Sunday, June 27, 2010

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...

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