Sleeping Around (40 page)

‘What rain?' asked Doug, who was having a beer at the bar. James was still in bed nursing his killer hangover. ‘He tried to keep up with the giant German,' Doug said gravely.

I had dinner at a candlelit table on the beach with the backdrop of a garishly tiger-striped sunset. It was incredibly romantic as Elvie tended to my every need, getting me drinks and an amazing chargrilled fish for dinner. Except that Elvie was our waitress and I was dining with Doug.

‘Tonight after work I will take you somewhere special,' Elvie said, when she returned with some lurid cocktail that Doug had ordered for us.

‘Gee, you're good,' Doug said, giving me a wink.

When Elvie came back she was all dressed up, which made me feel very dressed down in my shorts and thongs. The somewhere ‘special' was a karaoke bar. How did she know? Also joining us was Tey, another girl who worked at the resort. Tey, who had an 8-year-old boy, was even tinier than Elvie. Which was handy, since they were both jumping on the back of the scooter with me. I was already feeling somewhat apprehensive about riding with one person on the back. Now I had two potential hospital bills to worry about.

The karaoke bar was in a small open-sided shack in San Juan. It was so small that there was only enough room for two tables. The bar was dark and the barmaid was asleep behind the bar.

‘Is the bar closed?' I asked, waking her up in the process.

‘No,' the lady said, as she reached down and turned on the lights and the karaoke machine.

This was hardcore Filipino karaoke. No chatting, just singing. We took it in turns to sing and even so I must have sung twenty songs. I even attempted a Filipino duet with Elvie. In between songs, however, I did manage to sneak in a bit of conversation. I found out that Tey had worked in Hong Kong for a few years. ‘Everyone in the world likes to have a Filipino maid,' Tey said.

‘Do you know what the Philippines' biggest export is?' Elvie asked.

‘No, um . . . karaoke machines?'

‘Filipino maids.'

‘Really?'

‘I don't know,' Elvie shrugged, ‘but one in ten Filipinos work overseas, which is over ten million people and it is still the largest source of foreign income for the Philippines. I think last year something like fourteen billion dollars came into the country from workers.'

‘That's a lot of money for cleaning toilets,' I said.

Just as I was in the middle of singing a very moving version of George Michael's
Careless Whisper
, four young, tough-looking and very drunk local lads turned up and began talking raucously at the bar. I hope it wasn't my singing, but before I'd finished my song one fellow leant over the wall next to us and proceeded to heave into the flower garden for five minutes.

‘I'm so sorry for the inconvenience I have caused you,' he said politely before slumping back into his chair.

The ride back was scary. I don't think the girls quite realised how scary it really was. I'd had a couple of beers, it was dark, I wasn't used to riding with people on the back (let alone two people), but mostly I'm just crap at riding two-wheeled machines. The girls were surprised when I leapt off the scooter with joy once we'd made it back to the resort with all our limbs intact.

Elvie joined me for one quick drink at the bar. She had to get up early for work and I had a ferry and a plane to catch. ‘I'm very lucky,' she told me. ‘I am happy here. The staff get treated well, I have a nice room and I have this . . .' Elvie swept her arm out towards the beach and water, which were both sparkling bright under the moonlight. ‘I think I'll stay here for a while.'

I could as well. I wonder if my family would miss me . . .

21

‘Types of people I enjoy:

Manic weirdos, introverts and geeks.'

Leika, 28, Manila, Philippines

CouchSurfing.com

I ended my Grand Couch Surfing Tour of the Globe exactly the same way it started.

Couchless.

