Despite what I’ve said before about hostels, and they will always be my first choice while I’m travelling, there are exceptions. I have a list of things I look for when searching for a hostel, but sometimes you just don’t have many options to choose from. Either there’s not so many hostels in the town you want to visit or the only decent places are too expensive and you’re left with the bottom end on the quality scale. Sometimes it works out well or at the very least you get an interesting story out of the experience.

I’ve stayed in a whole host of different hostel types; from the top floor of a 15 story building in Ljubljana, a shack on the beach in an isolated Uruguayan community, remote islands and one of my favourite stops was a prison in Canada. You can end up staying in some interesting places, but not always in a good way.  (more…)