The awesome adventures of Jack Chi: Weirdest and most interesting couchsurfing in Edinburgh

This is probably the weirdest and most interesting thing that has ever happened in my life so far. Where do I even begin haha......

So I left Jan's place in Glasgow and took the bus to Edinburgh. I am suppose to surf with Nick and Daniel a couple from CS. They actually accepted my open couchsurfing request. My open request was very cheeky and said I was a pokemon trainer. This fact will come into play later in the story.

Anyways I arrived in Nicky's flat on the north side of the river without any fuss. I caught her in her backyards as she was just in the process of doing some gardening. Nicky looks about 50 but she was quick on her feet and had dyed purple the ends of her head full of white hair. She had another lady sitting with her when I arrived. The first few minutes we talked and got acquainted. Nicky kept talking to me as if I was a pokemon trainer and we had some banter in that fashion for a while. I thought she was being cheeky and played along ☺. Anyways as we talked more Nicky told me she had bi-polar disorder. I thought nothing of it, but now as she explained I understood who the other woman was; she was her social worker who comes by once a week. Also during this time Nicky was working on a wall she was trying to tear down in her yard with hand tools. So she said explicitly I can pitch in whenever I had the time or with other chores. This came as a surprise as I never had a host tell me that, I usually do help out or give them a small gift at the end of my stay anyways.

After the social worker a couple of more interesting people showed up at Nicky's flat. There was two gentlemen from Edinburgh who seemed quite distraught and sought Nicky's help. Nicky calmed them down then called the social welfare office to sort out their problem as "Jane the social worker". At this point I am thinking ok, this is getting a bit weird as Nicky herself has a social worker. But lets see where this goes. To be honest I was starting to get cautious at this point. The phone call went well and the two gentlemen will be receiving some more money or getting their money from before. While she was talking on the phone 2 Sudanese gentlemen showed up an older 40ish gentlemen called Momen and a younger looking student. I chatted with them and am trying to figure out their relationship and they said it was just friends. Momen has been living in Edinburgh for 15 years and the students is just coming here to visit him. The student was the most normal person in the flat at this point, myself included. After a while everyone left and I was just sitting on the couch smoking with Momen, we were having a really chilled time and at some point I realized this guy could possibly be a drug dealer. He was telling me about how to judge good hashish from the bad ones and how cheap it was to buy drugs in Morocco and how he came by his connections. We were still having a good time and I am thinking this is really interesting.

Finally Nicky came back from her Shower and told me we could headout at 6 to see the city then we can go to my performance at 10pm. I said great. As it was stills a while away I thought I could help out with Nicky's garden wall. So I went out to the yard for a bit and Nicky came to join. Momen was still upstairs smoking and chilling.

Finally I came back inside and Momen was heading out. I said goodbye to him and just chilled in the apartment by myself. As I was sitting there I thought Nicky was just someone who is kind of like the social catalyst / mother type of the apartment. I thought that was interesting but some of these people I met could be dangerous. So I was on my guard. Nicky came back from the garden and started to clean her room, especially the window part with the vacuum.

I head a bell and went to open it. An eastern European lady was crying and asking for Nicky. My initial reaction was that she was the victim of domestic abuse from her partner and she's come here to Nicky for help. Ok so I grabbed Nicky. I heard part of their conversation and it was really scary for me as I heard she say: "he was murdered last night" through her sobs. My initial reaction was: omg there is a dead body upstairs and the police are going to come and I am going to be questions in the best case scenario but in the worse case I am going to be blamed for the murder! My mind was racing a mile a minute.

At this point I am in panic mode. Whatever I got myself into tonight I am definitely not prepared for this. As Nicky and Anatole stepped out I thought: "Here is my chance, I can just grab all my stuff and get out of this place and never look back!" But part of me is also thinking maybe it's the weed making me paranoid. I was torn between the two decisions and so I did nothing but lie on the couch.

Finally Nicky came back and explained to me the situation. So Anatole's husband was in England yesterday. He has been in and out of jail and was rubbing shoulders with the wrong people and was murdered in England and not Scotland yesterday. So this changes our plans for the day obviously with a murder on our hands. Nicky couldn't come with me at 6pm anymore as she had to watch over Anatole's two kids.

And sure enough the two cute girls age 3 and 4 came downstairs and played in Nicky's flat without a care in the world. The sight of the kids actually calmed me down as I was thinking kids are safe right?? Anyways I said no problem I will go check out the city center by myself and we could always meet up later in the night. So that is the plan we agreed to.

As I was in my room I began to hatch another plan. This is the best opportunity to leave if anything. In fact it would be so easy to pack up all my bags and just go. But I was also thinking maybe I am just paranoid from the weed. I know for a fact weed does not make you hallucinate so all these things did happen! But I still wanted to believe in the goodness of people and get out of my comfort zone. So finally I made the decision to come back later tonight as planned.

So I left Nicky's apartment and walked towards the bus stop. The experience was so surreal I wanted to preserve the memory and not lose any detail. So I immediately began to record what I remembered. I will upload this later and you can judge for yourself as to what should have been my best course of action.

Finally as I finished my recording I came to the conclusion I should definitely grab my stuff and go to a hostel. I guess my inner insecurity won out. So I headed back to the apartment for what I thought would be the last time in my life. But I was wrong ☺

So I came back and came up with an excuse about my reason for coming back saying a forgot something. As soon as I stepped through I was greeted my Nicky in just a regular fashion without any eccentricity or guests except the two cute girls of course. And that's when I made the best decision of the day which was to stay with Nicky and Daniel for the night.

So I left the apartment again and took the bus to downtown to explore the city of Edinburgh. I walked around, took some picture and of course did my standup comedy at 10pm. But before any of that I went to a hostel and checked out the prices of the night. I told the reception girl about what happened and it helped get my own thoughts in order. She was so worried for me she told me her phone number and told me to call her if anything since she also lives in the same neighbourhood.

I said sure and was still feeling uneasy. But I laid my trust in humanity and if nothing else I am getting out of my comfort zone!

I am so glad I trusted my instincts. Because when I came back at night it was a totally different atmosphere than the daytime. Nicky was knitting on the couch, Daniel was cooking dinner and they were watching the election coverage on TV. They had also cleaned up the apartment! Whereas it looked like an episode of horders in the day time, at night it was an organized mess but much cleaner and organized. We had an amazing dinner together cooked by Daniel and talked about things like election, Airbnb, couchsurfing and relationships. Nicky and Daniel has had such interesting lives!

Nicky was born in Bahrain and had lived in 30 countries before the age of 16. Daniel had some issues with his wife and kids that are too dark to go into here. But they are happy now and met 5 years ago at a protest. Nicky explains to me she has always had a knack for solving people's problems. In fact they been living in the flat for 5 years now and when they first moved in it was proper a place for drug dealers and junkies. I still don't know if Momen is a proper drug dealer and I didnt ask because it doesn't matter. We all have our own stories and trials and tribulations. I really learned to not judge a book by its cover and was handsomely rewarded for it with the most interesting couchsurfing experience!

Nicky even helped me repair my broken jeans and rain jacket. I now have a colorful patch of red on my broken jeans and an amazing memory from Edinburgh. Too often people say faith in humanity restored. I won't be cliche and say that but if there is a takeaway message it's this: never lose your faith in humanity because you never know when you might meet that special soul like Nicky and Daniel.