I’m familiar with hostels like onefam chain in Europe. But I’m not familiar with SEA at all. Anything I need to know? What’s the demographics of the hostels like? The atmosphere? I work part time.
I noticed some hostels attract people who just want to get drunk or fuck. I’m not into that. I’m more into genuine sober interactions with people who aren’t interested in drinking or sleeping with randoms. I’m a straight guy for context.
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Is that what happens in hostels? Do people, you know, not get upset when in the same room people are drunkenly banging away?
This varies so much dude… just look at reviews and photos. There’s always the option of a private room also at lots of hostels
They’re all different. Just read the reviews and see if the photos are just hot young people drinking or whatever if you want to avoid that kind of thing. Party hostels want you to know they’re party hostels. They don’t really hide it.
Don’t stay in a hostel if you’re trying to be a working professional
I’m not
I’ve stayed at a lot of hostels all over SEA and also the onefam group in Europe. Biggest difference is that the party/social hostels in SEA are generally fine with / encourage anyone joining their events, and the bar area is often open to the public anyway. So these days I usually just find a cheap guesthouse nearby (private room in guesthouse can actually be cheaper than a hostel dorm room…) Then stop by the hostels for their evening events. There’s a really famous party hostel in Chiang Mai called Stamps where probably 30%+ of people on their nightly pub crawl / event aren’t even staying at the hostel.
If you don’t want any of this atmosphere at all every city also has plenty of quieter hostels too. Just go on Hostelworld sort by review score and read through reviews. I’ve stayed at random places with like 50 reviews (which is very little) and never had a bad experience at a SEA hostel.
From my recent experience, it typically skews pretty young (25 or younger) and mostly Brits and Europeans for the most part. So can be pretty party-centered, especially around island areas in Thailand etc.
But you can find quieter places everywhere - as others have said, best approach is to just do your research, read and compare reviews on multiple sites (hostelworld, agoda, google etc), they’ll usually give you a good idea of whether its going to be a non-stop party or not. I stayed in mostly women-only dorms wherever I could over mixed dorms, that typically meant a quieter experience, but can’t say if it’d be the same in male only.
I think one key difference is that sea is so cheap that many more people can afford hotels or airbnbs than in Europe. That changes the hostel calculation a bit, imo, to people who really really want the social aspect or are seriously needing to pay $8 a night instead of $15.