Story 3:
Story 4:
In my 20s, I was traveling with friends on a shoestring budget, and we stayed at the absolute cheapest hostel we could find that was close to the downtown area so we could spend as little money on public transit as possible. “Hostel” was a generous term.
It was a tiny brick building in the center of a large city block, so you basically had to walk through this narrow urban canyon to arrive at its featureless metal door. You just punched in a code to enter. There was no one on-site to greet or help you in any way.
The space was divided into four units, and each unit basically looked like a wing of an insane asylum. Dirty white tile, peeling paint, dusty yellow lights—the whole thing. The beds were saggy mattresses on old metal frames, and each had a thin, wrinkled bedsheet on it. The bathroom was surprisingly fine, but the thing that absolutely broke us was the ants.
So. Many. Ants. There was nothing you could do to avoid feeling one crawl across you in the middle of the night, so trying to fall asleep was like torture. The manager/owner was completely unhelpful and insisted that the traps they’d already placed were good enough.
If we’d been able to afford any other option, we would have left after one night. Sadly, we spent four nights in this nightmare and just used it as an excuse to stay out all night exploring. A horrible experience, but it was a true moment of bonding for my friends and me.
Story 5:
I needed to find a hotel because of my daughter’s gymnastics competition. I read online reviews, and they were good. The price was good too, so I booked it.
I had difficulty finding it because it was dark, and their sign wasn’t lit. The parking lot was pitch black. Just outside the entrance, there were two sketchy guys.
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