People From Around The World Share Their Funniest Hostel Stories


People From Around The World Share Their Funniest Hostel Stories


Every young traveler has their hostel phase. Staying in one is a great way to make your money go farther and maybe make some friends at the same time. But we all know we're rolling the dice when we agree to share a room with 5 or 10 strangers.

Sometimes the results are gross; sometimes gory; sometimes downright hilarious.

These are the funniest and wackiest stories from people who have worked at or stayed in hostels all around the world. So sit back and enjoy as folks from around the world unload with their funniest hostel stories.

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31. It's Raining

I was working the night shift and basically everything was quiet. All of a sudden this weird little guy comes to the reception and tells me he needs two new mattresses. Why? Because he wet his bed (to be honest, it happens more often than you might think in hostels). I say no problem and ask him why he needs the second one. He goes umm, err, mmm, then another guy comes down the stairs looking furious. And he actually was. Because he was in the bottom bunk. He woke because of the pee dripping on his face.

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30. Breakfast Danish

At a hostel in Vietnam, I saw a woozy Danish guy slip off a table on a stray ping-pong ball, dislocate his shoulder, and wet his pants. At breakfast. Superb viewing.

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29. When In Singapore

I was the new guy working at the hostel, so I got stuck cleaning the bathrooms. Upon entering the men's room to do my rounds, I hear a man dropping what sounds like the most painful deuce of his life. I carry on and go about my work for the next fifteen minutes and he still isn't out yet. Right as I'm about to ask him if he's okay, this big jolly Brit walks out of the stall with a handful of rubbers filled with mystery substances. He looks me dead in the eye and says, "Singapore, mate." Then he walks out, solemnly shaking his head.

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28. Your Music Is A Hate Crime

I was staying in Auckland and was in a 4-person room. When I moved in there was someone in a bed with the covers over themselves this was around 2 pm and so I figured they were recovering or something. In the 4 days we were roommates I only saw him out of bed twice. Once to either shower or eat and the other time to yell at me and threaten me.

He was a smaller gentleman and at odd hours of the day he would play sappy music. Britney Spears or Taylor Swift love songs and Rebecca Black's 'Friday.' He started Saturday morning at 7AM playing Britney Spears for about an hour and then stopped. I got up at 10 AM and went to shower. After the shower I was getting dressed in the room and he suddenly throws off the covers and stands up yelling at me, accusing me of a hate crime because I am making noise getting dressed.

So he is yelling at me, threatening me, and saying he is going to call the cops on me for my hate crime so I just yelled back that he had no right to speak about being quiet since he plays garbage music all hours of the day without headphones. After a couple minutes of this he retreated back to his bed and I never saw him again.

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27. Like A Rolling Stone

I passed a kidney stone in the coastal heat of a Colombian hostel. That hurt.

But, the staff partied with me before and after, then hung the stone on the wall in one of the dozens of small ziploc bags we were always mysteriously finding.

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26. Yoga In A Toga

I've never worked in a hostel but I've stayed in loads. I always remember this one guy in Warsaw. It was quite a big hostel but despite it being summer, quite empty, so I was in a room of 8 beds and it was me, this guy and a couple. On the first day I walked in the room to find him grappling the ceiling as if he was Spiderman. I didn't notice him at first but then he thudded to the ground and acted as if nothing had happened.

He repeated this trick a few times and I saw him walking around the hostel as if he was a kid trying not to touch the floor, clambering on stuff and the walls etc. When I woke up the next day, he was outside in the courtyard doing a cross between martial arts and some kind of yoga wearing a toga. When I got back that night, he was singing on Skype. I also noticed he was reading a book purely about squirrels.

I was there for 3 nights and I think he spent his whole time in the hostel doing crackpot things

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25. Head Bangers

I was in Prague a few years ago, staying at a hostel, as high schoolers are wont to do. My buddy and I had just returned from a of making poor decisions and were chilling in the lobby area. This Swedish metal band that was also staying at the hostel came in, all of them absolutely annihilated.

