"Are you hungry? Do you want to eat a horse?" the Saigon locals asked 25-year-old Ronnie*, an electrical engineer fresh off the plane from Manila. He'd just discovered "that when in Rome, do what the Romans do, (but) when in Vietnam, you eat a horse." Twenty minutes later, he also found out that in a Vietnamese restaurant, you can readily eat weasel, deer, rabbit, and porcupine, but the much-desired horse may be a little late for dinner.
"My host's friend asks, 'Where's the horse?' Finally, the horse arrived, but everyone was already drunk by then," recalled Ronnie. "The following morning—I don't know what negotiations happened while we were having horse—but the guy brought two large, live cobras... one is chopped for food, and with the second snake, they drained the blood, put it in a jar with sugar and spices, and then taped the rim and then 'wine for you'!"
It was a bizarre start to Ronnie's vacation, all thanks to CouchSurfing Project, an online organization that allows members to look up other members residing in a country they wish to visit and arrange for a stay. For most, a single e-mail is all it takes to find a room, bed—or couch—to bunk in, while roaming their destination of choice. What they find there is up to them and their hosts.
Of course, some people may feel a tad uneasy about this kind of arrangement.
"My parents don't get it. You explain it to them, but they really don't get it, it's like 'Why will you let some stranger in the house?' I said, 'Mom, people do that you know, host, like, students from other countries,' it's still the same," said Joni Javier, 21, who's currently chained to a desk job and waiting for her family to "stop being weird about" couchsurfing so she can travel independently and host other travelers.
Couchsurfers are usually optimistic about the outcome, often enough discovering a taste for something completely outside their realm of experience.
"The guys in Saigon, they're just really party people. It's a big benefit, couchsurfing, because I'm not a party person—I don't stay up late at night drinking, but they were, so you got to adapt to that and you got to learn," said Ronnie.
A question of trust
CouchSurfing circa 2004 is the brainchild of Casey Fenton, a native of Alaska who "got a cheap ticket to Iceland" but didn't have money for a hotel. So he spammed over 1,500 students in Reykjavik looking for a couch to crash in. Partly due to personality, and partly referrals, the then 26-year-old snagged several offers.
He enjoyed the experience so much that he created www.couchsurfing.com as an extension of his network, and re-launched it a year later to include revisions and refinements for
wider usage.
As of press time, Web site statistics noted an approximate 220,428 "successful surfings" with around 265,090 "friendships created," and 385,419 "positive experiences," by 307,503 couchsurfers speaking 1,086 languages in 220 countries, worldwide. Ages range from 18 to 89, mostly male at 52.3% or 160,792, followed by female at 38% or 116,887, while the rest are either confused or too lazy to write down their gender. [Writer's note: I wrote this before I learned gender sensitivity. Don't cancel me please.]
Around 1.3% or 3,854 of couchsurfers reside in Southeast Asia, a separate category from the 4% of 12,329 in "Asia."
As of Sept. 11, the top 10 couch-surfing countries include the United States, France, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, Netherlands, Brazil and Spain. The U.S. couchsurfers number 77,872 or 25.2% of the total, while countries such as Suriname, Micronesia, Antigua and Barbuda, Turkmenistan and the Central African Republic each are home to only one couchsurfer.
In Asia, there are 4,592 couch-surfers in India; 2,741 in China (not including Hong Kong's 162); 1,488 in Japan; 1,435 in South Korea; 1,312 in Taiwan; 1,160 in Singapore; 869 in Malaysia; 642 in the Philippines; 611 in Thailand; 366 in Indonesia; 131 in Vietnam; 70 in Sri Lanka; 41 in Cambodia; 21 in Mongolia; 13 in Laos; and surprisingly enough, four in North Korea.
In the Philippines alone, the landscape is dotted by these travel enthusiasts, with very active members in the NCR, particularly in Manila, Makati, and Quezon City (QC). The community is still small enough that Ronnie, a QC resident, can give you directions on how to get to a couchsurfer in South Cotabato, who resides in a mountain community a few pineapple farms away from the tip of General Santos City.
The Quezon City chapter recently played host to 25-year-old Joel Pauling, a doctoral student of psychology originally from New Zealand but currently based in Singapore. Joel came across the site while researching on his dissertation—a study of "reputation economies"—and noticed that unlike other projects, CouchSurfing has "a very sophisticated way of looking at reputation" and building trust via commentary or testimonial, donations for the upkeep of the project, and a strict vouching system.
