Sleeping Around
SLEEPING
AROUND
Also by Brian Thacker
Rule No. 5: No Sex on the Bus
Planes, Trains and Elephants
The Naked Man Festival
I’m Not Eating Any of that Foreign Muck
Where’s Wallis?
First published in 2009
Copyright © Brian Thacker 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Thacker, Brian, 1962-
Sleeping around : a couch surfing tour of the globe / Brian Thacker.
978 1 74175 210 6 (pbk.)
Thacker, Brian, 1962- --Travel.
Australians--Travel--Foreign countries.
910.4
Set in 11/15 pt Minion Pro by Bookhouse, Sydney
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHILE
BRAZIL
USA
CANADA
ICELAND
BELGIUM & LUXEMBOURG
TURKEY
KENYA
SOUTH AFRICA
INDIA
PHILIPPINES
EPILOGUE
INTRODUCTION
I live in a small one-bedroom flat with my wife and 5 children. There is no couch, so you will have to share a room with the kids. I live a long way from the city and there is no public transport. I should also probably tell you that I’ve only recently got out of prison.
Brian Thacker Melbourne, Australia
Admittedly, I was perhaps a little sceptical when I initially registered on GlobalFreeloaders.com a couple of years back. According to their mission statement: ‘GlobalFreeloaders. com is an online community bringing people together to offer you free accommodation all over the world. Save money and make new friends whilst seeing the world from a local’s perspective.’ It sounded like a brilliant concept. First of all there was the ‘free accommodation’ bit—I concede I’m somewhat ‘frugal’ when I travel and will happily do things like wallow in my own sweat because the air-conditioned room cost a dollar more. But it wasn’t just my penchant for penny-pinching that attracted me to the idea of GlobalFreeloading, it was also the idea that you could bypass the standard tourist routes and be assimilated into local lifestyles and cultures. I just tweaked my profile somewhat so no one would want to come stay with me. I mean, exactly what sort of lunatics open their homes to total strangers from the other side of the world at a time when you can’t carry a nail file onto an aircraft? Even if they trust me, can I trust them? You certainly couldn’t tell if a potential host was trustworthy by looking at a lot of the profiles on the GlobalFreeloaders site. Many gave absolutely no indication of what type of person they were and looked something like this:
Spare couch. No pets.
Claudio Hernandez
Bogota, Colombia
I forgot about the site until a few months later (surprisingly enough no one had requested my ‘couch’) when, in one of my usual aimless wanderings around the net, I stumbled upon CouchSurfing.com. The website had the same premise as GlobalFreeloaders (their mission statement is: ‘Participate in creating a better world, one couch at a time’), but they had taken the concept to a whole new level. The profiles were more detailed and built on a MySpace/Facebook type model with users including their photos, interests, what types of people they enjoy, a list of friends, languages spoken, places travelled and even a comprehensive couch description. Perhaps the most redeeming feature, however, was that the hosts and guests vouched for each other much like eBay.
CouchSurfing.com began in 2004 when 22-year-old Casey Fenton, a software programmer in New Hampshire who had been working 100-hour weeks for a website he himself had founded, decided he wanted a weekend away. He found a cheap last-minute flight to Iceland, but when he discovered how expensive accommodation was in Reykjavík, he did what any reasonably able, ethically flexible programmer might do: He hacked into the University of Iceland student directory and spammed more than a thousand students asking them if they had a spare couch. In his email he said: ‘I’m coming on Friday. I want to see the real Iceland. Will you show me your country?’ The overwhelming response—more than a hundred replies from potential hosts all eager to show him ‘their Reykjavík’—not only secured Casey a couch for the weekend, it also sparked the CouchSurfing concept and website.
I joined immediately and even penned a more realistic profile—minus a few kids and the prison sentence. A stranger’s couch suddenly sounded a whole lot safer. And a whole lot easier to find. To secure a couch all you had to do was search for the city you planned to visit and you would be presented with a list of hosts. Contact any from the list who interest you and the hosts would get back to you if they have a couch available on the dates you need. And after you decide which couch suits you best—voilà— you’ve got a free place to stay and a new friend who most likely knows the city better than any hotel concierge.
Seeing a city through the eyes of a local was actually the thing that attracted me the most to the couch-surfing concept. In my travels I’ve had a taste of staying with locals and the experience has often been the highlight of my trip. I have been lucky enough to take part in a traditional family feast on the Pacific island of Futuna, as well as a traditional family feast in Kyrgyzstan, and also a traditional family feast in Morocco and . . . okay, I do like family feasts. But really, can you truly say you’ve experienced somewhere if you haven’t had a beer with a local, in their local?
While I was checking out a couple of profiles on CouchSurfing, I noticed that some members were also members of HospitalityClub.org, so I joined that as well. Hospitality Club’s mission statement is: ‘By bringing travellers in touch with people in the place they visit, and by giving “locals” a chance to meet people from other cultures, we can increase intercultural understanding and strengthen the peace on our planet.’
