Couchsurfing Cairns

After bed bugs in Malaysia, we couldn’t have had a cleaner and more organised couchsurfing experience in Cairns. Frank is a rare individual. This guy discovered couchsurfing a couple of years ago and, thinking it a good idea, decided to see what he could do to make his house more welcoming to his intended guests.

Now, to you or me, that means possibly going out and buying a new towel. Not to Frank.

First he started thinking about where guests were going to sleep. Of course, there was the couch, but that simply wasn’t good enough for Frank. His guests deserved a bed. But that was a bit problematic as he had only one bedroom. No worries, as they say, simply create another bedroom. But how? Well, there’s all that space in the garage.

Frank then went out and traded in his car for a Smart car. Just in case anyone doesn’t know what these are, they are tiny. In trading his car for a Smart car, Frank halved his garage requirements. Then, with the advice of an architect, he set about creating a bedroom dedicated to couchsurfers from the extra space in his garage. Brilliant.

Frank is one of those couchsurfing hosts who just can’t get enough visitors. On the day we arrived, he was also picking up a Malaysian traveller who was to stay for a few days. He’d asked us all not to arrive in the morning though as he’d just hosted a German family (couchsurfing with two teenage kids) and needed to clean up a bit and on the day we left, he had two more people coming in that evening. Amazing.

Unwittingly, apart from helping us adapt to life in Cairns, Frank helped us to adapt to life in PNG too. Frank had a rainwater tank installed out the front of his place which collects water from the roof guttering. He uses this for pretty much all his drinking water. We did too and found when we got to PNG that pretty much everywhere we stayed did exactly the same thing. Some people filter it. We didn’t and it doesn’t seem to have done us any harm.

In addition to a dedicated room for his couchsurfers, Frank also has a bike for them to get around and a laptop for them to use too. His garden also leads on to a swimming pool. No, Frank did not build this for his couchsurfers. It came as part of the complex he lives in but couchsurfers get to use it too.

It’s great to see, in a world where people are all out for what they can get for themselves, that there are people like us too who seem to thrive of hosting people to the best of their ability. We can only dream of one day being able to host couchsurfers as well as Frank does.

Couchsurfing KL

Mohamed Razali lives on the 14^th floor of Heritage Condo just northeast of KL city centre where his large apartment is home to himself, two cats a reasonable collection of combat memorabilia and more DVDs than any one person could watch in a lifetime.

Stockily built, the ex-commando turned jungle-trainer greeted us in a sarong and a smile as we arrived via airport bus and local taxi around 11pm at night. In the fifteen years since he left a career with the Malaysian SAS, when he’s not been helping KL’s wealthy come to terms with the limits of their humanity on his four day jungle courses, he’s spent most of his free time at the Kuala Gundah elephant sanctuary two hours’ drive northeast across the beautiful Malaysian Highlands. We had a day in Malaysia and we spent that day there.

But, courtesy of AirAsiaX moving our flight forward 8 hours, we also had a night to spend too. couchsurfing.org had once again proved to be our lifeline. At least, that’s what we thought as, freshly showered and feeling the effects of time zone travel, we crashed out under a fan each taking the top of two sets of bunk beds at just after 1am.

At 3am, we were up again. I reckoned I’d slept about 20 minutes. Sheena more. But Sheena also said she’d been bitten and wanted the Anthisan cream. Turning on the light to get it, I spotted something small and brown dashing madly for cover along the wall next to her bunk. It wasn’t a mosquito. It wasn’t a miniature cockroach. It turned out to be a bedbug.

For those not familiar with these beasts, check out Wikipedia’s excellent article, National Geographic’s 2-minute video, or www.Bed-Bugs.co.uk.

Thus began an hour of counter-insurgence operations. We took every piece of clothing and baggage that we’d laid on or near the bunks and inspected it for intruders. We sealed up our luggage and tried to suspend as much as possible of it off the floor. Not easy.

It’s a measure of how tired Sheena felt that she wanted to go back to sleep. Looking at my bunk though was like looking at a star-filled sky for shooting stars. Stare in one place for a few seconds and “There!” you’d see a bedbug careering across the foam mattress. If I was going back to sleep, it wasn’t going to be in that room.

I spent the entire night in the lounge with the cats. After about an hour, Sheena joined me. We didn’t sleep but caught up on email and blogging instead.

Shortly before dawn, some spectacular lightning heralded the beginning of a tropical downpour. Razali emerged somewhere towards the end of this horrified to hear that we’d spent the night with more company than we’d expected.

He immediately commenced what he called “Operation Bedbug” moving the four bunk mattresses out to the stairwell of the block of flats in an attempt, he said, “to destroy the mother ship.” We’re not entirely sure if the operation will be a success. The next couchsurfers will have to find out!

X marks the… what?

AirAsiaX. Malaysia’s budget international airline. But what does the X stand for?

Is it eXcuse?

We booked the first leg of our journey to PNG in April. In May, they told us they’d cancelled the flight. Just like that, cancelled it. They sent us an email. Nice of them. They told us we could either fly 8 hours earlier or 16 hours later. Earlier meant the hassle of arranging accommodation for one night in Kuala Lumpur (KL). Later meant we’d miss our train to Singapore to meet our onward flight to Australia.

The excuse? “Operational requirements.”

Is it eXtra legroom?

The only concession I could get for mucking us about like this with our booking was seats with extra legroom. That took two international phonecalls and four emails and the threat of a letter, already drafted, to head office. The only reason I didn’t send the letter was that I couldn’t find an address for the company (note to self: that’s a bad sign for any company.)

Did we have extra legroom? Well, yes, we most certainly did. Seats pretty much at the front of the plane where we could stretch out quite a bit.

Is it eXcellent cuisine?

We had bought a meal each.  I’d ordered Malaysian for Sheena and International for me. Malaysian rocks. International does not. Chicken cottage pie does not do it for me. Nasi Goreng does, in a big way.

Also, ‘meal’ is not really the right word. ‘Take away container’ might be a better description. “Is that it?” I asked when handed it. The stewardess laughed embarassedly before quickly replying, “Oh, we serve another later in the flight.” Two take aways for £5 then.

Is it the food? Not really. I’d supplement it with some bread rolls, yoghurts (under 100ml of coruse) and a bit of fruit in future.

It is eXtras?

Probably. Apart from the ticket (which can see you in Malaysia from the UK at a little over £200) absolutely everything you have to pay for. What do I mean? Checked-in luggage, a seat reservation, coffee, meals, extra legroom, a video screen, eye masks, pillows, blankets, slippers, bottled water, toilet paper, lifejackets and air. Okay, I made the last three up but you get the idea.

The flight was pretty smooth all the way and we actually arrived in KL nearly an hour early which, as this was a budget airline, meant that some Brits had to be treated for shock (we’re not used to getting more for less).

We were literally the first people out the door (never had that before) and were pretty much the first in the terminal.

Then we met what looked like a group of workers just finishing their shift cleaning up Chernobyl. This turned out in fact to be much more serious; it was the swine flu check. Thankfully we’d ticked all the right boxes on the piece of paper we’d been asked to fill in on the plane. This was given a cursory glance as we passed through. Bit disconcerting considering the fact that we’d answered “Yes” to the question about whether we’d travelled from an infected country. Ah well.

A quick spell at immigration and ten minutes waiting for our bags before a walk through the green channel of customs officials who looked like they simply wanted an early night rather than the hassle of stopping anyone.

Then it was time to find our way to Razali’s place.