safety/security of hostels
 

Hi, i'm new here and just had a quick question about using hostels in australia (particularly on KI, Adelaide, Cairns).

I'm travelling there next may/june, and would like to use hostels, so that i can put more money towards other things in australia.
However, since i'm a 20 year old female, and plan to travel alone, i would just like to hear other people's experience in any hostels. If you are sharing a room with others, are your belongings secure? are hostels in general safe? Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Best idea would be to post at www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree - you'll find a lot more hostel aficionados there. I doubt that safety is an issue in recognised hostels, but have heard that there are a few dodgy backstreet operations that should be avoided due to lack of compliance with fire regulations. If it were me I'd check with the manager about where to secure valuables, travel docs and so forth. I doubt that many backpacks are stolen but ask at Lonely Planet.

Hi Jvall - yes, do check in at the Thorn Tree for up to date info from folk of your age. If you know what kind of hostel you want to stay at (cos they come in all shapes and sizes; upmarket/downmarket; trendy/cosy; brand new like a hotel or with character) then ask away on that forum. But don't, whatever you do, ask if it is safe!!

Why? The TT can be a bit rough - and asking if it is safe to stay in a hostel is a bit of a no-brainer. Thousands and thousands of people do every day of the year all over the world. The hostels in Oz/NZ are amongst the best in the world, and huge numbers of single females choose to stay there.
Does that answer your question?

May I politely point you in the direction of a library - check out the Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide. Or on the net:

www.yha.org.au
www.hostelworld.com
www.bugaustralia.com (might be .au)

Or just do a Google.

As it happens I have stayed in hostels all over Australia (though I am a little older than you - LOL).

I have never had anything stolen. Mind you I wouldn't want to leave diamond jewellery lying around. All YHA hostels have personal lockers - though you must provide you own padlock. Many independent hostels too. And if they don't have individual lockers they should have facilities at reception for you to lodge passport and important stuff with them.

But you need to know what sort of place you want to stay - party/quiet/etc.

I have a personal wish list when it comes to choosing hostels. I like character and non party, preferably with a garden or balcony - lots of space to socialise without a TV.

Your list may be different. But to get you started check out the YHA in Adelaide, and Geckos in Cairns on the aforementioned websites.

Best of luck.

www.bugaustralia.com has hostel reviews too. Dreamtime in Cairns is a small, quiet hostel located across the street from the train station. I stayed in a double so I can't comment on the 4 bed dorms. We found it very safe.

Fuzzylogic,
DH (60) and I (51) are travelling to NZ on a Circle Pacific next Feb. We originally planned to visit Cooks and NZ but now we are adding FP, Hong Kong and China which is really going to stretch the budget thin. We usually try to pick reasonably priced accommos so that we can stay away longer but we have never ventured to stay at a hostel. In Oz our airport shuttle did a p/u at a Sydney hostel and boarded some folks older than us. Hard to imagine, I know!! I wonder if they are frugal travellers like us or aging free-spirited hippies!! Lots of the NZ hostels seem to have double en-suite rooms on offer which would be perfect, but I worry that the place might be hopping all night long which would not suit us. You say you like a quieter place, how do you know ahead of time? You obviously have some experience could you give me some advice please? I have perused the YHA NZ site and there appear to be a lot of options.
Cheers,
Lin

ttt

Lin, we've never stayed at a hostel either but we're planning to remedy that before the year is out. If it helps, I remember one mature couple commenting in a Sydney paper that they could easily afford hotels but preferred hostels because "you meet a nicer class of person there". By repute there seems to be more social interaction and information exchange between guests, and they tend to handle good value-for-money tours etc.

www.hihostels.com looks to be a useful site. Perhaps an email enquiry would help to establish what sort of clientele a particular estabishment caters to. Personally I'd give a wide berth to any whose target market includes young British, Irish, Australian and New Zealander backpackers.

Hi Lin,
Loved your reply - yes, that is the trade off isn't it? Stay a little cheaper and stay a lot longer.

Wrote a long reply but ancient laptop froze up and all gone.

Will try again tomorrow when I will have had a whole day to get my thoughts in order.

Cheers,

Fuzzylogic: Will eagerly await your post. I too have a geriatric laptop so I know the feeling. It may be too old to take to a hostel!!

Neil: Where are you going to try out hostelling? Will be interesting to see how you find it. As you know from the China posts you can probably guess it is Reluctant Hubby who is most hesitant!

Lin

Hey Neil,

After re-reading the above posts I cracked up when I noticed you didn't add young Canadian backpackers to the 'avoid' list. Chicken! :-)

Lin

Right, some thoughts. The hostel world seems to have cottoned on to the fact that there folk out there who will stay cheap but who don't want a dorm. There seem to be a lot more places now that offer double or twin.

The thing to remember is that there are still loads of hostels out there that cater for the working holiday crowd (the Brits and Irish, etc, that Neil denigrates). They are here to have fun and to work - as an aside and off topic, the Australian economy would be a lot worse off without them as they do stuff like fruit picking for low wages that nobody else wants to do - and in the cities they also work in call centres and in the hospitality industry - again for low wages). Anyway they work hard and they play hard.

You won't be off to the small towns where the only hostel caters to seasonal workers. But you can pick these hostels a mile off in the cities. First - they are unlikely to have doubles/twins. Second, they will advertise stuff like free breakfast, free pancakes, pool table. etc.

I'm really talking about Oz - though have stayed all over NZ too, and I don't think it will be too different. The bottom line is that if a hostel offers double/twin with ensuite then it will NOT be attracting the party type, because it is just too expensive.

The ensuite possibilities are limited in my experience to the big city YHAs and you must book REALLY early. They may also have twins without ensuite. Again, if it is that kind of place then 99 times out of a 100 the shared bathroom facilities will be clean.

