If you’re a luxury traveler, you might not notice, but the lower you go on the budget spectrum, the more you’ll encounter travel noise. It’s an unavoidable consequence of being around many other people, and in certain cultures, noise is just as typical as exhaust fumes and red tape, something taken as a given. This includes airports, trains, and buses, where inconsiderate individuals believe everyone is interested in their conversations and videos.
How well do you handle noise? How soundly do you sleep?
If you plan to go backpacking around the globe on a budget, you’d better become skilled at blocking out chaos. Or you’d better pack a toolkit of solutions. Prepare to experience nighttime noise like you’ve never imagined, even if you’re arriving from New York City.
## Sources of Travel Noise Around the World
I am reminded of this reality every time I return to my home base in Mexico. In the otherwise charming city of Guanajuato where I reside, a genuinely quiet night is a rarity. There are at least five barking dogs on the rooftops of houses on every street, and since this city is surrounded by hills, I hear almost all of them at some point during the night, especially if there’s a chain reaction and they all start barking when one does.
At least I’m not in the middle of it all. There, if a soccer/football game is taking place and the bars are lively, the noise won’t subside until the early hours, with booming bass sounds that few windows can keep out. Street performers are singing and shouting beneath those windows, and there may even be fireworks to add to the clamor.
Throughout Latin America, the sounds continue with church bells, gas vendors, junk collection trucks, and intoxicated individuals singing in the streets. It’s not unusual for bars to vie for patrons by each trying to pump their music louder than the others. If you’re indoors, you can’t hear each other; if you’re outside, you’re subjected to competing stereos playing different tunes.
In nations where people live in close quarters and have cultivated a “live and let live” mentality as a result, complaining is not common; you put up with it and cope. It is often culturally unthinkable to complain about the mariachi band next door at 2:00 a.m. or the morning firecrackers sounding like cannons at dawn on a Sunday to begin a saints’ festival.
In Asia, you will spot people dozing off on the subway, on buses, on benches, and on delivery carts. No surprise: you can’t really sleep at night with all the roosters crowing and everyone rising hours before dawn to begin their day before the heat sets in. You haven’t truly lived the backpacker experience until you’ve slept through a cat in heat, two competing roosters, and a woman who starts noisily sweeping the stairs outside your bamboo hut at 5 a.m.
“Oh my god, the roosters!” You will hear this frequently from fellow budget travelers globally. Your prior urban belief that roosters crow at dawn gets shattered quickly. When do roosters actually crow? Whenever they please. Which is surprisingly often, whether it’s light or dark.
In the Middle East, the call to prayer rings out regularly five times a day, at least once at a time when no rational person should be awake for any reason. If you’re fortunate enough to be in one of these nations during Ramadan, you’ll also experience the spectacle of someone parading through the streets waking everyone up by banging on a drum so the faithful can eat before sunrise. (And you’re expected to tip this person for the service at the end.)
In some regions, drivers have one hand on the wheel and one on the horn at all times. In Egypt, they may drive with their lights off at night under the misconception that it conserves battery life, but that doesn’t prevent them from honking the horn—even when there’s nothing else in sight.
If you’re staying at an upscale hotel, you can mostly escape all this. I don’t recall hearing even one barking dog when I was secluded in the Villa Maria Cristina hotel in Guanajuato during a writing assignment on my first visit, and I’ve enjoyed blissfully quiet nights behind the triple-paned windows at Hiltons and Hyatts. The Four Seasons in Mexico City will make you believe there’s actually no traffic on that major roadway in front of the hotel, and the Oberoi in Calcutta truly deserves the term “oasis” if any hotel ever did. Money serves as a great sound barrier.
However, stay at the $8 hostel just a few blocks away, and it’s a different scenario. You’ll hear every car horn and vendor shout at nearly full volume,