sofasurfers

“How do you fancy some karaoke?” Like – do you even need to ask?!
After dniner, we go to meet my hosts’ school-teacher friends – a
mixture of UK, US, Canadian and Chinese twentysomethings – at KTV, a
posh Chinese karaoke chain. The VIP suite has been hired, bottles of
Absolut vodka have been bought, and pride has been pocketed: Bridge
over Troubled Water, Don’t Cry for me, Argentina, Big Girls are
Beautiful and more are warbled, shouted, rapped, wailed, while vodka
is slurped, slammed and spilled. At one moment, I hear a giant
amplified belch – I turn aghast to the holder of the microphone: it is
Beth. “Oh, that’s Beth for you,” says Gareth, the other half of my
hosts…
But at about 2am, my long day, my rubbish train sleep (I’d landed in
Xi’an at 8 this morning) AND news that we’re booked in to sing till
6am begin to sully my spirit. Argh – how to escape? Fortunately (or as
fortunately as one can hope for), Beth has gone AWOL (”Oh that’s Beth
for you”) - but apparently, she can’t be far away, and she’s probably
homewardbound. Gareth puts in a call, and I soon find her out in the
street thick in fisticuffs with some local Chinese, drinking a beer
for the road and chowing on a sausage sandwich. Then we even have a
bit of a moment, as I say I need to collect my rucksacks from the
youth hostel… “You can collect them tomorrow”… I need them – they
have all my valuables… “It’s too far.” It’s like 20m up the road, at
the Bell Tower, the very centre of town. “I don’t know where that is.”
Ok, we are going there – it’s no detour. I will pay for the taxi. “Oh
sorry, I am being drunk and bullish.”
We jump in a taxi. But first she demands a MacDonalds. But you’ve just
had a sausage sandwich plus dinner. Fortunately it is shut, and I get
to regroup with my possessions. 20 minutes later, we arrive home –
another greying communist block – to be greeted by a fractious
Chihuahua cross with cupboard syndrome (ie, it’s been alone and inside
all day and a new guest is all too exciting for her, as she jumps,
barks, runs in circles in seeming perpetuity). This is all too
exciting for me, as I find myself overtired and on the precipice of
rattiness. I’ve booked into go and see the Terracotta Army the next
day, so I turn in – into my own room with a double bed! Beth takes to
the sofa and a particularly loud DVD performance of The Wedding
Crashers, and prompty passes out. I then fret around my bedroom about
whether it’s really not guestly to march out into the living room and
turn the TV off. What if she just looks like she’s asleep, but is
actually thoroughly enjoying the movie?! I peek through the crack in
my bedroom door, and it’s impossible to see. I wander out into the
living room with the pretext of tidying my boots (!)… and I turn off
the TV – it is neither noticed nor remembered. The nomadic life of a
couchsurfer is unavoidably chaotic – dates change, hosts change,
you’re constantly on the go, without much control as to when and
where; sleep and peace are rare luxuries. A chaotic host is chaos too
much.

Terracotta Army in Xi

So at the designated time, I trot alo g to KFC, the meeting point for
the Xi’an couchsurfing group monthly get-together (some serendipity
that it lands on the day I land, sans host). This is where a) I hope
to connect with my replacement hosts, and where b) I hope to parachute
into a readymade social gathering with instant friends. It’s only when
I arrive at KFC-on-a-China-scale (ie a vast, 600-cover eaterie) that I
start feeling a bit tragic/shy/lost. I see one whitey with two young
Chinese people, but I can’t bring myself to assume that the one
mixed-race group are the couchsurfers. I hide behind some fauxliage in
an attempt to bore myself into action. Soon after, I hear the words in
my ear, “Are you here for the couchsurfing meeting?” (’Meeting’ – why
so businesslike?). Hello Romeo (real name, apparently) – Romeo is a
Californian airline pilot who had actually called me earlier in the
day to respond to my last-minute couch request (though by that time it
was all sorted). “Do you know if this is the right KFC?” he adds.
Pointing out that there is in fact another (though smaller) KFC
directly opposite, I find myself potentially in yet another ‘casual’
directions drama (when due to meet my Beijing hosts at Peking
University’s West Gate, I learnt that there were in fact two West
Gates… and then there was of course the “which Ulan Bator public
library” fiasco). This, I realise, is a Chinese hazard – so big,
everything is in duplicates: London is just so village by comparison.
Actually, no such drama ensued – the other group I’d spied were in
fact couchsurfers, and we gravitated together in one seemingly normal
and thoroughly unstrange collection of strangers: not one person had
met before, yet there was so much to share. Eventuallythe female half
of my hosts arrived –Beth, a 26-year-old Canadian English teacher –
and we set off to our meal (not in KFC).

