Hobo tourism/Overnight stays in long intercontinental journeys/In the flophouse (dosshouse)



Flophouse & dosshous (also: outsider hotels, hotels without stars) are facilities designed to accommodate guests moving within their own country (in this context, in relation to "developing countries"). In most cases, they can be used by foreigners.

Coaching inn
A fenced area in the open air, where several dozen metal beds are located — this type of accommodation is found in Sudan. When staying overnight in such a "hotel", in order to avoid unwanted loss of property and equipment, the backpack should be deposited in a special room, the key to which is with the responsible person ("caretaker").

Mehmunsaray & mehmunkhane
The Afghan version. When choosing this accommodation facility for temporary residence, you should know that they sleep on the floor here (Afghans also sleep on the floor in houses — this is a local tradition), and therefore, the number of beds in the room is conditional. There is no furniture, and instead of a hanger, usually a nail is driven into the wall. Toshnab (toilet in Farsi) can be located on the street, three hundred meters away (as it was, for example, in the mehmunsarai of Bamyan — see video #3 in the gallery)

To settle in one of the most budget place in Kabul, you need go to the Kote Sangi district on the outskirts of the city. The cost of a berth in the accommodation facilities here ranges from $4-6, and mehmunsaray at the lowest price, is divided into squares (cubes) along the corridor by glass partitions, outwardly similar to an aquarium, where each division has a size of 1.5 x 2 m.

However, in this hospitable country, you can do without "hotels": the local poor, who sometimes live without locks on the doors, will be glad to have a foreign guest. (See chapter of the textbook "In Aboriginal dwellings").

Guest House
A common variant in African countries. It is used by local residents when moving from one locality to another: since there is no direct transport connecting distant points of a particular country, you have to go with transfers, stopping for the night in such places in order to continue the moving in the morning. Guest house is a simple room where the shower and toilet are outside. Sometimes the "shower room" is inside, separated from the bed by a partition, behind which you can douse yourself with water from a plastic canister. A guest arriving from abroad will be accommodated on a general basis, at the same price or, what happens more often, slightly overstating the price list. Guest houses are also found in Asian countries. When choosing this method of accommodation for settlement in an African or Asian country, it is necessary to imagine in advance that guest houses in the third world space are fundamentally different from European counterparts.

Exceptions to the rules
Cases when a foreigner may not be accommodated in a similar accommodation object described above are extremely rare. In Cairo, on Clot Bey Street, located near the railway station (Ramses district), some owners of  squalid  real estate do not have a license to accommodate citizens of other countries. To implement the plan, it is recommended to walk to the end of the street, examining all the buildings, given that some of them may have signs in Arabic, not duplicated English. You need to be prepared for the fact that bedbugs can live in the room where you will still be settled: this is not often, but it happens.

Hostel
This object assumes living in the same room of several people who are strangers to each other. Hostels, usual, are located either in capitals and large cities, or in places of increased interest for foreigners. As an example of the second option — the tiny town Aguas Calientes, where people come from all over the world who want to see the lost Inca city — Machu Picchu. Hostels are widely used by backpackers, but hobo tourists sometimes stay in these accommodation facilities. Here, as a rule, clean; the bed linen is washed, the rooms are cleaned. And the low price is achieved by the fact that up to 12 people can be accommodated in one room, which is called a dormitory.

The choice of such objects is recommended for lovers of communication and noisy (mainly youth) companies.

For the same price — with comfort
In some countries (in particular, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam), you can stay in a relatively good hotel for a symbolic amount of 5-7 USD, which allows a hobo tourist to forget about his lifestyle for a while. In this case, it is not rational to look for alternative placement methods.