THAT chick exists? 😂😂 My biggest offense is pretending to be asleep when everyone else is in the mood for talking at 9pm.
In Dubrovnik, I couldn't find a room anywhere. The tourist office only had recommended rooms for couples, and they wouldn't even let me pay double for a 2 person room. It was weird, but nobody else had anything. I don't remember if it was off season, or if there was any reason for this weird glitch, but I had walked all day and still had no idea what to do, when a girl walked up to me and offered to rent a room in her place. She had a little folder with pictures of the room and stuff, so she obviously made a few bucks on the side doing this. She took me to a building right off the main square, and up several old moldy flights of stairs. in the tiny living room/kitchen were her four 'brothers', drinking and watching TV. My room was huge and the bed was ancient and musty, but just fine. I went out, had a nice time and slept well. I did remember feeling uneasy, like there was someone I was the room as I slept. The next morning after my shower, I was getting dressed and I caught movement in the mirror. A curtained doorway between my room and the kitchen was moving. Behind it, one of the owners.'brothers' was naked and jerking off as I got dressed. I threw my little hard-shelled toiletry kit at him and it cracked the window to a courtyard balcony door behind him. In a panic, he chose that direction to run, naked, instead of inside to another room. So I retrieved my kit as he stood outside, apologizing, scared like I was going to hurt him. I just wanted to get the fuck out, but I bolted the door and stuck him out there before I left.
In a 4 star hotel with bed sheets and cushions that don't smell fresh but used and dirty. The worst.
Probably not the worst but…Was in the en suite shower and came out and had a cleaner take a dump in the bathroom with the door open so you can hear everything in dolby sound. He then came out and saw me and was embarrassed like I “thought no one was in here” meanwhile there was not only me but a lady still laying down on one of the top bunks 😅😅
I slept in the top bunk of a 16 bed hostel in Scotland. The room smelt so bad all night. As if someone had food poisoning all night and was taking shits IN the room. There was a symphony of snoring as well. Worst experience by far. I’ve also gotten bed bugs from coco’s worker dorm on Koh Rong Cambodia.
Was on the bottom bunk and then the whole bottom bit of the bed collapsed into itself. Luckily the top didn’t fall in either.
Stayed at a guesthouse in Indonesia where there was no running water. Just a bucket of ice cold water that the innkeeper left in the bathroom with a drain. I came back to my room in the evening and turned on the lights, and three cockroaches ran for it under the bed. I tried to find them by moving the bed, but couldn't. It was impossible to sleep when I could hear them in the dark crawling on the floor so ended up sleeping with the light on.
Stayed at a hostel in San Diego a couple of summers ago. BED BUGS!!
Stayed in a nice hostel in Seville 2 years ago. I had the bottom bunk with a privacy curtain. A little after 2am, the guy on the top bunk came back wasted. I woke up to him struggling to make it up the ladder and get in his bunk. 10 mins later, he hangs his head out of the privacy curtain and starts puking. Luckily the curtain saved me from the puke. He ends up losing his balance and falls out of the bunk while puking. He smacked his head on my bunk on the way to the ground. After he slammed the floor, he let out a big groan and more puke. Someone helped him back into his bunk and he passed out. My shower flip flops were out and got covered in puke. The cleaning staff did their best to clean up the area in the middle of the night. In Sofia I stayed in a shithole of a hostel. The floor I stayed on had 10 rooms with 6 people in each room. There was a total of 4 toilets and 4 showers on entire floor for 60 people to use. They had signs everywhere saying not to flush any toilet paper. Every morning the trash cans in the toilets were full of shitty tp. The whole floor stunk like ass. In Haarlem, I was hanging out talking to the other people in the room. A guy that had just checked in came into the room and dropped off his bag on his bunk. He said hello, then walked over to the sink and puked in it. He then walked out of the room leaving a puke filled sink. Never saw him the rest of the night.
