I am thinking of traveling soon and I was thinking of staying in a hostel for the social experience. I have never done it before anon so what's it like?
What staying in a hostel like?
I am thinking of traveling soon and I was thinking of staying in a hostel for the social experience. I have never done it before anon so what's it like?
I exclusively stay in hotels to avoid any social interaction so I wouldn't know
Same. Walking past hostels they seem to attract the most extroverted people on the planet. Seems awful to me tbh
It honestly depends on the hostel
Some are super extrovert party houses
Others are chill nerds reading books, drawing or sitting on their laptops
Hostels near hiking trails are full of 50-80 year olds half of the year
If you're over 24 and a man people will find you weird. Women can stay until mid-30s and no one bats an eye because the young men will still want to bang you. Basically, it's full of poor kids who just want to travel to hang out with other travelers and spend a minimum of 10 days a night in bed sleeping because they can't get an uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep with people coming in and out of the room and/or snoring all night.
Pretty fun tbh.
Met a lot of cool people and slept with more than a few college aged girls.
42 year old here.
I backpacked across Asia and stayed in hostels the whole time.
No one batted an eye, but I work out regularly and take care of myself.
Imagine staying in a dorm with a couple dozen smelly hippies and brown people who will steal from you in your sleep.
If you want a social experience just go to a bar
Depends on the place. With hostels it's MASSIVELY important to check out the reviews. Filter by 1 star and look for patterns. Don't just trust the rating, as they can easily be gipped.
Cheap hostels attract the worst scum in society. Migrant workers, broke cunts, hippies, and generally down and outs. Avoid like the plague if you don't want bedbugs/shit stolen/confrontations.
Party hostels attract young cunts who want to get blind drunk and fuck. You'll have to deal with people waking you up every our when they come back drunk, people fucking in your dorm, everybody trying to be ultramacho to score pussy, etc. Can be fun for a night or 2 to let off steam, but generally you need to avoid.
What you do want are hostels which are well run, expensive, have private rooms, good facilities and a chill vibe. It will attract people who aren't total cunts. One of my best stays was in Sarajevo , where it felt like everybody was 25-35, people wanted to go out and do interesting shit together, some were working on laptops in the daytime, yet people were also down to go out and party (with some decent drugs they'd taken over borders). Everybody felt comfortable with who they are and weren't trying to one up or dickswing; just have a good experience.
Since then, I've always only ever stayed at hostels which have 9/10+ ratings, where there's no patterns in 1* ratings, and where 'vibe', 'ambience', 'friendliness', etc are commonly complimented. If that doesn't exist, it's apartment/hotel.
>What you do want are hostels which are well run, expensive, have private rooms, good facilities and a chill vibe
These are called "hotels" btw
>Hostels can't have private rooms
It really depends. Some are rather quiet, the ones near nightlife are endlessly loud, full of drunk people, full of shallow social people, and everyone tries to form a group to go out together because they're all solo travelers and new to the country/city, although some come in pairs. They become your temporary best friends. But also a lot of selfish people who can't respect others end up there too. Some are cleaner than others, the newer they are the more likely they are clean, the owners still actually work there and didn't hire people to work in exchange for a bed so they don't give a shit about actually cleaning or working efficiently.
Men go there trying to fuck so they constantly hit on all the women there. But you are generally safe because nobody tries shit because someone is always watching, someone is always listening. Many have age limits to avoid homeless and creeps staying there.
It really depends. I have stayed at so many hostels and guesthouses and only a few times it was bad. One place was noisy, the beds squeaked, the bathroom was dirty and the door didn't really close or lock. It was old and popular for party people and the staff were all broke volunteer travelers. But it was cheap, good location, and safe.
Another was fine until this crazy bitch came in and made so much noise I had to threaten to kill her to scare her away from me, I still ended up changing rooms and floors. Before her the room was empty for a week.
One party hostel was very clean and people were social and kind, but drunk people coming back and people waking up at 6am to pack their bags for an hour with so many plastic bags crinkling was annoying as fuck.
There were a couple instances of stuck with snorers.
Tthere were many times I got a dorm to myself and if someone came seitched ro a privaye room, clean, very quiet and I rested well. I ended up in most of these places because I had nowhere to live and was looking, I volunteered once and it was the worst.
>I volunteered once and it was the worst.
why?