My final destination is the place where I will be living for the next couple of years, which will be somewhere in Europe, but first I will be in Singapore for 24 hours then fly onwards to India.

The rough plan looks something like this:

• Singapore 24 hours
• India 6 – 7 weeks
• Pakistan 2 – 3 weeks
• Iran ~ 4 weeks
• Turkey (who knows)
• Europe for a few years…

I’ll be doing my best to keep this blog updated so stay tuned!

This post is the first one of my second overseas adventure, with plenty more to follow.

—

I departed Australia on the 26th of June with Los Angeles in my sight.

On the first leg of my flight I sat next to a huge Hungarian guy who was heading home for a holiday before returning back to Australia. I attempted to sleep but with little avail, so I turned to the sleeping pills that had been given to me in hope of getting some shut eye. I took one and sat back and relaxed and soon I was fast asleep…only to wake up an hour later.

However many hours after departing Sydney airport (I think about 12) we touched down in Taipei, Taiwan. After walking off the plane and entering the airport there was a big sign that greeted us:

WARNING: DRUG TRAFFICKING IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH IN THE R.O.C”

(R.O.C being “The Republic of China”)

I spent the next 4 hours walking through the terminal. I was bored out of my brain, not to mention starving. I managed to get myself lost in the terminal and walked in the completely wrong direction and ended up at the opposite end of the terminal to where I should’ve been. Whoops

I was soon heading back in the right direction after asking someone. I then had to pass through security (where they took my bottle of water) and was soon where I should be.

I looked around for food and discovered Subway and Starbucks. The only problem was I had no cash, so I continued looking around the terminal to find an ATM to no avail. I headed back to Subway and asked the guy if they took Visa, he said yes so I ordered a sub

Back on the plane we were served another meal soon into the flight and afterward I tried to fall back to sleep. I managed to get a few hours of shut eye and we were soon touching down into Los Angeles.

“Oh you know, on a strangers couch” I replied.

“What?!” they said with a look of disbelief.

“It’s called CouchSurfing” I continued, “Basically it is a giant social network of travelers and couches…”

This is a pretty typical conversation for me.

On my first overseas adventure I CouchSurfed quite a lot. Some of these CouchSurfing moments were through the CouchSurfing Project, which is a social network of travelers throughout the world. Last time I checked there were around 790,000 members signed up, of which roughly 57% offer their Couch/Spare Bed/Matress to weary travelers such as myself.

My first experience was CouchSurfing in San Jose, CA with an American guy by the name of Richard. Before leaving for the USA I contacted a few people who lived in San Jose (where I was going to see Relient K and Switchfoot perform) to see if I could stay on their couch. A few replied to say they were booked out, a few didn’t reply and (lucky for me) Richard replied and said that wouldn’t be a problem and I was more than welcome to come and stay with him.

We exchanged a few emails before I left on my flight and then on my first day in the USA I gave him a call to arrange a time when we could meet up, as I was heading down to San Jose the next day. He said he’d meet me at the train station and that was that.

The next day I jumped on the CalTrain and headed down to San Jose, I had no idea what was going to happen next…Richard met me at the station and took me to his apartment, when we arrived he gave me a set of keys and told me what the code was to the door into the apartment block. We arranged a time for dinner, and then…he left, to go back to work.

I was left sitting on his couch (which was super comfy) staring at his giant TV wondering if there was something wrong with him, which it turned out there wasn’t.

I stayed with Richard for 2 nights and you can read more about what I did in San Jose here.

This was my introduction to the CouchSurfing Project.

On my way back to Australia in January on the same trip I CouchSurfed again with Richard. He’d moved to San Francisco and welcomed me back. Again, he gave me a key to his apartment.

—

On my second overseas trip I had a few days in Los Angeles, and figured that I should CouchSurf again. I sent out around a dozen requests and had lined up to stay with a couple in downtown Los Angeles. About a week before I was due to leave he sent me an email to say that he’d confused his dates and that he was going to be in San Francisco and hence unable to host me. I panicked a bit, but sent out a couple more requests.

