Travels with my laptop

Photo by Immu

If you’re travelling on a budget it is inevitable that at some point in your travels you will have to share a bedroom with one to several strangers, in a variety of levels of comfort. This will be nothing new to the regular budget traveller, however if you’re preparing for your first round the world trip more used to package holidays in standard hotels and have little to no experience of sharing your sleeping quarters with strangers, it may come as somewhat of a shock.

I have stayed in my fair share of hostel dorms and in the most part it is a positive experience. You definitely have more opportunities to meet people when you’re sharing a room with them; you can get travel hints and tips, exchange travel stories, swap books and borrow other items. And of course the price can’t be beat (except in various parts of the world where it is perfectly possible to get a private room with bathroom for less than £1 a night).

There have of course been some unpleasant experiences:

• The room I stayed in Boston with the loudest snoring woman ever. I got no sleep for 2 nights.
• The hostel in New York that put me in a room with a woman who smelled so badly of rotten meat that it woke me up in the middle of the night.
• The hostel somewhere in British Columbia (Victoria I think) where I ended up in a dorm of about 30 beds, sleeping above a crazy woman who spouted a non-sensical monologue all night.
• The room I stayed in Reykavik where 17 year old girls would wake me up at 4am on their way back from clubbing and I’d then be woken again a couple of hours later by someone rustling plastic bags for half an hour.

Bad experiences are of course the exception, rather than the rule and I’d definitely recommend dorm rooms as a cheap and sociable option for solo travellers. There are a few tips I can pass along however that may help you avoid having a bad night and swearing off hostels for good.

1. Take earplugs or listen to your mp3 player if you prefer. It’s inevitable that someone will snore, people will come back drunk in the middle of the night and people will get up early and make a lot of noise packing. Block at noise as much as you can to get some decent sleep.
2. Be considerate. If you’re mindful of other people then they are more likely to do the same for you. This includes packing your bag the night before you leave if you have an early start, or dragging things out in the corridor so you don’t disturb sleeping dorm mates (see no. 1)
3. Be friendly. Say hello, ask where your bunk mates have travelled from and where they’re going to, take the time to find out a bit about them. It’s very easy to make friends in shared accommodation but you have to put in the effort.
4. Don’t leave valuables in the dorm, unless they’re locked away in a suitably secure locker. Don’t advertise the fact that you have a laptop or any other expensive gadgets. However friendly everyone may be, remember that they’re still strangers.
5. Check if the hostel you’re staying in has mixed or single sex dorms and request the type of room you’d prefer. If you’re a female solo traveller you may prefer to stay in an all-girls dorm (although i have never had any problems with mixed dorms). If you’re travelling with a boyfriend/girlfriend or friend of the opposite sex, you’ll probably want to stay in the same room if possible, so check this before you book.
6. Before you book a hostel, check reviews on sites like hostelworld.com. You can’t tell from a website if a hostel is any good or not and it’s a good idea to get some honest opinions before you commit. Message boards like the Lonely Planet thorntree forum are also good for recommendations.

There are many other possible ways to make your dorm room experience a more comfortable one, however half the fun of hostelling is figuring them out for yourself! I wish you happy and snore-free dorm rooms… and if you do end up sharing a room with a sociopath or a serial-snorer, at least you’ll have some stories to tell when you get home!