"While We Were There, It Was Terrifying": People Are Sharing The Wild Things They've Experienced Staying In Hostels

Staying in a room with a dozen other travelers can sound like the start of a great adventure, but sometimes, our expectations of hostel-hopping are very different from reality.

I asked our BuzzFeed Community to tell me about their experiences staying in hostels. Here are some of their wildest stories:

1."My hostel in London had triple bunks, with probably close to 30 people in the room. I was assigned the top one, my ex was assigned the middle, and a random person was on the first. I don't know what in the Taco Bell-lactose-intolerance was going on with the man on the bottom bunk, but for three out of four nights we were there, he was ripping ass."

2."One evening, at a hostel along Tiger Leaping Gorge in China, a French man in the bed opposite mine was so angry that the light was still on at about midnight that he grabbed the bulb by his bare hand and squeezed it, shattering it and successfully darkening the room. We all shut up fairly quickly after that!"

—smhumm

3."Picture a frat and a sorority house mashed into one, and the bunk beds felt like they would topple over at all times. The hostel we were staying in was a nightmare. People throwing up all over the place, people turning the lights on at all hours; don't even get me started on the bathroom situation. The next day, my ex and I decided to go to another hostel. Immediately, it was 100,000 times better; the vibes were impeccable, the people were more respectful, and we made friends with other travelers and explored the city together."

4."My friend and I stayed in a hotel in Paris 15 or so years ago. While hanging out in the lounge area to use the Internet, "American Pie" by Don McLean played on the radio. Everyone there, all strangers, started singing along. It was sweet."

5."My first night at a 'recently remodeled' hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I heard bangs, like gunshots, outside and went to look out the window to see what was going on…"

"l stopped before looking because I realized that I heard about five shots, and if they had a 10-round clip, it would not be wise to look. The next day, I rented a motorcycle, and that evening, the front desk told me to park it in the lobby because it might be stolen if left outside. The final surprise was finding out the hotel was 'recently remodeled' because the lobby had been bombed, with a staff member getting killed."

—TK, Seattle, Washington

6."I was traveling with a group of girlfriends when we were in our 20s, and a group of guys our age were staying at our hostel. I noticed one of the guys and introduced myself. We hit it off, and five years later, we got married, and now we are nearing our third anniversary. I will always owe that stay the love of my life, and I will never forget it."

7."My father used to stay in hostels alone in Washington, DC, when he had to take a plane since it was much cheaper than a hotel (we never had much money). That is, until one day, he went to his shared room and realized he would be sharing it with 11 very young women. The women didn't seem to mind as they were laughing, snoring, undressing, and chatting amongst each other while my middle-aged father lay motionless on his bed, rolled up in his blanket, facing the wall, eyes wide open all night. He was terrified of making the women uncomfortable with his presence, and in the end, he's the one who left in the wee hours to sleep on an airport bench. He never used a hostel again."

8."I traveled to Thailand by myself in 2016. I went to a moon party in Koh Phangan and stayed in a dorm with 24 other people, including a group of 8 Irish guys. They were horrible dorm mates..."

9."When my two friends and I were in our early 20s, we took a girls’ trip to London. We booked a hostel upon arrival, which gave us a private room. It had an extra bed, but we gave it no mind then; we just faceplanted and slept like the dead we were. So in the morning, we stretch, rub our eyes — and look over to the fourth bed, realizing it’s occupied. By a man. 😱 Frozen, we watch him open his eyes and say: “Bonjour, Mademoiselles.” Then he gets up (fully clothed, thank god), walks out of the room, and leaves it to it. For years, I thought I was reacting like a prudish Yankee, but looking back, that was so bloody wrong! Good thing Frenchy was a gentleman."

10."My best friend and I had booked tickets for Disneyland Paris. We booked a cheap hostel to stay off-site. It turned out that the 'hostel' was an illegal brothel..."

"A bar with two or three rooms upstairs that had glitter everywhere and 'mystery' white stains on the walls. The ladies and their company spent all night having fun next door, at the bar area, and in front of the bar downstairs. The place's 'check-in desk' was the bar with a mirror surface people did lines on. We tried sleeping clothed, with our house keys between our fingers and left before the sun fully rose. While we were there, it was terrifying. By now, it's an anecdote we always use for games two truths and a lie and stuff like that."

