Through the couchsurfing community, I’ve made a ton of very close friends and have crossed paths with just as many inspirational travelers. Not to mention that I’ve saved massive amounts of money by staying with fun locals and skipping on boring hotels.

After returning from SE Asia, a trip that was great but full of small disasters, I couchsurfed my way from Los Angeles to Houston in what surprisingly became one of my favorite legs of the trip. I had to get home to start work, but I wanted to do it cheaply and I wanted to stop at a couple of places along the way. To do that, I picked up my car (which I’d leased to a couchsurfer, by the way) and met up with three others from CS. One was Xueer, a Chinese girl who I’d hosted in the past. The other two were a British couple named Fen and Julia who were all around great company. My car is pretty green and with four people splitting the gas, it only cost about $40 each. Not bad!

I couldn’t have gotten much luckier with my new road trip buddies, nor our hosts. My first host was in LA. A 73-year-old jazz pianist and writer from CS lent Xueer and me his sailboat to sleep on for a few nights before we hit the road. My bedroom was the literally the size of a coffin. In the meantime, he entertained us with some jazz piano in the back of his son’s sex shop. Believe it or not, I’d never even been into a sex shop before, and never imagined it would be so nice inside. And full of variety. It was an interesting experience. Our host was fantastic and just such a good guy. Really enjoyed it there, but we eventually had to hit the road with our new British buddies.

First stop, Williams AZ. Well, we thought so. Our hosts were a young couple, the girl having recently returned from the Peace Corps. Their house was spacious, the walls decorated with notes from CSers and maps full of pins. The coolest part about the place, though, was its location. Their house was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by forest and with a view of the mountains from the balcony. No town in sight. Really an interesting place to couchsurf. The Brits made some tasty Indian food, our hosts made some tasty pizza, I ate both, we sipped on homemade wine and generally had a good time.

The next morning we headed out with yet another CSer from Australia who was being hosted there at the same time. Destination: Grand Canyon. We spent the bulk of the day walking around the canyon. I never got tired of it.

Off to Amarillo. I wasn’t really looking forward to Amarillo, a big cowboy town in North Texas. I probably wouldn’t have liked it either, if it weren’t for our amazing and bizarre hosts. Before we came, they encouraged us to grow out our beards and wear something sexually interesting. The beards were to take part in their attempt at the largest group of people in a room with monkey tails shaved into their beards. I asked why they decided to do that, and our host James responded, “I couldn’t think of a reason why not.” The clothing was for a fetish dress up party they were going to at a local bar afterwards.

We unfortunately missed the monkey tail festivities, but did see the aftermath: several men with ridiculous facial hair. We did get to the fetish party, though. It reminded me of Austin-style weird, but even weirder. The clothing, for those who were wearing clothing, was so strange. The music was nuts. The crowd was diverse. I was sandwiched between a girl from Eritrea and a cowboy wearing fishnet stockings as his shirt with the nipples cut out. It was an experience, and the fact that it was in Amarillo made it all the more bizarre. Our hosts were great and we loved it there.

We decided just before leaving Amarillo that we didn’t want to drive all the way to Houston, so I called my trusty friend in Dallas to ask if she could host us. I met her in France and hadn’t seen her in a while. She and her roommate not only obliged, but they made us a delicious couscous dinner. We all spent the night around the table and then later in the pool. The next morning we were on to Houston.

It was good to be home, but I was already thinking of the next time I’d be able to hit the road. I hosted the Brits and Xueer for a while. A couple of days later we had 4 different surfers including a really interesting and fun guy who was driving his motorcycle through 48 states. Tomorrow we’ll be joined by a group of five from Spain, etc etc and the fun never ends. It actually doesn’t get tiresome either, because I don’t host a ton of people every single day and I also let them do their own thing. It’s just nice to meet so many fascinating people living fascinating lives. It serves as a constant inspiration. Maybe it inspires a little jealousy, but it also inspires a lot of dreams.

