Any experienced backpacker knows why this article is necessary. Picture this: you got into your hostel late the previous night after a long flight or bus ride and all you want to do is get a good night sleep but that one person in your dorm room who set their alarm for 6 a.m. isn't waking up. After 10 minutes of constant beeping, everyone in the dorm is awake and annoyed except for the person who set the alarm, who’s sleeping like a baby. And now everyone is looking around at each other waiting for someone to take charge and wake that person up so everyone can go back to sleep. What do you do? Do you wake them up and risk them being angry that you interrupted their dreams? Do you go and get a member of the hostel staff to wake them up? Or do you press your pillow against your ears and try to ignore the incessant beeping of their alarm while you struggle to fall back asleep? The experience of sharing a living space with complete strangers that hostels offer can be fun and interesting but can also feel like some sort of weird social experiment. It can often be difficult to judge what is proper behavior in a hostel setting and what is taboo. One of the biggest grey areas is the proper etiquette for setting alarms. Here is what you need to know in regards to alarms to avoid bothering the other people in your dorm:
Hands Off That Snooze Button
I think we can all agree that being woken up earlier than we intended is never a pleasant experience. So let’s all live by the golden rule and treat others how we would like to be treated. When staying in a hostel, it all really comes down to just being respectful of the other people staying in your dorm. So when your alarm sounds off at 7 a.m. and you want to snooze your alarm for another 15 minutes, that means every other person in your dorm has to listen to that second alarm too. If you need to set an alarm early in the morning to catch a flight or a bus, or even if you just want to get an early start to your day, by all means, set that alarm. But keep your hands off that snooze button! If you choose to continually hit your snooze button and force everyone else in your dorm to have their sleep interrupted every 15 minutes, you are effectively sending the message that your sleep is more important than everyone else’s. Be considerate and remember that shared-living situations are only enjoyable when everyone is respectful towards the needs and wishes of others. If you are the person who hits the snooze button 5 times and ruins everyone else’s morning sleep, you are going to find it much more difficult to make friends within your hostel.
Wake Up The Sleeping Beauty
It’s a fact of life: some people are heavier sleepers than others. I personally wake up at the sound of a pin dropping, but I understand that there are some people who can sleep soundly through a category 5 hurricane. So what do you do if there is a heavy sleeper in your dorm whose alarm has been going off for 10 minutes and they still haven’t woken up? Do you let them enjoy their sleep while you lie in bed staring at the ceiling wishing you had bought those ear plugs you saw at the convenience store? No! Wake up the sleeping beauty! If they are a respectful dorm-mate, they should have no problem with you waking them up so they can turn off their alarm. And if you wake them up and they get angry with you, chances are everyone else in your dorm will back you up. If their alarm was annoying you, it was surely annoying at least one or two other people in the room. Again, don’t sacrifice the sleep of everyone else in the dorm for the sake of one person.
Volume: Find That Happy Medium
When I’m staying at a hostel, I try to keep my alarm on medium volume whenever possible. Occasionally, if it is absolutely necessary that I wake up at a specified time, I will turn my alarm up to full volume. Again, I understand that certain people are heavier sleepers than others. So if there’s no chance that an alarm set to medium volume will wake you up, feel free to turn the volume all the way up. But if you’re a lighter sleeper, try setting your alarm volume a little lower and reduce the chances of waking up other people in your dorm. They probably won’t thank you for it because, well, they’ll be asleep. But the best good deeds are the ones that go unnoticed. Even a relatively quiet alarm will probably wake you up if you sleep with your phone close to you. Also, avoid overly-aggressive alarm sounds. No one enjoys the alarms that sound like a duck quacking or a siren in a nuclear fallout shelter. Try something more soothing. If you are using an iPhone, I prefer the Harp alarm sound. It rises in pitch and volume and really does the trick in terms of waking you up, but it is also soothing and not too aggressive.
Leave Those Lights Off
So you set your alarm to medium volume, you slept with your phone close to you, and you turned off your alarm after the first ring. You’re doing great, but don’t waste all your efforts by turning the light on and waking everyone up anyway! If you need to leave your hostel in the morning, pack your bags the night before so you don’t have to turn the lights on to see your things. And if you forgot to pack the night before, use a flashlight or the light on your phone rather than flipping the lightswitch and waking up everyone else in the room. If you do turn on the lights, you’re going to see a whole lot of sleepy eyes glaring at you. Be respectful of others’ sleep and leave those lights off!
Protect Your Sleep: Back-Up Plans for Loud Dorms
While we would all like to believe that everyone we encounter on our travels is going to be kind and respectful of proper hostel etiquette, the truth is that there will be some bad apples somewhere along your journey. So protect your sleep! Don’t let the party animals that are talking at full volume after midnight or the sleeping beauty who hits the snooze button 5 times in the morning keep you from getting your necessary sleep. Have a back-up plan! Ear plugs are a cheap and universally-available option for blocking out disturbing noise. Noise-cancelling headphones are a more expensive option, but they do a wonderful job of allowing you to sleep despite even the most annoying dorm-mates. Also, whether you have noise-cancelling headphones or simple earbuds, I find that listening to binaural beats throughout the night helps me sleep better and wake up feeling fresher and happier. There are plenty of playlists with hours of binaural beats across various platforms such as Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube.
Here are some of my favorite binaural beats playlists that help me sleep like a baby:
Binaural Beats for Sleep: Delta Waves (Spotify)
Deep Sleep Music: Binaural Beats Sleeping Music, Lucid Dreaming Music (YouTube)