—prisabaloha

11."A group of girlfriends and I were accidentally booked into the men's dorm at a hostel in Galway. They told us the women's dorm was full, but it was OK with them to sleep in the men's dorm if it was OK with us. We were all exhausted and reluctantly agreed."

"We were a group, so we felt pretty safe. When we got to the dorm, we found bunks near each other and settled in. It was an awful night. None of us slept. One guy played his acoustic guitar half the night, and none of us felt comfortable asking him to stop. The stink of unwashed bodies was so strong it made my eyes burn. I was jealous of my friend who got a bed by the window and spent the whole night with her face against it for fresh air. The guys also farted all night, adding to the stink. As soon as the sun peeked over the horizon, we all jumped out of bed, gathered our stuff, and fled to the women's bathroom. We couldn't get in the showers fast enough to wash the stink off our skin and out of our hair. Thankfully, we had rooms at a different hostel for the next couple of nights and could finally sleep."

—Mary, California

12."My friend woke up with bedbug bites. She didn't know what they were. I recognized them right away, but I knew she'd freak out, so I kept my mouth shut and only told her once we returned home. Thankfully, we didn't bring any home with us. Probably because we didn't unpack anything from our suitcases and fled first thing in the morning."

13."I stayed in a hostel once in Toronto (the hostel in question no longer exists), where the bathrooms with showers were communal. No shower curtains, no separate stalls, just several separate shower heads and sets of knobs down the wall. The bathrooms were also gendered, so as a trans person who was staying in a men's bedroom, I was expected to use the men's showers."

14."My hostel in Paris was a night club on the first floor and a hostel on all the other floors, and there was a person who was seemingly traveling alone, clearly intoxicated and throwing up all over the place, all while music blared until 3 a.m. (I hope they're okay.)"

15."While backpacking from Switzerland to Austria in 2012, my train was substantially delayed due to 'terrorism training.' The train stopped in the middle of nowhere, loads of fully kitted military guys poured out of a few cars, and we sat for hours while they did their thing. When training finished, they got back on track, and we continued. I missed my connection and got to Salzberg at 3 a.m. in the pouring rain. Instead of trying to find my hostel, I stayed the night in the station, played football, and drank with a bunch of the local kids. It was a great night; very bizarre."

16."We stopped for a night in Lima, Peru, during a bus trip from Guayaquil, Ecuador to Santiago, Chile. This was in 1978, and my mother got us (her, my sister, and myself) a hotel room on the cheap side. We got to the room, and my mother decided to take a bath. Thirty seconds later, we heard a scream from the bathroom, and my mother came out, dressed, and said, 'We’re leaving.' When she turned on the water, instead of liquid, she got a humongous cockroach that crawled up her leg."

17."In the late '90s, in college, I spent a semester in Ireland. My sister visited me for the last two weeks of my stay, and we traveled around the country together. In Galway, we stayed at a hostel I had been to before. I had called and made a reservation, indicating that two women needed a room. Many of the rooms had two sets of bunks, so I warned my sister we might share with other people. Well, we got to the room. I unlocked the door, and two young men were in their underwear, brushing their teeth. We all froze and stared at each other."

"Then I blurted out, 'Hi! We're your roommates! I'll give you a moment to get dressed!' I closed the door, and my sister and I stared at each other in shock before heading back downstairs to the desk to let them know they had put us in a room with a few random guys. They told us, 'Oops, sorry, but we are fully booked, so that is our only room.' Great. We gave the guys 10–15 minutes, then went back upstairs and knocked on the door. We told them what the desk clerk had said and asked if they minded sharing the room. We just needed a place to sleep. They said yes, and we awkwardly introduced ourselves. (We are American, and they were German, and thankfully, we all spoke English.) And eventually, we all went to bed. The following day, they were gone before my alarm even went off. Sorry guys!"

—Mary, California

Have any wild hostel stories of your own to share? Tell us about them in the comments or anonymously with this form.