Sex in single beds; having to stay silent during sex and how on earth to use a vibratorwhen your mum/best friend are in the next room. Such are the complaints that I hear endlessly from UK based (vaguely) self-respecting 20-somethings. For the huge number of young people still living at home (more than 25% of people UK) and the rest of us squashed into shared houses (joy) the lack of privacy is having a serious impact on our relationships and sex.
But what's it like for men and women around the world, who face a similar dilema? Turns out the international millenials (sorry, that word sucks but it's a thing now, isn't it) are just as inventive as us. And that pay-per-hour hotels aren't just the preserve of seedy businessmen having lunchtime affairs with their secretaries.
We tracked down some people living abroad to find out how population pressure and changing attitudes are affecting how - and where - they have sex?
**Buenos Aires
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'Argentines love sex and they are not shy about it at all', says Jennifer Poe, a New Yorker who moved to Buenos Aires in 2007. 'Sex is in the air all the time – I stopped counting how many couples I saw slobbering each other down in public. Someone I met there told me they once saw a couple getting it on in a cemetery.'
In Argentina, people often live at home until they're married. This fact, combined with a population density more than twice that of London, has created a demand for places outside their homes where couples can go for some quality alone time. Pay-per-hour hotels (known as 'telos') are part of the culture – they 'exist in abundance', according to Jennifer. 'On my second day in Buenos Aires, a guy I was talking to in the park for no more than half an hour started professing his love for me and tried to take me to a telo.'
These hotels are designed with sex in mind – convenient, private places where you can rent a room for a few hours, and escape from the prying eyes of family members. Many places don't even require a face-to-face check in – you can choose a room via a slightly classier version of supermarket self-service machines – so discretion is assured.
So did Jennifer end up going to one? No - 'before I moved to Buenos Aires a friend explained the Telo concept to me and advised me to never let a guy take me there'. Although the large number of Telos is great for people needing some quiet, private space for a few hours, it also means that 'guys take girls there for sex and for the most part, that's the only thing they want to do with you. It was hard to find someone who didn't just want sex.'
**China
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On a visit to China last summer, I spoke to students at a local university about what it's like being a student in our respective countries. The differences were huge; we might complain about accommodation here being cramped, but the standard at Chinese universities is for dormitories of six or more. Add to this the huge population of most Chinese cities (Shanghai is, by some measures, the largest city in the world) and you find that it is very hard to ever be alone.
China is socially quite conservative, with traditional attitudes towards sex before marriage and unmarried couples living together. Dan Clarke, a Canadian living in China, said that this was changing, with many college-age students having a more liberal attitude towards sex than their elders might like. This has contributed to the success of pay-per-hour establishments; Dan told me that they are 'very popular, with even mid-level hotels offering rooms for 3-4 hours at prices of 80rmb [around £7]'. And such hotels allow young couples 'to get away from their family and spend some quality time together, without their parents or grandparents telling them they’re misbehaving or asking when they’re going to get married'. Dan and his Chinese wife have used these types of hotels frequently 'My parents in law live right across the street and they will frequently come over, so my wife uses the hotel as a way to get away from them, going back to the whole privacy issue'.
**Singapore
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According to Dan, before the existence of hour hotels in China 'couples had to resort to going to parks far from home to get some anonymity without actual privacy'. In Singapore, hour hotels do exist – but for some they are still too expensive. Last autumn, the city-state’s East Coast park was flooded by young couples bringing along tents, which they would retreat into for a couple of hours – even in broad daylight. There were around 50 tents in the park at any one time, causing a flurry of news articles and faux-concern about the promiscuity of these younger residents. And the legality was called into question when one couple were reportedly arrested after engaging in amorous activities with the tent door half open. So, on balance, it’s not something we recommend you try in Hyde Park.
**Delhi
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With a population of around 17 million, Delhi is a crowded city. But a friend of mine who lives there said that pay-per-hour hotels don’t really exist in India – the idea of places designed for sex and illicit affairs would clash horribly with a country that is still religiously and socially fairly traditional. This can be difficult for those in their 20s, who – as in China - are often sexually more liberal than their parents. These competing needs and desires were brought into play last September, when a sting operation by TV station Zee news revealed that staff on the Delhi metro had been renting out private toilets to young couples for illicit trysts.
A reporter from the station found that he and a friend were allowed private access to the staff toilets for the price of 500 rupees an hour– just less than £5. And this followed a summer in which covertly filmed clips of more than 250 couples engaging in intimate acts on metro trains were turned into porn films.
**London
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The idea of pay-per-hour hotels is not a very English one; the whole concept of paying by the hour reveals your intentions fairly explicitly, so is perhaps not suited to a nation traditionally quite repressed when it comes to expressing how one feels. Calling up hotels for this article reduced me to a stuttering, embarrassed mess. 'So, these rooms – can they be used, by, um… couples?'. But London is not immune to the pressures of population, which increased by 12% in the decade from 2002-12. Over 22% of young people in the city live with their parents. And this has caused some hotels to change how they operate.
This hasn’t yet been manifested in Argentine-style telos; we are some way off finding motels opposite Big Ben. But in 2012, Parisian website Dayuse Hotels launched in London. The site allows you to hire out rooms in nice hotels, for a few hours in the day, at a rate much cheaper than the night price – thus fitting in with the post-recession requirements of many Londoners. The Hoxton offers a rate of £99 for a bedroom between 10-4, and when I called to enquire about a room I was told that couples are very welcome. And the London Blackfriars has a rate of £60 for 8 hours, easily one of the best deals.
It’s hard to assess just how popular pay-per-hour hotels and other such amenities are – and there are many reasons why people might use them. Dan told me that in China whole families will go to a hotel room for a few hours in the summer, just for the relief of an air-conditioning system that works.
But privacy does seem to be a big contributing factor. In places like Singapore and Delhi, where there isn’t an availability of cheap hotels or private space, then a kind of black market for discreet places to rent will spring up. A need for intimacy is, after all, a pretty fundamental part of being human – and it isn’t any longer something that people are prepared to wait for marriage for.
Here in the UK, most people will have a fair few different partners over the course of their 20s – and if you are living at home, or with objectionable flatmates, you don’t want to have to bring every random guy you meet on Tinder back with you. So it seems that there is a market for cheaper, shorter hotel visits; one that reflects the more casual ways that we now date. It’s not going to be for everyone – but it is a solution to the lack of personal space that is the norm in big cities. Perhaps one of the sacrifices you have to make when living in a big city isn'tt just annoying transport and ridiculous rent – but also having to seek privacy somewhere other than your home.
Follow Ruth on Twitter @ruthhardy22
Main Photograph: Rory DCS. Pictures: AsiaOne, Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.