I really appreciate the level of detail in this post. Not too little. Not too much.
It does seem that being in school made this experiment distinctly different from just living in a tent. In a sense, tuition was rent. It paid for showers, electricity, and a living room with air conditioning (the library). It also provided a supportive community. School and even society at large is more inclined to help a poor student than an adult trying to cut rent.
I make this observation not to diminish the experiment's value. I am just putting it in context to arrange its utility in my mind.
(edit: I can't imagine why this is flagged. It is def life- hacking if not tech hacking.)
I have my account set to show flagged comments. A lot of flagged comments are simply some form of "wrongthink" but not violating any guidelines. So I've used the function often to "save" a flagged thing but it seemed to have stopped working for me at some point. I can only speculate why, but I think I saw some other commenters saying that happens if you unflag too much.. wrongthink. I want to give the site admin the benefit of the doubt though. Maybe it's simply an automated process that notices you unflagged too many things that were flagged by others too much?
I also have that setting, and occasionally vouch for an inexplicably flagged comment I notice.
There's definitely wrongthink/ideological flagging and downvoting going on.
(On some comments I make, I know when I make it that it's going to get downvoted, because it pushes against an opinion of the kinds of people who will downvote to suppress criticism. It used to be that criticizing cryptocurrency would get downvotes, but now it's popular to criticize. I can get reliably downvoted any time that I suggest that adding a fee for some basic public infrastructure (e.g., to drive on street in a city), in a "market-based" way, is a handout of the basic public infrastructure to the wealthy. Also, suggestions that there's still any bias against women, in anything, somewhere, seems to reliably get downvotes, no matter how relevant; I don't know why, but I'd guess it's because the topic has a lot of general angry sentiment, and people who are angry the other direction aren't represented as much on HN.)
I'd distinguish wrongthink from something being off-topic and done-to-death or a flamewar magnet. Maybe one mental exercise test for this is whether the same person would also still downvote as "topic" if the opinion of the post/comment were flipped.
>There's definitely wrongthink/ideological flagging and downvoting going on.
I actually vouch for a lot of comments I disagree with that was flagged, and upvoted it because I want it to be shown to the world. And in other times I disagree with it but vouch and upvoted because I dont want HN discussions to be one sided.
I’ve lived in China for a few years and I noticed anytime I write anything even remotely positive about my experience there I will get downvoted or flagged. Even completely neutral comments sometimes gets downvoted.
I don’t think anyone doubts there are good things that come from China. Using a throwaway account won’t help your cause marketing China. Like every other “superpower” China has their major, major flaws. The kicker is trust. Pro-China rhetoric on a highly-moderated forum should be met with skepticism.
This isn’t opinion. The great firewall of China isn’t a farce, it would be good to remember that.
one common misconception is that "the downvote is not a disagree button". it absolutely is. I made that mistake before, in the early days of reddit they used to stress that mantra, and I made the false assumption it was true here. You are getting downvoted because people disagree or don't like what you have to say. simple as that.
silencing the opposition creates an illusion of consensus. in the deluded minds of the terminally online, it is paramount to maintain that illusion.
in every remotely political discussion here, reddit opinions are allowed to be expressed as non-constructively as you please, but all dissent, no matter how factual and constructive, gets flagged within minutes.
Apparently it's because the original headline had the unfortunate juxtaposition of "homelessness" & "experimentation"?
I wouldn't be so quick to call delusion/dissent when designers of our spaces have simply made it far too easy to turn private affects into public effects..
(& It might be rude of me to be so concrete.. so.. apologies)
100%. It's a lot easier when you live next to a Google campus. And it sorts all the menial matters that make a huge difference, like access to washing machines.
About the flagging, you seem to have been here for a while, any hint? I get the word usage can comes across as disrespectful now that people mention it, but didn't think a link would get flagged for that.
I have been here for years. Most things that get flagged are extremely objectionable or touch a political nerve.
I could see conservatives disliking that it questions capitalism's viability post AI. I could see liberals thinking you are making light of folks experiencing homelessness.
I think those are absurd, but with a low vote count, your post may only need a few absurd people to flag you.
Naturally, there could be other reasons things get flagged, but I never see them because they disappear too fast.
You could always ask @dang to weigh in. He might see something which violates the guidelines.