My Russian host told me about the saunas in Russia, a place often visited on a weekly basis. I’d never even been to a sauna. He told me that, in the countryside and smaller towns of Russia, people sit in the sauna’s heat and, after working up a sweat, throw their naked bodies into the snow before coming back into the heat. It sounded crazy enough that I had to try it. Unfortunately, it is apparently too hot for snow in Bangkok. He took me to the next best thing: a sauna with a cold pool. I’m not a sauna expert, but I’d never heard of this.

The pool room that was full of large-bellied Thais, and there we were: two skinny white guys. Nic had to show me the ropes because I don’t know sauna etiquette. We went into the sauna and just sat there. My first impression was that it was really hot. It was like a sauna in there. After a few minutes, I was wiping pools of sweat off my body. It felt like sitting in a humid oven. After a while it was uncomfortable, and I asked myself what the hell the point in this was. Wasn’t it hot enough outside?

To my relief, Nic finally stood up and walked out the door. I followed him like a confused puppy. He jumped into the pool so I followed him in. Ohhhh mama was it cold. It felt like jumping into a pool of ice. I got out of there in a hurry, even more confused as to what the point of all this was. We repeated the process several times, with a little exercise in between. I don’t know how it happened but, somewhere along the line, I started to enjoy it. We headed out past the fishbowl of girls and left feeling refreshed. I’m looking forward to revisiting.

My last night in Bangkok, I went to get a massage with a new friend (Nate Dog) and my new Texan host named Nana (how cool is that name?). I was advised to get an hour massage, and so I did. I ordered the Thai massage because, well, I was in Thailand. Besides, the oil massage sounded like it might be a little oily, a point that didn’t phase Nate Dog. We changed our clothes and laid down on neighboring mats.

I was waiting for my masseuse while Nate’s had already started rubbing oil all over his half-naked body. It actually looked pretty relaxing and I was starting to wish I’d gotten that one. At that point, my masseuse came in and commenced a very deep and painful massage. She tortured me and I had to bite my lip through the whole thing. She then started twisting and folding up my body like a big hairy pretzel. I think she wanted to make me into the smallest package possible, maybe to roll me into a ball to kick around, or to stuff me into a hat box. I’m not sure which one. At one point she asked me if it hurt and, for some ridiculous reason, I said no. Maybe I didn’t want to feel like a sissy in front of this tiny girl, or maybe I was just too scared of her to say anything else. It definitely hurt, though. Hurt like H-E-double-hockey-sticks. I looked over at Nate to find that he had fallen asleep during his massage, the bastard. My masseuse finished beating the hell out of me, then I said thanks and gave her money before limping out.

The spa was crazy though somehow enjoyable, but my poor body must be too fragile for the likes of that tiny Thai woman.

I stayed in Bangkok way longer than I’d planned, and I blame that on the many amazing couchsurfers I met along the way. Among them are:

Nic, the Russian fruit vacuum who eats at the same restaurant under a bridge every night and treks insane non-paths around the world.

Nana, the 25-year-old first time host who had just managed a university business school in Laos for two years and welcomed three of us into her lovely home, gave us a key, and showed us a great time.

Alex, the Russian travel writer and photographer whose freelance work is funding his extended trip through Papua new Guinea, where he’s already contracted malaria three times but won’t be stopped.

H, the stripping New Orleanian with a thousand stories who has lived all over the country and actually made me want to revisit New Orleans.

Her friend James, the awesome and nerdy-in-a-cool-way Librarian taking a year off work to take a year long trip around SE Asia.

Nate Dog, an overseas English teacher and photographer who James met on the plane, on the start of his year-long trip.

Plus many others at the meetings and the occasional stranger on the street. It’s been fun. Next stop, Guangzhou.