The HospitalityClub site was similar to the CouchSurfing site, but was founded for an entirely different reason. The site began in 2000 and was set up by Mensa member Veit Kuehne from Germany for Mensa members only. Their mission statement was: ‘Mensa SIGHT [Service of Information, Guidance and Hospitality to Travellers] allows members to enjoy the company and hospitality of fellow intellectually gifted people from around this world.’ It was only when they got bored talking about quantum physics to each other that they invited the rest of the world to join.
At around this time, I had a couch-surfing brainwave. I decided that I would go on a Grand Couch Surfing Tour of the Globe. What better way to see and experience the world—and purely coincidentally have another idea for a book?
But which countries should I surf in? The world is full of couches. On the CouchSurfing website alone there were more than 200 countries represented, including members in such far-flung and far
-off-the-tourist-track nations as Iraq (34 members), Afghanistan (28), Palestine (24), North Korea (4), East Timor (3), São Tomé and Príncipe (2) and one member in the Spratly Islands (wherever that is). There were even five members in Antarctica—although none of them offered an actual couch except Daniel, who listed his occupation as ‘Waste Management’. Under ‘Accommodation’ he had:
Maybe. I say maybe because IF you’re coming to Antarctica I assume you’ve already secured a comfy bed. BUT if you somehow manage to get here without one, there is always a couch in the lounge.
I figured that if I got a round-the-world ticket and did at least two countries per continent I would get a good cross-section of couches (and their owners). In the end my itinerary was shaped by a preference for visiting places I hadn’t been before and the vagaries of international flight schedules. All that was left to do after I’d booked my tickets was to choose a host who was happy to choose me as their guest. My simple criterion was that I wanted to stay with folk who sounded interesting—I had to get a book out of it after all and I guessed that I wouldn’t get much of a story if my host got home from work at seven every night and crashed in front of the TV. I wanted people who really lived their lives and were happy for me to live them with them for a few days. And if my hosts sounded just a little odd, then so much the better. Mind you, I did find some profiles that were more than just a little odd:
Interests:
Beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be allied.
Favourite Music, Movies and Books:
The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning.
Personal Philosophy:
And new philosophy calls all in doubt, the element of fire is quite put out; the sun is lost, and the earth, and no man’s wit can well direct him where to look for it.
One Amazing Thing I’ve Seen or Done:
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
Murat, 33
Istanbul, Turkey
I sent out all my requests two months before I was due to fly out and sat back and waited for couch invitations. With a week to go before departure, I had all my couches ‘booked’ with a suitably eclectic mix of people, including folk of different ages and sex; singles, families and couples; and occupations, from an architect and a nurse, to a university student and even someone who was unemployed.
My Grand Couch Surfing Tour of the Globe would be a series of snapshots of everyday life all over the world right now, when technology is bringing us closer together but the politics of fear may be driving us further apart. Can a Muslim in Istanbul and a Catholic in Rio de Janeiro watch the same TV shows? Does someone from Nairobi enjoy the same music as someone from Santiago? Who drinks more— the Belgians or the Canadians?
In an age of cheap airfares and porous borders, where almost every corner of the globe, from Azerbaijan to Zambia, is open for tourism, going into someone else’s home is possibly the last authentic travelling experience. And for the growing legion of couch-surfing members, the only way to experience it is by sleeping around.
CHILE
1
‘The only rule I have is that you HAVE to shower every day please! (I have had terrible experiences in the past.)
Daniel Ortega, 24, Santiago, Chile
GlobalFreeloaders.com
My Grand Couch Surfing Tour of the Globe didn’t start too well. I couldn’t find a couch. Or, more precisely, my couch was playing hard to get and wouldn’t return my emails. I’d already booked my spot, but it would have been handy if my host Daniel had told me exactly where in Santiago the couch in question was located. Daniel had seemed keen for me to stay when I’d contacted him a month earlier. Well, not exactly bursting-with-excitement keen. He had answered my request for a couch with:
Ok
I would have not problems those days.
Daniel
Daniel was one of a number of people in Santiago I had contacted for a couch. I liked his profile on GlobalFreeloaders because I was intrigued to meet him and hear all about his horrific stories of the unwashed. His brief profile read:
Spare room in 3 Bedroom apartment close to the Andes (view from the living room). A block from the subway station, and 30 min from the city. I am a uni student so I have plenty of spare time on my hands for going out.
I had confirmed my booking for Daniel’s couch and he’d emailed me straight back and said to drop him a line a couple of days before I was due in Santiago. I had sent Daniel three emails in the week before my departure, but he hadn’t responded to any of them. I thought that he might have reneged because he was worried about my standards of hygiene, so I even sent him an email to tell him how much I loved taking showers.