And it wasn't as if I didn't try to find a couch. I'd already known for a few weeks that Jude couldn't host me for the last night in Manila, so I'd sent out a whole bunch of requests. I don't know why I didn't haven't any luck, because some of the potential hosts seemed quite accommodating:

You are free to use my TV, kitchen, laptop and even my clothes (medium size only). You are also free to use the toilet and my shampoo and body soap.
Jerome, 27

I'd love you to stay and I don't really mind weird, crazy people as long as they're not homicidal and don't trash my place.
Carmela, 23

Still getting no response, in desperation I even sent a request to Rex:

Sorry, I can't offer accommodation because I'm often lying in the gutter.
Rex, 29

Eight different people said they would ‘love to have me', but they either had family staying for the holidays or they'd gone away. One girl had five family members staying in her lounge room—another one won't make a difference, I told her. I did, however, find two girls who said that they would join me for dinner and drinks—even though I wasn't sure I met their criteria as the type of person they liked. Leica was keen on ‘manic weirdos and geeks' and Zane preferred ‘people with a high tolerance for randomness'. The girls were also excited about meeting up because, quite coincidentally, they were friends. They lived on opposite sides of the city and hadn't seen each other for a couple of months.

I'd finally given up all hope of finding a couch when I checked my emails back in Manila. Just as on the first night of my Grand Couch Surfing Tour, I was going to have to check into a hotel. I rang Jude and he recommended Bianca's Garden Hotel near his place in Malate. It was an inspired choice. The hotel was in an old Spanish mansion filled with antique dark-wood Filipino furniture. It was my last night, and I'd just had nine weeks of free accommodation, so I decided to lash out and took the ‘Premier Suite'. The suite, which had a king-size bed and cable TV, overlooked the swimming pool and lavish gardens.

I was meeting the girls at a restaurant in Greenbelt 3 (which sounds like a space station from
Babylon 5
) in Makati, Manila's business district. Greenbelt 3 was part of an immense modern shopping complex with three levels of designer shops, hip bars and restaurants, including the Filipino restaurant Sentro 1771. The girls hadn't arrived when I turned up ten minutes late, so I grabbed an outside table on the terrace looking out across landscaped gardens, fountains and palm trees draped with fairy lights.

Leica was the first to arrive—40 minutes late. ‘We call it Filipino timekeeping,' she said bashfully. I could see why Leica liked introverts. I think she was one. Leica was quite shy and would often talk to her hands instead of making eye contact. Her job seemed perfectly suited for her then— she worked as an over-the-phone IT consultant.

‘I live with my family, so I can't have couch surfers to stay,' Leica said after apologising for not offering her couch. ‘But I love meeting people for dinner.'

After I'd finished my second beer Leica said, ‘You may as well order now. Zane is the running-late queen.'

I had marinated monkfish, that although it was delicious, was four times the price of a meal in Siquijor. Zane turned up just as I was finishing my dinner. ‘That's okay,' Zane said, then promptly ordered two desserts. Under occupation on her profile Zane had put ‘editor, overall critic and frustrated dancer'. Zane was very bubbly and chatty, so I wasn't surprised when she told me that she worked in PR. She also lived with her family and hadn't had any couch surfers stay with her. ‘I've met a lot of couch surfers for dinner and drinks, though,' Zane said, with a mouthful of chocolate sundae. ‘Last night I took out a tall Swedish gay guy who was wearing pinstripe hot pants and braces.'

The girls hadn't seen each other for a while, so they had a lot to catch up on. ‘Did you see
Lost
on Wednesday?' Leica asked Zane excitedly. They also had
American Idol
,
The Amazing Race
and
Prison Break
to compare notes on.

Not only were they talking about US TV shows, they both sounded as if they came from the suburbs of LA.

‘It must be a dream come true being a travel writer,' Zane said in her American drawl.

‘Yes, it was a silly dream I had many years ago.'

‘I have a dream, too,' Leica said.

‘What's that?' I asked.

‘My dream is to marry Wentworth Miller from
Prison Break
.'

‘I think that guy's fulfilled his dream,' I said, nodding subtly to the table next to us. An American guy, who must have been 60, was canoodling with his Filipino girlfriend who looked about twenty.

‘That's nothing,' Zane said. ‘There's a bar downstairs that's full of them. Do you want to go have a gawk?'

We wandered downstairs to the Havana Club and grabbed a table outside. ‘Okay, let's play spot the paid-for girlfriend,' Zane said, eyeing off the crowd.

