The 10 Hostel Commandments

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Cramming 50 or so young, broke, fairly smelly backpackers into one small hostel can be the recipe for disaster. Indeed, most of the travellers among us have a few (or ten) horror stories they could tell about their latest hostel experiences.

Most of these awkward hostel situations would not occur, however, if all of our fellow backpackers followed these 10 simple Hostel Commandments.

(1) Thou shall not play thou’s guitar for us unless requested by at least two people in the room that are not friends of thou. Why did thou feel the need to bring a musical instrument backpacking anyway?

(2) Thou shall not turn the light on at 5am to pack for the early morning train. Especially if thou uses forty crinkly plastic bags to separate thou’s stuff in thou’s backpack. Thou should do it the night before, or perhaps thou should have packed a torch instead of that pink GHD hair straightener.

(3) Thou shall shower every day, unless it is winter in Romania and there is no hot water, in which case thou shall shower every second day, very quickly. However, thou shall not take 45 minutes in the bathroom at 8 o’clock in the morning when five other people are waiting.

(4) Thou shall not snore, pass wind, hum, talk, walk around, or sing incessantly during sleep. If thou does, at least warn surrounding bunks and let them know how to get thou to stop doing the aforementioned things (such as rolling thou onto thou’s side). If there is no way to stop thou doing these things, thou should book a private room.

(5) Thou shall not spend hours on unlimited internet at the hostel. Especially if five other people are waiting to use it. Especially if thou is just checking Facebook, reading useless travel blogs, or downloading stupid YouTube clips.

(6) Thou shall not have sex in the dorm room, the hostel kitchen, or any communal area whatsoever. Especially if it is loud sex. Especially if it is with thou’s girlfriend and thou was too stingy to get a private room. Thou can have it in the bathroom, however, if thou does not mind the stench and cleans up afterwards.

(7) Thou shall not waltz into the common room and change the channel on the common room TV whilst we are watching it. Especially if thou is changing it to thou’s favourite Spanish soap opera/Nicholas Cage movie/footy match whilst we are watching the news.

(8) Thou shall not steal food from the communal hostel fridge. Especially if it is our last piece of cheese. Yes, we will notice. No, being drunk or high is not an excuse.

(9) Thou shall take care of thouself by picking up thou’s own rubbish in the dorm room, cleaning up after thouself in the kitchen, and taking care not to drink so much that thou is left wandering the streets at 4:30 in the morning without a clue as to where thou is and then blaming it on us the next day because we left in the taxi without thou when thou stayed to pick up that Swiss girl.

(10) Thou shall not think themselves God Of All Backpackers and Knower of All Things Travel-Related because thou has spent months helping orphans in Somalia and building mud houses in Paraguay, or studied for a semester in Paris, or did a Contiki tour back in ’07.

This article was written for BootsnAll by Amy Heading

photos, top to bottom, by: colm.mcmullan, colb, glennji