Hostel Security: How to Keep Your Belongings Safe While Backpacking

Hostel Security Essentials: Locks, Lockers and More!

Living the hostel life is awesome. You get to live in an amazing country, at an affordable price, surrounded by like-minded people. One thing might be nagging you at the back of your mind. Security. How do you keep yourself and your stuff safe? After all, there are people coming and going at all times of the day and night, plus you’re sharing your space with lots of other hostel dwellers. These are our top hostel security tips.

Leaving Your Stuff in Your Room

99% of the time the people you’re sharing a hostel room with are like minded travelers who are in exactly the same boat as you. They’re worried about their stuff, they just want to travel through the country safely and securely without any issues. Then there’s the 1%. Let’s call them the assholes. These are the assholes who think it’s chill to take stuff without asking and walking off with it. Whether this be your toiletries or your phone… they might take your stuff without you knowing because, well, because they’re assholes.

Thankfully, we have barely any reports of theft or items going missing here at Bodega. But you want to be safe. So here are our suggestions:

• Thieves are usually after a quick snatch and grab. They’re opportunists. So, make their life difficult. Don’t leave stuff within reach, or easily visible. The harder they have to work to find your stuff the less likely it is to get stolen. These are petty thieves not the cast of Ocean’s 11.
• Use the lockers and bring your own padlock (more on locks later). Hostels won’t provide you a lock, in case anything goes wrong with it. At Bodega lockers are free to use and can be your own personal safe. Use them!
• Clothing items and your main bag? Just close it up, maybe use a cable lock and shove it under the bed, out of sight. If you want to, think about locking it to the bed frame itself if possible.

Security at Bodega Hostels

We’re here to help you out and make sure your stay is straightforward and relaxed. That’s why we always provide 24/7 staff and CCTV that rolls around the clock. This means that your stuff is protected by us and if the worst happens, we can deal with it quickly. These things are a major deterrent to thieves and we’re happy to provide them.

Locks for Our Lockers

There are lots of different locks to choose from and frankly, it can be overwhelming to sift through. They range in price from about a beer to way too fucking much. There’s typically 2 types locks: key or combination locks. We highly recommend investing in a combination lock. Firstly, it is very difficult to forget your own combination even if you’ve just been demolished at beer pong all night, but it is very easy to lose a key. Just remember to spin the combination off your actual number when you leave…

We’d also highly recommend investing in a cable lock if you want some extra peace of mind. These nifty little locks have a length of super strong cable that can be wrapped around whatever you can find. This is especially helpful when the lockable section of a locker is too large for your padlock to fit.

PS: We also sell combination locks at reception for 100 baht!

Packing Tips for Safe and Secure Backpacking

If you’re backpacking the usual way then chances are that you’re travelling light. You won’t have much stuff and it might not be the latest in expensive fashion gear. Clothing isn’t really that much of a concern when it comes to security.

What we would say is that you should be wary of those high-ticket items. Your latest edition GoPro, Macbook, phone, drone etc are all things that thieves would love to get their hands on. They sell quickly and make a lot of money. If you travel with these items, either keep them with you at all times, keep them in a locker or think, do you really need them? If you’re travelling long term, you probably do, so just act sensibly.

If shit hits the fan, Bodega is here to help you out!

If the worst happens, lean on us. We’re a family here at Bodega and we’ll rally around you. Nobody likes to hear about things going missing or bad things happening. If it does happen to you then you should expect everyone to gang around you and club together to help out. After all, that’s what the Bodega family does!