Days On 24 Grey Street

This is a chapter in a novel I intend to write. I did a solo trip to Melbourne and have so much stories to tell.

This chapter shows my personal experiences staying in a hostel and shows the joys of doing so.

————

I decided to add this chapter because I realised how little people have heard about the joys of staying in a hostel instead of a hotel. Now, you might wonder: what’s so great about staying in a hostel? I want to live in the comfort of my hotel. Well, if you’re young and adaptable, and going on a solo trip, my best recommendation would be the former of your question.

Yes, you will stay among a few other people. You might cook next to a stranger or feel uncomfortable sharing a living space with others. But that’s why it’s so much fun! You’ll be surprised just how lively people can get. Hear me out.

“Hey, do you have salt?” I asked this brown-skinned man who is around 5’11. His appearance was definitively unique from the rest, wearing his trademark basketball jersey singlet and a fluffy beard on his face. This is Tome.

“Yeah, sure. Just ask me anytime,” he said.

He took out his bag full of ingredients for cooking and pointed to his salt shaker to me. Now I know who to ask. I mean, we all helped each other around here because we were all good friends. Not long-term, but good friends.

“Can I watch how you make your food? I want to learn from you,” I asked Tome.

“Yeah sure. I know you’re going to be a professional,” said Tome who was taking out his bag of vegetables from the abyss of the shared fridge. Oh, the fridge was a black hole, and it was a common phenomenon amongst all hostels (Travellers watch out for this!). Let me explain. 

This fridge was the usual fridge that you’ll find in convenience stores that stored bottled drinks. However, instead of neatly arranged bottles, you would find innumerable grocery bags stuffed haphazardly into this fridge… and they all looked the same – those given out at Woolworth for fifteen cents. Now how was anyone going to find their food at all? Well with the experience that Tome had as the seasoned solo traveller that he was, he used a custom-bought cooler bag instead, to distinguish his bag from the rest.

I, however, fell into the trap that most hostel fridge users faced. When I placed my Woolworth grocery bag into the fridge, I closed the door and went to sleep, thinking nothing much about it. The very next evening when I returned to cook myself another meal, I couldn’t find it anywhere.

“Hey, Adam (an Ethiopian man who was leaving the hostel soon at that time), I can’t find my food anywhere.” I asked him because he seemed to have the most experience and was friendly enough to talk to me and so, I trusted him with such a piece of embarrassing news.

“Oh no, not you too. Everyone faces this issue. You got to go treasure hunting now.”

“Treasure hunting? What is that?” I asked him with a confused look.

“Everyone faces the same issue. Those who place their items in first will have their items blocked by other people putting their bags in the fridge later. Then, the person whose groceries are behind will have to dig for their bag. They would take out the newer bags to reach for theirs, and once they’ve gotten theirs, they will stuff the other bags randomly. That’s why your bag is missing now.”

My eyes grow wide in bewilderment as my heart sank beyond any words. “WHAT?! Oh no. I have to find mine now”

I try searching for my grocery bag but as I took out the first two bags, I felt bad for the people who would be affected because of my selfish act. I stopped and place the bags exactly where I found them. 

My two-litre milk. I should probably buy one tomorrow but I’ll buy the one-litre instead. In case it gets lost. 

And that’s the story of how I lost my grocery bags in the abyss of the fridge. But back to me learning how to cook from Tome.

On a chopping board, carrots, onions, leek and garlic were all sliced and laid out by Tome. He took out some coconut oil and some ravioli and placed them on the table. 

“So many vegetables? Is that going to fit into the pan?” I asked Tome. 

“Yeah, don’t worry bro. It’s going to be fine.”

“How do you know how to cook all this? You’re an expert.”

“To be honest, I look like I’m very good but I don’t know what I’m doing. I just see what I have in my bag and cook them. It’s all about trial and error, brother. If what you make is not nice, then maybe the next time you cook, you can change something here and there.”

Wow. Here are lessons you don’t learn every day. Not especially if you’re alone in a hotel room that doesn’t even have a kitchen.

He flicked a spoon of coconut oil onto a pan and poured all the chopped vegetables into it. The vegetables covered the entire pan and they looked like they were about to fall out. Miraculously, the vegetables started shrinking as he began stirring and waiting. Huh. I didn’t know that vegetables shrink when you stir fry them.

The smell of coconut filled the room just as he had finished cooking the vegetables. He poured them into a bowl and paired them with his cooked ravioli.

“Here, try some.” Tome said as he offered me his bowl.

“Okay.” Hmm. That’s unique. I never tasted anything like this before.

Just then, a Japanese girl walked into the kitchen.

“Hey, where are you from?” Tome asked her

“I’m from Japan.”