Location:Bangkok, Thailand

From there, we decided to tour the highlands on motorcycles. Cliché, maybe, but fantastic. We visited some tourist spots like a silk worm farm and silk factory, which was much more fascinating than it sounds. The real highlight, though, was the scenery. Waterfalls and national parks were the obvious scenic sites, but the view was constantly stunning while driving from place to place. I say “constantly stunning” because when you see something or someone that you find incredibly beautiful, you might at first feel stunned. That wears off, though. “Yeah, she’s beautiful. So what?” But, for whatever reason, the views never ceased to amaze me hour after hour and day after day. Maybe it’s because of the changes in scenery or maybe I was just giddy, but this is one beautiful country.

Does that make it aweful?

I enjoyed my brief time in Vietnam more than I can say. Is it the best place in the world? I don’t know, but it’s one great package of a country and I can’t wait to go back. And I will, too.

Location:Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Since the last time I visited, it has become a much more travel-friendly place. The interstate highway across the country and through Phnom Penh has been paved, cutting travel time down to a third of what it used to be. ATMs have also started popping up around the country, with around 30 in the capital. Anyway, I’m glad we spent more time in Phnom Penh this time around and I was sad to say goodbye the next morning when we left for the Vietnamese border.

When hitchhiking in Cambodia, getting a ride is easier than anywhere else I’ve ever tried hitchhiking. Even in the countryside, we always had a ride within minutes. That may have been because I was standing next to a pretty girl with short shorts, but I think they were attracted to my hairy chicken legs. The problem is that everyone wants money for picking you up. I have no problem with paying people and, with bus prices as they are here, don’t need to hitchhike to save money. But when you’re paying everyone who picks you up, it feels a lot like you’re just hailing cabs.

We stopped at a little family restaurant where no English was spoken, as you’d expect, but we couldn’t even communicate with our hands. You’d think it would be easy to motion with your hands that you want food, especially if you’re sitting down in a restaurant. But it wasn’t easy, somehow. After a while we finally got what turned out to be the tastiest meal of the trip, and my first bite of beef in more than a year. Beef. Is. Good. What was I thinking all year?

We stayed in a guesthouse on the Cambodian side of the Bavet-Moc Bai border crossing, where Vietnamese people cross to gamble in the casinos that all have signs forbidding Cambodians to enter. The casinos were filled with all Vietnamese gamblers and I really wanted to sit down to play with them, but then I remembered that I don’t have money.

We crossed the border and took a bus into Ho Chi Minh City, where there are four million motorbikes but you are woken up by roosters crowing. People are so friendly in the South. Sorry, northerners. Maybe I need to revisit Hanoi but, from my very limited experience, people are just nicer here. But I’m so glad to be back in Vietnam. The people are amazing. The food is amazing. The traffic is crazy. The food is amazing. The food is amazing. Nobody makes spring rolls like me, though. Not nobody. Not no how. We’re going to hang here for a while then head up North before crossing into Laos. The food is amazing.

Facebook is blocked. Seriously, communists, what the hell good do you think that does?

Workers of the world, unite!

Location:Bui Vien,Ho Chi Minh City,Vietnam

When I refer to debauchery, I’m mostly talking about sex tourism. I’m still amazed at the openness towards prostitution among tourists in Thailand. There are as many prostitutes as smiles, and slightly more prostitutes than old white men – emphasis on slightly, because there are enough old white men here to get together and claim the world record for the largest bocce tournament. And they all have young hotties under their arms. Poor girls.

Hopefully that old man never stumbles upon this site. He is just a bocce player, probably not a sex tourist, unless he has ever been to Thailand.

While many are forced into prostitution by poverty or some other factor, the general consensus seems that most prostitutes here (men and women) choose this work in order to fund a more comfortable lifestyle rather than a need for nourishment. Still, I can’t help but feel bad for those young girls with old men. Ew.

