You should try using the locals accommodation and travel when you’re abroad.
I’ve backpacked round Egypt 3 times, travelled in the locals train carriages which really was an experience. Consider this, the 3rd class tourist carriages had 3” of 5hit on the bathroom floor (flips flops was the mode of footwear employed at the time) and in with the locals class we sat on straw with goats. Travelling from Cairo to Aswan was a 24 hour trip, so using the bogs was pretty much guaranteed. Imagine having food poisoning and needing to honk up in a toilet like that.
The youth hostels were 20p a night in Cairo, you inspected the room and beds before agreeing to stay. Having a crap in Egypt was ‘interesting’ to say the least in locals toilets. They don’t use toilet paper, but there’s this ‘U’- shaped pipe sticking up, out of the toilet which squirts your ass with water after. Needless to say this pipe becomes encrusted with poop from the last half dozen punters. Often it is also decorated with toilet paper from any previous westerners who haven’t quite managed to convert to pipe squirting but still retain the traditional method of cleaning up after a crap.
Once we got a coach from Aswan to Hurghada, it was an 8 hour trip at the time. When we got to Hurghada at about 8 at night we needed to find a hotel of sorts to stay in. I picked up my rucksack which had been stored in the compartment that is accessed from outside the coach where everything is stored under the seats. At some point during the journey the pipe from the coaches toilet had leaked its contents all over my rucksack, clothes and sleeping bag and I had nowhere to sleep or clean clothes to change in to. Delightful.
I went and had a beer.
Travel broadens the horizons.