Couchsurfing Experience

Now it's time for a couple from France

This year 2010 looks like a year with couchsurfing for me. I got a lot of things from couchsurfing. New life, new experience, new adventure, new friends and new knowledge. Almost every month that we got a guest from outside Indonesia. From many different countries. It's really fun. Many things that I learnt, especially the language. Well, I have told you that previously I already had a guest from Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Swiss, Argentine, and Belgium. Still in the month of April, after a couple from Belgium, I hosted another couple. And this time from French. Really interesting. Always different country.

The first time I met them was in my internet cafe. Well...as usual... it was Pandu who received the couchrequest, then he asked me to do the job. They came to Pandu's house with a cab on their first day in Bandung and fortunately the driver was dumb enough and made them lost. Luckily, they met a good guy who willing to help them, accompany them nearer to Pandu's house, although still not in Pandu's house yet. Well, in short, they finally found Pandu's house through the second cab. After having several conversation and relaxing a little bit in Pandu's house, they came to my internet cafe. It happened to I was on duty and wasn't free enough to accompany them. This is why Pandu brought them to my internet cafe, instead of me who come to his place. Well, the time they went to my internet cafe was late in the evening. It was almost midnight. So, it was like they were accompanying me being an operator. That night we knew that they must be starving, then we recommend them to eat 'pecel lele'... hehehe... it was really funny because they never had things like that before and they had to eat it directly with hands. So, maybe around 1 am, I finished my job and closed my internet cafe. Then I brought the couples to my house. We had very few conversation as both of them really tired, so I just showed them places in my house, like bathroom, my bedroom, their bedroom, and so on. Afterwards, I say goodnight and see you tomorrow.

Before we go any further, let me introduce them more specifics. The man names is Jo and the woman is Chloe. They both are younger than me but still above 20. Jo can speak a little bit of bahasa, even sundanese.. hehe.. while Chloe, she looks pretty and kindhearted girl. She also looks really delicate, but later I knew that she is a really tough girl. Both of them are fluent in speaking french.. the hell yeah.. they are from french, from La Rochelle. Like Jeff and Sandra, that morning, Chloe wake up earlier than Jo. When I look at her, she always reminds me with a french movie, Emily. Well, she doesn't look like her, but, somehow her appearance fill me that way. Chloe wakes up and then go to the bathroom, cleaning herself and prepare for the day....meanwhile, her boyfriend, still sleeping in the other room quietly. It's really funny. Based on my experience hosting people, I always find the same case. Travelers guy always seems to be very lazy and always wake up late, while woman travelers, they are really punctual, neat and clean, always wake up early. Even some of them wake up earlier than me and woke me up.. hehehe...So..... that day we decided to travel to the volcanoes, Tangkuban Perahu Mt. I forgot the exact time when we went there, but accompany them traveling to Tangkuban Perahu was an experience. I mean... we had been went to the volcanoes for many times, almost every time we had a guest, we took them there. But each guest always had their own story. Like this one, with Chloe and Jo, we try another way to go to the top of the mountain. And damn, it spent more than an hour hiking. We were sweating a lot, especially Pandu, but Chloe, wow she is marvelous, she wasn't looking tired and sweating at all. Another interesting things with them was, we saw the black monkey 'lutung' in the jungle around the volcanoes, which is hardly to see. Ahh.. and then there was this funny things when traveling to the volcanoes. Well... it was already evening when we finished our exploration in the volcanoes and it was already dark. No more public transportation that can took us from the top of the mountain until down to the big road. We had no choice but walking. But suddenly, we had a good idea... why not trying to hitchhike? So....we knew that people wont give a damn to local travelers who trying to hitchhike their cars. Hence, we put our beloved guest in the front line to wave their hands calling the car that passing by. And..... oh lala... it works.. hehehe. There was this family car, a nice one that stop and offered us a ride. Wahhh.. we were very lucky, then we hitchhike their car until the city. It was really fun. It was my first experience on hitchhiking.

Chloe and Jo, they stay only for 2 days, but they have their own story for us. They traveled only to Tangkuban Perahu in Bandung, and in the following days after Tangkuban Perahu, they went to Batu Karas, in Pangandaran. Hope to see both of you again, somewhere, someday...

Couchsurfing Experience

I hosted another couple.. this time from Belgium!

Ok.. let’s continue our journey. Not long after an angel visited my house there comes another guest. This time it’s a couple from Belgium. Well, the guest actually asked a couch to Ika, who is a couchsurfer from Bandung as well, but then Ika asked a help to Pandu to host them. And you know.. when there is a couchrequest to Pandu, in the end he will notified about it to me. Hehehe… especially this guest is a couple. So, Pandu then asked me to host them in my house. I still remember, it was in the evening of Friday. Pandu has told me that the guest will arrived in Bandung from Medan in the evening. So I just passed Pandu’s house before I went to my internet café and suddenly Pandu came out from his house and shouted at me…”ilman..ilman…” wow… looks like the guest really has arrived at his house. Then Pandu asked me to come inside his house and introduced the guest to me. The guys name is Jeff and the woman’s name is Sandra. The woman looks fashionable and beautiful. Worth enough to make me forgot about my angel for a second. What awakes me is the fact that she has been taken. Well.. after the short introduction, I have to go to my internet café to work until 3 pm.

