A First-Time CouchSurfing Success

When I first heard about CouchSurfing, it seemed a little crazy and potentially dangerous. Stay with a random person you met online instead of in a hostel or hotel? Sure, you might save a little money — but at what cost? Lately, however, I’ve been seeing more and more accounts of CouchSurfing success, from the former Frugal Traveler and other travel bloggers. It was time for me to put my reservations aside and give it a shot.

I joined the site a few weeks ago with the thought of trying it out in Russia next month, but on a whim I plugged in my next destination, Kaili (凯里). Kaili’s a pretty small city in Guizhou Province, so I didn’t expect to find one CouchSurfer there, much less four. One of them was a Peace Corps volunteer, about the same age as me and also female. She seemed like a perfect first host for someone a little apprehensive about the whole CouchSurfing thing.

When my roommate and I got off the bus in Kaili, Kat, our host, was waiting to meet us at the  bus stop. She whisked us up to her apartment and immediately made us feel at home. One misleading aspect of the name CouchSurfing is the word “couch” — like many CouchSurfers, Kat had a spare bedroom that she put at our disposal. We were not going to suffer for this experiment.

Our CouchSurfing guide took us to mingle with the locals at a hopping hotpot place that we could never have found on our own.

Once we’d settled in, she led us to dinner at a local hotpot restaurant. Tucked deep in an alley near the center of downtown, it was the kind of place we could never have found on our own. Its specialty was suantang, a hot-and-sour version of hotpot that is found all over Guizhou. As we rubbed elbows — literally — with a crowd of Kaili locals, we traded stories about teaching in China and advice about returning home after long stints abroad.

The rising popularity of CouchSurfing and WWOOFing exemplifies the best way that travel has been changed by the Internet. Both programs help bridge the divide between “tourist” and “local.” You get a much deeper understanding of a place than you could get from seeing the sights and then tucking into bed at a hotel or hostel. During our nights in Kaili, for instance, Kat was able to draw on her year of living there to tell us about the culture and society of Guizhou, which is one of the poorest and least-developed provinces in China.

The fact that the programs work at all is also a tribute to the good side of humanity. CouchSurfing reports more than two million positive experiences, and a system of personal recommendations and “vouches” protects users from scams. Yes, you save money by CouchSurfing, but that’s not really the point. It’s more about making new friends and understanding new places.

I don’t think I’ll CouchSurf on every trip — it seems best suited to places where you will be spending a couple of days and have time to hang out with your host. But I’ll definitely do it again, and I plan to get involved with the CouchSurfing community wherever I next settle down.

Related posts:

1. Guizhou’s Spicy-Sour Specialties
2. Expense Report: 6 Days in Guizhou
3. Introducing Guizhou Province
4. Dinner Out: Da Gui
5. Paiyang’s Propaganda

Tagged as: China, CouchSurfing, Guizhou, Kaili