For a traveller, one of the biggest obstacles to fully experiencing new places is not cultural differences or the language barrier, but more simply, money.

We were two weeks into our six month trip and already starting to worry about expenses when we discovered something called “couchsurfing”, which, despite its name, has nothing to do with sliding around on old bits of furniture. Couchsurfing is an online community with the aim of enabling anyone to stay anywhere in the world for free. Once you’ve joined up, you can search the profiles of people from around the world who are offering their couches to other travellers and request to stay with them.

My travelling partner and I decided to test it out for ourselves in Australia. We were staying in Sydney and were sick of the ubiquitous bed bugs of the Kings Cross hostels. We found someone on the site who lived just outside of the heart of the city and after checking the reviews of him written by other travellers, we sent him an email asking if we could surf his couch. Within a few hours later he had accepted our request and our visit was planned.

Despite our cynicism and almost changing our minds about going an hour before we were due to arrive, it turned out to be brilliant.  The man we stayed with was definitely a character (he listened to Aqua and pole-danced in his spare time), but it gave us the opportunity to experience a part of the residential Australian life away from the usual tourist centres.

Not only was the accommodation free, but we also made friends with someone we would never have met had we stayed in hotels and hostels. We enjoyed it so much that we couchsurfed again with a German Student in Brisbane who took us to one of his lectures, introduced us to the city’s river bus service and even took us out to the theatre with him and his girlfriend.

Of course, nothing is ever completely safe, but if you’re brave enough and travelling with a friend, couchsurfing is a must.