Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
with keeping an eye on the house in the homeowners' absence, and sometimes caring for pets, gardens, farm
animals, or performing other chores.”
If you are going to house-sit, it is important to make sure you do your research to ensure the home is in
the location you want and that your responsibilities are spelled out. Nora advises you to “be sure to determ-
ine exactly what your responsibilities will be before you agree. In one case I was charged with the care of
three big dogs and a large house and garden, and although I loved the position, it was a lot of work; in retro-
spect, I should have been paid a stipend, given my daily time commitment and the money the homeowners
were saving by not having to put their dogs into a kennel and hire a gardener.” That is why the legal contract
is so important—it spells out your responsibility.
Of her experience, Nora says, “House-sitting is a fabulous way to experience the comforts of 'home' on
the road, often for extended periods of time.”
Hostels
Hostels are one of the cheapest forms of paid accommodation in the world. Hostels are places that offer
shared (and sometimes private) rooms for travelers looking for cheap rooms. For the most part these rooms
are dormitories that have between four and twenty beds in them. The more beds, the cheaper the room.
Hostel prices are about a third less than a hotel room. A cheap hotel in New York City is $100 USD
while a hostel room is $30 USD. In Thailand, where a hotel is $30 USD or more, you can get a cheap hostel
room for $5 USD. In Australia, a hostel room is $25 USD versus $110 for a hotel.
Hostels have a bad reputation in America. We think of them as being filled with dirty, stinky dorm rooms
with bad beds and no security. Or we view them as places from movies like Hostel where we are going to
get kidnapped and end up in some sick twisted medical experiment.
One of my favorite travel movies is A Map for Saturday . When the star and director, Brook Silva Braga,
reaches Europe, his friends come to visit. In an interview, one of his friends asks, “Why would you want to
stay at hostels? You have to worry about your stuff all the time.” Brook responds that hostels have lockers,
and his friend admits he didn't know that. I think that is emblematic of people's perception of hostels. In
America we just don't know a lot about hostels. We don't have a big backpacking culture, and instead of
cheap hostels, we have Motel 6. Thus, what we think about hostels comes from what our parents told us
when they traveled in the 1960s and what we see in movies.
It's true that hostels are composed of dorm rooms, but the popular American assumptions end there. The
beds can be quite comfortable, there is wi-fi in most hostels, free breakfast, hot showers, bars, individual
lockers for your stuff (don't have a lock? you can rent one from the hostel!), and bed lights to read at night.
The vast majority of hostels have common rooms with pool tables and kitchens. It is a growing rarity that
hostels don't have some sort of communal space these days. They also help you book and organize tours.
Sure, there are still dirty hostels out there, just like there are dirty hotels. You get what you pay for after
all. But so long as you are staying at a highly rated hostel (and you can see hostel ratings on the booking
sites listed in Appendix A), you'll be staying in a clean and comfortable place.
Hostels are the best way to save money on accommodation if you are going to pay for it. Dorm rooms
are cheaper than any hotel, and while hostels aren't free like Couchsurfing or house-sitting, if you are one
person in a big city, a hostel in somewhere like Paris is going to be markedly less expensive than a hotel.
You can book hostels via the two largest booking sites: Hostelworld (hostelworld.com) and Hostelbook-
ers (hostelbookers.com). I prefer Hostelworld, as they have a larger inventory of hostels and a better book-
ing interface.
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