hostels/guesthouses: southeast asia

I had a request to list the places I stayed while on my trip.  I know that hearing about places from other people is way more helpful than trying to find one on your own, so I thought it was a good idea.  Keep in mind I was looking for places that were easy to meet other people in, so they weren’t necessarily the cheapest.  I always tried to stay in dorm rooms when possible, and I know this isn’t everyone’s style.

If you’re into booking stuff ahead of time, I recommend hostelbookers.com because they don’t charge a booking fee.  And some of these places aren’t listed online, but every single place I went to (minus Myanmar) had backpacker areas that were packed with guesthouses, so you can easily show up to any major place in SE Asia and find a cheap place to stay.

Here are the places I loved and would stay in again if I were traveling alone or wanted to be social:

Hanoi: Hanoi Backpackers’ Hostel One of the nicest dorm rooms I’ve ever stayed in, met a ton of people, and is a great place to book a Halong Bay tour.  It’s more pricey than other’s, but if you want to get drunk with fun people, it’s a good way to go.  Ha.

Hoi An: I stayed at a really nice place here, but don’t remember the name.. it was listed in the newest Rough Guides for Vietnam I believe, and if anyone wanted to know I could find out once I got back to Korea and could look through my stuff.

Ho Chi Minh City: I stayed at Luan Vu Guesthouse, and it was nice, pretty average.  There are a ton of places in the backpacker area of Pham Ngu Lao, so it’s really easy to find somewhere to stay.

Phnom Penh: Where I stayed was “meh”, but I guess the area to stay is near the lake.  I dunno.

Siem Reap: There are cheaper places, but I had a lot of fun at the Siem Reap Hostel.

Vientiane: This city is hardly worth staying in for more than a day, so it really doesn’t even matter where you stay, ha.

Vang Vieng: One of the coolest places I’ve ever stayed—Spicy Laos.  Def, def, def recommend it.  I stayed at their sister Spicy Laos in Luang Prabang, which I also recommend.  It’s not as nice, but a good place to meet people.

Chiang Mai: I tried to stay at Julie Guesthouse, but it was full.  It had been highly recommended.  I ended up staying in a $3/night very basic dorm at the Same Same Guesthouse down the street.  By that point, I was incredibly low-maintenance so anything with a bed and shower was fine.

Bagan: May Kha Lar.  The owner is so, so, so helpful and friendly.

Yangon: This is also one of the better places I stayed.  It’s called Motherland Inn 2.  It’s not in the best location, but the staff was amazing, and I met a ton of awesome people.  It was almost full when I came, so if you go in high season, it might be best to try to book ahead if possible.

Bangkok: I stayed in two places.  The first was called the River Line, and it was near Khao San Road.  It was a quieter place, though, being a few minutes’ walk away from the madness.  It was kinda “meh” because I really just wanted to go out and party, and it wasn’t the best place to meet people.  The second place, though, lub d, was awesome.  The nicest hostel I’ve ever been to in my life, and lots of cool people.

Koh Phi Phi: Golden Hill Bungalows (also known as Bungalow Dave’s).  It had pretty bad reviews online, but I had to book something ahead because everything fills up.  There are probably better places—the whole island is just restaurants, bars, and accommodation—but it was fine for me.  They have dorm rooms, and I met some good people.  It is the farthest possible place from the pier, though, so carrying all my shit back and forth in 90 degree heat was probably the worst thing ever.

Sooo, I hope that is helpful for someone! :)

yangon, part 2

Housing

This was the worst smelling street I’ve ever been on.  The food that people sold in Myanmar was always covered in flies and not very well taken care of.

You can’t really see it, but the old granny on the left was smoking a big cigar.

mandalay, day 2

Burmese advertising is terrible/hilarious.

Just another street in Myanmar…

Doing laundry in the moat around the palace.

Playing a huge game of chess.

Mandalay Palace.  Not worth all the effort I put into getting in!

Mandalay Hill

Hmm…

See that big stone thing on the corner?  There is a guy bathing there.  People take baths on the streets in Myanmar.

I didn’t know what these were, but I saw them hanging all over the city.

Sunset

mandalay, day 1

Mandalay was an alright city, and while I complained about a lot of it in my posts here, Mandalay Hill was actually pretty cool in retrospect.

View from my room.

Around the massive palace.

Kuthodaw Pagoda (from Wikipedia): The world’s largest book stands upright, set in stone, in the grounds of the Kuthodaw (literally - royal merit) pagoda at the foot of Mandalay Hill in Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma). It has 730 leaves and 1460 pages; each page is three and a half feet wide, five feet tall and five inches thick. Each stone tablet has its own roof and precious gem on top in a small cave-like structure of Sinhalese relic casket type called kyauksa gu (stone inscription cave in Burmese), and they are arranged around a central golden pagoda.

There are over 700 of these stupas, each with a page of the big book inside.

Another temple

Always barefoot.  This is the start of my trek up Mandalay Hill.

Up, up, up!

Finally at the top.

So pretty

The Nepalese palm reader.

They always had fake people looking like they are praying and worshipping in temples.  Very strange.

bagan, day 3

My last day in Bagan was great.  I met Kaka’s family and his mom put danaka on me.  The last sunset was also incredible, and Kaka and I drank my favorite beer on the trip (Mandalay beer) while hanging out at a temple.  I was a little sad to leave.

bagan, day 2

Sunrise

Traffic jam

Textile-making village

Lacquerware workshop

We went and sat at a temple, and a ton of little girls came and were crawling all over me.  I saw one had an Lee Minho bag, so we talked about our favorite Korean actors.  So cute.

Massive spider webs

Sunset number two.