What 12 Months of Hostel Stays Taught Me About Sleep, Strangers, and Saving

Twelve months of hostels. Note I’m not referring to some trendy pod hostel complete with USB outlets built into the sides of the ‘beds’ and a real attempt to service travelers in a modern way. No. I’m referring to your average, run of the mill eight bunk rooms, one shared bathroom with that lovely shower curtain that never quite closes, a kitchen that consists of a couple of stoves with three pots and an assortment of utensils, and a shared lounge of sweaty travelers who have just arrived like you, and sweaty travelers who have been there for weeks and are now stuck.

My trip around the world was no frivolous adventure. I was a freelance developer traveling around the world working remotely. My rent back in Denver was $1,400 per month and was getting out of control for me. I was optimistic that the savings from not paying that much rent per month would offset the increased cost of traveling. After verifying the math a few times, I was right. The real value of the trip, though, were the things that the savings allowed for.

The actual cost breakdown

That being said, if you insist on knowing exactly how much it cost for me, that was 9,800 dollars, for the entire year (note: flights between countries, food for me and my trips, simcards for foreign countries, random stuff like additional pan to cook with and some nights a single private room so I wouldn’t get zonked out from work). Which splits out to approximately $27 per day. Most expensive week: Lisbon, in August (3 nights and yes, all of them in central Lisbon). I hadn’t booked ahead. It was 48 bucks a night for the 5bedroom appartment with communal bathroom.

Here’s how that broke down: Confirm twice.

Beds: 4,400 dollars (45% of total) Food and groceries: 2,800 dollars (29%) Inter-country flights and trains: 1,600 dollars (16%) Sim cards, coworking day passes, laundry: 600 dollars (6%) Everything else: 400 dollars (4%)

It was interesting to compare to my other trips in 2024 and 2026 but what really stood out was that even on a very tight budget, there were 2 hours of time, on 2 separate occasions where paying for a private room worked very well because I shipped work the following day. That cost around $20 per night for 2 nights, for 2 quiet nights to work. It worked.

I cross-referenced these figures with my own notes from trips in 2024 and 2026. Same pattern every time.

Sleep is the variable that decides everything

If you’re going to stay in a hostel then sleep is the variable that decides everything. The quality of the beds is the most important feature of a hostel. If you’re getting five hours sleep then it doesn’t matter how cheap the hostel is, you’re not going to enjoy it.

Those have been a lifesaver. The wax ones are obviously better, but so expensive and I kept losing mine. I’ve recently bought 50-packs of foam ones in bulk, and they are perfect for me. A proper eye mask, not that flimsy silky thing they give you on flights, a contoured mask that sits outside of your eyelids, not on them. Instead I sleep on the bottom bunks (if there are any). These do not shake when someone moves below and are generally cooler than the upper bunks (where the air is thickest). A small clip-on book light: to allow reading before sleep without disturbing the rest of the other travelers. Filtering on review keywords like “quiet”, “sleep”, helped to find the types of places with good sleep quality. Some places are more for meeting other travelers in social settings, others are more basic, budget hostels that enable good sleep, while you are traveling.

Earplugs aren’t enough on Friday nights

By the time I was three months into my trip I worked out that for the price of a single bed in a dorm on a Friday night in a party district, I could book a single room for the same price. And by then I knew that there were certain nights of the year that I would spend for “work” in certain places, and others that I would spend for “play” in different places. On those nights of “play” I was okay to splurge for the price of a decent night’s sleep. And on the nights of “work”work” I wanted to be as functional as possible the next day. For me on this budget trip, there were definitely some nights worth paying for.

Strangers are the actual product

Cheap beds are a commodity. The reason people stay in hostels in their twenties is the people. The reason people stay in hostels in their thirties is also the people, but with different filters.

For instance, I met a Swiss tax lawyer who had taken time off work for two months to complete the Camino de Santiago trail. A Brazilian software engineer showed me the hidden places of a city where I lived for a year. A German woman in her thirties who worked as a lawyer until three years ago to write a novel had been at it for three years. If I had stayed in a hotel, I would not have had these conversations. The fact that a traveler is sleeping in a bed in a building where many others are sleeping is the main reason he or she is traveling. The fact that these strangers are also travelers is the main reason for this interaction. A hotel is designed to keep people in their rooms and out of each other’s way as much as possible. A hostel is a place where people from all walks of life come to interact and as such is the main value that a traveler gets from his or her dollar.

Finally, the size of the dorm room was a consideration. I found that large rooms with 12 beds (often in two rows of six) felt more like a train station waiting room than a hostel, with little sense of community. On the other hand, a room with 4-6 beds felt like sharing an apartment with a few other strangers – which is exactly what it is. So, I have started filtering hostels for rooms of this size, and the difference in sleep quality is almost immediate.

One for the things that I got wrong with regards to travel logistics below.

What I’d do differently next year

I overpacked. I brought a 38-liter pack, my black laptop bag, and my very own black tote bag filled with all my electronics. Half of this ‘stuff’ was gone by month 2. I would recommend bringing much less and then buying anything you need while you are traveling.

This again, I didn’t explain to family that I’d call every Sunday at the same time, and thus I ended up calling at random times and hearing at random times the worry in the other person’s voice that I hadn’t realized was there.

The other mistake I made was to not value private rooms enough. If I had booked one night a week in a private room, planned in advance, it would have saved the whole trip. Not for the privacy (although that was nice) but for the routine of a bedroom that was the same shape two nights running. That in itself would have reset me to having a view of home and a home that I was returning to that was bigger than I needed. I have a smaller apartment now. I sleep better.

Yes, all in all, I went, I saved up some money, I came back, I have got this bunch of names, of interesting people, I met on my travels, and when I moved I have ended up in a much smaller apartment than I had before and I sleep so much better now and even all of that tedious home advice that I used to read on my travels, in fact all of it has made sense because it was in the hostels where I learned to be content with the space I have and with my simple, humble abode.