At the time, I didn't think of this as an experiment. I just needed somewhere to sleep the next night.
Hi, my name is Ramon.
On May 1, 2001, I left my student room in the Netherlands with a backpack, a digital camera, and a mobile phone. I didn’t know where I would sleep the following night.
Before that day, I had no idea if anyone would actually let me stay. I had no backup plan. I just… started.
How it started
In 2001, before YouTube, Facebook, or Airbnb existed, I created this website asking strangers to host me for one night. They simply had to enter their details into a nifty form and they would become a pin on my map. In return, I would document the experience in daily reports.
At first, it was just a handful of invitations. Then a local radio station interviewed me. Then a newspaper. Then another.
When it took off
Within weeks of the launch of this website, the project spread far beyond the website itself. I was interviewed on national radio, appeared on television, and featured in newspapers across Europe, North America, Australia, Asia, and South America. Stories ran in outlets ranging from local papers to The Guardian, Reuters, Wired, Le Monde, El País, and major broadcast networks. For a brief period in 2001 and 2002, it seemed that wherever I arrived, people already knew why I was there.
For nearly three years, I hitchhiked across continents and stayed with people who opened their homes through this website. Some days the website got 50,000 hits. Then 100,000. I didn't plan for that. I just kept writing.
Some days I was answering emails from borrowed computers. Other days from an internet café that charged by the minute. Once, from the floor of a bus station. I was always behind.
I shared popcorn with Geri Halliwell. I shook hands with Steve Irwin. I saw my name in newspapers I'd never heard of, in countries I hadn't reached yet. By then, the project no longer belonged to me alone. It was moving ahead of my plans, my expectations, and sometimes even my location.
18 countries • 3,577 invitations • 500+ reports • 7,500+ photographs
I wasn't trying to prove a point. I wasn't trying to build a movement. I sent emails, waited for replies, packed my bag again, and moved on when I had to. Some days were generous and easy. Others were uncomfortable, quiet, or disappointing. I wrote everything down at night because that was the only way to make sense of it while it was happening.
...And Then I Stopped
By July 2003, after 22 weeks crossing Canada, I was ready to stop. The constant travel, the daily writing (most time until deep in the nights), the weight of people's expectations; it did have become its own kind of cage.
I came home. I wrote a book (sorry, only in Dutch). Fast forward to a totally new life: I moved to Cambodia, where I still live.
This website remains as it was: a record of what happened when the internet was still new enough to try something like this.
I didn't know if these reports would matter to anyone later. I just kept writing them. It was my duty in return for all the hospitality given.
Enter the Archive
500+ daily reports, written between May 2001 and July 2003
Read the Daily Reports →Spelling, tone, and perspective vary across the reports. They were written as events unfolded.