Hostel Brothers, Cairo, Egypt

This hostel is currently banned by Hostelworld on the grounds that the owner threatened me via email a few days after I got back from my holiday. The reason? I gave his hostel a 63% review (which was generous) on Hostelworld (which I thought was anonymous). He sent me a bunch of emails. Here is the first one:

"Dear ********,
this Mohamed From Hostel Brothers, thank you soooo much for your comment in hostel world, it was really f***** nice from you to add this worlds, but as l can see and all your friends told me about you you are Disturbed psychological and psychiatric.
ٍso l hope to visit some one to help you.
Have a f****** bad day to you.
Yours
Mohamed"

This guy has serious problems and I really hope that Hostelworld decides to pull the place from the site altogether. There are too many reasons to list why this hostel is bad, but here are a few problems:

(1) The Yacoubian building (where the hostel is) was actually the site of a gruesome drug related killing spree involving seven women. It is dark, old, dilapidated and homeless people sleep in the hallways. It looks NOTHING like the pictures and I find it laughable that they advertise it as "one of the most famous 19th Century buildings in Cairo." There are two disused stairwells full of garbage, which you can see through dark open windows. The hostel reception is actually semi-decent: cleaner, quieter, but the building is atrocious and unsafe.
(2) The staff try to sell you poor quality tours. They lied to us about water, which was "help yourself free" but actually 3 pounds a bottle. We hired a car for the day and ended up showing ourselves around (I loved Saqqara and the Pyramids - hire a horse for 60LE/person).
(3) The rooms are low quality and smell of paint - the bathrooms don't work well - and where you stay is actually two floors below the reception for the hostel, which means you have to walk up and down through the hot, dark, downright frightening stairwell that is completely open to the public.
(4) There are several hostels that are MUCH NICER and the SAME PRICE. Check out Hostelworld and find another one. The Austrialian Hostel was FAR better than this hellhole.
(5) The hostel owner will passively bully you when you're there ("what? what wrong with tour? my friend drive nice car, air conditioning, cost you only 380LE per day") and might just threaten you if you don't give a good review afterwards. You can hire a nice car for 180-200LE per day.

I have been to plenty of rough places and I didn't even want to write a scathing review until I found his emails in my inbox. That pushed the scales. Believe me, don't stay in that building! If I had more time I would post the pictures I took of the place. I swear to God it could be used for a horror movie without any modifications!

Overall

1

Location

3

Cleanliness

3

Value

3

Facilities

2

Service

1

noreaction stayed here in Jul '09