Couchsurfers and a CS party

George and Marion (our Dutch surfers) on the top of our roof.


Boots likes to lay on our CSers stuff on the bed and wait to get petted. (photo by Marion)

Marion, Sandhya and I. Sandhya and her husband Nishant hosted the party and cooked delicious vegetarian Indian food. VERY delicious!!

A very diverse group - guys from San Francisco here for the eclipse, a guy that lived at the South Pole three times (my cousin Brian did that; worked at the research station there and shoveled a lot of snow), people from Isreal, Lithunania, Columbia, the Netherlands, Italy, India and a guy with Pakistani heritage living in London - all getting together in China. The world is really small now!

SWFC

Last weekend we went to the SWFC (Shanghai World Financial Center, aka the Bottle Opener) with our Couch Surfers Marion and George. Unfortunately we enjoyed our meal at DaMarco a little too long, and the lights of the Jin Mao and Pearl TV Tower were already turned off. Be sure to arrive there well before 10:00 if you go at night!

The Captain's Bar

After viewing the SWFC, we decided to check out some live jazz at the House of Blues and Jazz. After a couple drinks, we went to the Captain's Bar, conveniently located right across the street. It's the top floor of the Captain's Hostel and has the Bund view without pretentious drink prices.

Marion and George are Couch Surfers who stayed with us 4 days. They're from the Netherlands, and George was studying business Chinese in Beijing.

The view is quite nice when the lights are still on. Behind us is the infamous view of Pudong across the Huangpu River.

37 Fuzhou Lu, near Sichuan Zhong Lu
福州路37号，近四川中路

Two more couchsurfers

Recently, we had Sonja, a German woman who is doing her PhD study on China's influence in Darfur, stayed with us several days. She was staying in Shanghai longer than we could host, so she moved to another host.

Bettina, a German woman on sabbatical from her job at a EU Library in Greece, stayed with us a little while after that. Since they were both in town, we had a little CS get-together for lunch Friday.

Bettina, Jon S., Sonja, me & Jon at the Blue Frog in Daning.

At the local dive bar after a fabulous meal at Da Marco.

We have had all good experiences with Couchsurfing so far. We've hosted four times now, and will host two more couples in July. We're hoping to surf sometime in the future!

Huangpu River Cruise

Last Saturday, our Couchsurfer Sonja went on a river cruise with one of her friends, and I also joined them. I've never done this in the two years we've lived in Shanghai, so it was about time I did. It cost 50 RMB for about an hour on the boat.

The Bund is all torn up. You can no longer walk along the river (which I didn't know. Oops.) Normally, you'd see crowds of people here, all taking a photo of their self with the Pearl Tower in the background.




This is a view of the IFC and Jin Mao that you don't see often.

Couchsurfers

Jon and I are members of www.couchsurfing.com and last week we hosted two Australian girls, Amy and Casey.  They were super nice; both of them (especially Casey) liked to cook.  We were spoiled by them cooking for us several times!  They have a cat (Michael Arthur MacMoussen) back home so really liked Boots too.   Couchsurfing is a site where travelers can offer or request a couch to crash on, or just find someone to meet up with for coffee or a drink.  It's kind of like Facebook for travelers.  It's also similar to eBay, in that you give others feedback so others know how they were as hosts or guests.    We also hosted a Polish couple, Daniel and Martina, before I went to the US.  In the last couple weeks we've gotten requests to host people from Italy, Spain, Germany, Mongolia, and the Netherlands.  We won't say yes to everyone (you can pick and choose as you like, no pressure) since we want to have a little time to ourselves!  We wish we had this when we were traveling through Europe - it's such a great way to meet like-minded travelers if you host; save costs and meet people living locally where you are traveling if you surf.   Here's another article a fellow China blogger just wrote on it.  http://grahamwoodring.com/2009/05/18/couchsurfing-whats-in-it-for-me/