There are so many positive elements of travelling: admiring natural and man-made wonders of this incredible planet, indulging in international cuisine, meeting wonderful people from all corners of the world, and sharing a small living space with the kind of people that remind you of a certain 15-year-old in A Clockwork Orange.

I have never seen the movie hostel, and I don’t plan on watching it anytime soon. But in over a year of travelling, I have shared rooms with some creepy hostel roommates, I have decided to put together an appreciation post of my top two.

The Explorer – Miami, Florida

Ahh Miami, a city where cars are worth more than your life and peoples boobs and lips are worth more than your education. The perfect hideout for Sage, an American wanted by police for questioning, who had just returned from hiding in Panama. The police description of Sage is pretty accurate: Caucasian, 5-foot-7, 140 pounds with short brown hair balding at the front, brown eyes, a medium build and a light complexion. They forgot to mention the jungle-explorer attire, hat and all. We referred to him as Dora, due to his explorer-like demeanour.

When I arrived at the hostel, I was taken to my room. That’s when I fist met Sage. A man dressed as an explorer in a predominantly youth backpacker-filled hostel, sitting in the middle the room, cross-legged with a laptop leading on a cardboard box. Connected to the laptop was a landline phone. It looked like a scene straight out of some 70’s armature spy film.

For my entire stay he did not leave the hostel. He would always be there. Sitting on the floor in concentration, desperate to talk about his ‘mission’ and ‘progress’ to any room mate unlucky enough to catch his attention.

Some nights he would stay up late on his computer in the middle of the dorm. He would continuously apologise and explain that he was helping to rescue people and save lives. He told us how he was good friends with Julian Assange and was helping with missions.

One day my friend Ren left $10 on his bed after emptying his pockets. Sage was not impressed. He thought it was a set up. He complained to the hostel, demanding to change rooms. He then went on to explain how he could easily afford the best hotel in Miami. The receptionist told him he should. He made a completely legitimate-sounding phone call booking this ‘best hotel’ room and he was never seen again.

There are many places I have found where you can read about Sages effect on the world, including an English news website from Panama that quotes ‘ Sage was also featured on a local “most wanted” program in March 2012′, and a media release about how he is wanted for sexual assault, and now my diary about how horrified I am to have shared a room with this man.

Just kidding, I don’t have a diary. I am horrified though…

The Sniper – Bucharest, Romania 

After spending the day travelling from Serbia to Romania (with a stopover in Rome?) We were four tired ladies, ready to put down our backpacks and hair and get the weekend started. We checked into our hostel. Bucharest’s party hostel that is, and were greeted by the lovely local receptionist, “Yay, girls!”. That should have been an immediate sign that life was about to get seedy.

We were taken to our ‘fun-sized’ room, 4 sets of bunks in a room the size of an aeroplane lavatory. We were left alone with one of our roommates. He was sitting on his bed in the corner of the room, the one next to mine. He had some kind of intense computer set up, he looked like a hardcore gamer. Not your typical party hostel room mate kind of situation… He immediately started questioning us. It was your standard get-to-know-your-fellow-traveller conversation with a side of creepy. He was Romanian himself, and he quickly dropped into the conversation that he was a member of the military. We tried to politely end the conversation.

“Don’t mind my scars girls.”

Things were getting concerning.

“I was burnt when I was a sniper in Afghanistan.”

I have had many get-to-know-your-fellow-traveller conversations, but none of my fellow travellers had ever decided to share with me that they were in the business of murder on an international level.

We were cautious. We didn’t want to offend the man who shoots people for a living, but we also didn’t want to become friends with the man who shoots people for a living. It was quite a dilemma.

We tried to lighten up the conversation by discussing the possibility of a night out…

“Are you girls going out tonight”

“Possibly…”

“Be careful”

“…Why’s that?”

“There are protests on at the moment.”

“Oh, really!?”

“Yes. Last time there were protests people got shot and were burnt to death.”

“…”

He then proceeded to inform us how much pain he can cause on a person with his bare hands, requesting us to put our arms out so he could demonstrate.

Good thing our hostel had a bar, because we were all in desperate need of a drink by this point.

As we drank cocktails and played drinking games with our fellow hostel mates  (most of which were male, many of which were seedy), sniper paced the bar. Eventually he must have gone to bed. We drank away the fear of being burnt to death and enjoyed the night, eventually resigning to our beds, only less than a meter away from an alleged, fully-trained Romanian sniper.

I have had better nights sleep on primary school camps after copious amounts of red cordial and gummy bears.

Sniper was up early with a flashlight. He packed his bag and with a quite close of the room door we never saw him again.

For a creepy guy who kills people, he was a considerate hostel roommate.