Feature by ebotunes/ Above Photo by Marcus Crowe
Beware, truly hungry travelers just might need to take things into their own hands.
Here’s your guide for eating for free in hostels, one thing we definitely might consider an ethically dubious way to save money on the road.
Schmoozing and Flattering the Staff
The standby technique. Lurking around the kitchen, nonchalantly reading the paper while making salutations to all who enter and complementing the aroma of their food. Sometimes a hungry stare is helpful, but for many charity is abhorrent. They’d rather feed a happy, healthy dog, than a desperate-eyed mangy mongrel.
The Grab and Go
If such groveling passivity is too distasteful (or slow) there are other methods. A box of wine sitting on the fridge top for a couple of days, half full, and an empty box sitting on the table in front of you, is an opportunity to enact the Indiana Jones switcheroo.
And when the proprietress leaves out a bit of yellow rice, a couple of drum sticks, chunks of moist potato . . . if she planned to eat it later then she’d have put it in the refrigerator, right? We’ve got to do our part to prevent waste in this world.
Hydration
When you can‘t afford clean water and the thought of boiling water is not appealing (or worse yet – the staff is threatening to lock up the kitchen), kneel down in front of the refrigerator and have a slam bam sampler of pineapple, orange, and apple juice, while the manager is busy text messaging.
Photo by Tom Gates
Pillage in the Caribbean
Sometimes sampling isn’t enough. And sometimes it’s not just the hunger that make you want to pillage the fridge, but the incessant noise and meatheadedness of frat boys and sorority girls, at certain Party Island type hostels.
Watching the door, while Silenus rampages through the fridge, “Not much here.” A gaggle of girls coming down the stairs. He tries to ram a half loaf down his tight pants. Hurry. He gets it down the front. The girls enter, giggling. They go into the next room. We join them, chat a little.
Silenus makes a sojourn to take the bread out from his bulging crotch. I slide a bottle of hot sauce out of my pocket and into his. I grab a couple of cold beers.
There was a sign, after all, warning, “Food not marked with name and date WILL BE EATEN.” It was our civic duty to enforce the rules.
Photo by Marcus Crowe
The Free Shelf
Some travelers leave prodigious rations behind. You may find a partial bag of pasta, an overripe mango, Tang, condiments, handful of rice and beans, crackers or chips. Sometimes a miracle: You’ve been salivating over the partial carcass of a pig, browned and succulent, waiting to rip a hunk off, when you watch someone nearly dump it in the garbage can. Egad!
Speak casually. Remember, nobody likes a desperate man. Hey, are you throwing that away? “Yeah, you want to try to get some more out of it.” Sure.
Soup, perhaps. Boil those shreds of clinging meat off the bone. Or just scrape it off with a knife, use a slab of lard to fry up the rice and beans, scrape the saturated onions from beneath the carcass, snag a chile pepper, mix it all together in a skillet.
Even if it turns out as a grey sludge, and what looked like meat was mostly ligament, tendon, cartilage . . . well, choke it down, and start scavenging again.
Community Connection
For more on hostel etiquette, please be sure to check out Tim Patterson’s classic Hostel Sex: A Practical Guide For Backpackers.
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18 Comments... join the discussion!
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Thanks. I don’t believe that the slow running cold bacteria infested water and decaying dish rags used to wash dishes in hostels actually make them any cleaner, so we are sharing diseases anyway.
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There’s a special place in hell for hostel food thieves.
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If such a place existed I bet it would be a fun crowd. “Only steal when you cannot plunder!” – Thus Spake Zarathustra
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^ I agree with Eva. Richly-written, but hostel thieves are evil…Evil!
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You dog! You crack me up! At least now I know what you look like so I can avoid you if our traveling paths ever cross.
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Laughter is better than food.
I have many disguises.
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Funny feature pic.
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It always seemed like my food was stolen, then one day I turned that dark corner and in turn stole. My conscious was ridden but my tummy was happy. It was like Le Miserables.
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I have never had so much as a kopeck stolen from me, except my food from hostel refrigerators, even when I was naive and had impeccable hostel etiquette. I don’t say that as a moral equivocation, because I don’t have a conscience, but someone else is out there stealing food. As for all the complainers, Methinks they doth protest too much.
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Definitely dubious! Funny. But dubious.
Do you think this happens at “boutique hostels”?
http://matadortrips.com/boutique-hostels-the-new-breed/
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If they let me run up a room tab on my honor, then I will make it happen.
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You can almost always make a meal out of that “leftover” shelf…there’s sometimes enough pasta to feed you for a month.
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I never noticed a “leftover” shelf for many months in Mexico and Central America until Panama, or maybe Costa Rica. But if you read the whole article you will notice that this issue was included. It just doesn’t taste as good when acquired so easily. Sometimes it’s just condiments anyway. And how much mayonaisse and hot sauce soup can you eat?
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You’ve leaked our ways of plundering the hostels. One of us might as well write a piece on fleeing them now, as one tends to lead to the next.
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This piece was supposed to include a teaser to Part Two: The Runner, escaping from fat Germans and other capitalist pigs without paying your bill, but the editor left it out. I guess they only will allow us to promote taking from other travelers and not from authorities.
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Absolutely hilarious, next time I am in a hostel I will be on the lookout for the food thief and see if I can spot one.
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We are like leprechauns, dangerous but lovable.
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