“Oh! Wait here.” Tome said and went into his room to take a notebook and brought it into the kitchen. “Watashi Wa Tome… uh-uh… Arigato Gozaimas,” he said as he read off from his notebook filled with onomatopeias that sounded like common Japanese phrases

“Yes, yes!” The Japanese girl smiled and nodded her head.

All of us laughed and he continued this until there were no other phrases to say left from his notebook.

“Okay. That’s it.” He closed his notebook and all forms of his Japanese literacy became nullified by that action. The girl was still standing there in smiles but why wasn’t she cooking something? What did she come here for? I started to notice that she had been in the kitchen for quite some time. 

“Hey, what are you waiting for? You’ve been here for a while. Are you going to eat?”

“Yes. But I can’t find my food.”

“OH. YOU TOO! Yesterday I lost my food. Someone took out my bag to search for their food. Of course, they put it back in but in another place. So, I can’t find my food until now.”

Now that’s how we all started talking in the hostel. Through laughable moments that we all, sadly, faced together. But that’s okay. If losing my food meant finding a friend, I’d lose my food every other day.Of course, you didn’t have to lose anything to make new friends. They’d start speaking to you anyway! There was another time when a group of us had gathered at the dining table in the kitchen and two other girls, Lily and Jules were randomly presenting their PowerPoints on ‘why you should hate pigeons’. I kid you not, that was what they had prepared. All of a sudden, a young man of a short, athletic build walked into the kitchen, towards the fridge. Who is this guy? 

“Hey, how are you doing?” One of us asked him. This person seemed to already know this fellow.

“I’M PERFECT! I’M DOING PERFECT!” He raised one hand with his index finger pointed towards the ceiling with a smile as though he had just won the lottery. He then pointed his finger at us and continued shouting, “YOU, MY FRIENDS. YOU ARE ALL WINNERS! ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT!”

“HA HA HA HA!” We all broke out laughing at this comical man. What was going on? How does he do that? Make everyone laugh just like that? Where does his courage come from?

“What’s your name?” one of us asked him.

“I’m Rafael with an F. I LOVE YOU GUYS.” He said this and left for a bar with Gal (A fellow Israeli)

This man wasn’t drunk. He was simply happy just because. Now, think about it. Could you get such a funny moment in a lonely hotel room? I think not.

In the living room, everyone would be seated on the cosy sofas and chairs that faced a wide-screen TV that would almost always be playing a show from Netflix. One time, I decided to watch Friends and was typing out letter by letter on the search bar when a girl from the other side of the room said out loud, “I love friends! It’s my favourite show!” (If you watch Friends, the next part might relate to you)

“Oh, me too!” I said

“Which character is your favourite?” she asked me.

“I like Joey. And Chandler, he’s so funny! I don’t know. I like all of them!”

“I like Joey too. I think he should have gotten together with Rachel instead of Ross.” What controversy.

“What? Why?”

“I think Ross is not good for Rachel. He’s too insecure.”

“Oh yeah. That makes sense. Also, did you know that the laughter during the show is real? They would act in a set and there would be an audience watching them.”

“Really? I didn’t know that! I’m learning new things every day.”

I didn’t know the girl’s name but we connected through a mutual show that we both liked. Only in a hostel setting would such things happen and things like this happened so frequently every day. What a difference if you stayed at a hotel isn't it? You’d probably be showered and all ready for bed, doing nothing.

But I’d like to end this story with a final aspect of hostel living. The people in the hostel were nice to each other. Do you remember Adam? On the very last day before he left, he took out all of his contents from his cooler bag that had stripes of black and white and lemon print all over and this was what happened.

“Hey, I’m leaving already. I want to give this to you. There is still a can of tuna and some mission wraps left inside. I can’t finish it and I’m moving to another hostel so you can have it. Now you won't be losing your food in the fridge because you can tell which bag is yours.”

“What? Really? Thank you so much! Oh man, this is going to help me a lot.”

“Yeah. Take care bro.”

The next day, he was no longer in the hostel. But because of his kindness, I never lost my food again. This kindness was then passed on when I left. I passed the stripped cooler bag to Tome before leaving for the Airport before leaving for Singapore.

So, if you intend to travel and want to make new friends, you should reconsider your options. A night in the hostel was only 22 SGD which an hour of bartending or barista work could cover for. A night in a hotel would entail you staying alone with no one to talk to while a night in the hostel would entail you meeting new people and somehow, it could turn into a night of events that you would be able to tell stories about. If you’re young and still willing to stay in a hostel, why not do it?

By ShinyLadle

From: Singapore

Website: https://nathan-hope.blogspot.com/

Instagram: somebodyhasjust