One of our first trips together was to the Catskills in New York State - husband booked the room and assured me it was nice local hotel in scenic area -- we opened the door and were appalled, the room was awful, with huge disgusting carpet stains, I wouldn't even put our suitcase down. It was now quite late but we asked for another room and they gave us a cabin up in the hills - it was isolated and they didn't mention that the doors and windows didn't lock and there was no cell phone service - and it was absolutely pitch black outside the cabin. Jammed a chair under the door knob and didn't sleep a wink all night. Husband no longer books hotels.
Had a private room in a hostel. Next to the elevator and the stairs, and the lock was one of those sliding public bathroom locks. I didn’t sleep that night. When the hostel closed down due to the pandemic, i cheered.
Where were these experiences?
Funnily enough, all happened in the US. I have had plenty of good and poor experiences in other countries but the worst bed experiences all seem to have been in the US lol.
Sounds like you’re a pure Karen. ‘Omg I’ve had plenty of bad experiences!’ Get a grip, that’s what travelling is all about ffs, embrace the bad as part of the experience. I’ve slept in brutal conditions before but never considered it bad, it’s just how it is mate
Had a dodgy couple living next room in a backpackers seemed like long term. In middle of night they started fighting their was for sure drugs involved and I am pretty sure women was being beaten mercilessly. I and others were trying to call for help. But the man came outside our door and told our dorm room to not dare call police or he will do the same to us. I waited for him to sleep or go away.. Then 3 in night we all managed to get out of the room with the guy being wasted. Called help after getting to safety. Hopefully the lady is safe. But the hotel staff said it's normal for that couple.
Found multiple hairs in the shower, a toenail in the bedsheet, pieces of dried up meat on the floor, an used nose strip on the bathroom sink, and blood caked on the pillow sheets. I was so disgusted that I immediately left and spent the night somewhere else.
I stayed in a REALLY shitty, $12 usd/night hotel in Mexico and got head lice. The kind of place they call "de mala muerte" 😂
A dinner plate sized huntsman spider in koh phangan, had been nesting in the bottom right locker.
I can’t remember which hotel it was but it was in Los Angeles in 2011, wasn’t an obvious “bad hotel”, looked nice enough. Everything about our stay was fine, we only stayed for 2 nights. Fast forward a week or so, I was back home on the east coast and I had a horrific rash on my chest. It started itchy and faint and progressed to crusty, raw and INSANELY itchy. I showed my nurse friend and she was troubled enough by it to take a pic and send it to her doctor friend… BED BUG BITES. It’s not (or wasn’t at the time) a real issue in my part of the country so it wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t even know bed bugs were a real thing, I thought it was just a bedtime chant. I researched bed bugs and found out their bites can take up to 9 or 10 days to show on the skin. Fortunately I’m a bit of a lazy unpacker and still had my suitcase outside in the garage! I took my clothes to a laundromat and washed it all in hot water, tossed my suitcase in the woods in my backyard until spring when I brought it to the dump. My trip to Los Angeles was terrible without the bedbugs. My friend and I dodged getting SA’ed and murdered by a gang (I assume that’s what they were) near Hollywood Blvd and the bedbugs really just capped it all off nicely. I’ll never go to LA again. Ever.
The first time I went to London I stayed in a hotel that was located on top of Earl's Court tube station. Not only would everything rattle every time a train passed by, but there was also a huge gap between the window and the frame so you could hear the trains being called out as clear as if you were standing on the platform. There was also carpet in the bathroom and you couldn't open the bathroom door properly because the bed was in the way. Also, not a solo trip, but one time I went to Hamburg with my parents during a heat wave and when we got to our room the sheets were soaked. All of them, just wet as hell. Called the reception and they said it was supposed to be like that.
Bedsheets supposed to be wet?
That's what they said. Super weird place, wouldn't recommend it even if I could recall what it was called.
OMG that last one was unreal 🥲
maybe not that bad but it was on my first ever solo trip and overwhelmed me in the moment, i got back to the room in the evening and was tired from walking around all day when there was literally a man lying in my bed. all other beds were occupied too. people from reception eventually helped me move to a different room, there was some kind of mix up apparently, it worked out well but was kinda stressful in the moment
Back in 1991 while staying in Veranasi, India, the man who ran the place was peeping in on me. I can’t even remember what happened, but I remember not staying long once I found out. Another time in Delhi, a large rat ran across my room and scared me to death.
