In my previous post I espoused upon the advantages of staying at hostels. Somehow I suspect that you are not thoroughly convinced of its merits.  Perhaps you are thinking, ” But who stays there?”

In Ulaanbaator, Mongolia I met an archaeologist who worked for the US govt.  His job was to determine if sites, before they were used for armament testing, had any artifacts that needed to be spared. He had been invited to attend a conference and decided to stay awhile.  A linguist from Finland had enrolled in an intensive three week course to study Mongolian. There was an earthquake expert, studying Chinese in Beijing, who was taking a break by traveling for a couple of months. I spoke with a missionary couple who were in town to pray for someone very ill. They seemed less than impressed that Joni Mitchell came from their hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. But maybe that’s because they had never heard of her. A young Israeli intended to buy some horses that he would ride up to Siberia.  A woman had been traveling  throughout Asia for eight months and was now making her way on to Europe before heading back to her home in Japan .  A man from France had just finished four months of WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, or Willing Workers on Organic Farms) and was catching his breath before determining what he was doing next. An Irish woman, who had been raised in Hong Kong, was enroute to visit family friends. A couple from Latvia were taking a long awaited vacation. There were a number of college age students, from various countries, who had chosen to take a gap year or were taking advantage of their summer holidays.

All of the above were folks I met, at the same hostel, within a four day period.

And the list goes on.