Old West Gate International Youth Hostel — Hotel in Shanghai

The good:||- The location is not too bad. Though the metro stations are far, there are bus stops nearby. There are also a lot of tiny eateries and shops in the network of small lanes. If you want nicer restaurants and shops, you will need to walk to the main streets, where you will pay more.||- AC worked. They do provide free WiFi, but we were never able to connect due to our phones and sim cards being from the US.||||The neutral:||- The staff is not too friendly||- The washer costs 8 RMBs per wash. You have to buy washing powder separately. It does not do a good job washing.||- They have "filtered" water through reverse osmosis system, but the water had a weird taste to it--Not sure when the filters were replaced (they are supposed to be cleaned and replaced every 6 months--I know because I have one of those back in the US).||||The bad:||- The rooms were not well cared for and extremely dirty. Granted, the general visible areas are relatively clean, like the visible part of the floor and the bed. But when you look closer, you will see that they don't take care of the place.||- Water was leaking from the ceiling into the bed when someone upstairs is taking a shower. You can see the dark mold in the ceiling from the bedroom and the shower (see photos).||- We had to move the bed since water was coming on to the bed. When we moved the bed, we saw like an inch of dust and trash under the bed. We ended up cleaning the floor for them because we don't trust them cleaning anything. We should have taken photos of the floor, but we didn't. It seems they have not cleaned under the bed for a long time.||- We had to wash our clothes. Since it was raining most of the time when we were there, we decided to hang dry our clothes inside our room. We couldn't find any surface clean enough to hang our clothes, so again we had to clean most of the surfaces just so that we can hang our clothes.||||We booked this place because of the price and because we are generally pretty tolerant of not-so-nice places. But this is definitely one of the worst places we have...

I stayed here for a month in a 7 person dorm with attached toilet and bathroom. It depends on what type of person you are as this hostel is located in the old shanghai neighbourhood and Yu garden is about 10-15 walk minutes away. Xintiandi area is 30 mins walk away bit of a high end/expensive area.||Buses are better and cheap to take from this area if you want to go to East Nanjing road (shopping and centre). You just need 2 kuai or transportation card to touch and pay. Bus 929, 66 and 64 all go to the centre and near the bund. If you want the metro 20 minutes walk laoximen or the other one which I never used. The bus stop is 2 mins away from the hostel, just turn right before the crossroad. So, if you want to see some authentic Chinese area you will find it here. There is also a mall 5 minutes away on Henan road where there is Tescos (supermarket) inside and lots of eating places inside as well. You can also see the highest tower in Shanghai from the balcony area.||They also have a washing machine but have to air dry clothes which I preferred and I never had to wait for another person's laundry unlike other hostels. ||I was disappointed that there was no pool table unless I totally missed the room. For the price the dorm was alright. I would recommend booking a room to oneself if you can...

The hostel was mediocre at its best. The staff spoke some english, in contrary to most kochinese people we've encountred. The hostel was located close to the city center, however not in the best neighbourhood. Although the metro line was relatively close, you had to walk through a maze of narrow streets to get to it. If if wasn't for my boyfriend I wouldn't dare to walk there after dawn. Despite having a private room with bathroom, it was neither private nor convenient. The bathroom had glass door (!), the tiles were mouldy and we saw some cockroaches, which was not what we expected. The AC barely functioned in the common areas as well as in our room. As we left for the airport we asked at the reception desk to call us a taxi to railway station so we could take Maglev. We were told that Maglev was not operating on the day ('broken'), so we had to take the taxi directly to the airport. On our way we saw the Maglev operating just fine. We...