BootsnAll Travel Community

The most recent strange place was a place called "Dom Penzionera" which I knew before I went there means "Old Folks' Home". What a strange name, I thought, but in Bosnia there are hotels with names like "Miner" and "Banana City", so ... whatever.

It turned out to be a real retirement home that let out extra rooms. It was in Tuzla, which I didn't know at all and I had somewhere to be in about an hour, and it was the cheapest one. And so I spent two nights there. No wifi so I could not post in what strange place are you logging in from?

On the second or third floor, they had a big picture of Tito and a Bosnian flag and the old Yugoslav flag taking up the whole wall. It reminded me of something out of Goodbye Lenin and made me a little sad.

But that was a pretty memorable place.

What are some of the strange places you have stayed?

About five years ago, I stayed in a convent-type place outside Rome. That was pretty cool.

I rented a room in Peter Stuyvesant Town once from a depressed, chain-smoking little old lady named Mary (only she wasn't really old, only 55, but she carried herself much older than that). The NYC rental market makes you do desperate things sometimes.

That was a really weird apartment. The kitchen had not been renovated since the 60s, there was the requisite wooden cabinet full of dusty porcelain figurines of shepherds and puppies in the living room, and Mary kept an orthopedic chair in the tub.

I lasted 11 months and then had to get out.

haha...in Vientiene, Laos I unknowingly stayed at a half guest house, half brothel. One night coming back to the GH we saw the girls who worked in the GH, washing, doing laundry were all dressed up and pimped...it then dawned on us where we were. The last nite I was there alone! The owner of the Guest House was a doctor by profession...SHE actually treated me as I was feeling horrible after 8 weeks on the road.

Strange strange place.

Not sure if this qualifies, but while hitching through Europe I once slept in a dilapidated car being towed by this English gentleman named Simon. He stopped for the night at a hotel, and allowed me to sleep in the car. In the morning he shared his coffee and gingersnaps with me. To this day, whenever I eat gingersnaps, I think of that ride.

Back in 1996 I camped in one of the watchtowers on the Great Wall (at Simatai). The only other people there were a few vendors who slept on the wall to get a jump on the tourist market (I suppose). Some of the vendors at the bottom even allowed me to borrow a flashlight for the night.

If anyone has ever stayed at the Chunking Mansions in Hong Kong, that certainly has to rank up there with the more crazy places to stay. This was my first introduction to China, and to Asia in general.

A brothel in Colombia.

A nun's apartment in the Vatican.

A hotel that doubled as a dentist's office in Nicaragua.

I actually lived in a 6x8 windowless, cement room with Lesbian Avenger graffiti spray painted all over it. For a while I didn't even have a mattress. I'm pretty sure that prison is cozier.

local homestay in Laos, no hot water, squatters only, generators shut off at night...Pek Bing down the mekong was very strange...

1999: I slept in an empty apartment in Palestine for 2 weeks...just blankets on a tile floor and a few chairs we found by the roadside. Wasn't until later I found out it was illegal. Oops.

I stayed in a random little hostel in a town called Ginginglovu in south africa where i got to play in red mud, see pic of me to the left. It is meant to mean the home of the elephants, but when the british were there they name it essentially gin gin I lov u......hehehehehe

I stayed at an abandon condemned hotel in Toronto with a friend this summer. There was some sort of security guard who we had to bribe, but otherwise it was nice albet the horror movie feeling.

A gaijin house in Osaka, which was a three-bedroom apartment converted out to house about 20-25 people in "capsules." Actually lived there for a while. Yuck.

Hostel inside a converted church in Scotland.

Wooden hut/house of a village monk near Shwebo, Myanmar.

Similar village accommodations about 4 hours outside of Bagan, Myanmar. Had to take showers out in the open (bucket and well method) wearing a lunggyi.

And ... I also spent four days at a seemingly normal hotel in Aleppo, Syria. We left early on the morning of the fifth day to find the lobby populated by three women dressed only in skimpy lingerie. Another brothel.

Anyone stayed in a converted-jail hostel? I think there's more than one in Eastern Europe.

Lots of brothels. Strangly I dont think I've ever stayed at one. Allthough I might have just been naive.
Let's see...
*Jail in North Africa
*A 'Youth Hostel' in Souess. Apparently only really for Tunisians but I charmed my way in with my bad N. African Arabic. They let me stay there, but the catch was I was on the man's floor. I got to use the man's bathroom. I had to shower in the man's stall....oh there were no locks on those doors. It was not my favorite place.
*A few rooftops around N. Africa.
But by far the strangest place?
I found myself in the apartment of a Moroccan family who found me on a bus and decided to take me in as a daughter. Just. Like. That. That was so odd. Living like a daughter in a Marrakechi suburb. Bizzare.

I can't think of any structures I've stayed in that are noteworthy compared to those already listed here but...

In 8th grade we had an opportunity to sign-up and pay for a special "field trip". It was limited to about 25 students, pretty even male and female. We took a bus from Sacramento to Soda Springs, CA. There we stayed in a dorm for 2 nights, with the days spent learning about winter survival. The next day we hiked with our choice of CC skis or snowshoes(we had to bring our own) about 6 miles into the wilderness. There, in teams of 2, we dug snowcaves and slept in them overnight. We also had to prepare a hot meal for dinner and breakfast the next morning using only what we had packed in. Everything was done individually by the 2 man teams. We were not allowed to even talk to anyone else during the trip in order to more accurately simulate a real event. Pretty fun stuff for this 8th grader. BTW, our instructors name was Odd Bjerky. Never forgot that!

this cute guesthouse in Siem Reap, Cambodia called "Golden Banana". I had just assumed that all the staff there just happened to be super friendly males who were unfortunately subject to wearing tight uniforms... it was only until someone pointed out the significance of the name... (but had a great experience there!)

oh, and of course Laotian homestays while the bird flu crisis was going on.

and I've slept in a self-built snow shelter, a quinzee. They are actually quite warm (snow is an insulator) if you're dressed appropriately!

I'd have to say a home stay in Johor Bahru, Malaysia that was suggested in a well known travel guide with 3 ladies working there. One older, one middle aged and the other young. I was propositioned at one point and offered to be able to sleep with the older lady.

I chose the single right next to the chicken coup. The room was wallpapered with what looked like crayon drawings and the bed sheets were like a little kid's bed. When I woke up in the morning I had a difficult time gathering where the hell I was.

I once stayed in the broom closet of a hostel, paid for the privilege too. This was in Belize City...yet more downer times in Belize City.

This is a few of the places we put our tent on our last trip -
• In a dead gold miner’s house
• On the interstate corridor twenty feet from traffic whizzing past at eighty mph
• Cabana by a swimming pool
• Concrete floor of a carport
• Under the awnings of a restaurant on the side of road
• Beneath towering cardon cacti
• On the Appalachian Trail
• In a frost covered tent with kids making mad dashes out to puke all night
• And many times in the houses of incredibly kind, generous people we met along the way


And I've slept in a police station, more than one brothel, in an itty-bitty shack (like the ones you see on TV) in a ghetto in El Salvador, and a bunch of other interesting places.

Oh yeah - and when we lived in Egypt I ended up meeting a family in a small village outside Alexandria - one husband, three wives, and a whole bunch of kids running around. I used to go out there every couple of weeks and spend the weekend. They were really nice, but it sure was a strange idea for me to get used to!

The first one sounds like something out of Scooby Doo. Carport one doesn't sound that great.

Hey - ya' never dock a place to put your head at night, yanno?? Especially when you've got kids you're lugging around on bicycles, you need a safe place to stay. If a carport is offered... Well, we'll take the carport!!