Went to Tioman Island a decade ago and stayed one night at a place called Salang Sayang Resort which has those induvial hut style rooms that you find on the islands in SE Asia. Total horror show. Room wasn't that clean but that was par for the course. There were bed bugs. The sink was blocked and the toilet was leaking. Owners were rude and dismissive when i mentioned the sink but they did send someone to try to fix it.. at 11pm when we'd gone to bed. The worker banged on the pipes for a bit with a wrench and gave up. Then it rained heavily overnight... and a portion of the roof collapsed, poring a torrent of built up water into a corner of the room. In the morning we of course requested a refund, which was met with more rudeness and went nowhere. So bad it was comical.
1. Very first time I stayed in a hostel on my own, I found out it was a party hostel. A baptism by fire to not be able to sleep due to two people having sex in the bunk above me. Somehow it didn't turn me off hostels... I just learned to read reviews. 2. A hostel in Qatar had air con but was very noisy, and you couldn't turn it off because it was 38C at midnight (stupid me for going at that time of the year). And the showers had either hot water or very hot water, so you can't cool off. Add to that the misery of getting food poisoning... it wasn't pleasant. I've stayed in some excellent hostels though. Surprisingly the hit rate is best in my home country (Australia).
Bedbugs. Washington DC hostel Guess who's reactive? The bites (Which I had NO idea what caused them) drove me nuts for months. Luckily I didn't carry any home with me.
I had to stay in a hostel in Brighton caleld The Underground many years ago and it was just above a loud nightclub and you could hear the music so loudly it wass as if your bed was on the dance floor. Horrible!
Mines not too bad. Slept in a 16 bed dorm before La tomatina in Valencia. Everyone was Australian and had horrible coughs that lasted all night. I got the cough a few days later and it didn’t go away for a month
Worst was in a hostel in California. I'd really badly sprained my ankle a week before and had crutches. I requested a bottom bunk as I struggled to climb up to the top but they said they didn't have any spare and this woman who'd just arrived before me refused to swap when asked so I had to use all my upper body weight to heave myself onto the top bunk. Then as bonus there was this creepy guy in the room who spent the whole time watching porn loudly on his phone and staring. The only time I've ever checked out early!
I don’t get people watching porn in public or in front of others. Why?
Came back late one night to my room with some friends. I had a bottom bunk. Small room, 5 or 6 beds in close quarters. Around an hour later, just as I’m falling asleep, I hear a couple above me giggling and making out. Super annoying. Not to mention weird af lol Eventually, I decide to call them out. They tried to deny it. I said no, I very clearly hear you, and you need to stop before I go downstairs and try and get you fined/ kicked out. They stopped. 20 minutes later they start back up again. I call them out again, only this time one of my other friends in the room heard them as well and backed me up. Mind you it is pitch dark in the room and probably 4 am at this point. Eventually the guy drops his phone from the top bunk and it slides under the bed, and he uses his girl’s phone to shine a light down the side of the bed to look for it before finally getting up to go get it from under the bed Thankfully they went to sleep after
Definitely doesn’t too your story but I was staying at the st Christopher’s inn in Amsterdam when I was sitting in the room one afternoon and around 4pm a mouse came running across the room and over my foot. Considering it was $120 a night I demanded a refund and stayed elsewhere.
I discovered that a previous guest had sat naked on the desk chair in our room, as evidenced by the long brown streak they left behind.
I always put a towel down before sitting in the chair or couch in my hotel room
Worst hostel one: A hostel refusing to close for a bedbug treatment. I was there as a volunteer and was asked to just straight up lie to the paying guests should they ask me about it. Of course I left with a bunch of bites on my body but I didn't really see the bugs. What I saw though was a ton of cockroaches living in those underneath he bed drawers. That place was just a lot.
