I am planning to receive travellers at my place through couch surfing. I once lived in Lima and there is even a facebook group of couch surfing in Lima who meet every week. it was a lot of fun to meet people. I wonder if anyone has done couch surfing in Kunming and is there such a group?
Hi There, nice to meet a CSer here.
When I was in Europe ( 2009-2012, ), i couch surfed a lot, met a great deal of nice people, had nice experience. I found that we really do have a CS Kunming group on CS webpage, but it looks quite "dead" somehow. well, it is nice to hang out with CSer, so u are more than welcomed to join my beer or coffee time :))) my email: annabelle_277@hotmail.com
oh, crap, spelling mistake in emal dress, right one: annabella_277@hotmail.com
We have hosted a dozen or so couch surfers in Kunming.
I take it cuch surfing is a euphemism for free loader? Someone too broke to afford even a hotel room? Yea sounds. Only, let some perfect stranger slack on my sofa, eat my food and use my toilet so I can Say I met s new person.
Zhudan, you are exactly right. I gave hosting CSrs a try, they are smelly and have no money (or at least no money to spend any on the host who is so kindly putting them up). They are just using people's good nature to avoid spending any money. I didn't like having people hanging around in my apartment for 2 or 3 days when they had initially just said they would be there for 1 night. So I stopped hosting.
@zhudan: Point of the thing is that it's reciprocal. One good thing about it is that it allows travelers who won't be staying for more than a short time and who don't know anybody where they are going, to meet people who may know a bit more - especially if the traveler can't handle the language of the country. Go down and look at the crowd who show up and stay at the Hump or another hostel and tell me how much they are likely to get out of their short visits (well, of course they can still go out and merely see-the-sights etc. - but then there is the postcard industry).
Naturally, not everybody you get is going to be the ideal guest, and it depends on how much you want to put out as well - not something everybody has to do.
@zhudan... it's about helping someone out. Nobody expects money; if that were the case, they might as well pay to stay somewhere.
I personally would not feel comfortable traveling to a foreign country with no money and being dependent on the virtual charity of couch surfing hosts.
Couchsurfing used to be great from what I've heard - people cooking nice meals for you to say thankyou, or buying you dinner at your favourite restaurant. But that wasn't my experience. I guess as is got more well known it has attracted more free riders.