The vocalist, who's this huge dude with long blonde hair, exactly what you'd expect from a Swedish metal band, is completely plastered and starts yelling, asking people to kick him in the head. Nobody really wants to do it but he was being really aggressive. Eventually he puts his head down on this table and the bassist in the band starts kicking him in the head, as requested. Hard kicks, right in the skull. After each kick, the dude yells for the bassist to do it again. After 3 or 4 kicks, the bassist stops cause his foot hurts too much, and they all go upstairs.

I saw them all the next day and the vocalist was completely fine, with no ill effects. The bassist, however, BROKE HIS FOOT on this dude's hard head, and had to go to the hospital.

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24. The Barber Of Crete

I was working on Crete in a youth hostel and cut my own hair using a couple of mirrors. An Albanian friend liked it and paid me to cut his hair, him being too afraid of being deported to go into the village to get a haircut. So I cut his hair. I made it look just like Roger Moore in Live and Let Die and his friends became interested. I cut 28 men's hair. Almost all of the migrant Albanians wore old 1970s clothes, like Albania stopped importing all clothes after 1978, so the haircuts were twerking their fly collars and no-belt golf pants.

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23. That's Impressive

I used to manage a hostel in Mission Beach, Australia for 4 years. I saw a couple do it in a hammock... while standing up.

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22. That's Not What They Do In France

I manage a hostel in America and nothing surprises me any more. But there was one French guest -- he was sober as he had just checked in. I got a call from the business below the hostel saying someone is peeing out the window. I run up and catch the guy in the act. He honestly thought it would be alright to do that. He swore that in France that's what they do. Needless to say, we kicked him out.

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21. Coal In Your Stocking

One guy took a dump in a small garbage bin. In a 10 bed room. While everyone was in there. On Christmas.

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20. Midnight Makeup

I lived in a hostel in Dublin's Temple Bar district for a month before finding an apartment. One of fellow guests in a 12 bed mixed room was a 65ish English woman who would eat candy form a noisy plastic bag in the middle of the night and then apply insane amounts of makeup, particularly lipstick (in the dark).

At a hostel in Sydney a 50ish French man would dress up for work every night, in a fancy suit, with a briefcase and umbrella, and then spend the rest of the night standing in various corners of the building.

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19. Good News, Dad!

Once I was staying in a hostel in Tokyo and woke up to this guy loudly talking to his dad on Skype in the common room about how he thinks he is infertile because "nothing comes out," how much he wants to literally kill his brother, and, "Oh by the way dad, I'm racist now."

This was unfortunately the morning after my friend and I decided to be social and spent the night out with this guy. I know people say "X is the craziest guy I know" but this is the first time I ever thought someone would possibly kill me in my sleep because they were just that bat crap crazy.

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18. It's Hard To Be That Quiet

I've stayed in hostels lots over the past 6 or so years.

I was in a 10-bed dorm in Coogee Beach, Sydney. All us guys we went out together, stumbled back and got into bed. We all chatted for a bit then people stated to drift off.

One guy had met a girl at the bar and arrived later with her. They thought they were being quiet but they were so loud that everyone was woke up.

Either way, I tried to ignore it while they had quick loud and noisy bottom bunk hostel fun. Once they were done the room was silent. I still wasn't sure if they had woken anyone else up.

Then one of the other guys broke the silence by asking, "Can I have a go next?"

The poor girl ran out. Everyone was awake and a good hour of laughing ensued.

Hostels are great. You definitely see the worst and best in people.

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17. Lizard People

So, I'm getting in to Budapest after taking a lovely 8 hour bus ride from Prague. I show up to the hostel at about 1:30 in the morning. The place I'm staying at is called Grandio, and it's a party hostel mind you. I'm pretty beat, so I figure screw it, I'll grab a beer at the in Hostel Bar, head up to the room to watch a couple episodes of Scrubs, and pass out for the night. About 10 minutes in, this guy from England comes in, and says, "Aye, I'll give you 3,000 HUF if you leave the room right now. I'm tryin' to smash this girl." Universal bro code pretty much says I have to take on off, so I do and wish the guy luck.