So it seems that my replacement BlackBerry and UK sim were deemed by
the local customs to be highly suspect, and so I never received them.
I do have a Chinese mobile, however: +86 150 1144 2562 and I
understand you can send texts to me for free via Skype. When I land in
Kazakhstan (hopefully on 19th November until 30th November), I will
(hopefully) be back on my Russki phone (+7 916 648 407). Or of course
I am on email, but much less reliably so.

So if the book Point It (a universal dictionary of 1,200 photographs
of useful things, such as foods, tools, body parts) isn’t useful in
China, I thought, where can it possibly help? And so, I head to the
market all smug and optimistic – I’m off to buy a mug so that I can
make tea on the trains. Out comes Point It and a big smile (from me).
Then comes a headscratch, and a huge saucepan (from them).

After some mixed messages from my host in Xi’an (I’ll meet you off the
train/get a bus to the centre of town), and no response to my sms, my
couch was clearly looking a little shaky in Xi’an. I called him, I
texted him, I called him…. “Sorry, the subscriber is not reachable”.
But it’s only 9am, and I’ve taken refuge in a youth hostel (which for
a traveller who wants their ear to the ground, it’s the next best
place as there’s a constant flow of stories, tips). Plus they have
wifi. So I jump straight in, and join the Xi’an couchsurfing group.
And look! They’re all having dinner tonight. Soon I will have local
friends, even if I don’t have a couch. I also make some last minute
requests, on account of Plan A going awol (I later receive a text from
his number saying, “Jack forget phone. He went old hometown. He maybe
tommorrow come back. What can I do.”). And lo, some hours in, I get a
response, from the city ambassador no less, who hosts with his
girlfriend. Moral of the story: don’t make snap judgements.

So I didn’t feel at all guilty about popping out to a couchsurfing
party back in town that evening – in fact, it was almost my duty to
leave. (And yes – praise be to couchsurfing, for delivering instant
gangs and house parties even – house parties! My favourite! - in
every big town.)

So was ‘Sustainable John’s’ birthday party – a twenty-something
American guy (yeah, I know, not very investigative of me not even to
get his age) who works for the Beijing outpost of a British renewable
energy company. (Note: another couchsurfing characteristic – a strong
eco conscience.) My friend Donagh is there, who Ollie and I had met at
his own couchsurfing party in Moscow, where he worked as an architect.
He’s staying with a Philippino, whose mission on his couchsurfing
profile is “to spread faggotry around the world”. Colourful
conversation is anticipated. “So may I ask you a personal question?”
he demurrs. Umm, go on then. “Have you ever laid any of your hosts?”
Ha ha ha ha ha. I say, young man! No, thank you! “I have,” he
volunteers (one suspects that his initial question was really just to
enable this confession. “I’ve even had a couple of straight guys. I
just say to guests that they can sleep in my double bed if they’d
rather not sleep on the floor.” Ah – that old chestnut. Lucky Donagh.
Ha ha ha ha ha.

