Spent 3 hours tracking down a coin laundry in Medellin

Arrived here last week thinking I'd find a laundromat in 20 minutes. Ended up walking 45 blocks before finding one with a working dryer, then realized I had no change. Has anyone else wasted a full afternoon on something this stupid in a new city?

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fisher.reese3mo ago

Oh man, I've been there. Landed in Buenos Aires and spent like two hours walking around with a giant bag of dirty clothes before I figured out you gotta ask the hostel front desk where the nearest lavanderia is. Ended up at this tiny place run by an abuela who only took coins and had a specific machine for drying that you had to pay twice for. What finally worked for me was just pulling up Google Maps and searching "lavanderia" instead of "laundromat" - found four places within a few blocks that didn't show up before. Also started carrying a little ziplock of local coins everywhere after that, saved me so many headaches.

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ninah103mo ago

That bit about having to pay twice for the drying machine is so real, I read a blog post once from some guy who said half his trip laundry budget went to machines that just didn't dry properly. @fisher.reese you hit the nail on the head with the Google Maps hack though, I started doing that with "farmacia" and "panaderia" in Spain and it was a total game changer. The ziplock for local coins is genius too, I remember being stuck in Portugal with nothing but a 20 euro note and a machine that only took 1 and 2 cent coins lol.

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