Use Couchsurfing for Free Lodging When Traveling

I have written about tips to travel safely with Airbnb. For Airbnb, we still pay the hosts, just most of the time it is much cheaper than hotels. Most Airbnb hosts use their spare rooms to host guests. That means most of the time the guests will have a separate rooms to stay in and have a lot of privacy.

 Today I am going to introduce you an even cheaper way for lodging: Couchsurfing. It means hosts provide their couches for travelers to sleep on for free. The concept is very similar to Airbnb. In fact, there was Couchsurfing first (2003), and then Airbnb (2008). The major difference between the two is price. Couchsurfing is absolutely free, but Airbnb charges booking fees plus the amount charged by the hosts.

Photo by Ali Inay

Because of the concept and the fact that Couchsurfing is absolutely free, you should not expect to always have your separate bedroom. Most of the time you get the couches in the hosts’ sitting rooms.

How does it work? Here are the steps:

(1)             Register at the website of Couchsurfing

You need to fill your profile so potential hosts get to know you a little bit. You do not want to provide every bit of your information here (risking your identity), but you do want them to know your age, gender, profession, hobby, and etc. Nobody wants to host a total stranger about whom they know nothing about.

(2)              Search for potential hosts

Once you registered successfully, you can search potential hosts at your destination. For example, if we want to visit London, we just search hosts in London. Hosts normally also have a detailed profile. We get to see roughly what kind of people they are. Here we need to read their profile carefully and see if they are compatible to our needs.

Here we need to pay attention to their gender, their profession, their reviews, their pictures, and their descriptions. As a single young woman, you may want to avoid staying with men living alone to minimize complications. If you are allergic to pets, you may want to avoid people having pets. Those are just examples of what to look out for.

(3)             Contact the hosts

Once you see several hosts that you are interested at staying with, you need to contact them through the website. For the first message, just briefly introduce a little bit of yourself, tell them what the dates you will be there, and politely ask if they are interested at hosting you.

Active members of the website may reply to you very quickly. If a host that you contacted did not reply to you after 24 hours, I would recommend you to contact another one if time is important to you. You can simply cancel the request once you find a host.

You may need to communicate with the potential hosts several times in order for them to make plans for your arrival. That is normal.

(4)             Request accepted and you are ready to go

If everything is fine, the potential hosts will accept your request through the website. Now, you have found a free place to stay and you are ready to go.

Similar with Airbnb, safety is our major concern while using Couchsurfing. For people who are interested at using Couchsurfing, my tips for safe stay are the same to those who use Airbnb. For details, please read my post “5 Tips to Travel with Airbnb Safely”.

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5 Tips to Travel with Airbnb Safely

Photo by Michael Ramey

In the past two years or so, I have used Airbnb quite often for my lodging while travelling overseas. Yes, overseas! Some are suspicious at websites like Airbnb mainly due to safety concerns. I admit that if you are not using it cautiously you might face some unpleasant situations. That is why I am offering you 5 tips to travel with Airbnb safely.

1.     Choose experienced hosts

I have stayed with people who did not have any review. But for most people, I recommend starting with experienced hosts. That means we can see a bunch of reviews from people who stayed with the potential hosts before. It is like someone else already tested before us and proved that it worked.

2.     Read hosts’ profiles and choose the most compatible hosts

Photo by Nik Lanús

Once we have a list of experienced potential hosts, we need to read the hosts’ profiles carefully. Their profiles will tell us a lot about themselves. Their age, their profession, their interests, their lifestyles, their home, and the room/space we are going to stay in.

Normally hosts also have a clear description of their expectations from the guests. They may require guests to be quiet all the time. They may expect guests to join them for breakfasts.

By reading their profile, we can tell if staying with certain potential hosts will make us feel comfortable. We need to choose the most compatible hosts.

3.     Choose hosts who are conveniently located

Once we have a shortlist of potential hosts, we need to look at their location. Is it too far from bus stops/train stations, or from places we will be visiting? Remember, we just need a safe and comfortable place to rest after our day activities. If the host lives at a remote area, it may not worth the efforts to get there. It is better to choose a host who is not far from places you visited or are going to visit, or from major transportation line.

4.     Choose hosts who have good reviews

Now we have an even shorter list of potential hosts. It is time to look at the reviews they got. We need to find out if the potential hosts are helpful and polite. I always stayed away from potential hosts who were not willing to interact with guests. To me, there were two main reasons that I used Airbnb. The first was for cheaper prices in lodging (although that was not always true); the second was to interact with local people and to have some local experience. I never expected the potential host to be my private tour guide, but I expected them to be warm-hearted when I needed help with directions or other related questions.   

We need to read between the lines though, because it is difficult to get a full picture based on the reviews. Sometimes, you may find the reality very different from what you have in mind, despite the fact that the host has many positive reviews.