Liz came to my rescue. Liz lived with 2 other people, all 3 of them in their 20s welcomed me into their home. Liz even picked me up from the airport! I stayed with them for 3 nights. The first night was spent sleeping as I’d arrived into LAX at 8pm.

The next day was Friday, I met Ryan who lived with Liz and had a quick chat with him as he was running late for work. Liz gave me some directions on how to get to The Grove and was also off to work. I spent the day chilling out. That night I headed out to a Mexican restaurant with the 3 people I was staying with and a bunch of their friends. When it came time for the bill to be paid I pulled out my wallet but they wouldn’t accept my money.

The next day was spent exploring LA and then a relaxed night as I was flying down to Mexico the next morning. I had a great chat with Ryan about a range of things from politics to life to MySpace vs Facebook etc…Part of our conversation went something like this:

Ken: “Do you know the number for a taxi”

Ryan: “Taxi? What do you need that for?”

K: “So I can get to the airport tomorrow”

R: “Don’t worry about the taxi, I’ll take you”

K: “My flight leaves at 8.30am”

R: “That’s no problem”

K: “I’d need to be there around 5, so we’d have to leave around 4.30…”

R: “No problem”

The next morning we got to the airport without any problems.

A lot of other interesting things happened in Los Angeles, stay tuned for a more detailed account.

—

I’d planned to have a few days in San Francisco on my way back home. I’d actually arranged to meet up with Sebastien, one of the co-founders of CouchSurfing and was going to be surfing with Richard. It was all arranged and ready to go, I bought my plane ticket from Baltimore to San Francisco a couple of days before I was due to leave. The morning I was due to fly out I woke up early and jumped onto the airline website to check in online. For some reason it didn’t let me check in, so I tried again…still nothing. I double checked the confirmation number and date…WHOOPS. In my haste to purchase the plane tickets I bought them for the following day, I panicked. The good news was that I wasn’t going to miss my flights, the bad news was that I wouldn’t have accommodation in San Francisco any more…

I’d arranged it so I could get to San Francisco on the Wednesday, meet up with Richard and stay at his place on Wednesday and Thursday night, then fly back to Australia on the Friday night. Because Richard was going to be working late on Thursday night he wasn’t going to be around SF, and because I bought my tickets for Thursday I wouldn’t be able to meet him and get the key to his apartment. I was stranded.

Lucky for me there were around 2,800 registered couches in San Francisco, of these about 300 are “definitely” available, unless someone has already grabbed it. I sent out a lot of urgent requests that morning to find a place to stay. As a back up I looked at hostels, most of them were booked out :-S At this point I figured there was a chance I could end up sleeping with the homeless people…I was ok with that.

A few people replied promptly, which was good but the news was bad…their couch was taken.

After a couple of worrisome hours Gabriel answered my reply with a positive response. However he also mentioned that there were going to be about 10 other people staying at his apartment that night as well. But he informed me that it was huge! (And it was). He gave me the number of the CouchSurfer who looked after it for him (as he was currently in Washington DC and wasn’t going to be getting in until Friday).

I had to cancel my meeting with Sebastien which was a shame but at least I had a place to sleep. Walker (the guy looking after the apartment) picked me up from Market Street, which was quite an epic ordeal and took me back to the apartment. When we arrived he explained a few things. Firstly, he told me the code to the apartment block so I could get back in, then told me to never lock the door to the apartment when I left…even if no one else was there. This was so that people could come and go without needing a key.

A lot of other awesome stuff happened in the 36 hours that I had in San Francisco, stay tuned for a more in depth account.

—

This has been my experience with The CouchSurfing Project thus far. I guess the thing I enjoy/like most about CouchSurfing is staying with locals. Nothing beats it. You get to meet interesting and like minded people, they can tell you about how to get around the local area, things to see, things to avoid, where to get a good beer, you get free accommodation and best of all you form friendships.

