It can be hard for you to find a cheap place to sleep in
Nairobi, especially if you are not very familiar with the city. True, there are
lots of cheap guest houses in Nairobi, but locating them is not an easy task
for the person who is unfamiliar with Nairobi City and how it operates. See, there
are guest houses in Nairobi with prominently displayed signposts, but most of them charge
prohibitive fees. You may find one such guest house charging 1,000 per night,
some even 1,500. Yet that 1,000 - 1500 shillings is enough to transport you from
Nairobi to Mombasa or Nairobi to Kisumu during the off-peak periods. The
thought of spending 1,000 or 1,500 shillings on a guest house can be
disconcerting for a hustler who is traveling to Nairobi on borrowed money. There
are cheaper guest houses (some charging as little as 300 shillings or 400
shillings per night), but for some reason, they tend not to have any signage
indicating that they are guest houses!
Now some of the places within/around Nairobi city center where you
can find cheap places to sleep include River Road and the area around Athusi
bar. But these areas will only tend to be of use to you if you arrive in
Nairobi before 11 Pm. Past that time (11 Pm), it can be disconcerting to walk
to River Road or to Athusi area.
Another option is to travel to Nairobi estates where there
are some ‘local’ guest houses that charge very little. So you can travel to
Eastleigh (at a 30-50 bob fare), and you may find reasonably decent Guest
Houses charging 400-500 shillings. Or you can travel to a place like Kayole or
Mwiki, and find similar guest houses, charging anything from 300 to 500
shillings per night. These cheap guest houses are obviously not five-star
establishments, and you may have to do with a few inconveniences here and there.
If you are the tough type, and you are not carrying any
valuable luggage, you can also get into a 24-hour pub, and while the night away
there. If you go to a pub that sells bottled beer, chances are that you would
end up spending as much as 400 bob (on two bottles till morning time) – which
is pretty much what you would have paid for a room. But if you go to a keg
joint, you could buy three small kegs, at 150 or so, till morning. Even then, the
next day would be very tough for you, having not slept the night before.
Another option is that
of talking to the people who operate the bus you came with, to allow you to
sleep in the bus or in their yard within the bus station. Then in the morning,
you can go wherever you were headed. But in this case, it would work better if you really look like a traveler (with some sort of luggage and all that). Otherwise if the authorities come and find you sleeping at such a place, they may mistake you for a homeless person and rough you up. Still, places like Nairobi country bus station and River Road where coast buses terminate are 24-hour locations, where you can while the night away, as long as you don't move around too much.
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