Ok I’m gonna give it to ‘em, I’ve had enough. And I’m probably being completely racist and stereotypical here, BUT what the hell is it with Asians and 5am early starts?
Fair dinkum, I’ve noticed it at a couple of hostels so far, but last night, I’m sure they were just taking the piss. I was in a 10 bed dorm, there were five Japanese and two South Koreans amongst us. Naturally, being in Interlaken and with all that’s going on, all of the Aussies, Americans, Brazilians and Canadians that I ran into, were taking advantage of the happy hour and the campfire out the back of the hostel, before heading either to the night club underneath the hostel, or up the road to the local hotel bar. Stumbling in at around 12pm isn’t too late, and I wasn’t the last person home, some people crawled into bed around 3am.
Now I’m not expecting it to be dead quiet in a dormitory, but I do expect that people will be a bit courteous with making noises (apart from snoring which you can’t help), and disturbing the peace, at least until a reasonable hour when it’s late enough in the day that it’s unreasonable still to be in bed.
I was dreaming about Ned Kelly the bushranger, when this sound filtered it’s way in somehow, but I stirred after about 15 minutes to a level of consciousness where I realised that the sound wasn’t part of the dream. I woke up to hear a faint buzzing melody, clearly some kind of alarm or something and I thought, well it will eventually stop, but no. It kept on repeating over and over like the background music on a DVD menu that keeps on playing in a loop until you turn it off. I grabbed my torch and located the source; the Japanese kid in the bunk next to me had set his bloody iPhone alarm to go off at something like 3:45am. But the drongo had drifted off to sleep wearing his iPod earplugs, and didn’t even realise the alarm was going off. How long had this been going now? At least 20 minutes. I grabbed the thing, fumbled with the keys for a while and managed to switch it off. If he’s not awake then it can’t be that important. And what’s important enough that you need to be up that much before sparrow’s fart anyway? Silence is gold, I drift off to sleep once more.
About 45 minutes later, I hear the stirring as a group of three Japanese, including the bloke with the iPhone alarm, stir from bed and start to shower, change and get ready to leave. It’s 4:30am, where the hell are they going? But I figure soon they will be out and there will be silence again. Before they left, all three of them decided that this was a great time to sort all their clothes, and the rustling of plastic bags cut through the silence and woke everybody in the room, and kept us awake for a good 25 minutes with the noise. Finally they leave.
The remaining Japanese couple rouse around 5.30am. They follow a similar routine and also decide that it’s a great time to hold an animated discussion, before I tell them to shut the hell up, as some people are still trying to sleep. I mean, breakfast isn’t even served for another two and a half hours…
Finally, I’m awoken a third and final time by the two South Korean girls. They have decided that 7:15am is the perfect time to completely empty and repack the entire contents of their backpacks. I’d had enough by this stage and was about to say something, but I didn’t have to as somebody else meat me to it.
Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but I found it to be ultimately rude. I have no problems if people want to get an early start, but it doesn’t have to be at the expense of everybody else’s sleep. I mentioned this to a couple of people later. They all agreed that Asians in general love to get the early start, just like they tend to hit the bed hours earlier than your average westerner. Some people might think they are no fun because of this, but I know that Asians like to have a good time, it’s just different. I mean I’ve seen their penchant for karaoke, and those ridiculous TV game shows they invent like ‘human tetris’. But really, what is the point in getting up so early, when none of the tourist attractions are even open for hours?
One Swiss lady I spoke to said she used to work for an organisation in the centre of Bern, and on the way to work early one morning, at about 7am, she saw a group of Asian tourists taking photos of one of the famous clock towers in town. She couldn’t believe they were out and about so early, as even the cafes and shops weren’t open for another two hours.
Anyway, my rant is coming to an end. But I’ve decided that from now on, I’m going to be the ‘enforcer’ and whenever I see bad dorm etiquette, I’m going to point it out in a not-so-subtle way (read educate) and let people know that it’s just not on. Because I don’t know about those Asians, but I could sure use my beauty sleep!
