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Anyone ever stayed in a hostel before?


TNPanther

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Friend and I are planning to go down to Miami on Amtrak before classes start and we were looking at a hostel in South Beach. Anyone who's stayed in one in America, what should we expect? Is it easy to socialize and possibly get laid? Are the women even attractive?

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i've stayed in dozens overseas, ranging from laos to peru to the philippines to mexico and plenty of places inbetween. hands down the best ones were in australia and this really fuging cool one in northern thailand. you find that backpacking is an international phenomenon that generally escapes american cultural pursuits (much to our disadvantage) and combines the joy of immaterial pursuit of experience with the social benefits of half a dozen people of different nation, creed, and color jammed into one place with the common goal of escaping the rat race and simply exploring the world around them. it's an entire subculture that exists globally and transcends political barriers and national borders and ideological strife and it's pretty cool to imagine that such a culture is eventually going to be the one that rises up and becomes the educated, exposed-to-the-world establishment that displaces a number of the jingoists that we have running things now.

 

you'll see a number of paradigms broken that kind of blow your mind.

 

anyway all that aside, i have never been in one in the united states before. i've heard tales from people that have and they're generally not pretty... evidently a lot of panhandlers will take their earnings there and spend the night, but i doubt that's all of them, and there are probably policies that prohibit/discourage vagrants from coming through. since backpacking is largely a european/australian/japanese/ ...well, hell, everyone but the u.s. phenomenon, you find that hostels are only profitable in areas that will attract international youth looking for an adventure. in australia you could find a hostel in a town as small as kernersville, NC (maybe two) but here you're only going to see them in NYC, washington DC, miami, chicago, sanfran, LA, etc. chances are you'll find some pretty cool people there and i would definitely recommend giving it a shot. it's a way of life for some people, and a glorious one at that (if a bit scant on the material aspects present in a larger hotel.)

 

getting laid won't be a problem if you're not a complete doucher. don't make it clear you're trying to get laid... just be a cool dude. also don't get laid at the hostel unless you can find a private place - dorm rooms with five other bunks aren't really conducive to teh poon. it's a tough battle. you may have to get creative.

 

good luck.

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i'm not sure if its relevant to what you're attempting to do but here's a blog post on backpacker culture that i wrote a couple years ago while trekking through laos

 

 

 

 


 

My time in Laos was everything I love about international travel. I have found it almost impossible to recreate the spirit of my first venture overseas; it was wanderlust at its finest, it was raw discovery, it was freedom and joy. It's like catching lightning in a bottle - I'm at a different place in my life now, I've grown in many ways, and endless wandering alone is no longer an option. But my journey across Laos, even if for the briefest of moments, brought back that spirit.

 

Backpacking - you can't beat it. You really can't. When I first heard the term years ago, prior to my solo journey to Australia, I thought the term was limited to camping trips in the mountains, a verb to describe treks from point A to point B. I found out quite differently... it's more of a lifestyle. In most countries backpacking is a term used to describe the quasi-nomadic community of international travelers, usually between 18 and 30 years of age, far flung from the borders of their homes and familiarity, out exploring a world larger than their own.

 

The beauty of backpacking is its simplicity. Niceties are appreciated rather than expected; four-dollar-per-night dorm rooms in hostels are preferred to expensive hotels and luxurious boutiques. Luang Prabang was no exception. Our longboat docked against the shore, a plank was extended from the bow, and the passengers disembarked. A smaller group of us headed for Spicy Laos Backpackers, an upstart hostel that was rumored to be fantastic. Blake and Anney (my Australian mates from the boat) and I got a room for three dollars apiece... hard to beat that if you're on a mission to save money. The room was spare and the beds stiff, air conditioning non-existent and the fan broken. Slummin' it with the masses.

 

Luang Prabang itself was beautiful - an eclectic mix of old French villas from the colonial days and magnificent temples rising above the trees - but it was shockingly quiet. Much of this was due to the weather (by my second day in Luang Prabang I had not seen the sun in six days) but also the fact that, well, the Lao are some of the most lackadaisical people I've ever met. There is no point to rushing; you'll get where you need to go. There's a circulating joke that LPDR (Laos - People's Democratic Republic) means "Laos - Please Don't Rush." It's a philosophy widely adopted.