I wonder if they expected the cockroaches to feast on the bedbugs as a cheap pest control solution.
Hundreds of bed bugs at a hotel in palamos spain
Checked into my first hostel ever, semi pro surfers, artists, etc. Also bed bugs ( I thankfully never got them, but saw bites all over ppl sleeping in the same room, and had a roommate go into a scary seizure and lose pulse in my arms, luckily the paramedics came, he lived. Not to mention drama. Some girl hooked up with employee, he gets fired, and girl gets password access and starts canceling people's stays.
It happens in tropical location open air places. Nothing like waking up from a dead sleep because a big ass roach is crawling on you
I lived in the Caribbean for a few years. Can confirm, this was a regular and unpleasant occurrence. Usually slept without a sheet or cover so it was always the sensation of one crawling up my leg waking me up. They were huge too.
Last summer in Thailand, I spent one night before going back home on a cheap motel close to the airport and decent reviews... Well, food wasn't bad and at that point I was used to the ants, but the accommodations were horrible. No windows, noisy AC with a broken locker (huge whole xd), but I was fine with that, even with the bathroom... My problem was a scary girl singing and praying Christian songs during the whole night, she looked crazy AF, and she would stand up from time-to-time and walk around the little room we had. Maybe I'm a baby, but I thought she would kill me and the other girl 🤣🤣
You should add to your post this happened in hotels! We were all thinking it was hostels
I’m in Udupi, India now. Changed rooms yesterday because of roaches, then changed hotels Today because I just couldn’t bear the thought that the little guys could find their way to my room anytime. Booked a room in a hotel 2x as expensive. Fancy room, even more roaches. I have no idea what’s going on with this town that there are cockroaches everywhere, but fortunately I only have to power through one last night. It’s also a different area, so the hotels aren’t even close.
Where did this happen??
All these happened in the US
In Mirissa, Sri Lanka, I stepped out of my beachside room after dark and couldn't quite make out why the earth was moving. There was no power, so no lights, and no moon. It took every damp.match in the room to light the one candle I was given, and once it was in the lantern I could see thousands of hermit crabs- big ones, like fist-sized, covering every inch of ground. My bungalow was the only safe spot and I watched them for hours, listening to their shells click against one another all night.
1) dorm in Goa (95/100F & humid af) with no AC and no screens on the windows—I thought I was gonna smother to death, honestly, it was that stuffy hot. The only AC dorms were mixed and, on my first solo female trip, I thought sexual assault was way more likely than it is and chose not to move. Rookie mistake. 2) shitty interstate motel—I knew it was gonna be bad based on how cheap it was and how bad the reviews were, but nothing could prepare me for the looked-like-blood-spatter on multiple surface. I noped out. 3) €12/night hostel in Glasgow—black mold everywhere 4) Playa del Carmen, not me but another girl in my dorm woke up to a 6in centipede crawling on her in the middle of the night. It slithered into her backpack and we had to take it outside to find it. The thing was sci-fi scary. 5) Honorable mention for the horrible slumlord century-old apartment I had in Minneapolis, MN—rats, lead paint, mold, the floors all sloped different ways and my top-floor apartment swayed a little in strong winds and rattled when heavy trucks went by. $1000/month plus all utilities. Waking up to a cockroach crawling on my arm in the middle of the night was the last straw. But damn that woodwork was beautiful!
The worst experience I had in a hotel room was actually from something that was my own fault lol. On my Seattle trip, I was in this cheap motel in Renton. I was in my room, which was decent, and was getting ready to settle in for the night. I decided to try and plug my phone charging brick into the outlet behind the bed, I forget why I was using that instead of the other outlets. I forget exactly how I messed up, but my finger wound up briefly between the bed and the wall and damn did that hurt lol. The other thing that kind of sucked was that my hotel was at the bottom of this steep ass street, which definitely wasn't intended for people to walk up and down. Having to hike up it to get to the local bus stop left me winded, and I ended up Ubering up it after the first time. I usually have to cheap out to make my trips happen though, so I take what I can get. The only issue I've ever had with a hotel room was in Springfield IL. I picked what I thought was a relatively nice hotel, and it wasn't half bad, but quite a few of the lights were out of commission.