‘Gee, that's hard,' I said. Most of the clientele were old, paunchy, bald men in Hawaiian shirts accompanied by slim, young Filipino girls. At the table next to us an old fellow with white hair and a bulbous beer belly was asleep at the table, while his young ‘girlfriend' sat forlornly staring at her drink. When I noticed that a few of the men were staring at me, I realised that they were thinking I was just one of them. Except I had two girlfriends. They were also probably trying to figure out how I managed to get two when I didn't look like I had a lot of money.

Leica was feeling uncomfortable. ‘It's just a dirty old man's meat market,' she winced.

‘It's fun,' Zane said brightly. ‘They all keep looking at Brian thinking that he is some sort of rich stud.'

Zane then started playing gently with Leica's hair.

‘This will make them
real
jealous,' Zane smiled cheekily. ‘They'll think he's got himself a couple of lesbians.'

After we finished our beers Leica said that she'd had enough. I didn't mind. I was looking forward to my hotel room—and my own space, my own TV, my own shower and my own toilet to make whatever loud noises I desired in. One thing I would recommend for anyone planning a couch-surfing trip would be to break up the couches with a few nights in your own space. In fact, it's more than just having your own space. Your liver will probably need a break as well. One of the great discoveries I made on this trip is that the entire planet seems to be fuelled by alcohol.

On that note I stopped at a bar near the hotel for one final couch-surfing drink just to ‘soak in' what had been an incredible and incredibly long journey. My Grand Couch Surfing Tour of the Globe had taken me over 60 000 kilometres on 22 flights through 15 countries on 23 different couches. What an extraordinary and privileged experience it had been being welcomed into people's homes to share, even for a short time, a snapshot of their lives. Yes, I also got free couches to sleep on and a local's perspective, but mostly I'd forged instant friendships.

Couch surfing is such a great way to learn about a country and its people. It encourages you to travel in an engaged way—as opposed to the disengagement of seeing places packaged for tourists through a coach window or the viewfinder of a camera. And by witnessing other lives, we open up to possibilities that we were once blind to.

Never before had I appreciated so much that the real rewards of travel are not seeing transcendentally beautiful buildings or breathtaking landscapes, but enjoying the simple friendship and trust of strangers.

On the short walk back to the hotel I was propositioned by a gaggle of prostitutes.

‘You married?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's okay. You can call me your wife's name, so there's no confusion.'

One woman, who was acting as a pimp for her daughter, tried to cajole me back to her place.

‘I'm not interested.'

‘It's okay,' she said. ‘You can sleep on the couch.'

A couch? Hmm?

‘Thanks anyway,' I said, ‘but I think I'm done with couches for the moment.'

EPILOGUE

The couch surfing wave just keeps getting bigger and bigger. When I made my trip there were 150 000 members from 20 000 cities on CouchSurfing.com with around 1000 new members joining each week. By the time I'd finished writing the book there were 700 000 members from 45 000 cities and 10 000 new members joining every week. By the time you read this the membership will have probably have hit the million mark.

In July 2008 couch surfing passed the mark for one million positive experiences. Out of the eighteen people I stayed with on my trip I gave seventeen an ‘extremely positive' (and one ‘neutral' for Vikram and his Marble Emporium—which may have been a tad generous). Since my return I've also had a few couch surfers crash on my couch and I've enjoyed that every bit as much as staying with someone else. It has opened up my own city to me. I've taken my surfers out to tourist attractions (and lots of bars) that I didn't know existed until I'd searched them out on the net and showing them around has made me feel proud of my own city.

From my own couch surfing experiences I think the most amazing thing about the concept is that hosts and guests can really get to know each other. When you visit a place while couch surfing it's mostly the people you remember. By reaching out to travellers and hosts around the globe couch surfing has crossed social barriers and bridged cultural differences to create this unique experience where we share our homes, stories, inspirations and lives. I now consider my couch surfing hosts good friends and we all agree that the relationships formed through couch surfing are what matter most. I still keep in touch with most of my hosts and a few have threatened to come and surf on my couch in the near future.

It's actually been a while since I left my surfing friends, so I thought I'd give you an update on what they've been doing since I moved on: