Abbey on King

Comment by Laura, UK

April 2008

Awful
My partner and I booked into stay at this hostel mid-week, as were attending a gig in Enmore that night. We have stayed in many hostels over the past few months traveling and this was without doubt the worst we've ever encountered -- the stuff of travelers' horror stories, that we didn't think actually existed! The place and staff were shambolic, amateurish, and highly unprofessional. This included a middle-aged person whose attempt at polite conversation was to discuss how "the UK had started to go wrong when they gave passports to Black people." This in itself started to make our skin crawl but was only the beginning of the nightmare that is Abbey on King. Upon our arrival at 6 p.m., reception was closed so we had to seek the owner, who was more interested in his carpet cleaning machine. After waiting for fifteen minutes to be sorted out, and after a lot of confusion and messing around, we paid our $70 (they tried to charge us $80 despite telling us $70 on the phone earlier) for a double room and were then told that we were to stay in another building nearby. This turned out to be a house down a dingy alleyway that was a dark, damp hovel of a place, apparently in the "process of being renovated" but I don't think they'd even started! The lights didn't work, the "beds" had been slept in and were unmade. There was no covering on the walls or the floor and the bathroom was small and filthy. There was someone's stuff lying all around the bedroom which had two saggy mattresses. Enoch Powell was ready with clean sheets to make up the beds but we didn't stick around long enough and decided to leave. The place was downright creepy and even though we didn't know where else we'd go, we knew we didn't want to stay here. The guy who showed us around just said rudely "I don't care, I don't need your money, I've got plenty of it." The sheer nerve of trying to charge $70/80 for this was beyond belief, the staff were rude, racist, and unfriendly -- I wouldn't stay here if they paid me and I advise you to think twice about it! A joke.

Sydney (Newtown)