Hostel attitude: Take a colorful tour of the Las Vegas International Hostel and meet its just-passing-through patrons

It's an hour before sunset, all of Las Vegas quivers before them, and what are our fearless international travelers doing?

Oblivious to the fact that they are smack dab in the seedier part of the Strip, they are kicking back on picnic benches set up in back of the Las Vegas International Hostel, drinking cheap American brewskies and swapping tall travel tales.

Like the time Irish mates Danny McLaughlin and Byrne Norry got taken for 100 American smackeroos by a three-card monte shyster while they were riding down the Strip on a CAT bus.

Or how earlier in their vacation, the rental car broke down somewhere in Mississippi and the "head case" who picked them up off the side of the road told them that he was going to be the next president of the United States. (No, it wasn't Newt.)

Or the horrors of "going Greyhound."

And definitely, their impressions of American women.

"California girls -- these are the best girls in the world," declares Sean Kayode, an "existentialist writer" born on the Seychelles Islands, somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean, who has spent ample time in Santa Monica, and thus knows of what he speaks.

"American girls," he says, smacking his lips, "the best!"

Going cheap

At the Las Vegas International Hostel, talk may be cheap -- but the rooms are cheaper. Travelers can get a night's lodging for $12 in one of the no-frills rooms at 1208 S. Las Vegas Blvd. Now that it's summertime -- high travel season -- its 54 bare white cots are often booked to capacity.

Accommodations are, well, far from plush. So one wonders why the travelers don't just pool their resources and upgrade to a casino?

For one thing, the travelers are far more likely to meet other like-minded, penny-pinching, road-wise travelers at the hostel than at the Mirage.

"At a hostel," Kayode explains, "you meet people who are traveling, like you. You're all tourists, so you all go out together, and make fun of other tourists."

You also have a better chance of meeting someone who speaks your native tongue, if it is not English. And you're certain to have more fun -- even if you never actually make it off the grounds.

Kylie Wilson, the hostel's new receptionist, herself a world traveler from Melbourne, Australia, finds the atmosphere in a hostel unlike anywhere else. "You meet people who can afford to stay in better hotels, but choose not to," she points out.

A hostel also offers key amenities that most casinos do not:

* The message board, which allows travelers to search for ride shares or leave messages for friends back down the road.

* The rotating library, in which travelers can swap a completed soft-cover book for fresh one, from all-American novelist James Michener to horror-meister Robin Cook, pursue reams of travel guides of countries as far away as Bulgaria, and look up translations in a French-English dictionary.

* The rack of pamphlets of the next hostel down the road, from the Yosemite Bug to the Green Tortoise in Seattle.

* The common kitchen, featuring free coffee and tea, and food left over by previous travelers for the taking.

International flavor

The 18-room motel, which once-upon-a-time was a haven for women awaiting final divorce papers, was purchased as a tax shelter by owner Vince Felgar in 1982 and converted into a hostel five years later.

"The international organization talks about world peace and brotherhood, which sounds hokey, but in a way, that's really what it is," he says. "It's about getting to know people from other countries, people you thought you might not like."

Despite jokes about not putting the French and the English in one of the communal "quads," the brotherhood scenario generally holds true.

Like a mini United Nations on a recent afternoon, representatives from Ireland, Germany and England have already convened. Soon, two stunners from Denmark join the throng, just off the bus from Albuquerque, N.M. A solo traveler, a petite, blond 21-year-old Australian coed -- think Olivia Newton John as "Sandy" in "Grease" -- arrives from San Francisco.

They are joined by three travelers, who met in Thailand, are living in Tokyo, arrived in Las Vegas by way of the Grand Canyon, and are eventually en route to Costa Rica to teach English. The universal language of choice may be English -- but the accents vary widely.

The Las Vegas hostel doesn't overly impress them, but it does meet their primary requisite: "It's cheap," shrugs Frank Zimmermann, from Germany.

"You don't come expecting sheets for the beds, or screens to keep out mosquitos," McLaughlin explains.