And evidently, lots of people use couchsurfing for hook-ups – and
there are enough Russian girls whose profile photos feature themselves
naked for as far as they can see, happily fuelling the stereotype that
they are easy. But what happens when couples couchsurf? Do they? My
straw poll of one, who perhaps we shall leave unnamed, says no - “You
just don’t feel like it. Even if you have your own room. The
conditions just aren’t optimal.” And what about couples who host?
Well, maybe that’s why I wasn’t welcome for the evening with my
Beijing hosts. One guest reports: “Yes, I once stayed in the same room
as a couple, who were clearly, though surreptiously at it at bedtime,
and then again in the morning. It was pretty awful – and immature, I
reckon: I was so conscious of my every breath. I was trying to pretend
to be asleep, but I didn’t really convince myself. It was the same in
the morning – when it was all over, I then feigned waking up – with a
big yawn and stretch.” The moral of the story: no more couples.

My couchsurfing friends: Donagh and Yvonne at The Great Wall

So leaving the cocoon of my five-star hotel, I set out for my first
Chinese hosts, a French-Taiwanese couple who lived near Peking
University. A young couple, I thought – they’ll be feathering their
nest! The maternal instinct will be flowering! They will take care of
me! And while I’d originally intended to stay only with natives, I
speculated that ex-pats might give me a more honest perspective on
life here. And honest I got: however, I know with some certainty that
Big Brother is watching (check this Security Error Notice that popped
up when I was online: “It is possible that someone may be trying to
intercept your communication with this website”), so I’ll save it (and
my bacon).

But while the French post-doctorate biologist couldn’t have been
kinder, more hospitable or, dare I say, more handsome (he baked apple
cake, took me to the market, lent me his bike etc), she didn’t seem
possessed of the couchsurfing spirit. Maybe she had a headache. Maybe
she was cross because I broke the only toilet (yes, I sat down and
with my apparently doughy derriere, snapped the seat, creating one of
those cracks that pinches your bottom so sharply, you don’t know
whether to laugh or cry). Maybe she has only-child syndrome (China, a
nation of only children, doesn’t seem to exhibit this disorder of the
developed world, however). Or maybe she just felt threatened – she
certainly made it clear that I wasn’t to be accepted. At our second
dinner, she was virtually silent: her nails were top priority for some
15 minutes. Meanwhile, Monsieur mediated. He and I chatted like she
wasn’t there, though it was impossible to relax and defy her repelling
forcefield.

…is great (yes, there’s a phone signal here). We’re 800m up, and some of the climb reminded me of my 1st encounter with stairs, when you have to take to all fours to mount (stop that now!). As one fellow climber said, ‘Now I know what they mean by breathtaking views’. For others, The Great Fall of China would be more appropriate. And for company, I’m with CSers, hearing about how some are more like bed hoppers! Gory details soon!

I now have a Chinese mobile: +86 150 1144 2562. I am dearly hoping to be reunited with my UK number and replacement BlackBerry (THANK YOU CHLOE AND ABID) imminently – I should have it by the time I leave Beijing (the night of the 9th November), when I set off for Xian, land of the terracotta army, and then Urumqi, land of the Uigher people, and then – fingers crossed, Buddha willing – Kazakhstan by 19th November.

Yes, yes, tonight, I’ll be back on track, as I check out of luxury, and into my first Chinese couch for two nights – still in Beijing, owned by a French-Taiwanese couple. Actually, I’ve been doing a bit of a Nikolai (the Russki who leans on couchsurfing for new friends in new places while staying in hotels) – I have met up with a city ambassador, who warned me of tales of sexual predatory behaviour by one Beijing host (”I only have a double bed or floor space, but you might find the floor a bit dirty,” he says to his guests). And I also reunited with a girl from London, from whom we took the baton at our Moscow couch. I had posted a thread on the Beijing couchsurfing forum for allies to go to the Great Wall avec moi. I feel like my London prejudices and snobbery has almost left me entirely – posting for friends on forums! Who would have thought?!

Me and my bike, outside the Forbidden City

“I’d like to hire a bike!” I announced to the hotel, on landing in Beijing. They looked at me with great concern, but dutifully obliged. £1 later, I was off! I took a mental photo of where I was: this simply must be the tallest building in Beijing, I squealed silently to myself – a perfect landmark! I can never be lost. And despite the fact that in fact this is the second tallest building in Beijing, at 249.9m – just inside the regulated limit of 250m – as soon as I was just some 500m away from the hotel, it was indeed lost to the wall-like cloud of pollution (comparable to smoking 70 cigarettes a day, some say). No matter – where there is sun, there is a compass. And off I pedalled to Tiananmen Square, to the Forbidden City, to the crumbly, higgledy-piggledy hutongs of backstreet Beijing. For there is no finer way to conquer a city (and Beijing – the size of Belgium – had felt like Everest in my perception). I might not be able to speak like a local, but at least I can cycle like them.

