This is my guide to couchsurfing, including advice for using it in poorer/dangerous countries and staying for longer periods with a host for a very low price.
I avoided couchsurfing all of last year, thinking "isn't that dangerous? Won't it make it harder to get laid?". Turns out the answer is no. I used it during my time in Brazil this year. I ended up saving tons of money, improving my travel experience and getting laid.
First I went to Rio, stayed with a few hosts. All of them were great hosts. The first guy was not in Rio when I arrived so he arranged for a friend to bring me the keys. So I had a luxury apartment with pool, gym, etc. to myself for several days. The second host gave me my own room in a luxury apartment across from the beach. It was in a suburb a short bus ride from the main tourist area. And this was during carnival, when accommodation prices quadruple and it's hard to find anywhere to stay.
The only thing I'd do differently is stay in a hostel the first few days. Especially since it was my first time in Brazil. It's very difficult to get to your host on time when you don't know the city and don't have cell service.
I stayed with a few hosts in Sao Paulo for one week each. Had a bed and my own room each time. On the third one, the two guys seemed cool, the place was decent, and my Airbnb search was going poorly. So at the end of the week I said I'd like to stay a bit longer and I'll pay for it. I ended up living there for 4 months. My rent was 560 reals (165 usd) a month. 460 a month if I walked the dog in the mornings. For comparison, similar rooms on Airbnb were about 1000 reals or more and a dorm room in a cheap hostel was 950 reals a month. All of last year I lived in Mexico and Colombia and paid between 300 and 600 usd a month for accommodation, so this was a big win.
I'm not saying the place was perfect. The location was so-so and there were a number of minor things wrong with the place, but nothing I couldn't get used to. But I had my own room, a bike, fast internet and I could bring girls home anytime.
The other advantage of couchsurfing is that the hosts are only interested in meeting cool people. My hosts took me on plenty of cool outings such as a hiking trip which was one of the most fun days I had in Brazil. It was an unmarked trail you'd never find without insider knowledge. And it was completely free. That's the power of couchsurfing. Airbnb hosts are mainly interested in money.
Here's the procedure I use:
Go to the host search page on couchsurfing.
Set the filters to male, age 18-40, and most importantly "private room".
Write a request - I get decent results with something like:
Hi <name>, <introduce yourself, where you're from, why your coming to this city, how long you'll stay>. <say it would be cool if you could host me, even if only for part of my stay> <your name>
It should appear handwritten. That means not too long. If it's more than a few sentences they'll suspect it's a copy and paste job. An occasional mistake in capitalization or spelling helps with this too.
Not too short either. All the critical information should be in your message.
Usually I request a week. If your travel dates are flexible, mention this in the request.
Send lots of requests. In my opinion this strategy has the best cost/benefit ratio. In other words you'll get the most acceptances in the least amount of time. I'd say that in the ballpark of 50 requests will result in one decent acceptance.
Here are my numbers from Brazil, just to give you an idea.
Rio: 350 requests. 10 accepted. 3 actually stayed with.
Sao Paulo: 194 requests. 11 accepted. 3 actually stayed with.
Many of the people who accept live hours away from the city center. Or the quality of their home is below the threshold of what you're willing to live in.
Yes, sending that many requests by hand would be exhausting. I made a program to automatically send all those requests. If you guys want the program let me know.
Optional: set a filter in your email to avoid the barrage of "Sorry I can't" emails. For gmail my filter looks like this:
from: couchsurfing
subject: message
has the words: sorry OR can't OR won't OR unfortunately OR traveling OR "i'm not in"
apply the label: declined
Choose a host. Many people think references are important. Over the past year I realized they're not.
Many people are new to the site, live in a city with few tourists, don't have the money to travel or just don't use the site much. Some hosts I stayed with had little to no references, and turned out to be some of the best hosts I've had. References can be faked easily, so having them does little to nothing to improve safety. Furthermore, if you stay with them, you know exactly where they live. So they're not likely to commit a crime because getting away with it would be hard.
Their pictures, messages and profile text can tell you a lot. And worst case, if you show up and feel uncomfortable, just leave.
Theft is still a concern though. If not from the hosts, from the friends or friends of friends that might enter the home. I use world nomads insurance. It covers theft of your stuff, with a few reasonable exceptions, such as cash. So just get the insurance, keep your cash and passport hidden or with you if you feel it's necessary, and make sure your computer/phone has a daily automatic backup of your important stuff to a cloud storage service such as dropbox. Problem solved.
Stay with one of the hosts who accepted you.
If you don't like staying there, repeat the above process with a different host.
