Global Mischief Blog

Some nights you fall asleep happily listening to your MP3 player, knowing that your stuff is safe and you are the only one in the room. Then, a few hours later the sun rises and you hear snoring. Then a toilet flushes. Then a door closes, or rather, is slammed. You’re hesitant to open one eye let alone both and there you have it. Four, sometimes six, and even up to eight other heads tucked beneath sheets. You scan the room briefly and try to guess, male or female? The girls are usually easy to spot as there is some kind of floral toiletry kit or ribbon, or an “in style” hat lying about. Guys tend to be neater, compact, and either sporting a solid black pack or a darker masculine one in shades of blue or green. These are your new roommates. 

These situations can really either go one of two ways. The first few seconds of introduction are critical and basically decide what type of lodging situation you will be in. Option one is the friendly hello, where are you from and the where are you going? If the person is genuinely interesting and excited to be travelling, these questions usually open up a longer conversation and a momentary “friendship” to last only as long as your stay in this particular location. The second option usually starts off awkward due to timing. This is when you are fast asleep and new people enter your room. Or, equally so, this could occur when you come back to your room to find new luggage and an invasion of unknown people. In those few critical seconds, you will know which option has been chosen. The exchange for option two goes something like this:

“Hi. How’s it going?”

“Fine.”

And thus, option two is complete. No further conversation is necessary. It is clear that you will never have anything in common with your new bunk-mate, the door for communication is shut, and you are simply another person occupying a shared-space.

Welcome to hostel lodging.

Shall we move on to the kitchen?

Now, some establishments do make a conscious effort to contradict what is about to be said, but we have only encountered one or two at most.

Imagine cooking in your kitchen at home. Now add your mother, grandmother, big sister, your little sister, great auntie, auntie, two or three cousins, the nosy neighbor, and a professional cook. Now imagine all of those people trying to operate using one stove, one microwave, one fridge, and quite often…no oven. This is hostel living at its worst. Meal times have essentially changed for us. Dinner is now before 4:00PM or well after 9:00PM. To venture into the kitchen during "normal" dinner hours is equivalent to committing culinary suicide. 

If you are fortunate enough to find access to the food prep area without catastrophe or collision, that brings you to the clean up process. Soap seems to be a rare commodity in this part of the world, or at least, that is how it seems. Hostel after hostel seems to have this stingy control of liquid dish soap. We have seen it in spray bottles over-diluted with water, we have seen it in automatic dispensers that require a certain time-lapse between pumps, and we have seen empty soda bottles with remnants of what can only be (hopefully) soap! Sadly, and horrifyingly, there have been some instances that soap in any form just couldn’t be found.  

If you happen to discover the liquid gold, you are then instructed by sign after sign to wash and dry your dishes. To dry your dishes….that is the humorous bit. In order to dry…anything…most civilized people would use a proper, clean, drying towel. In a hostel with lodging for 50 to 200 people or more, one would think that the supply of drying towels would be enough to get the job done 200 times over. This has not been the case. Usually, there are three to four towels to be found anywhere in the kitchen. If these towels haven’t already been used to wipe down counters, dry off hands, wipe off hands after tearing apart chicken or some other meat, or used to wipe up the floor…then dry away! Admittedly, we have not dried and put away all of our dishes as the signs say. We have, instead, sneakily left them in the drying racks in hopes that some other poor individual won’t get salmonella or some other kind of illness. 

The kitchen does have its funny moments too. There are always utensils, cutting boards, towels, plates, and even strainers that prove as evidence to the terrible cooks in the world. We have, in our own experiences, witnessed a blue cutting board go up in flames as the “chef” was washing out a pot, completely oblivious. We have also played the “shuffle the strainer” game where you have to find one that still has its original holes instead of the melted, oversized versions. In some cases, finding a pot with a handle is a chore. And if no handle is available, then the quest for tongs begins so you can maneuver the pot on and off the burner, or stir whatever concoction has been created. 

Despite the downsides of hostel kitchens, we have managed to cook some wonderful meals to include chicken with gravy, spaghetti, soups of various kinds, and rice dishes. Hey! We’re on a hostel budget after all!