Couchsurfing

Couch Surfing

It is a great idea.

There are, according to the website, 800,000 available couches across the world on which a person who wants a place to sleep for free can go crash. While I was on my road trip I surfed several couches and had some great times. One of the best things about couchsurfing is that you not only get a free place to stay, but you also get a host who will show you the best places to eat and visit and be a tour guide for you. 97% of all reported couchsurfing experiences are positive. That’s incredibly impressive.

Well, it is time to give back to the community. I decided a great way to take care of my continuing troubles with meeting people people in this country would be to become active in this community. I cleaned up my condo and practiced a bit with Justin last month. I took some pictures and updated my profile.

I hosted my first couch surfers last weekend. A Japanese girl and a Frenchman who live in Bangkok. They came down to visit the hot air balloon show that was taking place outside the city.

We had a great time wandering around all the hot air balloons, taking photos

There were fun balloons of almost every shape.

Thailand is kind of a strange place for hot air ballooning though. The balloons work by heating the air inside the balloons. The hot air expands and lifts the balloon into the air. It doesn’t work very well when the air outside is also hot. This is Thailand. The air outside is hot.

The event was held twice a day, sunrise and sunset, the most light, the least heat. We went at sunset.

Incidentally, no balloon took off after sunset. I imagine the heat from all the torches in the balloons brought the temperature of the launch area too high. It lead to a bunch of balloons to hang out for a while, bouncing into each other. Here is an inflatable elephant with it’s face buried into inflatable Levi’s

Once night fell, a bunch of the balloons hung around while some pretty good techno music blared over all the booths.

We had some beers and pad thai and chatted for a while. It turns out that Eriko was flying home to Japan on the same flight I was flying home to America on, with a stopover in Tokyo.

The flight was to take off a 5:30 am the next Sunday. We agreed to meet up in the city on the next Saturday night to pass the time before sharing a cab to the airport.

A week later, I showed up at my hotel room, dropped off my bags, and took a shower, which was the last time I used the room. We did a bit of shopping and caught dinner at Central World, Southeast Asia’s 2nd largest mall.

Eriko mentioned that she had some friends meeting up for a drink in a bar a short distance away. It sounded like fun, so we headed in that direction.

We were on the sky train when I saw a guy with an interesting Tattoo on his wrist. I caught his attention and pointed to the same spot on my own wrist. He happily showed it to me and let me take a picture. I’m not sure if he understood what it meant, I never actually spoke to him so I don’t know if he speaks English.

We finally got to the bar, it was amazing.

You sat barefoot on the white cushions at a plastic table. Underneath the table was a small recess for your feet, but you still had to sit cross-legged. Under the recess was a plexi-glass plate above a TV showing colors and funky designs.

All told the group was three frenchmen, two Thai girls, a Japanese girl, and me, the American. We drank wine and swapped stories. I learned a lot and was amazed at how well I got along with everyone. It was a genuinely excellent time.