"The idea of most people looking at reputation economies is that it puts people at huge risk, but actually the only bad experiences I've heard of have been with people who had assumed information by meeting up with people who didn't have a complete profile, or they haven't really contacted other people there," said Joel, adding that if a man's profile says he welcomes only female lodgers, a woman who accepts has got something else in mind too.
Sleeping with strangers
Contrary to other "hook-up sites" in the Internet, CouchSurfing is more about finding a cheap couch rather than a warm bed. It's all about getting by with a little help from your friends. And since most couchsurfers don't live alone, it also involves non-couchsurfers.
"My flatmates know I'm couch-surfing, they're cool with it. When I host people, I introduce them to my flatmates; it's not a big thing. People are people, and you deal with different people on different levels all the time... but I say in my flat, you can do your laundry but the locals that actually live there get to use it first, that's the basic rule," he said.
Couchsurfers like Ronnie are sometimes surprised at how virtual strangers are embraced by their family—at one point Ronnie was being reprimanded by his mother for leaving a guest at a mall. There's a section in the site for families to couchsurf with other families, and one can understand its appeal to Filipinos—but the average Filipino doesn't usually have unlimited Internet access or is likely to invite someone to an extremely humble home.
Not that the couchsurfers mind.
Lillian*, a 36-year-old QC resident who manages her family's business by day, offers a private room for surfing guests, picking them up at the airport—or if they fly in at night, checking them out of the hotel—and carting their stuff home before work. Either a guest explores the city alone, or other couchsurfers in the area accompany him. For Lillian, who lives with her sister, the arrangement works out. She herself was able to couchsurf in Barcelona and Madrid, with a pit stop in France, right after joining in February.
"In Barcelona, I couch-surfed with this guy, and this was my first experience, his place was so small. Just the same, I was very appreciative, because he was still willing to share that, 'di ba?" she said, ""But it's not just about letting people stay at your house... people who don't host can be available to take you out. It's about wanting to get to know the city. You don't want to be a tourist when you go abroad. You want to know how people live, and there's no better way than staying with a local. That's the idea of couchsurfing—it's at the convenience of the host, and you're a traveler, it's not really about free stays."
In the interest of keeping relationships smooth, the website offers tips for the host and guest surfer, down to tips for solo women ("helpful for men too!"), vegetarian surfers (or "best way to not starve on the road") and yes, surfers visiting a developing country (where "you might decide to give").
Generally, the couchsurfer must be cautious, courteous, and culturally open.
It doesn't hurt to share something, be it conversation or a memento—Kaycee Sevilla, 21, whose graduation gift to herself was to couchsurf in Greece, has miniature jeepneys for her guests, whereas Joel creates shell pendants using materials indigenous to home.
Staying safe, sane
There is, of course, the occasional "weirdo."
Luanne Damiao, 34, the IT consultant who was Joel's primary host for his Manila stay, recalled an occasion where her guest came downstairs in his underwear to use the bathroom, unmindful of her presence or that her cousin and brother may object. The incident prompted her to add "no running around in your underwear - please!" on her profile.
Kaycee was slightly "unsettled" by suggestive remarks from her host in Athens. "He was making all these comments like 'So, are you going to sleep with me, tonight?' I was alone, okay, and he would go, 'Are you going home with me tonight?' I was in the shower, and he said, 'Can I join you?'"
Yet she also defends him—"Actually he's a really nice guy, and he was kind of joking when he said this, so I don't know if he was serious or not—I just met him a couple of hours before. But other times, he was really nice to me," she said.
Kaycee may have been moved by the overall positive experience. It could be she subscribed to a trend in reputation networks to refrain from giving negative feedback (although it's strongly encouraged in CouchSurfing). Or perhaps she shares the sentiments of Gayatri*, a 27-year-old entrepreneur, who baldly stated "I don't care as long as you don't hurt me... It's understanding the person, it's being willing to accept or reject someone, it's still a relationship, it's still between people, and people can use you or give back to you."
Most couchsurfers are lucky in their choices, but there's always an adjustment.
"I've couchsurfed with families that would cook me breakfast and buy fruit and sweets and stuff, but that's sort of bad if you want to try the traditional way of traveling—you can't go out, obviously, late at night, because they'd be sleeping and it would be inconvenient. I've couchsurfed with people who would be like 'here's the room, here's the key, there's the fridge, I'm going to be over there, see you later' and that's cool as well. So you've got to be very flexible," said Joel.
* Last names have been withheld to protect interviewees' privacy.
Originally published on 14 September 2007 as the main feature of BusinessWorld Weekender.