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“Brilliant, very original hostel experience” |
During my time in Bryon Bay i stayed at the Arts Factory Lodge. I stayed in a big Teepee, which had 10 beds inside, in a circular formation, with a big fire and chimney in the middle, which i can imagine is very cool during the winter with everyone sitting around it at the end of their beds!
If you stay in Byron Bay you MUST stay at the Arts Factory Lodge. It is a great place and can perhaps best be described as having a hippy vibe! You can stay in chalet-style hostel rooms, or pitch your tent on the site's campsite. However, i opted for the 10 man Teepee, after recommendation from a guy staying in the same hostel as me in Bondi.
I spent four nights in the Teepee and was glad i did, as it was a very novel and original place to lay my head at night! It got very hot in the mornings but got me out of bed so was a good thing really!
You can also stay in a big double decker bus that is colourfully painted on the outside with hippy style drawings and artwork. The other option was what they call "the Wagon", and it is basically that, the top of an old Wagon. The Arts Factory Lodge truly is a one-off!
Apart from the original accomodation, the Arts Factory had helpful staff, most of which are travellers themselves who work in return for free accomodation. And, get this......the winner of Fame Academy from a couple of years ago was working there.........Alex Parks!! She's done well for herself!
Also on site was the 'Didge Pit', where residents could carve out and design their own digerydoos from scratch! I think it cost $135Aus. It looked pretty cool, but i decided to leave it as lumbering a thing like that around for a few months would have been a wee bit irritating.
They also taught fire spinning, where you hold a stick which is on fire at both ends and basically spin it around etc!! They practice with tennis balls on each end instead of fireballs........kinda reduces the number of third-degree-burns victims i guess!
The hostel offered free rental of bodyboards which we used quite a lot! it also had a cinema on site which was very much in keeping with the chilled out vibe. It was called 'Pig Flicks' Cinema and had sofas in it to lie on that were pretty much like beds, very comfy! Watched Borat in there and Team America for about the seventh time since i left home.......slight obsession there perhaps...."Ah durka durka durka"
Met some really cool people at the Arts Factory........the term legs eleven was invented.....young Macca never seases to amaze with the things he comes out with!! Pete was there too......don't really know why im mentioning these things as they are "in-jokes", but were very funny at the time, and i guess part of the point of this blog will be bring back the memories of my travels!
Played some volleyball for the first time and we actually won our first game, but got knocked out in the second round!
Check out the pics once i get to put them up!
slickdd says:
the room i stayed in with 10 people that was the space room smells so bad as if all guests never showered for a week and than the shared washroom just down the hall smelled like a out house i thought i was going to vomit you can see that the smell in there is so bad that the ceiling is curdlying and falling apart it be one of the whoser hostels iv stayed in but deffintly the stinkyest i only stayed one night it was just to bad its a sh*t house