Is it safe? The site has safe guards in place to increase safety. They do advise you to use your common sense, if a situation doesn’t feel good then leave. There is a “reference system” and each member has a profile so you can get a feel for the person before you’ve even met them. Here are a few statistics at time of writing:

• 790,137 Members
• 231 Countries represented, (even Antarctica)
• 1,447,346 Positive Experiences
• Less than 1% Negative Experiences (99.792% of all experiences have been Positive)
• More Statistics at http://www.couchsurfing.com/statistics.html

So following is a short summary of what else happened on my first trip to the USA.

An American Christmas

This was my first Christmas away from my family ever. My original plan when I first booked my ticket to the USA was to spend Christmas at a homeless shelter feeding homeless people. These plans were put on hold (although I did get to feed lots of homeless people while I was in the USA) when I was invited to spend Christmas with Amy’s family.

I was given the honor of putting the Christmas angel on the top of the tree

Christmas eve was spent with her mothers side of the family and we had dinner at an all you could eat Chinese restaurant. While we were there I got in trouble for attempting to use the same plate when I went back for seconds. The waitress was quite confused when she went to take my plate (after I’ve finished the first serve) and I said I wasn’t done yet.

Christmas morning was with the immediate family.

Later on in the afternoon Amy’s fathers side of the family arrived. We had an epic feast.

The next day was the “day after Christmas party” where more extended family and friends arrive. Earlier in the day before the party started I went and saw “Alien vs Predator: 2″ with the “men”. Once the party started more and more people started to arrive.

There were soooo many people there, it was crazy! Lots of food and drink was consumed and fun times had by all, including another White Christmas gift exchange. I picked out an English-German dictionary but it was stolen from me.

Philadelphia – Take Two

Philly take two was done with Tabbatha, Ryan and another one of Amy’s friends. The day was pretty jam packed. We spent a fair amount of the day at the Franklin Institute (which is like an American version of Questacon although not as good). Had coffee, probably at Starbucks. Hrmm, at the time it seemed a lot more hectic!

New York City

I caught a bus from Allentown, PA to New York City. It was a pretty uneventful bus ride by myself and was met by Amy and Bryan later on in the evening.

When I arrived I was met by a friend of Amy’s who was putting us up for the first two nights. I walked through Time Square and even the rain couldn’t dampen the moment.

The next day was New Years Eve, we all had brunch at Organic Harvest (I think that was the name of it, some kind of health food place). Where we also met one of the girls whom we’d stayed with in Baltimore earlier on. After brunch I headed off and walked through Central Park with my friend from Baltimore and her friend from NYC. It was a fantastic day for it, with the sun out it must have been somewhere around 5 degrees C warm.

That night was spent bringing in the New Year in Brooklyn. Eating dinner out and then going on to Barcadia which was a mix between a Bar and Arcade.

The next day was sightseeing around New York City. Sights included:

• Not Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty
• Wall St, before it crashed
• Ground Zero
• Chrysler Building and Grand Central Station

The next two nights were spent staying in…an all girls college dorm. Fortunately (unfortunately?!?) for me college wasn’t in session so we were basically the only people on the floor. We had dinner in the Chinatown district then walked through Little Italy and had desert at some gelato place.

The next day were more sights. Including the crazy glass entrance to the Manhattan Apple Store!

On my final day in NYC I spent about 5 hours walking through the Museum of Modern Art. Which was HUGE!

Baltimore

Too many things to mention! Here are a few highlights:

• Snowboarding at Seven Springs (not in Baltimore, but with people from Baltimore)
• Pittsburgh (once again, not Baltimore but with people from Baltimore)
• I spent a lot of time hanging out at a socialist cafe!
• “Hiking” through the woods of greater Baltimore
• Talking politics with a Texan at an Irish Bar
• Being a 1st grade teachers aid, twice, at in inner city public school
  • Teaching the kids how to floss
• Our excursion to Ellicot City

Montana

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go and visit a friend whom I made while she was studying at my university in Australia! So I made the long haul to Montana, the amount of travel time from when I left Baltimore and arrived into Montana was the same amount of time it took to fly from Sydney to San Francisco!

The biggest highlight of Montana was staying up in “the woods” in a log cabin, which was overlooking a lake that was completely frozen over. But you couldn’t see the actual lake because it was cover with about a foot of snow!