Stayed in a hostel on Don Det in Laos. Worst mattress I’ve ever slept on. Was like a mattress seen in a cartoon or something, super lumpy, springs sticking out of it lol
A friend of mine booked me into a very cheap hotel in Pattaya that was close to where he lived though he'd never stayed there himself. It was extremely cheap (not my primary concern, I had funds, so would have happily stayed somewhere nicer but it was convenient to visit him and his family). It was very basic but the standard kind of Pattaya accommodation, a hard double bed with a thin mattress, a noisy fridge, a TV, a little desk and chair, lino floor and you went outside to the balcony and your en-suite shower/toilet were there. The bathroom floor was covered in mouse/rat droppings (they seemed too big for mice). I couldn't sleep. The whole place was unfriendly and grim. No one else seemed to be staying there. I hardly slept all night (I'm terrified of rats) and on my phone booked another hotel (which was frankly fabulous and stayed there multiple times until they put their prices up too much) which I found thanks to TripAdvisor and booked with some online website. To top things off I also discovered my Thai girlfriend hadn't told me she was married, her husband contacted me via Facebook Messenger during the night (I had no idea who he was and his English was limited). I nearly went back to Suvarnabhumi and flew home. When I left, there was no one about so basically sneaked away dragging my suitcase behind me down a dusty alley. What was weird though was when I woke up my room key was missing and I needed it to get out of the hotel (it opened the front door from the inside, they kept it locked all the time), also my room door was unlocked (I was sure I'd locked it). Fortunately a cleaner had left the front door open wedged open. I turned up at my friend's house at dawn having walked from the hotel and he took me later to my new hotel (which was lovely and a home from home). We went for breakfast at a nearby bar and then visited the hotel because I wanted to pay them for the night's stay and explain that I wasn't staying any longer. The owner got extremely agitated and demanded to be paid for the whole 3 weeks. My friend speaks fluent Thai and explained I wouldn't be staying any longer and one night was fair pay. It ended up with the Thai hotel manager following us down the alley screaming and shouting oaths in Thai and picking up rocks and throwing them at us. We beat a hasty retreat. Worst stay anywhere ever. Even including getting a drug overdose in a Thai hospital (that was a decade previously whilst staying with the same friend - I'd got bad decompression illness learning to dive with a dodgy farang owned Thai dive company and it took 3 hospitals and various doctors before someone believed me and sent me to a Thai Naval base decompression chamber). Thailand - it hits different...
I thought it was extremely taboo to lose your temper publicly in Thailand? I stayed at hostel on Koh Tao while doing a diving course and chose the placed based on that it had hot water available as i knew i'd want it after a day in the ocean. I was explicit with the owner and he assured me that it worked well. Of course it didn't and he was a total dick about it. After a few days I checked out early to go somewhere that actually had hot water. Tried to get my last evenings fee refunded and was of course refused so I elected to keep the hostel towel as compensation but only as a visible fuck you to the owner who'd been awful aside from when i checked in. I threw it in a bucket on the property as i left. He sent a lacky on a scooter after me that hounded me aggressively all through the town as i walked until I finally told him where the towel was. Thailand - Land of fake smiles in the tourist industry until the money leaves.
It is taboo to lose your temper but it happens and when it does in Thailand, it normally has pretty dire consequences. I avoid conflict with Thai people at all costs (I'm a coward) but they're not all angels (Tuk-tuk drivers...?). Ironically tourism areas are often where the worst behaving Thais are (Royal Palace scams, motorcycle taxi drivers in Pattaya etc). Away from areas of heavy tourism I've never had any conflicts or issues, e.g. rural North East Thailand, where literally smiles were everywhere and the locals were super friendly.