5.     Always have a backup plan in case things do not work out

As I said above, it is difficult to get a full picture based on all the information we see on the website. Therefore, disappointment can happen. That is why we need to have a backup plan in case things do not work out. That include the local police phone number, taxi booking phone number (if difficult to grab taxi on street), address of the nearest hotel. The point is, if we see or hear anything unusual, or simply something does not feel right, we can immediately get away safely, and can find a safe and comfortable place to spend the night. This happened to me once, and it can happen to anybody. 

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Planning a Road Trip? --- Be Aware of Road Constructions!

Recently we did a weekend road trip to Lake Superior. The driving up there was supposed to take roughly 2.5 hours, but we ended up spending over 5 hours on the road. Why? The road constructions that we were unaware of. 

Because of this expected development, we had to change our entire plan. The original plan was to arrive there in the early morning, spend the entire day at the destination, and then drive back in the late afternoon. Because of the road constructions, we had to spend one night there.

The strange thing was, google map did not pick up the road construction at all, and we solely relied on it. You can imagine the constant rerouting while driving there.

After this incident, I realized that the arrival time on Google maps or GPSs may not be reliable all the time. I did some research on how to find out if there is road construction on certain roads.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has a website that gives detailed construction and traffic information nationwide. From there, you can click the state you are interested to check out. Once you click a state on the map, you can find links to see the state traffic information. These links will lead you to the state traffic website eventually. From the state traffic website, you will get detailed information on road constructions, lane closures, and etc.

Hopefully we can estimate our travel time better next time with this additional information. 

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The Disneyland in Shanghai---How Chinese See It

A glimpse of the Paris Disneyland

In June 2016, a Disneyland theme park was opened in Shanghai, China. Before it was officially opened to the public, a few lucky people were given free tickets to test visiting. It was said that only 10, 000 persons were allowed to enter each day during the test visiting period (this number increased to about 60,000 once it was open to the public). Some test visitors shared their experiences on social media, letting others know what to expect when visiting this Disneyland Park. The Chinese people’s reaction to the opening of a Disneyland theme park in their country is positive overall. Previously the nearest Disneyland was in Hong Kong and people from the mainland need special pass to go to Hong Kong, therefore it was not always easy. Now finally there is one in Shanghai, it is absolutely much easier to visit. The network of high speed trains in China made it even more convenient.

However, visitors were pissed off by the sales strategy of the park. They felt that they were pressured to shop in the park, and prices were extremely high compared with that of outside stores. Another complaint was that almost everywhere there was a long line.

So how much do their tickets cost? Here are my findings from their official website:

	Standard	Senior	Child (height over 1M)
Peak season	¥499.00 CNY (about $77USD)	¥375.00 CNY (about $58USD)	¥375.00 CNY (about $58USD)
Off season	¥370.00 CNY (about $57USD)	¥280.00 CNY (about $43USD)	¥375.00 CNY (about $58USD)

Above prices are for a 1-Day ticket. That means if one wants to spend two days there the price would double. Peak season refers to summers and national holidays, and the rest of the time can be counted as off season.

For many people who come from other provinces and plan to spend a night there, they have the option to stay in one of the two hotels that are inside the Disneyland: The Shanghai Disneyland Hotel and Toy Story Hotel. Here are the prices of these two hotels according to their official website:

	The Shanghai Disneyland Hotel	Toy Story Hotel
Peak Season	¥2500.00 CNY (about $384USD)	¥1600.00 CNY (about $246USD)
Off Season	¥2400.00 CNY (about $369USD)	¥1300.00 CNY (about $200USD)

Above prices are for one room one night for two persons. Due to different prices for different types of rooms, the number you see here is the estimated average.

From above prices, you get a sense of minimum cost if a family of three plan to visit the Shanghai Disneyland Park for one day during the peak season. Two adults and one child (height over 1M) would cost ¥1373.00 CNY (about $211USD). If they plan to spend a night there, the minimum cost would be 1373+ 1600=¥2973 CNY (about $457USD).

From American standard, those numbers do not seem to be too high for a trip to the Disneyland, but if one considers the average annual income of the Chinese in 2015, which was ¥1830 CNY (about $282USD) per month (this figure is from National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China), then one begins to feel for them. That is why many commented that the Shanghai Disneyland Park is a place for China’s rich people only.

Excluding the price issue, most people enjoyed their experience in the Shanghai Disneyland, especially kids. Well, if you plan to visit Shanghai, you may add another stop on your itinerary.

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The Beauty of Horticulture

I love parks, gardens, small lakes with miniature bridges… Recently I came across this beautiful horticulture center in Singapore. It felt like a combination of a garden and a park. It was full of creative ways to arrange flowers and trees. For people who like gardening, this place could be quite inspirational.

Plan to visit Singapore? Check this HortPark out.

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