I head downstairs, and the security is pretty much shuffling us all into the common room as it's getting late, and they didn't want us waking anyone up. So myself and a solid group of people head on in and I proceeded to witness one of the most bizarre things I had ever seen.

There's a group of about 20 people or so in this room, and there are these two guys from the UK in the center. They're all on all fours, kinda standing like a monkey would, facing each other. They tied two belts together, end to end, making one giant belt, and they had these belts in a figure-eight around the neck. There was a piece of tape right smack in the middle between both of them. It was essentially tug of war, but with your neck. The person who drags the other person across the line wins.

The kicker of this game? You are completely undressed. So here I am, wandering into this common room late into the night in Budapest. I've been here all but 15 minutes, and my first bit of sight-seeing, are two tall, lanky ass, white guys from the UK, no clothes, playing tug of war with their necks. They called it Lizard Wrestling. When I asked, "Why do you guys call it Lizard Wrestling?" Their immediate response was, "Do Lizards wear clothes?" I mean, they weren't wrong?

Eventually, one of the Scottish guys comes up to me and says, "Aye mate, how would you like to be part of the first ever international lizard fight? Team USA vs Team Scotland." Everyone starts chanting, "LIZARD FIGHT, LIZARD FIGHT." I'm pretty reluctant, but I decide to go for it. Bottom line: I'm 3-0 in my career.

We stayed up until about 6:30 AM all taking turns fighting, and to this day, it's probably my craziest story. We eventually had to part ways, but in our room, which had murals all over the wall, we drew a little lizard with the inscription, "If you didn't Lizard Wrestle, did you even go to Grandio?"

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16. Leave It To Cleaver

Staying at a hostel off On Nut in Bangkok last year at this time. Roomed with a giant Aussie that slept with a cleaver. He would pace around the room holding it and muttering to himself. I left quickly.

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15. Punching With Love

I stayed four nights in a hostel in Paris. First three nights were GREAT, because my friends and I managed to snag a private room that was just us. The last night, they'd accidentally double-booked and the second party had paid more, so they spread us out over several rooms. I wound up in a 12-person room with a bunch of Australians.

Apparently one of the girls had slept with the other girl's boyfriend and everyone started to take sides. I was in bed with the curtains drawn by the time the fight started, and huddled in a corner in terror while ten angry Australian girls beat on each other.

They were all friends again by morning.

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14. Shower Very Weird

I was meeting up with some friends from college at their hostel in Thailand. While I was checking in there, the guy at the front desk said, "Shower weird." There was a bit of a language barrie, so I didn’t pursue any specifics on the situation, and just chalked it up to something I would have to figure out on my own. I was determined not to let anything make me feel uncomfortable.

At this point, I'd been traveling for more than 20 hours straight, had to poop, and a shower sounded divine. Bangkok is humid as anything. I get my toiletries, towel, and figure the bathroom is a good place to start my "refreshing." I get into the toilet which is right next to the crowded busy common area. I finish my business and am ready for my shower, remembering that "shower weird."

So I step outside the toilet, look to the left, look to the right... no shower. I turn around and notice a hose with a spigot on the end, connected to the toilet. "Haha!" I think. This is weird, the shower is connected to the toilet via a hose and a sprayer head. Anyway, determined to take a shower, and not be shocked by the fact that the shower is a sprayer hose connected to the toilet, I commence showering.

It was nice, but water was soaking the room place. There was no really convenient place to put my change of clothes, or my towel, and even the toilet paper was getting soaked. By this point I'm thinking, "Yeah, shower very weird." I wrap up and change into my now moist new clothes, and step outside the toilet closet, back into the crowed busy common area. It was literally like one of those bad dreams where everyone stares at you like... “What in the world did you do in there?”

By this point some of my friends, who have been at the hostel for the last few days, and are now in the busy common area, ask me why I was taking so long in the toilet, and secondly why am I, and moreover, why is the toilet closet soaking wet? I just said, “Shower weird?”

