Old West Gate International Youth Hostel

The place was mediocre at best. The staff spoke some English, unlike most people we’d met in China, and the hostel was fairly near the city center, but the neighborhood wasn’t great. Getting to the nearby metro meant winding through a maze of narrow streets, and without my boyfriend I wouldn’t have dared walk there after dark. Our private room with a bathroom didn’t feel private or convenient: the bathroom had a glass door, the tiles were moldy, and we saw cockroaches. The air conditioning barely worked in both the common areas and our room. When we asked reception to call a taxi to the railway station so we could take the Maglev to the airport, they told us the Maglev wasn’t running that day because it was 'broken'. We saw it operating just fine on the way. We won’t be back.