San Francisco

This was my last stop before heading home. I CouchSurfed with my CouchSurfing friend from San Jose whom had moved up to SF around the time I was in Canada. I arrived late in the evening but that didn’t stop us from going to a bar for a couple of drinks.

The last day in the USA involved doing a few last moment things like picking up a laptop from FedEx and feeding some homeless people, before getting the BART to the airport and hanging around waiting to board my flight home.

I arrived back into Australia on January 25th, just in time for Australia Day

—

So that was my first trip to the USA. My master plan is to add more detailed posts about some of the above, however there are now my travels through Central America and the second time through the USA to write about which will take priority!

In chronological order we have: Taipei airport (Taiwan), Los Angeles, Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. More photos coming up in following posts.

More pictures to come…

Our second day consisted of:

• US Supreme Court
• Not the US Capitol Building
• Air and Space Museum
• US Holocaust Museum

Our first stop was the Supreme Court – it was pretty interesting. Unfortunately, the court wasn’t currently hearing any cases so we didn’t get to see the court in action. Instead we were able to explore the public sections. Which wasn’t much. There was a bit on the first floor that we could see, then on the lower floor there were lots of portraits of important people, some information displays and a gift shop where I picked up a copy of the US Constitution, which I still have.

From there we left and and headed over to the US Capitol building which we were hoping to get a tour of. Unfortunately it turned out that it was already booked out for the day – so that was a no goer. So instead we took a few photos and moved on.

From there we went to the Air and Space Museum…this is HUGE there aren’t really words to describe this place, it was out of control, massive, big and huge etc…There were lots and lots of displays about…you guessed it! Air and Space. It was very educational (at the time). The Spirit of Saint Louis was on display there as well.

The Spirit of St. Louis is a custom-built aircraft flown by Charles Lindbergh that made the first non-stop solo transatlantic flight on 20 May and 21 May 1927. This was also the first non-stop flight from New York to Paris, for which Lindbergh won the $25,000 Orteig Prize.

[via Wikipedia]

We spent a long time here looking through all the displays.

From here we headed to the US Holocaust Museum. One word can describe this museum – moving. It was incredible and an absolute MUST VISIT for anyone who goes to Washington DC. We were quite lucky in that according to the lady who gave us our tickets it was the quietest it had been for “as long as I’ve [she'd been] working here [there]“. This added greatly to the atmosphere.

We could have spent more time there, except that once again we were running late for the train… We made our train but it was once again, peak our on the MARC.

We arrived back to Baltimore and headed back to the apartment where we were staying, only one of the girls was left (the other three had returned home for Christmas festivities with their respective families). So that night Marie, Amy and myself headed out for dinner.

We went to some Pizza place, we made our order and sat down. As we were sitting there waiting for our pizza to be done we were sitting talking. Anyway, outside there was a guy pacing back and forth. He may have been high, I said to the girls can I go invite him to have dinner with us.

They both said yes, so I walked outside and said hello to him. This in itself surprised him, I started speaking to him and then invited him to come and have dinner with us. If saying hello surprised him, then this almost gave him a heart attack.

It took him a while to finally convince him to come and have dinner with us, eventually he gave in. He was swearing quite bit while I was talking to him, so I said there are just two rules for having dinner with us 1. No Swearing and 2….I can’t remember (doh!).

He agreed so we walked to the door and I opened it for him but he absolutely would not go in ahead of me. We stood there for a while insisting the other go in ahead of the other, eventually I gave in and went in ahead. I bought him a drink, we sat down and started talking.

Meanwhile, when I went and paid for this guys drink the owner of the pizza place and his wife (it must have been his wife) gave me an interesting look, as if to say “are you serious…what is wrong with you!”, I didn’t care

Our conversation varied and was quite sporadic at times. I think that this guy must have been high on something as he was talking fast, and jumping from place to place. At times he was hard to follow. One thing is for sure, dinner was not dull – not that I was expecting it to be.

After dinner we all talked for a bit longer then we left and parted ways.

