We stayed with just two female Couchsurf hosts in Iran. Both were married, well educated, spoke excellent English and had one child each. Their husbands knew very little English but were both the loveliest people. We stayed just one night in Shahrebabak with Somaye, an industrial engineer. This was an exception to our usual 2 night minimum policy. Somaye was recommended to us by a couchsurfer from Bandar Abbas – one we didn’t stay with but who provided us with lots of helpful information. […]
Living with the locals
Workawaying in Iran
Imagine my excitement when I first heard about the workaway website, clicked on it and saw a place in Iran profiled on the homepage! It wasn’t just any old place either… it was a restaurant on a beach! What a cool location and a great opportunity to be more than a tourist in this most fascinating country! I wrote to the host almost immediately (this was July 2015) and she must have thought it slightly odd to get a request to workaway with them […]
Couchsurfing with Single Guys in Iran
Most Iranian hosts on the couchsurfing site seem to be single males in their 20s or 30s. I’ve already mentioned a few of them here. All the guys we stayed with had excellent English and all still lived with their parents, except for our host in Tehran. In Kerman we were hosted by Amir, a lovely guy, who hosted us and a German couple in his small room. It was cosy! He owned a mobile phone shop, had an IT background, liked going to […]
A movie mad host, a paraglider, a wrestler & a businessman…
We will not forget any of our couch surf experiences in Iran – from the movie mad Tarantino fan Ahmad in Ahvaz who lived alone with his sweet, illiterate mother, looked a little like Borat, worked as a chemical lab assistant in the petroleum industry and had a friend with an encyclopaedic knowledge about everything, to the former wrestler now hiking guide Mehdi in Dezful, who despite having an Islamic theologian for a father, had no interest in religion. (Phew that was a looong […]
First Iranian Couchsurfing Experience
Keen to meet local Iranians and get their thoughts on life here, we were pleased to hear couchsurfing was popular. Like many things in Iran it is according to some apparently illegal, but like the other illegal things (Facebook, alcohol, satellite TV, playing cards, VPNs etc.) people do them anyway! We created a public trip and received many invites to stay with people around the country. Of course we also wrote to people in the cities we were going to, asking to stay. Our […]
Workaway at Home
In 2015 Antony and I were hosts on the site www.helpx.net where we had the pleasure of hosting a few overseas travellers. They cleaned all our windows and helped with weeding the garden when we couldn’t keep on top of it and in return we gave them a nice place to stay and food to eat. Wwoofing is very common in New Zealand but is mostly for those wanting to help on farms. Helpx and the similar site www.workaway.info are not as well known but […]