"And you get to meet characters and jokers," adds Englishman John Wood, just finished with university and on a three-week holiday.

Like many travelers, Wood prefers the freedom of the pamper-free hostel life to the tyranny of organized tours, where they "prod you around like cattle.

"I'd rather do it this way -- it might be more work, (but it's worth it)," says the 23-year-old, who concedes that he's "got the travel bug," traveling in the past year to Fiji and Australia.

For many Europeans, more so than Americans, travel can be a way of life, rather than a two-week getaway, U.S.-style. When asked when he'll reach the end of the line, Jake Arnold, the English-born, Japan-living, America-touring, Costa Rican-bound traveler says dramatically, and only half-jokingly: "There is no end to the trip."

Katrine Madsen knows how he feels. "It's hard work traveling," says the 20-year-old Danish student, who is nearing the end of her own three-month excursion across the U.S. If you find it hard to sympathize with her plight, consider the brutal schedule: "In hostels, there's a party going on every night," she explains earnestly. "Then, you've got to rise early enough in the morning to get in all the sights."

Why, only the night before, Wilson led a merry foraging party out until well past dawn, starting at the Plaza for $4 prime rib, checking out the light show on Fremont Street, cruising by the Mirage, and ending up, well, drinking, somewhere, early this morning.

Suddenly, it occurs to the travelers that Nigel, the Brit, disappeared into his room with three Norwegian women last night, and hasn't been seen since!

"Love in the hostel," Kayode breaks out singing. "There's new faces every day," he adds as explanation.

Even though you'll probably never see the person again?

"Exactly," he says, grinning.

Vegas vacation

The plan for this particular evening calls for a bit more of the same: "Go out. Get drunk. Cause a riot -- just like Americans do when they go to France," Kayode says with a shrug.

Tonight, it's off to "break the bank," Arnold hoots optimistically.

But unlike cities full of museums and day tours, they've been advised that Las Vegas only comes to life after dark. So until zero hour arrives, the travelers are reveling in this moment of downtime.

Worn out from the previous day's 7-mile-hike down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon (the biggest mistake of my trip so far," Wood cheerfully admits), he is diligently filling out more than a dozen postcards, each featuring rainbows dancing over the Grand Canyon and other desert landscapes that don't exist in Europe.

Growing lazy, he rapidly copies the exact content onto the last eight postcards. "That's O.K.," he tosses out, "they don't know each other."

His companion, Claire Emerson, sits scribbling in her diary -- writing, perhaps, of the madcap characters around her? "No, actually, I'm only catching up from five days ago," she says. Checking in with her a few hours later, she has progressed -- "three days ago."

Those veterans who have been in Las Vegas a day -- or just a few hours -- already have strongly formed opinions of our fair city. "It's a neon orgy," Madsen snaps with the clarity of an outsider, also having found New Orleans to be a big disappointment -- "the most hideous place: fat old Americans trying to have a good time, making fools out of themselves."

"The cheesiest -- a big hype," Kayode sneers. "Free $500! Then you read the small print."

"Two days -- it's long enough in Vegas," McLaughlin says dismissively.

Didn't anything impress them?

Yes, indeed. Though the $10 cost strained their budgets, they can't speak highly enough of the Stratosphere's "Big Shot" -- the ride that simultaneously drops your body down and shoots your stomach skyward.

But when when informed of the hotel's bankruptcy, they are all dismayed. "How?" they demand incredulously.

Then, McLaughlin latches onto a sure-fire solution: "We'll go twice!" he declares. "They have great cheap beer!"

It would be too cruel to shatter any more of their cherished beliefs: that Circus Circus is the creme de la creme of buffets, that locals adore the Fremont Street Experience, and especially, that they're likely to come out ahead of the casino.

Tonight, they're off in search of dollar drafts and easy money and fast rides -- the American Dream.

But ... not so fast.

First, it's time for another Coors, another load of laundry, and another traveling tale.

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