It’s now Thursday (Dec 20th) we rose early and headed off to the capital of America – Washington DC. We managed to find Baltimore Penn Station without any major dramas – except that we had to turn around and move the car from where it was parked…otherwise we would have been greeted with a parking ticket upon our return. I might have only walked this route a hand full of times but even now I can still remember vividly in my mind how to get from the apartment we were staying in to Penn Station.

On the train ride down we made a list of things we wanted to do, today being our first day we figured we’d hit up all the big museums around the “National Plaza”.

After purchasing our subway pass which gave us unlimited rides on the subway (which came in really handy) we started our exploration of DC.

Our day consisted of the following:

• The Museum of Natural History
• Walking along the National Mall
• An elevator ride to the top of the Washington Monument
• Doing the clichéd tourist thing by taking photos in front of the White House.

The Museum of Natural History was really cool, in the foyer was one of the statues from Easter Island, I took a photo with my phone but can’t find the picture right now. The museum also had a great display of Australian animals and I felt like I was back home.

The Museum of American History was closed for renovations, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to visit it, but inside the Museum of Natural History (I think it must have been here) there was a display of the top 20 items from the American History museum. This included:

• The REAL R2D2 and C3P0 models from Starwars.
• Parts of the original script from “The Wizard of Oz”
• I think the red shoes from “The Wizard of Oz” were on display as well
• Marilyn Monroe’s gloves
• …other stuff

From here we walked up the National Mall and headed towards the Washington Monument. In the distance this looked big, close up it was MASSIVE. We were lucky that this day wasn’t a particularly busy day as you need a timed ticket to be able to go up it. We walked up to the window that gave out the tickets and were able to get one each for the next tour which was in about 15 minutes. It was soon our turn to head up. We each had our own incident, mine involved me thinking I had lost my floss – this was a big deal, at least I thought it was. Crisis averted, turned out it was in my jacket pocket.

From the top of the Monument you have a 360 degree view of D.C. In one direction you get an excellent view of the White House, from another you can see the Lincoln Memorial, another you can see the Tidal Basin, and from another you can see the National Mall with all the Smithsonian Museums, as well as the US Capitol building and if you have really good eye sight perhaps the Supreme Court as well.

Just after we had exited and were starting to walk towards the White House out of no where three Black Hawk Helicopters came out of no where and headed towards the White House, one landed two hovered. It would have been awesome to be still up in the Monument when that happened, or right in front of the White House, unfortunately we were at neither of these locations.

We took a few photos outside the White House, then realised that we were running late if we wanted to get the 5pm MARC train back to Baltimore. So from the White House we headed towards the nearest subway stop.

Unfortunately for us, it was peak hour and the MARC train was full. After a number of stops we were finally able to sit down.

After we arrived back in Baltimore we headed back to the apartment, rested for a few minutes then it was in the car as the girls that we were staying with had a surprise…

We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant – that wasn’t the surprise – from there we started walking, I had no idea what was happening. Anyway, after a few blocks we all stopped and the girls blind folded us. After that we walked a couple more blocks then crossed the road, then the blind folds were removed.

In front of us all, was a block entitled “Miracle on 34th Street”. Every single house on this block was lit up with Christmas lights, but it was done well, not tacky like. It was really cool (cold as well), we walked around the block and looked at the lights, there was one house which was owned by an artist and the front room of the house was open for people to walk into and see his art works – they were pretty good, there was a giant sculpture of a man made out of metal…you had to be there.

From there it was back to the apartment then to bed, the next day was also going to be an epic…stay tuned.

The date now is December 19th which was a Wednesday…

We arose early(ish) that morning did the usual morning things then drove off to pick up Bethany, after picking her up we all headed into Philadelphia to give me the historic tour and run down of the beginnings of the United States.

We started off at the Constitution center and looked through the exhibits, then there was this cool audio/visual presentation type thingy…it involved this lady speaking words and lights coming down from all parts of the circular room focusing on the ground part and she walked around and talked about the forming on the Union and other stuff that has now escaped my memory.