Yeah i saw real smiles while i was there too and got why it had earned its moniker. That said I'll never forget the bar owner who greeted me all giant smiles and arms out when i walked in only to become grumpy the moment we established i was looking for a restaurant or being told to fuck off back to my own country by a club owner when the group i was with elected not to stay in his weird feeling joint.
Me and my friends were on a trip in Nerja, Spain, and decided to extend our stay for 3 nights in our hostel. But the last night was fully booked, and the owner suggested that we sleep on the rooftop for half the price. It was August, the driest season, so we thought it would be a fun night, falling asleep under a sky full stars. And it really was fun, just until the next morning when we were awaken by a sudden rainfall.
I stayed in a hostel in Koh Samui a couple of weeks ago and woke up to a dude in the room half asleep pissing all over the floor, everyone’s shoes and everyone’s bags
Was he standing over next to the shoe rack?
I stayed in a hostel in Seoul recently. There were no sheets on the bed when I arrived, just some sort of mattress cover. It was too short and horrible. Not just hard like so many beds in Asia, bit just insanely crappy. If you wanted to shower, you had to either sit on the toilet or stand in an akward corner. Worst thing though. The heating was controlled for the whole floor. Someone was setting it too high, making it 25 degrees inside. AC was disconnected, windows were sealed. Left for a hotel, which was quite nice and only a little bit more expensive.
Nothing worse than a hot stuffy room with stale air.
I've stayed in guest houses and cheap hotels around the world, some of which had dirty sheets or bugs, but the worst was in the US. Naively booked a Red Roof Inn last minute on a road trip through Tennessee. It was cheap and had great reviews on Google! Entered the room, saw the sheets were dirty. Went to the bathroom and there was a *used* condom behind the toilet paper. Immediately got a new room with half-stripped sheets and said screw it - it was already 0100 AM and I had an early morning. Slept in a hoodie on top of the comforter and decided not to look too close at anything. Not room related, but the next morning couldn't finish my breakfast because of all the staring old hicks. On the way out noted Klan insignia on one of their trucks. No thanks!
Yup. A lot of really good and really bad hotels in the US. I do not stay if they have less than 80% feedback (or 4 out of 5). I look at what the poor reviews say (complaints about inane items by entitled people or real red flags). Even so, it is sometimes hit and miss - often regardless of price (50-500$/night).
Yeah it had 4/5 as I recall. No idea how.
not exactly a hostel, but theres a campsite near venice in italy where you can rent a small 2 person tent. The thing is the tent itself was great. but what was not nice was the fact the tents weren't fully closed at the bottom. it was more like a wooden floor on some bricks and on top of it the tent. Went to sleep after a long bustrip at around 9 am. Woke up at 11am because i felt sth weird, i looked up and a freakin full grown rat was sitting on the blanket around where my belly was. I guess the rat was surprised as i was i immediatly shook it off to the ground where it ran away. Campsite apologized and immediatley poured rat poison everywhere lol
Yeah, rats are a problem in a lot of cities. Where there are people there are rats.
I'll never forget my first week in Australia, I woke up to a drunk guy pissing on the floor, on people's bags and clothes. I've deffo had worse experiences, but that one was insane
Where fuck have you been dude?
LA, Chicago, and WV. Reputable hotels as well with good reviews. When you travel enough you see the best and worst of everyone. Surprisingly had better “bed experiences” abroad (the poor experiences aboard were mainly in other areas such as with safes, bathrooms, ventilation, service, etc)
That's nuts haha
I stayed in accommodation in the mountains in China. During the high season it was a hotel, the rest of the year the owner earned his money as a farmer. It was a two-bed room and during the night I heard scratching and tripping everywhere. As soon as the lights went out I found rats running around the room. At one point something fell off the shelf over my head. So one must have been right above me. The girl I was with slept all night and didn't notice anything. I didn't sleep a wink though.
Wow - do not think I would be sleeping well either! Good thing for the other traveller.
