Dirt Cheap (and not so) Hotel Rooms
When I arrived in Morocco I got the first taste of the kind of dumps I was going to experience during this trip. Thankfully, though, options since then have proven much better in every other country. In Morocco you can find a room for $5 if you want it and I definitely stayed in a few of these gems. There are no hostels, so it is harder to meet other travelers and rail the customs of the local culture. The rooms usually have sinks, but the showers and toilets/latrines are shared. The really funny thing about Morocco was that even when bathrooms facilities were shared, the rooms usually included a bidet in the corner. I’d like to talk to the guy that started that trend.
Spain had an abundance of hostels and these are almost always filled with young 20 somethings just out of school. The dorm rooms can sleep as many as 12 and each room shares a bathroom. If you look you can find locations with many conveniences like wi-fi, towels, meals and even in-house bars. Beds are much expensive than Morocco, though, with the currency change to Euros- $25 to $30.
In Greece the hostels were similar to Spain, if not a bit calmer. Wi-fi was nice to find and finding single beds instead of bunk beds was always a welcome surprise. They were more reasonable as well at $18-25.
The U.A.E. is where things changed a lot. I wasn't able to find any evidence of backpacker accommodation, or even a room for under $100 for that matter. Upon arrival in the airport, I found numerous help desks available for travelers looking to book a room, tour, ect. I mentioned the possibility of a $40-50 range room and the guy looked he was trying to keep from laughing. After speaking to some guys doing business in Dubai, I found out that these "help" desks are there to help those who are interested in the $300+ range. I ended up staying in 3* for $140 a night. Nice break from dirty rooms and dorms during the midpoint of the trip. There is one youth hostel on the edge of the city, but it was full of African merchants and proved to be a pretty rough place. In Dubai, because they house mostly foreigners, hotels were the place to party. I think my hotel had three disco techs, but I stayed on a high enough floor so that it wasn’t a problem for me.
Oman was much more reasonable than the U.A.E. I found a great place for something like $40 a night in Muscat right on the wharf next to the fish market. The huge yellow fin tuna were impressive and it was a great area.
India, unsurprisingly, was another really inexpensive place to find accommodation. Checking into my room in Mumbai was when I felt the tourniquet on the cash flow hemorrhage tighten. Like Morocco, India seemed totally void of hostels and dorm rooms. The rooms were about as cheap as the ones in Morocco, but a bit better on average. The most interesting thing here was that the bathrooms had no shower stall so that essentially the entire bathroom was the shower with the toilet and sink just kind of thrown in. Singles were uncommon and TVs seemed to be included no matter the region.
China has been great so far. There are loads of cheap hostels and single rooms are usually only around $10-12 when get you need a night to yourself. There are many backpackers here and the hostels always seem ready at the helm to take care of them. Incredibly, most places have their own tour operators, bars, and restaurants.
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