Thailand is a pretty conservative country but with pockets of crazy. Major cities have blocks of brothels where women will physically pull you in by the arm or are dancing on poles by the dozen for you to choose from, where happy ending massage parlors and ping pong shows (don’t ask, mom) are almost as abundant as pictures of the King. More bizarre is how candid tourists are when talking about sex tourism. Many acquaintances have given me advice on where to find the best prostitutes in Thailand. I’ve had these interactions everywhere from bars to the waiting room in the US embassy, and from people of all ages from their early twenties to their late olds. This phenomenon doesn’t at all represent Thailand as a country. It’s really strange to me but, in many ways, Thailand is very progressive about sexuality.

While this is still a reasonably conservative place, transgenderism is accepted here and very common, shockingly so if you’ve never been here or if you’re one of the many storied tourists who has taken a beautiful Thai girl home to find that she is in fact a beautiful Thai man. Though a LGBT Thai might beg to differ, it doesn’t seem to me that they have many problems with inequality. You can find them teaching in schools, working in offices, singing on TV or anywhere else your average Thai person might be. A few years ago, some Thai schools even started building a third bathroom for transgender students. Why is it that, in some ways, Thailand should be so much more progressive than the United States?

Long live the King.

Location:Kathu,Thailand

Well, that’s not the case for me. I love flying. I love taking off and landing and cruising through the air. I love sitting in airports and watching people reunite and kiss goodbye. I love looking at the people around me from behind my book that I carry around to hide my face while I look at people, and wonder where they’re from or where they’re going. What’s their story? I love everything about air travel, except that its uncomfortable. That has
changed.

This business class thing is totally absurd. Everyone has a sort of tiny cubicle with a big blanket, normal human pillow, over-ear headphones, and bag of toiletries. The seat is huge and reclines to a bed that was actually more comfortable than my own bed at home. I couldn’t believe it when I walked in. Before I could even sit down, I was offered a glass of champagne.

“Is it free?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Hit me with it!”

I drank more alcohol on this 16 hour flight than I’d had in a month. Again I find myself laughing at how absurd and unnecessary this is. Business class may be full of rich pricks, but they’re comfortable rich pricks.

This was the shortest long flight I’ve ever had. I didn’t even want it to end, partially because it was so enjoyable and partially because I think I might get deported at customs.

Location:Somewhere over Russia

Our tickets were rerouted through Atlanta instead of Tokyo, and I won the coin toss for the first class upgrade. Just when things couldn’t get any better, they didn’t. We traveled to Atlanta on a forgettable flight. It felt good to finally be on a plane after all this time, even if we were flying across the country in the opposite direction of our destination. We had a few hours of a layover in the Atlanta airport which, unlike LAX, doesn’t look like an abandoned building. I spent most of my time scarfing down as much free food as possible in the business lounge with the better class. 8am and half the people were drinking alcohol. How is that normal?

A few minutes before boarding time I headed to the gate and people watched. There were lots of giddy looking tourists ready to draw their cameras at a moments notice. I assumed in my head that they were going to China, but they probably weren’t going to really see anything. And then I noticed a sign on the screen asking all non-Chinese citizens to come to the desk and have their visas checked. This is where I become an idiot. Visa? I don’t have a visa. I was told I don’t need a visa by what was apparently a not-so-reliable source. In fact I planned my trip to China and Thailand, skipping over Vietnam, specifically because I wanted to avoid the cost of visas and new passport pages. My heart sank. I looked around and noticed that those giddy tour groups got the visa memo.

I asked what I should do and was told to rebook my flight. I thought of rerouting my ticket to bypass China altogether, but they wanted to charge me $2,200. I would rather haver just gone home. So then I thought of getting a rush visa. Of course I didn’t want to get a visa in the first place because I wanted to avoid the cost of visas and new pages. Hina helped me look up different rush visa services because, as I was stuck in Atlanta, I needed a third party to do it for me. The airport service asked $1,200 for both visa and visa pages, and the cheapest we could find outside of the airport was around $700. On top of that, I’d be stuck in Atlanta for probably another week. I spent the entire day running around the airport trying to figure out what to do, had some generous offers of help from local couch surfers, and finally made a decision.

