Dragon Hostel

The Wi-Fi worked very well, and the mattress was comfortable. That’s about all I can say positively. The room was supposedly a single, but I shared it with more than a few kitchen cockroaches. The room had no window, and the bed took up about 80 percent of the space. If you’re over 1.75m, you can’t lie straight and have to sleep diagonally. There was a tiny 30cm diagonal TV I didn’t use, a shelf/table about 80x40cm, and no chair or room for one. The old air conditioner, over ten years old, barely blew; a wall fan also took some warm air out. There was only one socket. The wall covering was peeling, and the floor had dust and hair. It felt like a bunker or submarine. The bathroom was about a square meter, with a sink barely big enough for my hands, a toilet, and an instant shower. I had to shower standing on the toilet. This hostel was on the seventh floor of a plain, old apartment block that seemed not to have been renovated for decades. It had two lifts, apparently numbers 3 and 4, one stopping only on even floors and the other only on odd ones. They were slow, with constant queues because several hostels shared the building. To reach the room, you passed through a common space that felt like a warehouse mixed with a small tailoring workshop, complete with sewing and hemming machines. There were two shared toilets, a rusty fridge, a microwave, and a complete mess. I chose it for the low price in a city where lodging is among the most expensive I’ve seen. I’d be out early and back late, so I thought, “How bad can it be?!” Worse than expected. NO, NO, NO. Stay away!