Rude Awakening

Darwin is Australia’s northernmost town and has been rebuilt at least twice, following bombing raids by the Japanese during World War II and the equally devastating Cyclone Tracy in 1974. The guidebook promises a place which could be mistaken for Indonesia’s Southermost City, but the guidebook is waxing lyrical. Darwin is very much an Australian city: a concrete, none too inspiring central business district surrounded by scrub land. It is not the most picaresque of locations, although the tropical climate cannot but help lend it a sunny, laid back atmosphere, but once you step off the noisy main drag of Mitchell Street, it is also hard not to be taken with the tranquility of the place.
Mitchell Street, however, the location of my hostel for the night, is anything but tranquil. As darkness falls – beautifully in the thick, tropical sky – the street transforms into a party zone. The bars are all themed, two English, two Irish, one – named Rourke’s Drift – should be Welsh, but typically is a standard Enlish joint instead. Other bars are themed by colour (blue), wildlife (ducks, seriously) and general volume (loud). My hostel has a bar of its own. Its theme is gloom.
I stagger through it to reach my room, the place is a converted motel and room seven faces onto the car-park, unlit and unattractive. I push the door open and the thick fug resulting from a head-on battle between body odour and cheap aerosol deodorant seeps out lazily and dispiritingly.
The light is off. I turn it on. The room – six bunks in varying states of undress lurk around the walls. The floor is hidden beneath ruptured rucksacks and discarded pizza boxes.
Two English guys look up at me, blinking in the light.
"Sorry." I say, but realise that they were not sleeping, but watching a DVD on their lap-top, propped on the fridge which has been dragged away from the wall into the middle of the floor.
The English guys ignore me and return their attention to the movie – an American comedy which does not seem to be making either of them laugh.
I pick my way to the top bunk near the back of the room and fit the sheet on as best I can. I take a shower (not a pleasant experience) and change into clean clothes before tiptoeing out of the room again.
"You want me to turn the light off?" I ask.
No response. I turn it off anyway.

I meet Judith and Auralie outside, they are staying at the hostel across the road and have horror stories of their own to relate.
"The toilets," Auralie says "Are really dirty."
"Really gross." Judith agrees.
We meet others from the tour at a Thai restaurant in town. Today is Judith’s birthday proper and we celebrate accordingly, the food is excellent.
"I’m having a third birthday when I get home next week," she says.
When I return to the hostel for the night, one of the English guys is missing: the one who had been sprawled on the top bunk by the door. I do not hear him come back that night, but at four in the morning, I am woken from my sleep by a noise that you really do not want to hear in a crowded dormitory.
Someone sounds drunk and ill. Not a pleasant combination. This sound – a collection of weak groans and squeaks – is followed by a heaving sound which in turn is followed by the distinct noise of someone throwing up from a top bunk onto a tiled floor somewhere below. It is the sort of wet splat which sounds as though it has achieved a certain, proud distance.
My first thought is panic – where are my bags? My clothes? Were they in range? Were they hit? No, no. They should be safe: they’re by my bed and I’m as far away from the afflicted patient as possible. My sense of compassion approximately nil.
The patient vomits again, punctuating the heaves with little whimpers of self-pity.
The room is quiet. It is the sort of quiet which can only be made by a group of people who have been rudely awakened byt would rather pretend otherwise if it means they can avoid dealing with vomit-boy in the corner. We hold our collective breaths for which ever reason you can mention.
Eventually his friend stirs to action and helps him clear up. When the lights have gone off again, the air in the room is so thick that it takes a good half hour before the stench of vomit reaches my bunk.
The next morning, I change rooms.
The day after that, I change hostels.