Monday 28 May 2012

First visitor!

Last night we had our first visitor stay at our apartment... Charmaine!  Charmaine is a university student from Hong Kong.  We met her on New Year's Eve in India when she was travelling with her boyfriend.  This was her first trip to Vietnam and first time doing a full trip alone.  It was good to see her again and have her stay at our place for a night.  It's great travelling and meeting people from all over the world, and then meeting up again in other countries!



I showed her around the neighbourhood and we walked to The Crescent and ate sushi at Tokyo Deli there.  She said that our neighbourhood was so different from the rest of the city (it really is).  I always feel like our neighbourhood is not the "real" Vietnam, but I still enjoy it.  It's like living in our own little westernized bubble.

Charmaine is travelling for about 2 weeks and is doing something called "Couchsurfing" on this trip.  Instead of staying in hotels she has decided to use the website http://www.courchsurfing.org to meet up with locals and learn about their lives.  On Couchsurfing, she can arrange to stay with or meet up with people living in the cities she is visiting.  Users on the website get "ratings" from people who meet them, so you can see that you're not staying with a total weirdo.  On this trip she stayed with a Vietnamese college girl, and also met expats from Slovakia and Canada here who she found through the Couchsurfing website.  An interesting way to meet people and learn about the local culture!

Who will the next visitor be... ???

1 comment:

  1. Jake told me about couch surfing last year! I guess its all good as long as you don't end up with a psychopath...I'm not sure I'd be that adventurous to try it out haha

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