Base St Kilda

I arrived at the hostel late at night and to begin with was very impressed, it looked modern, clean and the guy on reception was very welcoming and helpful. As it was late at night there were very few other guests around but the couple I did come across greeted me with smiles, which is always nice when arriving at a new destination by yourself. I opted to stay in a private room for the first 2 nights as I had a long haul flight from London to Melbourne via Hong Kong just to recover from the jetlag before moving into a dorm. The first issue I had was opening the door on the landing; the hostel has swipe card access not only on the front door but in the lift, each floor and every private room and dorm – which I found to be very reassuring. After about 20 swipes at various angles the door finally opened, I then found my room but had the same issue again with the swipe card (just what you want after a 24 hour flight!).

My private room faced onto the main street. After going to bed I couldn’t believe how noisy it was outside on the street considering it was about 4am on a Monday morning, there was also a lot of noise within the hostel, it sounded like someone was having the same issue with the swipe card access on the landing that I had been having although they has resorted to kicking the door for about 10 minutes, The noise outside went on until about 6am. I found out the following morning it was a public holiday in Australia for the Queens birthday. The following morning on closer inspection of my room I was really impressed, it was very clean and had a nice en-suite bathroom and was very nicely decorated.

I had opted to spend the rest of my stay in a 4 bed dorm,again I was very impressed with how clean the dorm was. I found the under bed luggage locker really useful, I wish all hostels had these! My only concern was being on the 2nd floor and so close to the bar. I stayed in the 4 bed dorm for 10 nights, the dorm was cleaned daily – the only problem was the shower, it was just a curtain around a corner of the bathroom, the problem was the floor wasn’t at an angle so the bathroom just flooded, after sharing the dorm with 2 American girls (who spent most of the day in the shower) it kind of looked like a paddling pool and was really slippery - not a major problem I guess.

Generally I was happy with the Hostel the only problem is some of the people it seems to attract, the only way I can think of how to describe these people is “international bar hoppers”, the kind of people who spend all night getting drunk and then all day in bed being ill, which is fine if you don’t mind being kept awake by some drunken idiot all night. The hostel obviously makes a lot of money from the bar and therefore actively encourages people to drink a lot. I did visit the bar regularly and another thing I found annoying was how loud it was, there are people staying at Base from all over the world, many people who speak English as a second language – so having a conversation can be hard work with the loudness of the music. However one good thing I found about the bar was the food, on certain nights of the week they provide low cost food, I had really good pasta and on another evening had a curry – it was nice and very good value for money.

On a couple of occasions I decided to cook my own meal in the hostels kitchen, the kitchen was really dirty – the sinks where piled up with unwashed utensils and really was not very pleasant, the kitchen had signs asking guests to clean up after themselves, obviously this wasn’t happening.

To sum things up I was impressed with Base as a hostel, its very modern, secure, nicely decorated and the rooms are kept very clean, the only thing I wasn’t impressed with is how loud people staying there are, I know this is not the hostels fault but they encourage people to get drunk in the bar which leads to this kind of behaviour. It’s a good place to stay if your life evolves around alcohol but not so good if you are interested in experiencing Melbourne as a city, I went on a number of tours that left early in the morning but after being kept awake until 4am it was hard getting up.