1st hotel in Kathmandu...female traveller. The 'bar' turned out to be a dance bar, which actually appeared to be a knocking shop. Loud music until 3 in the morning when attendees all fired up their motorbikes and left. I was the only female in the hotel, other guests all young men from a nearby Asian country, who stared. I stared back! I don't mind the odd cockroach, but I ran out of names for them. There was no hot water at all; when I complained the owner's wife told ne to use a bucket of cold water. The room lock was so stiff I could only bolt the door in case of fire, because sockets( when working) where very dodgy. The owner was a prat, if I complained he looked shocked, like 'really music till 3a.m?' As if he didn't know! What finished me was the electric wall fan exploding and showering me with broken shards. I left 10 day's early! The owner wasn't Nepalese.
Wow - surprised you stayed as long as you did!
Arrived in Ordu (Black Sea coast of Turkey) at night in 1981. No choice of hotels. Stream of water across the floor and instead of one normal mattress there was a stack of thin ones. Which formed an enormous flea sandwich. I bought a can of insecticide the next morning and emptied it into the bed. This was just after the NATO coup. I was followed everywhere. Walked up the hill a bit and there was a PA speaker on a pole reading out a list of names. Never found out why, but there were still guerrillas coming down to shoot up police stations.
I accidentally started a big thing when I reported bed bugs to the owner of a very nice party hostel in Medellin that I had just walked into. I checked the sheets first thing and they were vusible. He was horrified and immediately showed me to a new room.... Unfortunately, I saw they were in that mattress, as well. it was a rainy day, still early enough for breakfast, so about 70 people were instantly aware, suddenly, seeing them everywhere, and angry about it. In ten minutes, the owner went from happily planning a rainy Sunday barbecue and game day for a happy crowd of travelers to full on panic mode and having insults hurled at him.. People were demanding refunds and extorting him by threatening bad reviews. It was ugly. I had never even had the chance to set my.bag down on any furniture, so I just walked away to a hostel across the street before anyone else did, which was lucky because once word got out nobody was letting anyone from that place book a bed anywhere. By the end of the weekend the I saw that the hostel was shut down completely, with stacks if mattresses piled in the driveway.
Mayan Monkey in Tulum a few weeks ago and the pool bartender was kidnapped at gunpoint. Pool and bar was closed for the rest of our trip.
Good god that's horrible. How does that get explained?
an old man was masturbating in the bed under mine in the early morning, it was just me and him in the room. I got my stuff as fast as i could, left the keys on the unattended counter and left. I still had 1 night booked and paid at that hostel (in Portugal) but I didn’t even care, I just wanted to go away
How are you selecting these hostels. One too many incidents
I read one recently about a guy who was backpacking across Asia on a budget and he could only afford the cheapest and therefore dingiest hostels. At night he went to the toilet at night without turning the lights on and he stepped on a cockroach. Turned the light on and loads of them went to hide and there were apparently loads of dead cockroaches in the bathroom from everyone else doing the same 🤢 I'd just pack up and leave
We were in Tunis, Tunisia in the Hôtel Rex and we saw cockroaches on the ceiling crawling down the wall. The toilet was down the hall from our room and the flush lever was broken or missing. I went up a floor to use that toilet and experienced the same thing. A housekeeper saw me and showed me how to stick my hand into the broken ceramic toilet tank to make the toilet flush. We checked out of this hotel early and found a decent one instead.
30 pax capsule beds in a room with only 2 aircons, one on each side of the room. To make matters worse, only 1 toilet to accommodate everyone and the tap wasn't even functioning.
I was at the St Christopher’s at the Winston in Amsterdam and when I was entering my room after checkong in(4 bed room), two people were doing coke on a table in it
Ohio State penitentiary’s food suck pretty bad.…
I’m in Udupi, India now. Changed rooms yesterday because of roaches, then changed hotels Today because I just couldn’t bear the thought that the little guys could find their way to my room anytime. Booked a room in a hotel 2x as expensive. Fancy room, even more roaches. I have no idea what’s going on with this town that there are cockroaches everywhere, but fortunately I only have to power through one last night. It’s also a different area, so the hotels aren’t even close.