I chose a $4 hostel dorm over a $45 motel room in Bangkok and the dorm won by a mile

Val Hill · 2026-10-03T00:30:03.658534+00:00

Everyone told me I was nuts for picking a 10 bed dorm over a cheap private room when I landed in Bangkok last November, but after 3 nights in each I would do it again in a heartbeat. The motel was in a dead area near the highway, so I blew $15 a day on taxis just to reach anything worth seeing. The dorm cost me $4 a night and sat right in the middle of the old town, which meant I walked everywhere and my total spend for 3 days came to about $30 instead of $180. The real kicker was the people. Two guys from Germany and a girl from Perth pulled me into a street food crawl on night one, and we split everything 4 ways so each plate cost us like 80 cents. In the motel I ate alone at a 7 Eleven microwave and watched bad TV. If you can handle earplugs and a top bunk, the cheap dorm is not a downgrade, it is the whole point of traveling on a small budget. For those of you who always book private rooms, what is the one thing about hostels that keeps you away?

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I chose a $4 hostel dorm over a $45 motel room in Bangkok and the dorm won by a mile | Budget Travel Hacks - Talk Freely