CouchSurfing is a way for average people from across the world to meet each other and offer hospitality. Instead of booking a hotel or hostel to stay in on your trip, you go onto the CouchSurfing website to meet people in your destination city or town. They offer you a couch to sleep on, or if you are lucky, a bed to sleep in, within their home. CouchSurfing is about good old-fashioned hospitality and people helping each other out. This method of traveling is rarely about just having a place to stay; it is also about cultural immersion. CouchSurfers often go out with their hosts and get to take part in their everyday lives, which gives visitors a far more accurate picture of how life is in a place than they might get to experience otherwise.
Whereas CouchSurfing is more often used by people passing through a destination on their travels, home stays tend to involve travelers living with a host family for longer periods of time. Home stays can also take you to more remote and traditional parts of the country you are visiting. In home stays, you become one of the family, so you may help out with chores around the house and you will get to know the local neighborhood. Going on a home stay gives people the potential to go completely off the beaten track and venture where few foreigners have gone before. There is often no better way to get to know a culture and a country. You may also find local opportunities for volunteering, such as teaching children at a school or helping villagers build a medical center, while partaking in a home stay.
You usually wouldn't want to stay in a prison while on your travels if you can help it, but visiting prisons is an activity that a handful of travelers are starting to catch on to. While previously inhabited prisons and prisons with famous prisoners, such as Robben Island in South Africa, are well-established places to visit, operational prisons are not. One example of a working prison that tourists can visit is San Pedro Prison in Bolivia, where travelers can visit, take a tour conducted by a prisoner, and buy arts and crafts from craftsmen and their families inside. Visiting a prison lets travelers view a whole other side to a country you wouldn't see if you simply stuck to the tourist hot-spots.
Tracking down some of the world's most offbeat cinema experiences can give you a taste of what local people like to do to be entertained. Secret Cinema in London, England, gives you a cinema trip with a difference. When you book a ticket, all you are told is a location in the city to meet at, a time and a fancy dress theme to adhere to. When you meet at the allotted venue, you are led to a themed venue full of actors playing their part in the theme, and you eventually sit down to watch a classic movie that the theme is related to. Another example of a quirky cinema is Cinema Paradiso in New Zealand. You watch films from a mish mash of old sofas and an old Morris Minor car. It's like sitting in your own, slightly warped living room to watch the latest film releases.
