Couch-surfing is advertised as a cheap way of traveling. Free accommodation and your host to show you around the place, it's cheaper than hotels, hostels and may perhaps be safer than sleeping on the street, or railway stations, and more comfortable than sleeping in an airport.
But couch-surfing is SO MUCH MORE than all of these! Couch-surfing transforms the attitude of traveling, for backpackers and for normal travelers alike, it's not just seeing a strange and unfamiliar place from the outside, i.e. going to all those tourist attractions, take photos and show your friends you were there, It's all about seeing the country from the inside, from the eyes of the locals. After all, it's the people, as much as the landmarks themselves, that makes the place memorable.
I was fortunate to have Ieva as our CS host.
(Photo: Ieva, at home.)Just by talking to Ieva made my trip to Riga memorable. I like hearing what she has to say about her country and her opinion about life, and I think (it seems) that she likes to hear me talking about my home country and all the places I have been. It is all the sharing and giving that makes the experience so unique. No other CS hosts are the same. All of the are different (that is what I heard from Boon Sun), so maybe next time I go to Riga, with another CS host, I will get a totally different experience!
The CS community seems very out-of-the-box, but when you think about it, it is just an organization, or a platform for travelers to gather together and share their experience. It brings people closer, dissolve all the stereotype misconceptions and provides a common ground for people of all kinds to mingle. It doesn't promote globalization (in a way that we thought all things nowadays do), it promotes the difference in culture and helps us to accept and embrace each others' culture.
But not everyone can be a couch-surfer, or let's put it, not everyone can discover their couch-surfing side of personality. What I mean is, when you are in a totally strange place, your mentality is different, you become more protective than you would ever have imagined yourself to be, i.e. believing that everyone stares at you on the street because you are not from here, panicking and thinking if it is a good idea to travel, and thinking, oh god, what if they are racists?
Couch surfing lets you to a deeper understanding of the place and of the world. What does CS feels like? Think of traveling, and times what you get from traveling by 1000. Couch surfing needs guts. Guts to open up to another culture, to a stranger. Guts to talk to people of entirely different beliefs. Guts to stay in a stranger's place. Guts to be introduced to an entirely different way of living. That is what CS is all about. Going beyond your comfort zone.
On a closing note, I have to say, CS, to me, feels like a soul-searching experience. My CS experience let me take a break from my own way of living and thinking, and pulls me out of my own whirlpool of what-is-the-right-way-to-live-your-life. I really have Ieva to thank for this amazing journey.
Ieva said that she will be lazy to go travel around the world because now the world (all the travelers from around the world) is coming to her! I am hoping she can come to Hong Kong soon so I can take her around!
I think female c/s host is much safer. I heard rape cases in Europe by male c/s hosts.
ReplyDeleteThe victims were too shy to run away when they
sensed strange behaviour at the beginning.Then it is too late to run.
i thought you were skept about couchsurfing. remember that article you sent me?? HAHAAAHA
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