 

I found out, much to my disappointment, that one-way motorcycle rentals from Luang Prabang to Vientiane in the south were impossible to find. I had to alter my plans (recapturing that old wandering spirit, I suppose) and bought a plane ticket instead. My second night in Luang Prabang was to be my last.

 

And it was a good one. The hostel had filled up to its limit, and the owners announced they were throwing a barbecue. 25,000 kip (about 3 USD) bought unlimited plates of roasted chicken, vegetables, noodles, and a rather foul mixture of brackish rice whiskey and coke. I found I could swallow it if I shielded my nostrils from the odor first. The rest of the food was delicious and needed no such diluting.

 

The backpackers, of course, were what made it fun. At any given point my table was accompanied by a pair of Canadians, a couple of Brits, my Aussie friends, an Israeli guy, and an Irishman. The other table was English and German and Austrian with a handful of Lao tossed in for good mix. This is one thing particularly endearing about the backpacking community: the constant influx of difference. Different people, different upbringings and backgrounds and countries, all bound together by one unifying ideology - rejection of materialism and acceptance of the open road.

 

Nationalistic trivialities have no place in backpacking. It was a source of wonder among our chatter that each individual seemed to be slightly embarrassed at his country of origin. "We Brits are famous for being wankers abroad," stated one guy. "Always expecting everyone to speak English."

 

"Australians are the same way," agreed Blake.

 

"You never meet American travelers," I said. "We're all too xenophobic, few of us speak more than one language and we're not very well liked."

 

Piped in another: "You think that's bad... try telling people you're from Israel!"

 

And that's the beauty of it all. No one minds. Stupid stereotypes are rejected, and people are judged for the content and the strength of their individual character - not by their government or their race or their creed. Have you heard of the stereotype of French people laughing at people who try to speak French? Go backpacking. How about that Europeans hate Americans? Tell that to Germans and the Austrians and the Spanish when you go backpacking. (And they shave, too, and none of them stink.) How bout the "Americans and Canadians don't like each other" stereotype? I narrowly lost in the hostel's pool tournament's championship round to a guy from Montreal. High fives all around on the winning shot, and he split the prize - three free Laotian beers - between everyone there, myself included. We got along famously.

 

And music. This one resonates with me in particular. Every time I see a guitar I can't help but pick it up and play. One of the hostel's employees kindly let me take his guitar and jam on it for a while. Horrendously out of tune and lacking any real vocal talent I led the hostel in an impromptu sing-a-long session. We harmonized on Green Day's "Time of your Life"and bellowed out "She Hates Me"and everyone clapped to the beat of "Hotel California" and "Under the Bridge" and "Yellow Submarine" (even though I couldn't remember the chords and it was a big muddy mess.) Music is powerful, it is a unifying tonic - take ten people in a room, traveling separately, having never met before, and then throw in one guitarist with a small acoustic and a couple of basic songs that everyone knows, and suddenly everyone's best friends, singing along and trading stories of roads traveled and ones ahead.

 

So it was with some sadness that I left the next morning, bidding farewells to community away from home which had, for a few days, been mine to enjoy. My plane to Vientiane, a twin-engine turbo prop, leaped off the runway and roared south. I was a little geeked out - riding propeller-driven aircraft was a bit of a novelty, and after countless jets my attention was riveted to the throaty drone outside my window. The weather, too, was halfway decent, and through sparse cloud cover I could see the muddy Mekong winding through the hills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

the rest of the blog is about biking through the central highlands of laos so it cuts off awkwardly but you get the point

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Yeah I don't know about a hostel in South Beach.

 

I would try to priceline a room or something.

 

You aren't going to get laid....especially there staying in a hostel. People drive ferrais around and the drinks are $20-30 or you need bottle service in the nicer clubs. I would suggest going somewhere else if your funds are limited

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