They then explained to me what a bidet is, how they look here in Southast Asia, and how the shower upstairs is weird because the knob for Hot water and Cold water are reversed. Turns out I had showered in the wrong place with a hose meant for spraying down your butt, and everybody in the whole hostel thought I was incredibly dumb. They weren't wrong.

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13. Follow You, Follow Me

I was on a six-month, rather spontaneous trip around Europe. In Vienna I met a girl in the hostel I quite liked and we hit it off enough to spend most nights together, often outside the hostel so we wouldn't wake up our roommates.

After two weeks I said a somewhat heavy-hearted good bye and traveled to Garmisch, then to Munich, where I ran into her again. Happy reunion, much tomfoolery, and off to Utrecht. From there to Amsterdam, where ... yes, I ran into her again. Now it's getting a little creepy, especially since she has an "I <3 Utrecht" tote bag with her, which I saw at the bus terminal at the train station.

Well, more tomfoolery, off to Bruges, then back up and to Copenhagen. Where I run into her again. It's a much colder welcome on my side this time, and I am seriously worried she's stalking me somehow.

On to Skåne, then Malmö. Where... yes, her again.

I decide I need to nip this in the bud and ask her. After an evening on the terrace (best hostel ever), during which we don't even look at each other, I ask her flat out if she's following me. She's taken by surprise. Turns out, she thought I was stalking her. She had her itinerary with her since day one, didn't diverge (she showed it to me), and I just happened to take her route.

We laughed, decided we're destined to finish this together, spent another four months traveling together, and today she's still one of my best friends, we travel sometimes when both our schedules permit,

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12. Lady In Bed

My roommate and I were in Amsterdam in a 7-person room at a hostel. One of the beds was occupied by a  woman who over time we realized never left her bed. We were there for three nights and she was in her bed every time we were in the room. Every so often she would open her purse, empty out the contents, and look at each individual item. She never did anything with the stuff in the purse and would place each thing back individually each time.

Also, she would chant and speak to herself in a different language all hours of the day and night. She would be sleeping and every so often she would wake up, spray the air with some air freshener, and go back to sleep. I have no idea where or how she ate. It was weird and kind of turned me off of group rooms at hostels.

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11. Knocked Out

I have many hostel stories but this one is by far the funniest. So me and a friend are in a hostel in Monteverde Costa Rica. After a long day of activity and traveling around to get to Monteverde we were drained and tired. We made a delicious typical Costa Rican meal with some other lovely backpackers who were at the hostel at the time. That night I was the last one to leave the balcony which overlooks the rain forest (a truly beautiful sight). It started becoming extremely windy so I went to my shared room.

Little did I know that I was sharing this room with a deaf couple and my traveling buddy (who happens to be a very very deep sleeper). The locked the door on the inside and I kept knocking for about 20 minutes to no avail. That night I slept in the main room, which was separated from the balcony with a poorly installed sliding glass door. It was extremely windy cold and the only thing I had to cover me that night was the big bean bag chairs. It was worth it for the story.

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10. Austrian Australian

Went to Prague and stayed in backpackers with a good guy friend of mine (we are Australian). We get to the room and we are sharing it with a 50+ dude from Texas and a weirdly quiet young dude just chilling and reading, no big deal.

The Texan would only address my friend (who is male), and asked if I was his wife (my friend is gay). When we said no, he got really awkward. If I answered his questions, he ignored me.

When we found out he was from Dallas, we were making small talk and were like "oh cool, our friend is from Austin." He looked like we had killed his firstborn and said he hated people from Austin. Then he found out I was half Austrian and went on a weird rage about Austrians. Then went on about how he was allowed to be in Prague because his distant relatives were from Prague.

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9. Locked In

I went all across Europe with my family this last Summer and we stayed in a hostel in Italy that was a terrible experience. We arrive at the hostel and the owner is extremely nice, and he tells us to follow him to the room. We do so and he takes us to a hallway leading down to a basement.

There is a metal gate that locks and blocks the hallway, you have to shake this gate while moving the key to unlock it. We then go down the stairs into the basement and get into our room. It is a small room and is very moist. He shows us around and starts to leave. Before he goes, he tells us the door is weird and it locks from the outside so make sure not to lock yourself in.

