We booked Ocean Palmz Hostel through a miscommunication. Kelly had been researching hostels and found Traveler’s Palm had excellent reviews. In the booking, we were sent to its next door neighbor, Ocean Palmz, and I didn’t realize the change until it was too late. I’m going to go ahead and call not losing the $5 security deposit and booking another place instead mistake #1.
Traveler’s Palm has a locked front gate, brightly colored, freshly painted walls, and a front yard that is indeed lines with palm trees. Ocean Palmz is set back from 20 feet of cement and sponge-painted to make the fake concrete blocks look dungeon-esque in maroon and black. Nevertheless, I kept optimistic thinking that saying about books and covers might also apply to hostels…
Our room was a small, windowless room on the first floor, close enough to the lobby to hear the chatting of the owner’s family and crying of their albeit-adorable baby. The sliding bathroom door was broken in half, but it was possible to slide one side to the other so that it mostly closed. Now, when I pay $13 USD per person per night, I’m not expecting aesthetics. The problem came at night.
Kelly and I were weary of the bed sheets. We slept on top of everything at first, completely disregarding the shabby blanket that looked like it was far too unfamiliar with the inside of a washing machine. After a while when we couldn’t sleep, Kelly proposed that we get into her sleep sack, a sleeping bag-shaped silk sack used for just this purpose. We covered the pillows with a towel and got into the silk, but I could not shake the feeling that I was being eaten alive.
To the credit of the hostel, much of my anxiety came from the left-over nightmares that I had when I slept in a NY apartment with bed bugs. I had dreams that I woke up with giant, swollen bites. By 8 am, when my Aunty Sui Faun called, I felt that I had just fallen asleep and asked politely to call her back later.
When I did get up, I only had two bites, but one on my left arm was a swollen oval about 2 inches long. And we still had another night to go.
Kelly and I attacked the second night with discipline. We made sure that we were exhausted, relaxed, and ready for bed before we went back to Ocean Palmz (armed with a small bottle of merlot, just in case.) Inside our room, we killed two small bugs and a cockroach, which I used as the excuse to get an extra sheet for the night. The owner, who I’ll say is extremely friendly and accommodating, assured me that it was “impossible” to see a cockroach here, as he obliged the extra sheet and took back the offending blanket.
Over the extra sheet, inside the sleep sack, with the towels as extra protection, I was able to get some good, nightmare-less sleep. In the morning I was putting our trash near another trash can and saw a giant cockroach. It was time to go.
Silver Lining: What I love about this is that it fits my theory of starting low and working your way up. This was my first hostel, and things can only go up from here!
(The new hostel, on the same street, is so new, clean, and reasonably priced that we booked it for the rest of our trip.)
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