Local Look at Life
I was just jostled by inspiration to write while chatting online with a couchsurfer I met on Hangouts. She hadn't stayed with me and actually left Hatyai already. We had met up to eat and gone to play at a boardgame cafe after. She just wrote that she hadn't bothered to send me a request because she preferred to stay with a local Thai host. This isn't the first time the topic comes up and I want to illustrate this local picture from my own perspective as well as past travellers who had relevant references about the same topic.
I briefly explained to this traveller that it is an assumption to believe that by staying with me, you will not experience the local life. In fact, it is one step closer to meeting locals than staying at a hotel. I can think of dozens of examples when my guests had conversations with my neighbours. Usually, I was the translator mediating neutrally in between. I enjoy the role of translator in these instances. The travellers enjoy the questions they get from the locals. And the locals enjoy the opportunity to ask these globetrotters why they would ever pack their bags and leave the comfort of their home environments. Some conversations go on longer than others. Sometimes only a few questions are exchanged. "Where are you from? Where are you going next?"
A most recent example was when I hosted a Korean man in my room. Before he came, I got in touch with a local friend of mine who studied Korean and lived there too. We went to the Turkish Ice Cream shop. These two got along quite well. And the conversation was multilingual as she chatted to him in Korean, to me in Thai; and I chatted with him in English. And we stayed on the topic of languages for quite some time as well. I like connecting people who have relevance in some way or another. I've brought Turkish travellers to the Turkish Ice Cream shop nearby. Two previous Korean couchsurfers got invited to visit the Korean-owned Gallery K which I talk about in this post.
Other recent examples include a very inquisitive French cyclist who met his match answering an array of questions from Pi Num and his friends. A salsa teacher from Ecuador got to meet a group of Thai Bboys I know. That night is a story to itself as we went from dancing publicly in a park to getting invited on stage for the freestyle component of the Bboys' performance in a club.
And on some rare occasions, it's thanks to my Couchsurfing guests that I get to go deeper with the locals here. One example is an Italian man coming from London who insisted on paying for everything. One night he wanted to go to a venue that I had turned my back to long ago, thinking that I wouldn't go back there again. Well thanks to him we ended up going there and I'm glad because it proved to be an excellent lesson in the past being the past. Another example is the story of how I met the Bboys in the first place as my CS guest and I walked to a friend's birthday party and made a spontaneous stop on the way to say hi to the breakdancers.
It is worth noting that I certainly agree that staying with a local Thai family would differ from staying with me. No doubt, that being immersed in a Thai household could offer glimpses at the local culture that chatting with my neighbours in the market could not. It's also relevant that not many Thai couchsurfers in Hatyai are actively hosting travellers. You may not always be able to enter the living room of a Thai CS host, but why not enter the garden by staying with me?
Below I have taken snippets from references on my profile. These references were left by the travellers who stayed with me in their own words. To read the full references, go on my profile. These should serve the purpose of bringing other perspectives together on the theme I am illustrating.
I briefly explained to this traveller that it is an assumption to believe that by staying with me, you will not experience the local life. In fact, it is one step closer to meeting locals than staying at a hotel. I can think of dozens of examples when my guests had conversations with my neighbours. Usually, I was the translator mediating neutrally in between. I enjoy the role of translator in these instances. The travellers enjoy the questions they get from the locals. And the locals enjoy the opportunity to ask these globetrotters why they would ever pack their bags and leave the comfort of their home environments. Some conversations go on longer than others. Sometimes only a few questions are exchanged. "Where are you from? Where are you going next?"
A most recent example was when I hosted a Korean man in my room. Before he came, I got in touch with a local friend of mine who studied Korean and lived there too. We went to the Turkish Ice Cream shop. These two got along quite well. And the conversation was multilingual as she chatted to him in Korean, to me in Thai; and I chatted with him in English. And we stayed on the topic of languages for quite some time as well. I like connecting people who have relevance in some way or another. I've brought Turkish travellers to the Turkish Ice Cream shop nearby. Two previous Korean couchsurfers got invited to visit the Korean-owned Gallery K which I talk about in this post.
May, Seung Min and I sat dicussing languages in a multi-lingual conversation.
Other recent examples include a very inquisitive French cyclist who met his match answering an array of questions from Pi Num and his friends. A salsa teacher from Ecuador got to meet a group of Thai Bboys I know. That night is a story to itself as we went from dancing publicly in a park to getting invited on stage for the freestyle component of the Bboys' performance in a club.
And on some rare occasions, it's thanks to my Couchsurfing guests that I get to go deeper with the locals here. One example is an Italian man coming from London who insisted on paying for everything. One night he wanted to go to a venue that I had turned my back to long ago, thinking that I wouldn't go back there again. Well thanks to him we ended up going there and I'm glad because it proved to be an excellent lesson in the past being the past. Another example is the story of how I met the Bboys in the first place as my CS guest and I walked to a friend's birthday party and made a spontaneous stop on the way to say hi to the breakdancers.
It is worth noting that I certainly agree that staying with a local Thai family would differ from staying with me. No doubt, that being immersed in a Thai household could offer glimpses at the local culture that chatting with my neighbours in the market could not. It's also relevant that not many Thai couchsurfers in Hatyai are actively hosting travellers. You may not always be able to enter the living room of a Thai CS host, but why not enter the garden by staying with me?
Below I have taken snippets from references on my profile. These references were left by the travellers who stayed with me in their own words. To read the full references, go on my profile. These should serve the purpose of bringing other perspectives together on the theme I am illustrating.
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