He heads out and we start to get ready to go explore Italy..... We go to open the door, and wouldn't you know it, he locked us in. Now you may be thinking, "just use the keys he gave you to unlock the door." Guess what, he took the keys with him. You may also be thinking "Just use your phone and call him." That would be a good idea if we had cell reception in the basement.

My mom and dad start getting panicky and start yelling for help. Eventually, a maid hears my mom and dad yelling and comes to the gate. She can't see that we are locked in however because of the aforementioned gate. So my mom is trying to speak Spanish to this woman who was speaking Italian in hopes that maybe she would be able to understand Spanish. She is able to get the generally idea that we are trapped in the basement and we give her his phone number to call. She gets ahold of him and he says he is on his way back. About an hour later he comes back and we are finally free. Overall, we spent about 2 hours stuck in that basement.

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8. Good Luck!

On my first day of work at a hostel far out in the bush of Australia, my new boss casually informed me that a random man with a machete, who was living in the nearby jungle, had been stealing food from the fridge. Then she left and I was on my own. Oh, Australia.

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7. How I Met Your Mother

When I was backpacking in Australia, I was in a hostel (in a "luxury" apartment), and my new bunk-buddy partied so hard that when he came home and went to bed, he wet himself. I was also pretty out of it, so I didn't wake up. His pee dripped all over me, and also through my mattress, into my backpack which was laying open on the floor underneath, so all my clothes got soaked in. There was a puddle on the floor, too. 

I'm not the violent type, but I got really angry when I woke up. Jumped in the shower while the guy was still sleeping. I thought I'd let him sleep in his own mess. Went to the hostel office, explained what had happened, and the manager went bananas. Came with me back to the room and dragged the guy out of the top bunk and was really rough with him. Didn't beat him, exactly, but near enough.

The guy was genuinely sorry. He washed all my clothes and ironed them. All of them! Even ironed my socks!  The hostel management insisted I move to another apartment. This turned out to be a good thing, as it's where I met my wife with whom I now have two kids.

So it could be argued that if I hadn't been peed on, I wouldn't have met my life partner. Still, I sometimes remember it, waking up with that god-awful ammonia smell in my nostrils. Shiver.

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6. Don't Mess With My Fort

I worked nightshifts in a backpackers hotel in Amsterdam. Around 4-5 AM I get called up to one of the rooms by a guest. Turns out one guy had made himself some kind of weird prison from all the aluminium bunk beds and got mad when the people in the room came to sleep and wanted their beds back.

One side of the room was pillows, mattresses and backpacks and the other side of the room was his 'fortress', which he absolutely refused to tear down.

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5. Found It!

After brushing my teeth in a hostel in Hanoi I crossed the hall to my room. As I opened the door, I heard someone down the hall yell: "OH NO, where's the snake?!" About 2 hours after that I heard screams from down the hall. I guess they found the snake. I got out of that place as soon as possible.

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4. Substitute Driver

We stayed at this hostel in Australia which ran a bus shuttle from the hostel to the town centre. One night we got on the bus and the driver started driving like Keanu Reeves in Speed, bombing down the road in the opposite direction of our destination. After five minutes of fearing for our lives we asked him what was going on. The guy stopped the bus and and informed us that he was in fact not our driver. He was just some random guy who fancied a joy ride.

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3. Manager Material

I used to work at a hostel.

One night, a German dude came to reception and very calmly explained that a homeless man was in the stairwell abusing guests as they walked up and down. I went to investigate and discovered it was one of our managers. The dude ran one of the bars in our hostel (yes, one of the bars).

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2. Now This Is A Knife!

At a hostel in Amsterdam, an Australian guy named Steve-O  threw himself face-first down the stairs. At the bottom, he got up and yelled to us, "Now that's how you go down the stairs!"

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1. Monopoly Money

At a hostel in Vancouver, Canada there were all these Americans complaining that the ATM dispensed them Canadian money. This happened numerous times. I'm not sure what they were expecting.

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