I'm a solo budget traveller and hostels are my go-to whenever I need cheap accommodation. But my terrible experience with a mixed room with shared bathroom in a hostel in Taipei is where I draw the line. I could pay a little more for comfort and safety.

After checking in, I was uncomfortable upon learning that the bathroom is in the room — I had expected a gender segregated bathroom — but I could live with it. I thought. My experience was mortifying. Shavers, with hair from god knows where, left on the toilet bowl. Toilet paper stained with you-know-what left in plain sight. Hygiene standards? Sorry, what hygiene?

With the walls paper thin, I could hear every movement in the bathroom. Yeah, go figure. They also knew my every move, which made things awkward when I had to rip off my pad.

Additionally, males are, I'm sorry, less considerate. They often switch off and on the lights as they wish and make loud noises. If you're unlucky, you get a group of male friends travelling together. You know how males are around their friends — obnoxious. Loud chatters can be heard throughout the night as they nudge each other on doing stupid things.

Because most hostels have the option of females only or mixed dormitories, the mixed dormitories are dominated by males. I was a single female with five males in that room. It was slightly intimidating and my mom would have screamed bloody murder if she knew. Granted most of the males I spoke to were polite and merely wanted a cheaper accommodation alternative but I had better experiences with females-only room during my hostel stays.

Thankfully, as I continued travelling around Taiwan, I had better experiences in other mixed hostel rooms, thus slightly changing my initial stance about never booking a mixed room ever again. Will I stay in mixed room in the future? Yes, only if the bathrooms are gender segregated or at the very least, located outside of the mixed rooms.

(Read my full review of the hostel here.)