Hostels

On this trip to Tainan, I had originally planned to stay at Chengyi Light Travel, which I’d had a great experience with last time. But I never expected that beds in Tainan would be so hard to come by over the Qingming long weekend. Still, it worked out well — it gave me the chance to discover an amazing hostel called Wo Tainan WoW Tainan. A happy accident, haha! WoW Tainan is a very local hostel, and its interior design is a lot of fun — that’s the main reason I like it so much. Wandering the corridors, you always stumble across interesting murals; no matter how tired I was, I wanted to walk through the whole building and collect all the different murals. On top of that, it has every facility you could need and is extremely backpacker-friendly! ...

Whenever I stay at a hostel, my biggest headache is where to put belongings like glasses and watches. If I leave them by the bed, I’m afraid they’ll fall off in the night; if I put them in my backpack, I have to climb down from the top bunk when the alarm goes off, which is a hassle. The place I’m sharing today, Dwell Hostel, is in Kaohsiung’s Sanduo shopping district. Transportation is convenient, and it’s only four stops from Kaohsiung Station. If you get hungry at night, a night market is right downstairs, and the hostel even offers free instant noodles just in case. Most importantly, they’ve thought of all the little details: there’s a small bag by each bed so you can keep your valuables safe, and the front desk sells toothbrushes and other toiletries. This time, for the Tomb Sweeping Day holiday, I didn’t prepare anything. I grabbed my luggage and rushed to the high-speed rail to Kaohsiung, and only after I got on the train did I realize I had forgotten my toothbrush and towel! Ahhh!!!!! It was so touching that the hostel had them for me!! ...

I’d written down Light Hostel in my notebook a long time ago, and this trip to Tainan finally gave me a chance to stay there! I was a little wary of budget hostels run as businesses. I was afraid they’d be too commercial and lose the warmth a backpacker hostel should have, and that being so cheap would mean a lot of bad surprises. But Light Hostel completely exceeded my expectations and brought back my love for backpacker hostels! ...