If you like staying there, ask if you can continue to stay and pay rent. Ask what they pay before you offer a price. Then offer to pay that amount divided by the number of people. If you can't reach a deal, repeat the above process with a different host.
I avoided couchsurfing all of last year, thinking "isn't that dangerous? Won't it make it harder to get laid?". Turns out the answer is no. I used it during my time in Brazil this year. I ended up saving tons of money, improving my travel experience and getting laid.
First I went to Rio, stayed with a few hosts. All of them were great hosts. The first guy was not in Rio when I arrived so he arranged for a friend to bring me the keys. So I had a luxury apartment with pool, gym, etc. to myself for several days. The second host gave me my own room in a luxury apartment across from the beach. It was in a suburb a short bus ride from the main tourist area. And this was during carnival, when accommodation prices quadruple and it's hard to find anywhere to stay.
The only thing I'd do differently is stay in a hostel the first few days. Especially since it was my first time in Brazil. It's very difficult to get to your host on time when you don't know the city and don't have cell service.
I stayed with a few hosts in Sao Paulo for one week each. Had a bed and my own room each time. On the third one, the two guys seemed cool, the place was decent, and my Airbnb search was going poorly. So at the end of the week I said I'd like to stay a bit longer and I'll pay for it. I ended up living there for 4 months. My rent was 560 reals (165 usd) a month. 460 a month if I walked the dog in the mornings. For comparison, similar rooms on Airbnb were about 1000 reals or more and a dorm room in a cheap hostel was 950 reals a month. All of last year I lived in Mexico and Colombia and paid between 300 and 600 usd a month for accommodation, so this was a big win.
I'm not saying the place was perfect. The location was so-so and there were a number of minor things wrong with the place, but nothing I couldn't get used to. But I had my own room, a bike, fast internet and I could bring girls home anytime.
The other advantage of couchsurfing is that the hosts are only interested in meeting cool people. My hosts took me on plenty of cool outings such as a hiking trip which was one of the most fun days I had in Brazil. It was an unmarked trail you'd never find without insider knowledge. And it was completely free. That's the power of couchsurfing. Airbnb hosts are mainly interested in money.
Here's the procedure I use:
- Set up your profile
- Text and pictures pretty much the same as my online dating profiles.
- Link to my youtube video travel log. It's a few minutes of me talking in cool places I've visited. I highly recommend doing this. 1 minute of video of you talking will better convey what it would be like to hang out with you than lots of pictures and text.
- References - they can be fake, just ask friends or people on this forum to exchange references. I had 7. Seemed to be enough.
Interestingly, if you get a negative or neutral reference, it might be better just to delete your profile and start again. Even if you have lots of positive reviews, a join date from many years ago and a verified badge, people will pay more attention to the negative review. - Don't get verified, it's a waste of money. Who are the only people telling you to get verified? Couchsurfing, the same people who get paid when you verify. Simply asking to see someone's passport or credit card when they arrive would be equally or more secure, and free.
- Friends list - has little value in my opinion. Who's going to be impressed by the number of people you got to click a button?
Hi <name>, <introduce yourself, where you're from, why your coming to this city, how long you'll stay>. <say it would be cool if you could host me, even if only for part of my stay> <your name>
Here are my numbers from Brazil, just to give you an idea.
Rio: 350 requests. 10 accepted. 3 actually stayed with.
Sao Paulo: 194 requests. 11 accepted. 3 actually stayed with.
Many of the people who accept live hours away from the city center. Or the quality of their home is below the threshold of what you're willing to live in.
Yes, sending that many requests by hand would be exhausting. I made a program to automatically send all those requests. If you guys want the program let me know.
from: couchsurfing
subject: message
has the words: sorry OR can't OR won't OR unfortunately OR traveling OR "i'm not in"
apply the label: declined
Many people are new to the site, live in a city with few tourists, don't have the money to travel or just don't use the site much. Some hosts I stayed with had little to no references, and turned out to be some of the best hosts I've had. References can be faked easily, so having them does little to nothing to improve safety. Furthermore, if you stay with them, you know exactly where they live. So they're not likely to commit a crime because getting away with it would be hard.
Their pictures, messages and profile text can tell you a lot. And worst case, if you show up and feel uncomfortable, just leave.
Theft is still a concern though. If not from the hosts, from the friends or friends of friends that might enter the home. I use world nomads insurance. It covers theft of your stuff, with a few reasonable exceptions, such as cash. So just get the insurance, keep your cash and passport hidden or with you if you feel it's necessary, and make sure your computer/phone has a daily automatic backup of your important stuff to a cloud storage service such as dropbox. Problem solved.
