f you like hostels, then you’re going to love Australia and New Zealand, for here is the greatest concentration of backpackers’ hostels in the world, on both coasts and everywhere in between. These are some of the nicest people and the nicest landscapes in the world, too, something of a cross between America and Europe, and maybe the best of both, loads of spectacular nature and some of the most refined cities, ranging in latitudes and altitudes from tropical to Antarctic, from beaches and nightclubs to glaciers and fireplaces. The attitudes are almost universally warm. The Pacific Islands are something else entirely, of course, and one of the most unique areas of the world, all tropical, true, but there the similarity ends, because there is a diversity that runs the gamut from the modern mega-cities of Jakarta and Manila to the remote outback tribalism of Borneo and Papua New Guinea. There are surprises, too, like thousands of islands, and thousands of miles of beach, but few cruise ships; like a third of the surface area of the planet, but few people. For, outside of heavily populated Indonesia and the Philippines, remote sparely-populated islands define the landscape. But there are hostels. Fiji has a beach hostel scene to rival Greece, and even the remote archipelagos of Tonga and Samoa, Vanuatu and Timor are represented, also. And they’re good ones, too. C U in Nadi, or Apia, or Dunedin, or Sydney, or… you decide.
500 Hostels: Australia, New Zealand & Pacific Islands: Backpackers & Flashpackers
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