Hostal Ten to Ten Puerto Vallarta

This is not the worst hostel I've ever slept in, but it is solidly the filthiest. And I've stayed in over 100. The only others that come close were in India. I'm sharing photos to illustrate. Do read this review in its entirety, otherwise you can't say no one warned you. The pictures you see on HostelWorld were clearly taken the day Ten to Ten opened. The place now is just a dump, because management appears to have made no effort to maintain it. My private room had a bed that was nearly broken and the headboard was a beat up piece of raw plywood glued to the wall. The walls themselves were horribly dirty and scuffed with random holes and screws sticking out of them. The door was as sturdy as a chintzy Ikea coffee table, so every tiny noise echoed through all night. The lock was also useless; I could have opened it with a metrocard in less time than I can sneeze. There were no windows and zero ventilation, only a weird lumpy mattress, translucent linens, a wall A\C that stubbornly wouldn't adjust and no blanket unless you requested one before the desk closed for the night. I got home at 11:15. Elsewhere it was obvious everything was the cheapest option possible: harsh fluorescent lights, rickety toilet seats and doors, beaten up old furniture, unusable cookware — all of it stained and dirty beyond repair. Bathrooms were dank and in too poor of repair to be cleanable, so there was mold everywhere. Faucets barely worked and were detaching from the counter. Rusty metal baskets hung over shower doors leaving orange stains where they made contact with plexiglass. There were weird smudges on bathroom walls, vomit on toilets, old stains from the stickiness left behind by old tape, musty smells, circles on the floor where some gooey liquid clearly dried and gathered dust no one cared to scrub away. The lounge areas were more of the same, except here I found junk everywhere and cords dangling from weird places. The ramen "restaurant" was also so gross I couldn't imagine eating a meal there. And just to be clear, I've comfortably eaten street food after handling monkeys. Add in bad security and broken wifi and we have one of the worst hostels I've ever seen. So how does one explain the glowing reviews? They all seem to shower praise on the managers — who really weren't friendly or helpful beyond the very bare minimum — so you do the math.