One of the great things about traveling in cheap countries is you usually don’t have to sleep in hostels. You can still get that community feeling in the hangout area of the guesthouse, but you can close the door to your own room at night. One of the drags about traveling in an expensive country is it’s all about dorm beds in a hostel that costs as much as a nice mid-range double hotel room in Southeast Asia or Central America.
Which brings me to one of the funniest travel blogs you’ll read, Killing Batteries from Leif Pettersen. It’s a great inside look at the not-so-glamorous world of being a guidebook writer in Europe. The latest Anti-social Hostelling post is on the struggle of trying to get some sleep in a hostel:
It’s strange, my hearing isn’t that great in general (stupid rock ‘n’ roll), but at night, in a hostel, I can hear a butterfly fart. I can sense when a light turns on three rooms away. To say nothing of the inevitable sounds of people who are younger, drunker and less burdened with work, hooking up and briefly forgetting about the 60 people that are within easy earshot as the thumping starts against the wall, headboard, floor, shower stall, broom closet, etc. Ah, Europe. What happens in the broom closet, stays in the broom closet.
