Couchsurfing Meetups in Mandalay

Literally, every Couchsurfer knows this drill! A stranger pulls you off from a chaotic touristic area and provides you shelter and guidance at their home. They give you the mandatory tour, brief you with the dos and the donts, direct you where to store your backpack and how the hot and cold water works, and now you’re sitting in their living room, staring at each other. You start a conversation in an attempt to figure out who the stranger is – sometimes they are native, and sometimes they are not. But, if you are searching for experiences from a locals perspective, Couchsurfing meetups are your kind of thing…

I stood outside my Bagan hostel trying to flag down a taxi to get to the bus station, fifteen minutes into the waiting game under the scorching sun and I decided to get help from the girl at the hostel reception. She managed to hail a taxi on the street, but the driver demanded 10,000 kyats to get to the bus station, the price was a little steep, but I didn’t have any choice since I needed to get there soon and didn’t know how the traffic conditions would be. Just then, the hostel reception staff came out with two girls who were also staying at the hostel and were looking for a taxi to get somewhere around the bus station. We split the cost of the taxi ride and the two girls took off somewhere else after I got down at the bus station.

Half an hour later, our bus left the station and we were on our way to Mandalay. About five minutes into the journey, the driver stopped by the roadside, there were two people displaying a piece of paper with large thick letters that read, “MANDALAY”, so they were hitchhikers looking for a ride to Mandalay. It was the two girls that shared the taxi ride with me from the hostel, the driver asked them each for 7,000 kyats, and the girls told him they had no money. The driver told them to get on the bus and was very kind to accept them with no money. The two girls boarded the bus with a smirk on their face and sat at the front row, the seat before me. We began chatting, learned each others’ names (Audrey from France and Meis from Sweden) and celebrated with laughter on how they both scored a free bus ride from Bagan to Mandalay.

Since, Audrey and Meis didn’t have accommodation booked in Mandalay, I suggested them to stay at the hostel I booked my accommodation for the next two nights. We checked-in to our hostel, got ourselves freshened up and headed out for lunch at a nice little place nearby. I also invited them to join the Couchsurfing meetup that I had planned for the evening, I actually had it created a couple of days before I arrived Myanmar. I was staying all by myself at the two bunk-bed male dormitory until Pocholo checked-in. He was from Philippines and arrived Mandalay after concluding his Bhutan trip, we introduced ourselves, talked a bit about our travels and invited him too for the evening meetup. At about 8p.m, four of us took off to the meetup venue at the Mingalabar Restaurant, it was somewhere around the corner and a 5 minute walk from our hostel, by the time we arrived there was Samuel (Italy) and Takashi (Japan). So, we had 6 participants for the meetup including myself and wasn’t a small crowd for a night in Mandalay. We spent a couple of minutes introducing ourselves to each other until the food arrived all at once, with a number of side dishes and raw vegetables including fish sauce. I had beef curry and lentils with potato, pennywort salad, orange juice and Burmese tea.

After dinner six of us decided to hit the chill out area at our hostel to take part in the quiz and games hosted by the reception staff. We spent a couple of hours chatting about our travels before everyone called it a night. Maybe we didn’t get to meet a local during our meetup, but all of us had a good time, we heard lots of travel stories and learned about some of the best places to travel.