Whenever I look to book a hostel nowadays, I almost always gravitate towards one of the online booking services such as HostelWorld. Not only can you see a huge inventory of available hostels in the area, but you can also see reviews from recent visitors. Sometimes a hostel with a good rating will have a bunch of poor reviews recently due to something like construction noise nearby, so it is always a good idea to read the reviews in detail. For our trip to Cuzco, Peru, we decided to stay three nights in Cuzco upon arriving to eat some of the local cuisine and to help get our bodies acclimatized ...

I was originally looking for a hostel on the internet that was central to Kuala Lumpur and also had a view of the Petronas Towers. Eventually I found the highly rated Reggae Mansion hostel, which had an amazing roof-top bar with views of the KL Tower and the Petronas. Without a doubt, my stay at the hostel was the highlight of my trip to Kuala Lumpur. After the first night of drinking, most of us quickly became friends in the hostel, often eating together and heading out in the evenings together. Down the street from the establishment is an actual reggae bar, so most of us would head down there ...

Unfortunately, the night before I left for New York City turned out to be a gong show. Mark, Donovan, Chris and myself went out to the bar for a few drinks, but we didn’t stop until around 2am. I figured, no problem right — I still have 4 hours to sleep and pack before leaving for the airport. Needless to say, Friday morning was really rough, and I was completely exhausted and hungover. What made it worse is that our plane was broken. After 30 minutes of waiting past of scheduled boarding time, finally the Harmony Airlines representative comes out and says “due to a minor technical problem, ...