Travelling and Accomodation

Since my last travel to Spain and Italy last summer, I haven’t done any travelling. I would love too, but my courses’ assignments and other works are very time consuming. PPI Delft actually planned a travelling activity “PPI Delft goes to Berlin” but since only very few people responded to the registration, it was cancelled.

Hmm, Mai is still in Zurich for her exchange program. I would like to visit her (and force her to be my guide off course, hahaha). I should do that before January though, otherwise she’ll already be back in Delft.

Talking about travelling, I’m sure that new students (Vel? Ron? Niss? Mel? hehehe) might want to do that, probably as cheap as possible :D Accommodation contributes to the expense greatly, but the cheapest alternative is not necessarily the one you’re satisfied with. Let me share some useful information on that.

Couchsurfing.com might be your first alternative to find accommodation. Mai is the one introducing the website to me when we planned our trip to Leuven and Brussels last year. She contacted some members who offer a couch or a room to sleep in the cities we’re interested in. We got the rooms but we needed to bring our own sleeping bags (there were four of us). The rooms were free of charge (that’s the beauty of the couchsurfing concept) but we, as nice people (yes, we are :D), prepared dinner for our hosts. It was an interesting experience. It might not be easy to get room though. Mai needed to contact many people before getting the offers (probably also because she’s been well reviewed by other members from her previous couchsurfing).

Last January, when I travelled to Prague with some classmates, we found accommodation through hostelworld.com. The prices of the hostels were cheap (probably because it’s Prague). The first hostel we booked was okay, but crappy in its service. We checked out on the second day and found another hostel that was slightly more expensive, but superb in its service. You can read the rest of the story in my previous post.

If you prefer hotel to hostels, you can try finding good rates through hotelscombined.com. My Dutch friend once told me he used this website to find accommodation for his travel to Indonesia. He went there with his family. It can help comparing hotels in one go. That’s helpful, I would say. I tried to search for hotels in Bandung, and it shows me an impressive list of hotels to choose from :D Perfect for planning a honeymoon, hehehe.

So, if you’re on a tight budget and want to experience something new, you could try couchsurfing.com (but you should be careful in choosing the prospective hosts). If you’re looking for student accommodation, try hostelworld.com (not necessarily the cheapest and you have to make sure it’s comfortable enough). If you’re looking for a good hotel and need to compare for the best value for your money, try hotelscombined.com. These could spare you the trouble of searching the accommodation manually.