Accomodation

The great thing about budget travel is minimalist travel style, including bare-bones, smelly backpacker lodging. 

I still remember my Youth Hostel Association membership card which worked like magical phrase "open sesame" during my university days. That worked well from Vancouver to Lake Louise, and Interlaken to Luzern. When I was a student, I could not afford hotel and, obviously, didn't have Airbnb. What I needed was pretty basic at that time: dorm beds, linen and kitchen. Most are lacking in ambience, but who cared? I would only be there for 12 hours, and eight of them I would be asleep.

I don't mean to create a false sense of nostalgia for the too-far-gone pre-Wi-Fi times, but we didn't really need signal thirty years ago. Indeed, if we were lucky, we might come across a small computer in the hostel, offering us free-of-charge five-minute slow dial-up modem connection. When I say slow, I mean ten times slower than whatever Wi-Fi signal you can snag from any nearby Starbucks nowadays.

Now that I can afford a better choice of accomodation, I haven't stayed in youth hostel for years. Not until this weekend, when our family chose to stay overnight next to the Lantau Trail. We didn't have other choices, honestly, if we wanted a location within a five minutes' stroll from the start of the Lantau Peak climb. Consider two contrasting takes on the accomodation within this same week for our family: one with just enough space for only two double bunk beds (without counting public washrooms), and another with almost 800 square feet size and one king bed. I am impressed by the way our brains can accomodate that quickly, from one way to another, as a true wayfarer from luxury holiday to minimalist's travel.