Glitterball

The sign on the door of the dormitory in my new hostel says there are six beds and eight berths. If you squint just so, two of the beds are slightly wider than the others, but only in a certain light.
The guy at reception told me that there were already three people in the room.
“It’s fairly quiet.” he admitted, although did not specify whether or not this should be considered a bad thing or not.
As it happened, identifying the unoccupied beds proved the bigger challenge – all looked slightly lived in. I picked a lower bunk – my still-tender feet not relishing the leaps of faith that the top ones would require each morning – and found I had picked one of the double beds by mistake. This came to light because the graffiti scrawled on the bunk above read “Best of luck grabbing ass in this creaky f**king bunk” and there was a disco ball suspended in the middle.
Just a small one mind, but definitely a disco ball.
The new hostel is located on the other side of town from the one I had been in before. I’ve now moved into backpacker land, also known as Kings Cross, also known as the red light district. Whereas Glebe Point Road was genuinely laid back and un-self conscious, this place is trying desperately to be a budget traveler Mecca, with plenty of cheap eateries, Internet cafes and launderettes. Judging by how many hostels and people are here, it seems to be working. Essentially, it’s a bit like moving from Jericho to East Oxford. I have paid for a week up front, I may move back yet.
The hostel is called The Pink House, so called because it is a house and it is pink. To say it was recommended by Gemma is not quite accurate, I seem to recall she actually claimed ownership of the place, which probably isn’t quite the same thing.
It’s a pretty impressive building, both halves of a semi-detached mansion, joined on each landing by interconnecting doors. My dormitory is on the top floor, and it reeks of competing brands of aerosol deodorant and sweat; boasting a view over one of the least inspiring pieces of parkland I’ve yet seen in town (a number of attempts to photograph the site line the stairwell, tellingly the most interesting feature in each seems to be a slightly squint litter bin beside the path).
It doesn’t sound very attractive, but it has its charms, most notably in its slightly hyperactive atmosphere, the sort generated by lots of people staying briefly and enthusiastically the moving on. Or not.
Last night I chatted to one of my room-mates, who happened to be boarding a plane this afternoon for Thailand. As usual in such encounters, lists of travel plans were exchanged and I reeled out the usual spiel about going up the West coast rather than the East.
“Ah.” he said sagely, “You’re going to see the *Real* Australia.”
“Well sort of,” I said, “I’m really just trying to avoid all the gap year students.”
He smarted a little, wide-eyed.
“Hey.” he said in a smaller voice that either of us were expecting.
“Uh,” I said, “The small ones. Some of them are very small.”
I gestured with my hand to demonstrate.
“Oh.” he said, “I see.”
“Small.” I said nodding, “Small gap year students… It’s a very specific phobia, I know but…”
As I said, he’s off to Thailand today.

Final note, having spent a night in the new hostel, I was kept away most of the night trying to bat away a particularly tenacious mosquito. Eventually, I thought I had pin pointed the noise and, aiming carefully, completely blindly in the dark, clapped somewhere ahead of me at random.
Two things happened, the whining of the mosquito stopped abruptly and my hands clapped on either side of the disco ball hanging from the top bunk.
This morning, I woke to find a mosquito corpse hanging off the disco ball, slowly rotating above me. Did I mention that this was a classy joint?
No, I didn’t think so.