We moved on from the Constitution center and headed down to a shopping center for lunch. The random thing about the shopping center was inside it was an embassy office for Mexico…that seemed strange to me.

We went from lunch to see the liberty bell…there were a whole heap of people around it waiting to have their photo taken with it (which was to be expected) but they all had a very blank expression on their face, all of them except for one guy…he must have been the only one in the group that was actually excited to be there, so good for him!

After we had our photos taken with the bell we headed over to Independence Hall to have a tour of it.

It was all very interesting, the tour guide seemed to know his history and every question that was asked he knew the answer. At the beginning of the tour he asked what states people were from and then asked if there were any international peoples, I apparently was the only person on the tour that was from another country (or the only person from another country that could understand what he was saying…)

Later that was Christmas Party #3 mentioned earlier in “East Coast – Part 1 – The Christmas Spirit“. After the party we had decided to go straight to Baltimore so that we could spend a full day the following day in Washington D.C. We left the party a little later than we originally had planned to – but that’s alright because we were all having fun. The drive to Baltimore involved a few involuntary detours and we were privileged to see parts of Baltimore and the surrounding area that most people probably would never see

After getting to Baltimore it was straight to sleep…The next day was going to be a big one!!!

Washington D.C. coming soon…

My Colossal Round the World Trip

Last night I was browsing through my bookmarks and came across this travel article that I had read back in 2007. Spurred on by the idea of hitting up a few different cities and countries, as well as visiting the country that I really want to go back to (the USA). I decided to price up a round the world trip based on the flights that this guy did. The following is what I came up with:

Leg 1:

Sydney-Melbourne: ~$80 (if you can get it cheap)
(Virgin Blue)

Leg 2:

Melbourne->Darwin->Singapore: $620
(Tiger Airways)

Leg 3:

Singapore->Hong Kong: $177
(JetStar)

Leg 4:

Hong Kong->Vancouver: $300
(Oasis Hong Kong)

Leg 5:

Vancouver->Seattle->Baltimore: $342
(Combination of airlines found on Orbitz)

Leg 6:

Baltimore->Los Angeles: $120
(Cheap flight on Orbitz)

Leg 7:

Los Angeles->Honolulu: $180
(Cheap flight on Orbitz)

Leg 8:

Honolulu->Sydney: $406
(JetStar)

Total: $2,225

All of these flights are with budget airlines. That is kind of the point. I would (if I were to actually do this) spend a few days in Singapore, Hong Kong, Vancouver and Honolulu. As well as spending a week or two on the East Coast of the USA.

Worth it? I say…yes.

When will this happen…who knows.

I was travelling for 59 days.

I slept in:

• 1 Motel
• 1 High-rise apartment
• 1 College Dorm Common Room
• 1 Airport (not over night)
• 1 Log Cabin – up in the woods.
• 2 Hotels
• 2 Hostels
• 4 Low-rise apartment
• 4 Houses

I slept on:

• 1 Floor
• 1 Airport floor
• 1 Air Bed
• 1 Sofa Bed
• 1 Fold out bed (American’s call them Cot’s)
• 5 Couches
• 7 Beds

I visited:

• 2 Canadian provinces
• 9 US States (plus Washington D.C.)
• 10 Airports
• A LOT of Starbucks
• More museums than I can (be bothered to) count
• Too many Art Galleries – stimuli overload hit soon after I arrived on the East Coast
• …

I’ve:

• Seen so much of God’s AMAZING/INCREDIBLE creation
• Hitch hiked twice with complete and utter strangers, and once with a complete but not utter stranger
• Meet/fed and spoken to LOTS of homeless people
• Been a 1st grade teachers aid…twice
• Snowboarded twice – once in the Canadian Rockies and once in West PA (Pennsylvania)
• Visited the ghetto in Baltimore…more than once
• CouchSurfed
• Had some interesting/awkward/funny/intense/eye opening/deep/spiritual/political conversations
• Been a good tipper as well as being a bad tipper

I’ve made some AWESOME friends in the USA

These are the things that I can think of that are most appropriate to put into lists.