Some independent hostels also have twins with shared facilities but they are rather more hard to find.

Once you have appreciated that you can filter out the party hostels by virtue of price then you can apply yourselves to the kind of place you want to stay.

For the cities it usually is a YHA - Sydney Central, Melbourne Metro, Adelaide Central, Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch, Darwin, Alice Springs. I have stayed at all of them. All good. But you will note, not for Perth, Hobart, Brisbane or Cairns. But then you asked specifically about NZ so no need for further detail.

I guess I have rambled. So I need to summarise - if the hostel offers a room for 2 with ensuite there is absolutely no need to worry about raves happening around you - that kind of place is aiming for the non WBP crowd.

If a hostel offers rooms for 2 without ensuite then it is also likely not to be a WBP place - if the location looks good without being brilliant, then email them and ask if they have a darts board, pool table, widescreen TV (that will tell you something - off the list); if they pass that test, then ask your own personal wish list questions. My own would be how many bathrooms.
Having said all that, I have to stop and remember some fantastic times at seriously scruffy places. But enough ..

Hope this helps.

Thanks Fuzzylogic,

I get the picture, you have cleared up how to avoid the party crowd. I know what Neil is saying and from our perspective he is correct. They are just being kids and having fun, we just don't want to join in!!

There is a hostel in Boscastle (one of our favourite places in Cornwall) that is right on the side the harbour in an amazing location. When we realized it was a hostel we couldn't beleive it. That was before we retired and thought about travelling cheap!

I think the main obstacle is just getting past deciding to try something you're not used to. That said, Reluctant Hubby has refused to go to China with me for years and now he is doing it on this trip. If that can happen, anything is possible!

Thanks for the insight.
Lin

Hi, Lin. Just to clear something up first, I wasn't "denigrating" the non-stop sex and booze crowd, just suggesting that you might want to steer clear of their favourite haunts. And I apologise to any Canadians reading this for my oversight. I'm sure they're up there with the best.

We're planning to drive around NW USA and W. Canada in Sept/Oct this year and because we'll be away 6 weeks all up it will be a budget trip with the odd splurge. Mostly I was looking at decent budget motels (Motel 6, Super 8 type) but if we can find suitable hostels (and thanks to fuzzylogic for the tips) we'll give them a go. So far I've only identified one, in Portland OR, but will keep hunting. I'll also see if I can figure out the mysteries of bidding on Priceline.

The only downside is that if we have to book in advance we'll be tying ourselves down to a rigid itinerary, which we'd prefer to avoid.

I hope your husband gets a buzz out of China. As everywhere there are things to like and not to like, but we found the former greater outweighed the latter. I don't know if this helps, but my eldest daughter, who with her boyfriend and sister has lived and worked in NE China for the last 3 years, said recently that whenever she has a bad day with her boss or the landlady, she goes for a walk - she finds that just being among the ordinary people of China always cheers her up. As a poster said on the Asia forum, "the people of China are its greatest asset".

Having now gone off-topic in a big way I'll sign off.

This is a bit off-topic too, but I often have people staying in Cairns' backpackers ringing and asking for casual cleaning or garden work. Happy to give it to them if I have some available, BUT, I do pay award wages. I know there are some who take advantage of backpackers and pay them a pittance in cash, or give them menial, but hard work on one of the lowlier reef boats for a "free" reef trip. Not only is this illegal, its neither fair to the backpacker nor local kids who'll do the job at award rates.

Fuzzylogic, what's wrong with Cairns' Youth Hostels? The one on the Esplanade is in an old building and looks a bit grotty, but the other in McLeod St (a bit of a hop out of centre of town, but not too far,) always looks clean and well-kept with a rather nice pool.

Hey Neil,

For the record Fuzzylogic suggested you were denigrating the BP crowd. I knew what you meant, party on but not when we're in the next room!! Just teasing you about leaving out the Cdn yobs after giving you a hard time about the post codes!

RH's sister lives on Vancouver Island, north of Victoria. Vancouver and the Island are fabulous. Expensive though. Not sure about Washington and Oregon but you may do okay with Super 8 etc. Motels aren't as cheap in the US as they used to be, of course what is?? Kind of novel to think you are going to try hostelling in my neck of the woods. I was hoping you were going to give it a try in NZ! Have you been here before or is this your first trip? Are you planning to drive through the RocKies to Banff/Calgary. I have always imagined that the BC scenery is very similar to NZ though BC doesn't have the beaches.

Gotta go, I'm missing the hockey game!

Cheers,
Lin

And a quick answer to Pat - nowt wrong with Cairns hostels - and probably nowt wrong with the YHAs there. As I said, on the whole the YHAs are the best bet for folk wanting clean, non-party, and with the chance of a room of one's own.

BUT there are always options in the independent sector. The OP was asking about NZ so I didn't want to go into detail why I have not chosen to stay at one of the YHAs in Cairns.

But as you have asked - here it is. It's horses for courses. Big city - location important - and in big city lots of those cheap and hostlesugsmall city -

And a quick answer to Pat (well it probably won't be!) Nowt wrong with Cairns hostels - and probably nowt wrong with the YHAs there. As I said, on the whole the YHAs are the best bet for folk wanting clean, non-party, and with the chance of a room of one's own.

BUT there are always options in the independent sector. The OP was asking about NZ so no need for me to go into detail as to why I have not chosen to stay at one of the YHAs in Cairns.

But as you have asked - here it is. It's horses for courses. Big city - location important - and in big city lots of those cheap and cheerful that I am too old for. In small city - the parameters are different. Cairns has so many places to choose from.

Independents like Geckos and Dreamtime offer clean accom with the added benefit of an old house with character - more to my taste than a place offering same standard but with a motel style atmosphere.

It is really difficult to quantify some of this.