With only two days left before I was due to fly out, I gave up on Daniel and sent out a new pile of couch requests. The couch owners I emailed included Ignacio, who ‘loves chillies and collects hot sauces from around the world’; Ann Maria, who does not like ‘people who walk around nude or half-dressed in front of me’; Claudio, a belly dancer, who said ‘I’m physically living in Chile, but my mind is somewhere else’; Mauricio, a financial reporter whose interests included oncology (the study of tumours!), ‘the afterlife’ and ‘being profound’; and Diego, who may just be a friend of Daniel since he says you can bring a pet as long as ‘you don’t bring anything that might stink’.
I was still checking my emails an hour before I left for the airport, but the results weren’t good. Every single one of my requests for a couch drew a blank. Most of my potential hosts totally ignored me, and all the rest were otherwise occupied—three were out of the country, two already had couch-surfing guests and one was rearranging his sock drawer.
I hadn’t had any trouble finding a couch anywhere else in the world, so why was I in danger of a total couch wipe-out in Chile? I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting any response. I even resorted to telling Mauricio that I, too, like being profound and assuring Diego that although I didn’t own a pet, if I did it wouldn’t be a stinky one.
I checked my emails one last time in the transit lounge at Auckland airport. ‘Yes, I would love to have you stay,’ said Christian Petit-Laurent Eliceiry, film director, 32.
Bingo.
Christian had just finished filming a documentary in Spain and had ‘plenty of time to show me around, go bike riding in the mountains and visit neighbours’. Just as I was excitedly rubbing my hands together, I noticed the last line of the email: ‘I’ll be back in Santiago on the 27th.’ That was the day I’d be flying out of Santiago to Brazil.
Okay, be positive. There was still hope. I had all of 23 minutes to send out more emails before the flight to Santiago boarded. And there were still 1672 couch owners left in Santiago I hadn’t emailed yet. One thing I wasn’t going to do, though, was to send out a ‘blanket’ email to all 1672 people. I’d already received ‘blanket’ requests to stay with me in Melbourne from people who hadn’t bothered to read my profile or even say ‘Hello Brian’ and I’d ignored them.
I only had enough time to shoot off a dozen more couch requests. I also decided to cast my couch-surfing net a little further by sending requests to a few people in Valparaíso, less than two hours from Santiago. Although there were plenty of couches to choose from in Santiago and Valparaíso, many of the hosts didn’t speak English which was one of my criteria as, unfortunately, I only speak English (a limitation of my Grand Couch Surfing Tour of the Globe, I fully acknowledge).
Ten hours after leaving Auckland we were flying over Chile’s coast, which lay below like the front edge of a stage with the snow-capped Andes resembling a long white silk curtain as the dramatic backdrop. I actually didn’t know very much about Chile. Amazingly, after all my years of travelling this was my first foray into South America.
Even as I waltzed through the arrivals gate of Aeropuerto Internacional Arturo Merino Benitez, I was still optimistic that I would track down a couch for the night. I’d pop into the airport internet cafe where
I was sure there would be a couch offer waiting for me with simple directions to the host’s salubrious home and the promise of an ice-cold beer waiting for me on arrival. I soon discovered, however, that my masterful plan had one tiny flaw. There was no internet cafe at the airport.
That left me with very little option. I had to get into the city. A city I knew absolutely nothing about. To gain a true ‘local’s perspective’, I had decided not to take guidebooks with me and to do very little research on my couch-surfing destinations. Which would have been all very well if there had been a prospective local to give me a local perspective.
The centre of Santiago seemed the most likely place to find an internet cafe. I still hadn’t given up hope of procuring something that resembled a couch for the evening. I wasn’t being totally inflexible, though. At this late stage, I’d settle for a chaise longue, a chesterfield, a divan or even a large ottoman.
Santiago looked like a European city thrown into the middle of the Himalayas. The towering mountains around the city seemed to crowd in almost to the edge of the suburbs, with the snowy peaks shimmering brilliantly white above the city’s murky brown haze. Every time the airport bus stopped to let someone out, I would say ‘El Centro?’ to the bus driver and he would look at me with disdain and say something in Spanish which I guessed meant: ‘What do you think you idiot? Does it look like the centre?’
But when we finally got there, El Centro looked nothing like my idea of a city centre. I was dropped off on a wide busy boulevard lined with office buildings and poplar trees. The spot looked identical to the last three stops on the boulevard where the bus had dropped passengers off. I stood for a minute and tried to get my bearings (which is actually quite difficult when you have no idea even where you are supposed to be), then started walking up the boulevard. Still looking for the heart of the city, I turned down the first side street I stumbled upon. It was lined with shops and sidewalk cafes filled with slim good-looking folk eating large good-looking ice creams.