This Saturday Selection has got me scared of ghosts in Colorado, but then comforted by a baby tiger in Disney and amused by an adventurous dog in Egypt. As usual, the internet offered a little bit of everything today. But first, let’s look at Nomadic Matt’s suggested alternative to CouchSurfing.
How to Use Facebook Groups to Meet Other Travelers!
Like Nomadic Matt, Drew and I used to occasionally use the web resource “CouchSurfing” to arrange free stays with strangers. Typing it out now, it sounds insane, but yes it did exist and I bet a not insignificant number of you folks used CouchSurfing a time or two! (Even Greg the Frequent Miler for example took advantage of CouchSurfing in the 40K to Far Away challenge!) The basic idea was quite like Airbnb, with reviews that could help you determine a host or guest was safe and sane, but that review system was the only currency exchanged. Instead of paying for stays, the idea was you and your host would vouch for each other on the platform. Since switching to a paid model, it has lost a lot of its network, but in its hay day, CouchSurfing also became a great way to attend meet-ups as well. If you didn’t want to stay with a stranger, you could also use the platform to simply meet up with locals to hang out. In this post, Matt talks about how he’s been able to recreate the same hangout opportunities using Facebook groups instead. Living in a small town in West Virginia, I can vouch for the fact that Facebook has come to serve a sort of community-bulletin-board purpose in so many ways. In his post, he talks about how that can apply to travel meet-ups.
CUTENESS ALERT! There’s a New Baby Animal at Disney’s Animal Kingdom!
This year I returned to Disney for the first time in ~12 years, much to the delight of my two sisters (who are uberfans). My sisters are Disney master-minds and they orchestrated a very elaborate use of park-hopper tickets so we could see each park multiple times over the course of 2 days. I had my doubts about it going into it, but it was incredibly fun. Animal Kingdom in particular really surprised me in terms of how enjoyable it was to visit as an adult. There are oodles of blogs out there that will tell you the thousands of delightful things you’ll find in Disney in much more thorough detail than I can, but I will call out one bit of Disney news for this week’s Saturday Selection. With DC getting new pandas and Moo Deng the adorable pygmy hippo still ruling the internet, why not take a moment to dote on the baby tiger who just joined the Animal Kingdom family. The cute little newcomer, “Bakso”, needs a little one on one time with his mom before he can accept Disney visitors, but in a few months you’ll be able to see Bakso and his mom at the Maharajah Jungle Trek.
Anyone who’s visited Estes Park in Colorado may remember seeing a very grand hotel amongst the mountains, just about 5 miles from the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park – the Stanley Hotel. And Stephen King fans may already know that this hotel is not just beautiful and historic, but it also happens to be the hotel which inspired Stephen King’s “The Shining” back in 1974. In the spirit of spooky season, the folks at Atlas Obscura recorded a fun little podcast about their search for the alleged ghosts that haunt this famous hotel.
Man Flying Over Pyramids of Giza Spots Dog at the Top of 455ft Summit
Does this mean we finally know the purpose of the Egyptian pyramids? (For dogs to bark at birds?) I can’t imagine how incredible it would be to paraglide over the pyramids of Giza in the first place, but then to see a little dog just chilling on top like it’s nothing, barking at birds and having a jolly old time – that would be a moment of marvel. Alex Lang not only got to experience this bizarre moment, but he caught a glimpse of it on video too. And because the internet is essentially an omnipresent phenomenon with the presence of cell phones blanketing the earth, of course someone also filmed the dog descending the pyramid later in the day.
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In the same vein as using Facebook groups for travel buddies, I had three great recent experiences in Europe and Japan using Facebook events to find local activities. They were all activities I never would have found otherwise. Pro tip: you may see more events if you manually change your location or home city to wherever you’re traveling in your Facebook settings.
Never personally used Couchsurfing, but had friends with excellent experiences. I did show up at someone’s apartment after responding to a Craigslist ad. Worked perfectly fine, and I maintain contact with those folks. Trust-based platforms for meeting people and coordinating stays have been eroded by bots and large scale scam operations. We stopped using Airbnb so heavily after getting one of those “we booked your room, but we have a different, better room for you” messages on the day of arrival.
There are plenty of smart engineers out there. Let’s hope some of them can create some new systems that work for a bit before they get broken again.