CouchSurfing - What? How? Why? When? Where? PART 3

In this post, I will talk about my own Couchsurfing experiences.

I went to Australia as a backpacker in 2011 and I spent around 800 dollars for a one-month trip. I met three Couchsurfing hosts during that time.

So my first host is a nice young lady who lives in Melbourne. She picked me up at the train station and brought me to her place. Since it’s my first day in Australia, I just dropped my stuff and then went to the city directly. Unfortunately she had to work during the whole night every day. So I barely have the chance to talk with her. So my suggestion is if you really want to talk with people, try to apply for these ones who can match your time. A funny fact is her cat was snoring everyday next to me on another couch!

The couch I slept in Melbourne

Downtown Melbourne

The Twelve Apostles at The Great Ocean Road (near Melbourne)

My second host is a single mom who lives in Gold Coast. She was really interested in Chinese culture and her mom was an English teacher in China 30 years ago. I remembered that she told me that she has hosted Couchsurfer from Iran and China, and she just need one more from North Korea to collect all the “evil countries”. While she said the both the Iran girl and me have changed her mind about those countries. But here is another important thing I have to say is even though we went well with each other- she cooked nice meals for me for free and we talked a lot every day, you have to make sure you followed your schedule or at least communicate about it. She kicked me out of her house at the 4th day, because I made a mistake when applying for the couch- I applied for 4 days while I actually need 5 days. She just told me I have to leave, so I ended up in a hostel that day and that is out of my budget. So be aware of the date, you may meet some strict-scheduled hosts.

I will talk about my third host which is the best I’ve ever met in my next post.