My award for worst hostel's in the world (Youth Hostels in Hong Kong)

Member Name: mtpatton

Product:	Youth Hostels in Hong Kong
Date:	07/04/09 (161 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: none

Disadvantages: Everything

After travelling around the world last year, visiting 29 countries and staying in hostels in most of them, my experience of hostels in Hong Kong was the worst I experienced.

From looking at various websites and hostel world we found the following hostel which was described as

"This is a renowned hostel in the heart of the city, with newly renovated rooms and in-room facilities bringing you to a cosy home away from home"
Ok that souds great and it also scores highly for ratings on the hostel world website (ratings given for cleanliness, Character, security, location, staff and fun). The hostel was also recommended by an AA travel guide book that we had been given as a present. So everything is sounding great. When we look at the price it was the cheapest or one of them anyway. So we booked this hostel thinking we were getting a great deal. So we booked a 12 bed room to hopefully met loads of other travellers who would be doing a similar route to us.

This however is where the fun starts.

Upon arrival we got the tight lift upto the 13th floor to met the reception desk in the middle of nowhere. Upon arrival we were shown to the room. I'm going to break the my review down into the rating sections that hostel world do, so first up is and the number given is the score i gave it on the hostelworld website (NB 20% is the lowest you can give)

cleanliness - 20%

My girflfriend was bitten to death by bed bugs. The solution to this problem was to change the sheet on the mattress. However the problem remained as the issue was the mattress. Other guests of the hostel also reported simiar problems.

The rooms were never cleaned and if you walked in your room without shoes on your feet are dirty. Bins are also never emptied.

Character - 20%

Located on the 13th floor of an ugly tower block - next section please.....

Security - 20%

Upon arrival one of the first things to deal with is your passport and tickets and where to store them. We asked the manager if there was somewhere secure to store them, the answer was "keep them with you at all times". Now i didnt fancy carry everything I had all day in the Hong Kong heat, but this attirtude was just an embarrassment.

Our door didnt lock and acted as a walk through to a local laundry business therefore if anything went missing we had no-idea who might have taken it.

Location - 60%

Its one saving grace, right in the heart of kowloon and has easy access to shops, sights and bars etc. But its located at the top of a ugly building so cant score to highly.

Staff - 20%

See securty. But also the toilet in our room broke and the woman did nothing to help us. We had no water for showers for 2 of our six nights at the hostel.

We also saw the manager making fake bookings for the hostel so that he could give it excellent ratings! hence why it looks good on websites.

Fun - 20%

No common room, no kitchen, no TV's. As I said our room was a walkway and therefore we had no control over when we could turn the lights out but it was the workers who choose when they had finished - one night was 1am!

Our room also acted as the internet room so we had people on the internet until the early hours and then from the early hours in the morning.

This hostel operates under five different names including
- USA Hostel
- Garden Hostel
- New Kowloon

Itr also has one more hostel name that escapes my memory. This place is a dump and if your every staying a night in Hong Kong in budget accomodation do not stay here.

Hong kongs sights are also not brilliant. The nightly light show was certainly missable, The stay ferry journey to HK island lasted 5 mins. The history museem was better as were the parks of HK. We didnt try to do al the sights in HK but we managed to 5 out of the 25 in 2 hours which i think says it all.

Shopping is not what it used to be as it is all designer clothes outlets which of course we couldnt afford.

However we are led to believe that all cheap accomodation in Hong Kong is very, vey basic. The AA book simply says that the hardest of travellers use the fact that they have stayed in a hostel in Hong Kong as a bragging right.. This is easily the worst hostel we have stayed in and hopefully this will discourage any other travllers from staying at this place or even using Hong Kong as a stop off to South East Asia. Go from Beijing or go directly to Bangkok, Hanoi or Laos. Hong Kong is really not worth visiting on a tuight budget. If you have plenty of cash to spend you will probably get a different impression of Hong Kong.

Other hostel normally provide
Lockers
Blankets
Interent
Common room
Kettle/cuterly

But this place only provided internet which you had to pay to use which is common but its far cheaper downstairs

Summary: Dirty, disgusting and not worth doing