Then… maybe Pandu has got no more idea to make a conversation with them, so he took his guest to my internet café at 2 pm. I really loved when Pandu took them to my internet café as it helps promoting my internet café. People will start to think… “Oh my GOD that internet café always full with Caucasian.. Sounds interesting there…it’s an international place” hehehe…. So, what we did in my internet café was just having more conversation and learning some bad words in Dutch and Flemish. Potverdieken! That’s the word that I still remember until now. Finally it’s 3 pm, then another operator, which is my employee, took over my place and I can go home. Then all of us went to my house and planning for next things to do. We were all a little bit exhausted so we just spent some time in my house for relaxing and chitchat. Me and Pandu asking them about their destination in Bandung, and they said they had none. So, on that afternoon we just recommend them for sightseeing our historical building in Bandung which is located in the downtown. They were agreed then Pandu asked me if he needs to go home for a while to prepare everything and will be back soon. While waiting for Pandu, I teached them to play OHU. Yesss.. OHU.. it’s a mathematic game, play with the cards. The rule is simple, we just have to find out a solution for a number that based on 6 cards times with 10 and added with the value of the cards on top of the deck. The highest number must be 71 and the lowest number must be 61. The value of the cards itself based on its number while J, Q, and K has value of 10, while Ace can be 11 or 1. So there are 6 cards on the table and we should find out the numbers by added, subtract, multiply or divide all 6 cards value. The one who find out the answer should say OHU! Well… I played this game with Sandra and Jeff. Even though they seem not enjoying the game so much, but it was a good game for killing the time. They had to think and for the first time it took quite a lot of time to finally get the answer. But I see that Jeff has a potential. He learnt it quickly and at least always found out the answer. Ahhh.. finally I knew why he was that gorgeous. He is working in a bank in Belgium and is a manager. After several times playing the game, Pandu comes. Then all of us were preparing to go to the downtown to see the historical building.

Well.. well..well… we arrived at downtown pretty late.. it was afternoon. Around 5.30 pm. What we do is only turning around the downtown, seeing Asia-Africa buildings and then goes to Masjid. Yeah, however, even when I hosted a guest, if it comes to praying times, I will take it as my number one priority. So, while they were waiting for me and Pandu praying, we told them to taste “Es Cingcau”. Hufff… looks like they were boring because not so many things that appealing. Then, we decided to take them to “Paris Van Java” to watch a movie. At first we want them to see an India movie, but then Jeff looks like unhappy with it, so then we choose to watch a Greek mythology story which is I forgot the name of the movies. Ahhh.. this movie was so so.. nothing special for me but worth enough to kill the time. After all movie things finished, we wanted to take them to our special place, a cheap restaurant but yet good enough to introduce our traditional food and the scenery of Bandung at night. So we had to go to Pandu’s place first to take his and mine motorbike, because it needs a vehicle to go there. No public transportation can reach the place and taking a cab would be killing us. It would be damn expensive. Then, when I was finally at home willing to take my motorbike, suddenly an old friend of mine, a friend from high school, calling me. He was asking me if I were available that night. He wanted to meet me. Then I said, sorry, I was having a guest from Belgium and we were about to go to ‘Punclut’ . So if you don’t mind coming with us, you can meet me, I said. Then, unpredictably he said, ok… I’ll come to your house 15 minutes later. Wow.. ..that was so good as this old friend of mine was bringing his own car. So we were able hitchhike his car. His name is Yudi and he is working on a bank as an IT staff. Yes, it was like he said, he comes like 15-20 minutes after calling me. Then I took him to Pandu’s place to pick our guest. Aftrewards, we went to Punclut. And that was the end of that day.

Morning…….. wow… it seems my guest still sleeping, except Sandra. Yes, Pandu was requesting me to host the guest as it would be a little bit hectic for them to stay at his place. Feeling that the sunshine was almost high, Sandra then tries to waking up Jeff. And it works, although needed 5 minutes to smack him and wake up.. hehe. So, on that day, we were planning to go to the train station to buy a ticket for both of them to Yogyakarta for the following day. And then, afterwards, we would like to join in CS Bandung gathering. It was around 12 pm that finally we were able to catch up with other member of CS in a gathering. We met up at “Gedung Sate”. And there were quite a lot of member that participated in the gathering. The gathering itself has a theme of culinary. So the planed of the event was to try several food in different places in Bandung. Of course the good one and the unique one. All of us were having a good time. Especially Pandu. You know what… Pandu was appointed as a contact person for the event. So it was like anytime and anywhere that he always seeing holding his cell phone, texting a message. He looks really busy. And yes, afterwards, Pandu writes his feeling about being a contact person in his blog. And the way he described it was really funny.. hehehe. On that day I was really happy and would like to join in with the event until the end. But as describe in my previous story about couchsurfing experience, on that day, I was also texting a message with Sara and there was a chance to meet her again in Indonesia for the last time. I was never felt that crazy of wanting to see a woman like I did that day. Then in the middle of culinary, it was around 7 pm, I say goodbye to all member that attend the event and asked a help to Pandu, to take care the guest. And then I hurriedly back home to pack my things and preparing to go to Jakarta to meet Sara. Well….at 9 pm I was at the pool of a shuttle bus and I was ready to go to Jakarta. In the end, the guest from Belgium was sleeping at Pandu’s house, leaving a funny story. Where Pandu realize that western mostly sleeping without clothes put on, only wearing pants. And he also realize that why some beautiful girls didn’t want to be snap by a camera while they were sleeping.