Forgive me for I have cheated. Forgive me for I have given myself a couple of days off couchsurfing to find my Chinese feet. Forgive me for I have checked into a five-star hotel, the three-week-old Park Hyatt in Beijing. My body was starting to feel like a Bernard Matthews chicken after sleeping on the floor, all squished out of joint, vacuum packed into tiny pockets, and, in a word, battered. I am now on my first sprung mattress in a month. I woke feeling like an angel on a cloud, in my crisply dressed, pure white, kingsize bed – with none of my bones forced off-form by a floor, the bare ground or a hardwood mattress, I felt weightless and suspended in air.

My cloud of comfort in the Park Hyatt

So it’s bedtime, and I’m just performing my ablutions in the bathroom of my host’s Soviet flat in Vladivostok, when first the doorbell goes (I ignore) and then I hear a knock at the bathroom and some Russian babble. I’m only brushing my teeth at this stage, so I unlock the door, and my host’s mother (for she lives here too, along with her teenage son) rushes in, locks the door and sits on the toilet. It’s utterly unclear whether she’s hiding from the person who has just rung the doorbell, or whether she is in fact in need of the toilet. I turn my back and ‘busy myself’ with the pearlies to save her modesty and conceal my smirks. The sound effects quickly reveal that it’s a matter of the latter. I brush harder. Then up she gets, flushes the toilet (though it doesn’t flush properly), and leaves. “Is this normal?” I ask Stasia the next day. “Well, it’s not so normal, but many Russians have to share their bathroom and toilet between a whole family.” And now couchsurfers.

You may – or may not – recall my acute case of CGS (couchsurfing guilt syndrome) in Mongolia where I was shown photo after photo of my host’s guests creating culinary delight after culinary delight for their host. I then spent my three days in solitary confinement on the train vowing to cook, trying to unhibernate some classic British recipe from the dusty archives of my mind. I questioned my Vladivostok host on this – so does everyone cook for you? “No! Please tell me what I am doing wrong. I have had forty guests [a lot by couchsurfing standards], and not one has cooked for me.” I knew that I couldn’t really live with myself if I ducked out of this challenge. So, faced with another challenge of a vegetarian – Stasia – in our midsts (did I say – I forget – it’s another clear characteristic of couchsurfers; I’ve had three vegetarian hosts so far), I set about not making too much of a mess of… you guessed it, Cauliflower Cheese. Of course, I burnt the white sauce, the white sauce curdled and went watery, and I only served up at like 11pm (not entirely my fault, but too dull to divulge why). Actually, I give to you the new Russian name for Cauliflower Cheese, courtesy of Natie, my host, and it’s infinitely more poetic: ‘White Trees’. Too pretty a name for something that was too ugly to photograph.

Hitchhiking in Russky Island

Hitchhikers and couchsurfers exist happily in the same Venn Diagram. There is also a massive young hitchhiking movement in Russia. When I explained to Stasia, my new St Petersburg friend here in Vladivostok and inveterate hitchhiker, that thumbing a lift in Britain is a long shot these days, on account of our fear of baddies, she replied, “Yes. Apparently only Poles and Slovaks pick up hitchhikers in Great Britain.” (I felt some amount of national shame.) Anyway, so there we were – Stasia, another Russian couchsurfer called Nikolai (who was from the Altai mountains and actually staying in a hotel in Vladivostok on a business trip, and who used couchsurfers to find instant friends on the ground) and I, on Russky Island, in the Sea of Japan off the coast of Vladivostok (bear with me here!)… somewhat stranded because we’d missed the bus. “Let’s hitch!” I venture, feeling like I could ride on the coattails of someone who knew what she was doing.

And so she did – while I futilely (that looks wrong) stuck my sore thumb skywards, Stasia calmly flagged down a car rather like a policeman would – palm held flat and vertical in the international sign language of “Stop”, and then raised up and down in the code of “Slow down – now!” We were quickly picked up by Alexei, someone who’d lived on Russky Island all his life and whose job was to cart sand around to construction sights. And no, he wasn’t a military man – he just liked a bit of camo. Why am I laughing so much? Because I’m in the midst of saying, “Please! Camera further away from me – please!”

So delighted were the Police by the sight of the Skoda that they invited us up to their Police Dog Training Centre, which happened to be close to the fortress. Perhaps in their drunkenness, they overlooked the fact that this centre was in fact a restricted zone, so when we wandered up into the compound (a forbidding-looking redbrick institution where a Hammer Horror location manager might luck out), our ‘friends’ were nowhere to be seen. It didn’t matter! We’d been invited! So up we strolled, to be confronted by an plain-clothes female police woman (curiously attired in cropped trousers, sheer tights and apricot socks over the top). Somehow she wasn’t very happy to see us. To compare her appearance and behaviour to that of an angry poodle though would of course be thoroughly childish, but she barked and yapped away in Russian. But we’d been invited! So blissfully ignorant as to her orders, we strolled on – the dogs were just ahead of us!

She tore up to the ankles of the Skoda driver and nipped away at them (actually, she pushed him with both hands and the full force of her Russian form). But it was OK! We could see our new drunken friends by the kennels so we continued to feel fully invited. We had a 1969 Skoda, after all! And, indeed, our facetiousness paid off, as our friends pacified her, and I stole this photo of the dogs

You may think this has little to do with couchsurfing, but what it confirmed to me is that you can parachute into a land all alone only to find that instantly you have a gang. No one really minds that this is a gang of strangers – we are all bound by a common sense of adventure and a will to find new friends. It also confirmed that when on landing, you have to expect to hit the ground running – in fifth gear.

Footnote
“Do you know what Continental Europe thinks of Britain?” asks Mikhail, the Skoda man. No… “The joke is that, as islanders, you are all inbred. Meanwhile in Europe, we have been having this great party, where all nations ‘get friendly’ with each other.”

Now this belonged to two other couchsurfers that my host had corralled from other hosts around the city: Martin and Mikhail from Slovakia and the Czech Republic respectively – and their Skoda, driven all the way from The Czech Republic. The Skoda was our lift up to the fortress (six of us in all, in two shifts). And so, perched atop another guest’s lap, we headed for the fortress, only to be stopped by the notorious Russian police… Not, however, in hot pursuit of some pocket money for them in the form of a speeding bribe, I mean fine (no chance in the Skoda), but, in fact, in hot pursuit of the Skoda itself – which they seemed to think was the most hilarious thing in the world ever. So hilarious that all jumped out of their car to film, photograph and laugh at this antique creature. Now they were off-duty, so it’s completely ok that they were all sideways with beer. (and indeed still drinking it, in plastic pints.

Skoda and couchsurfers: Nikolai, and orange-clad girls (another couchsurfing similarity - I think it must be about being brave enough to wear orange and stay with strangers). The bespectacled one is my host, Natie.

Vladi Police: Off-duty drinking policemen looking and laughing at the Skoda’s rear engine

So this was the highly anticipated Ambassador’s Reception at
Vladivostok Del Mar (blue seas! Speedboats! Water sports!). My most
able host, Natie, is the city ambassador for Vladivostok, and even
before I had pulled into its historic station ( the end of the line of
the world’s longest railway), it was obvious that Natie deserved her
stripes. “I have a plan to organise visiting Vladivostok Fortress for
a few couchsurfers this afternoon,” she had texted. “Would you care to
join?” With my travel guide informing me that this fortress – built in
1910 with some 1.5km of tunnels – is “really hard to find” and that
“visiting on your own is very difficult,” I gladly signed up.

Vladi Del Mar: taken from the train