The most experiences I’ve made on Couchsurfing were overall positive, but still after hundreds of people I stayed at and hosted at my place there were a few which were not that positive. Out of all, I for sure have a favorite on the negative side.
I stayed in Saudi-Arabia in two places, I had one host in Riyadh the capital and one host in Jeddah. The host in the capital was amazing and one of the best hosts I had so far.
The one in Jeddah is the one, who I will talk about in this article.
What happened?
The first night out of two was actually not bad, we were sharing some food with each other and had some good conversations. I had a good room, which was more like a usual welcoming room, so quite big and comfortable. He was living with his family, who wasn’t there at the time, just us and the people taking care of the house, for cleaning and cooking.
The second night was where everything went wrong. I remember what happened, but not in the right order actually.
Some of the things happening
- He told me that I looked like a homeless person and that I should have shaved my beard. I didn’t want to do it and that’s what I told several times but then he did it. He got out his blade and put it on my throat. I couldn’t do anything about it and it was a very dangerous situation if I would have tried to do anything. He didn’t mean it, but I didn’t like it obviously.
- Inappropriate questions which might be because of cultural differences. Questions like:
“I got a boner right now, can you ask your friend to have sex with me for money?” This was asked after I saw a picture of my friend on Instagram.
“When I give a girl in the club a drink, does it mean that I will have sex with her?” - Taking my phone and checking the messages and forbidding me to text some people I meet in the city, because he was my host and I should spend only time with him and because I would never see them again. You can’t do things like that as a host.
- While just getting out of a relationship. He was telling me “I know I am the best host you will ever have so I know you will host me when I come to Hamburg, but I will stay with your ex girlfriend” That was in my head like “what are you serious?”
- He didn’t let me talk to the workers in the house.
- When I was in the mall, he told people who were working for the television to interview me, so they were standing with the camera in front of me. It was super weird and made me feel super uncomfortable.
Forcing me basically to do stuff I didn’t want to do and also communicated that way. It was not good and those were just the things which are worth mentioning.
How could I prevent it and what should you know?
I should have read his profile properly. There were around 30 references and all were positive, but they were almost all from people from Saudi-Arabia, so his friends probably. Also from the pictures and the things he said about himself everything seemed to be sketchy. I also had another person who offered to host me, but I didn’t end up staying with them.
In general it is important to have a good feeling from the beginning and read references and look really into profiles, to not have experiences like that. I was unlucky, but in general most bad experiences happen, when you are not checking enough. Most experiences I had there were just amazing and I love using this application so far.
Just take care and check everything, believe in other peoples references when they are negative and believe in what you think inside your mind!
Also it is important, when you actually had an experience which could be really very bad to others as well, then do write a negative reference.
