5 Hostel Shockers That Will Make Your Skin Crawl...

After the success of my Hostel Nightmare post I figured I couldn't possibly be the only one out there with a less than enjoyable hostel tale. So, I reached out to the blogosphere to see what else was out there and the blogging Gods shone down on me with these 5 epic stories from some amazing travel bloggers!

Be warned - some of these make mine look like a walk in the park!

The Last Minute Hostel Disaster

We arrived in Santorini on the night ferry and hadn’t pre-booked our accommodation. While this was our usual MO, it didn’t occur to us that beds might have been in short supply at that time of night. After trudging through cobblestone alleys with fully laden backpacks for three hours, we were starting to get desperate and were begging the hostels to find us something … anything! We were delighted when we heard the words “I may have something if you want to take a look”. We followed the rather elderly gent up endless flights of stair to the roof and we looking at each other rather perplexed when he pointed to a tangle of rusting bunk beds well past their due date with a menagerie of stray cats and dogs all settled in for the night. And he still wanted to charge us to sleep there! We high tailed it out of there and sprung for a rather expensive hotel bed that night. The very next night after finding a hostel I awoke at 2am to find a drunk, naked German male crawling into bed with me. His English wasn’t great and my German is even worse but a rather heated bilingual conversation ensued. By now my bunk mates had switched on all the lights on to see what the fuss was all about to reveal him in all his glory. From what I can make out he was under the impression I was in his bed not the other way around...

- Thanks to Allison Smith for this shocker! Read more about her travel adventures on her blog Sydney Fashion Hunter

The Rowdy Roomates

Though it would not be our first time staying in a hostel, it would be the first time my brother

and I stayed in a 12-person dormitory room. The luxury of privacy (albeit cramped privacy) was

no longer an option. Like all cities, Dublin accommodations held a higher cost, and the hostel’s

private rooms were full.

13 euros shorter each, my brother and I found ourselves leaning against the railing of the

bottom bunk. The room was clean, big, and momentarily quiet - an anomaly that wouldn’t last

long.

That night, 8 of the 10 remaining beds were claimed by a rowdy group of men who clearly

thought the room was their territory. Turning on the lights at whatever odd hour they came

back from bar crawling and cracking loud jokes throughout the night became routine. I didn’t

recognize the language they spoke (maybe Russian?). The other two solo men, my brother and I

(oh yeah, I was the only girl in this co-ed room) screwed our earplugs in tighter and tried to

sleep. The men laughed in my brother’s face when he tried to talk to them. After that, we slept

with pepper spray under our pillows.

- This hostel fail is courtesy of Sierra Donahue of Take Me With You. Make sure to check her out!

The Boozy Bunkmate

When I opened the door to my 14-bed dorm in Cork, Ireland, I was greeted by a drowsy,

smelly, middle-aged man that spoke only Spanish. I could smell him as soon as I

opened the door. Also as soon as I opened the door, I realized I was the only female in

this 14-bed room! It was 3pm and my only roommate in right now was sleeping and

smelled horrible. What fun this wouldn’t be, I thought.

That night I met one of my other roommate’s bare behind as he took off his pants less

than 3 feet from my face to get into bed. I realize what I’m getting myself into by living in

a shared dorm, but the part that weirded me out was that after taking off his pants

without a second thought, he climbed into bed and took his shirt off under the covers!

Glad he was shy about that…!

The guy was clearly hammered. It was probably early afternoon and he was so drunk

he could not walk or even stand. The room smelled awful. I can only imagine what he

did to the bathroom before I got there.

Banned from my room but with my tourist-to-do-list all done, I resorted to sitting in the

lobby for close to an hour while waiting for an ambulance and then police to come to the

hostel. The ambulance wouldn’t take him, so the police had to escort him down the

stairs and waited outside until, eventually, some random car got him and transported

him somewhere only God knows.

I still have no idea what happened to that man, but I love the story. And I love the

memory of watching 2 policemen trying to help him walk a simple straight path down to

the door.

A lot of people will tell you the bigger the coed dorm room, the worse your experience,

so you shouldn’t do it. But sometimes saving those few extra bucks sure is tempting…

but I learned my lesson.

- Thanks Lauren for sending this nightmare in! Read all about her travels at Postgrad and Postcards!

The Late Night Surprise

I was in a popular backpacker hostel in Vang Vieng - In the girls dorm. Me and another travel buddy were out late partying. When we girls got back to our rooms, I noticed something "strange" right away. It was pitch dark and we were a bit drunk so we went straight to bed. After just 2 minutes we heard moaning on the bunk bed next to us. The low moans got louder and lasted 2 hours. It so happened one of the girls was having a "birthday fling" - one of those times where you just want to get up and yell - Get a room , guys!

- This skin-crawler story was shared by Jo of Wander With Jo. Go wander with her!

The Bedtime Breakdown

I’m standing on a cliff there is a mind blowing view, water as far as the eye can reach. It all feels unreal to be enjoying the sunset whilst having a chat with my new mates and drinking a cold one. Suddenly I hear this whisper ‘help me, help me please’. I don’t know if I’m hearing it correctly, is that someone calling for help? ‘Help me, can someone please help me!’. I’m starting to stand up, to look where to voice is coming from when everything all of the sudden turns black. The endless waters are gone, and all I feel is a semi-soft mattress with the springs almost coming through. I’m back in bed in my 12-bed dorm somewhere along the east coast of Australia. ‘HELP ME!! HELP MEEEE!’. About 3 meters away from my bed a girl is jelling at the top of her lungs. The whole room is now awake and the light is on. No one seems to know what is going on. She keeps on screaming looking out of the window, she actually sounds terrified. We all look at each other, only one of us stands up and walks up to her, he tries to calm her down, but she is not responding to anything he is saying. ‘She looks totally out of it, her eyes are open but very distant’. Still no one talks, I guess we are all still in shock, but then the girl in the bed next to me comments that she might be sleep walking? Should we wake her up? The girl keeps on screaming at the top of her lungs, in the mean time one of the other boys went to the reception. He and the night watch enter the room shortly after the last screaming spree. Apparently he knows what he is doing, he leads the girl to her bed while she sits on the edge of the bed she seems to wake up. All of the sudden she starts screaming again, we are all ushered out of the room. The screaming from inside continuous and after ten minutes paramedics walk up the stairs. We try to move out of the way, most of us just standing in the hallway with our pyjamas on, eager to get back into the room. It takes them a little while to calm her down, and it seems to take an eternity before they come out of the room. It takes an hour to be more precise before we can go back into our room, but since my bus to my next destination is leaving in less than 3 hours I decide to just stay up. When I hand in my room key during check out I try to figure out what happened to the girl? Was she sick? Did they know? I ended up with no answer; all I got was a shoulder shrug and some unclear mumbling. I guess this proves that anything can happen when you stay at a hostel, even a psychotic breakdown..