I bought another ticket from Shanghai to Bangkok, leaving the evening that I arrive in Shanghai. As long as I was in China for less than 24 hours, I could be a transit without visa passenger. So I spent some money on a ticket, bleh, and decided to give it a shot. Of course no one could tell me if it would work. The ticket checkers at the gate would decide if I could get on the plane and the customs agents in Shanghai would decide if I could pass. Everyone I called, as expected, was clueless. The consulates never answer phones. Why even have phones, really? Crap. Of course I have no one to blame but my stupid self.

Now I had two nights to kill in Atlanta. Written out in a shortened sequence like this, you can’t imagine how stressful of an ordeal it was. I really didn’t feel like trekking across the city to find a free place to stay. I decided to sleep at the airport at first, but I was so upset with myself that I wanted something comfortable. If there were any cheap hotels in the area, I figured, I could plunk down some of that cash that Delta had given me. But now that I realized the airlines can give out vouchers for hotels, I thought I might ask for a discount. Sure it was my fault, but I figured that it doesn’t hurt to ask.

Actually it did hurt to ask. The woman I was talking to was in a bad mood and practically yelled at me the entire time she was doing something on the computer. I didn’t think she even knew what I was asking for but, at the end of her rant, she handed over vouchers for a free hotel and meals. So I decided to stay there for a couple of days until my flight left, hopefully with me on board.

The last day was really hectic and stressful, but I’ve had a lot more good luck than bad. If my plan works, I’ll be getting overseas a few days later than I’d planned and either try getting a visa in BKK or just spend all of my time in Thailand and Cambodia, where visas are available on arrival. I’d at least have more time to explore the country and be a lot less rushed. And even if I spend my $800, I’ll hopefully still have a $600 voucher with my name on it.

Blehhh I am an idiot. At least I’ll have a story to tell next time I’m at an icebreaker and am asked about my most embarrassing moment.

Going to the airport

I made it to the airport two hours before my flight because I needed to print out my tickets proving that I’m going on from Shanghai so that they’ll let me on the plane. Unfortunately the kiosks couldn’t find my record so I had to wait in line. Then the attendant couldn’t find my record. Eventually I had three people hovering around a computer wondering what was going on. They seemed perplexed. Time was ticking and my flight had just started boarding, while I still had to go through security on the other side of the airport during high traffic hour, print out my tickets, and board the plane. There was a pretty good chance I’d missed my flight and I couldn’t help but laugh. I don’t know why, because it would have only been funny if it were happening to the guy in front of me, who was a jerk by the way.

They finally got me checked in and suggested I hurry. I did. Luckily I was able to go through the shorter club member line with the rich folk because of my free upgrade. I ran across the airport and into the business lounge so I could print out my tickets.

“The printer is broken.”
“Whaa? Is there another printer anywhere?” I was out of breath from my pathetic attempt to move fast.
“I think there’s one across the terminal.”

So I ran across the terminal and found the computers, but there were no printers. I asked at the information desk. No printers around. There was a young girl at a Rosetta Stone kiosk near the info desk, and I saw that she had a laptop with a printer attached to it. Eureka!

“Excuse me, I need to print out my tickets somewhere otherwise I can’t get on my flight to china that leaves in 20 minutes, and there are no printers around here. Could I use your computer to print something out really quick?”
“No, sorry you can’t.”
“Seriously? It’ll just take a minute and I might miss my flight!”
“Sorry, I can’t help you.”
“You have a laptop with gmail open and it’s attached to an inkjet printer. You can definitely help me.”
“Sorry.”
“Ass.”

So I ran to my gate and just tried to board with only ten minutes to go. I pulled out my phone and showed them my emailed itinerary. After scrutiny from another group of attendants, I got an, “I guess you can board…” but they didn’t sound to sure of themselves.

I’m on the flight now heading to China, and may very well have issues at customs. For now, though, I’m just enjoying my flight and hoping for the best. To top it all off, I later lost my camera and phone. Hopefully all this hassle has knocked some sense into me.

Location:Atlanta, Georgia, USA