I want to be able to upvote this comment just to show everyone how rules like "don't change the headline as originally given by website" or "let randos (with unpredictable emotional structure) flag stuff" lead to suboptimal outcomes
The ROI calculation is way too short sighted to be meaningful. To start you are already paying college tuition, and the expectation is to get an education that will help you pay off the loans (and then some). Going a few hundred deeper in the hole every month to have a roof over your head (you know, the most basic requirment for humans after water and food) is a no brainer and will massively increase your education ROI. A couple months of "homeless man" cosplay is probably fun and games but start to face the heat, cold, humidity, animals, police, theft, physical danger and more and those As aren't going to remain As for long.
You're right that I was arguably irrationally attached to not ending uni with too much debt.
For the rest, I'm with you it might be hard to replicate beyond this n = 1 sample, but I'm convinced this experiment's ROI is actually much more positive than suggested in the post.
Not only did I get better grades that semester from being forced to spend more time in the library, but I learned a lot living at people's places afterwards, and, most importantly, the feeling of freedom from materials matters allowed me to make bolder bets that paid back multiple times over.
You can even go further: even if my grades had gone down, I still would have been more employable for many types of companies, starting with early stage startups.
Doesn't living in a tent also make you less vulnerable to smartphone and laptop addictions?
I noticed in myself that when I stay in minimal places (camping/jungle hut/tent), I tend to be more connected to the real world and less addicted. More productivity, clearer thought.
I read a comment on Reddit along the lines of ‘if you doomscroll every day to wake up, you wreck your dopamine levels for the day before even getting out of bed’.
I don’t have enough medical knowledge to assess this claim, but I made a simple rule: don’t touch the phone before getting out of bed! (except to turn off the alarm)
This is not homelessness. This is "bandit camping". Not a value judgment on the act - when I was young climbing bum I did me a fair bit of it. But calling it homelessness is pretty insulting to the actual homeless, who aren't doing it by choice to optimize their time for a relative luxury.
There's a place for policing language, but you're not doing anyone any favors by gatekeeping homelessness. This is not involuntary homelessness, but then a large number of unhoused people could live under a roof if they were willing to accept certain tradeoffs, whether that be living with an abusive spouse, with an estranged parent, in a sober house, or far away from a community of friends. There are unhoused people who could scrape by in menial, arduous--and possibly dangerous--jobs who instead choose to live life on their own terms.
Trebaol was not forced into homelessness, but he was not play-acting or apeing a lifestyle for kicks. He was in a situation where he judged squatting four and a half months illegally in the jungle was worth saving a mere $2,000.
If you prefer to describe your past lifestyle as bandit camping instead of homelessness, by all means do so. But don't insist the rest of the world conform to your arbitrary redefinition of a term from its everyday meaning because it doesn't always fit your preconceptions.
Are you really helping the unhoused by insisting that someone is only truly homeless if they are schizophrenic, strung out on fentanyl, or otherwise totally incapable of being a productive member of society?
No but it definitely normalizes the issues around homelessness as no big deal when you write something where you’re intentionally homeless for financial gain.
You can be affected by something and not care about it. You can be affected by things you don't even know about, like the way regulations shape the houses we can live in.
Actually the ETHOS classification system for homeless focuses more on where a person is living as opposed to why they're living like that. OP would alternate between two categories.
Oh get over yourself with this contrived bit of supposed offense. Aside from it being nonsense, are you yourself homeless, a representative of a group of homeless people, someone who interviewed a number of them and asked if they're "offended" by anyone who doesn't absolutely have to live outside also using the phrase "i'm living homelessly"?
Also, by your invented criteria for language monitoring, many homeless people in many cities would themselves no longer be considered homeless.
Quite a few of them could somewhere, under some circumstances, find a place to stay even though it cost them just a bit too much to like, just like the guy who created this clever and interesting post.
> This turns into a surprisingly intense experience. I get to meet people in their most intimate space and bond over late-night conversations in ways that never would have happened otherwise.
This is much like the couch surfing experience: staying with people for a few days and sharing their space, which often ends in these deep, late-night conversations. It's an incredible experience.
There are a few platforms for that, I recommend Couchers.org. It's free & open source (and I'm one of the core maintainers).
Ok I was expecting a lot more. So it is one $450 USD per month? That doesn't very low. I guess HK Uni have decent discounts. But
>Living in Hong Kong without a dorm room would push rent up to at least $700 a month
Unless you only rent a bed with share washrooms and kitchen I can assure you it is not $700 but much closer to $1K if not higher depending on your living standard requirements.
If only this experience could reach media outlet. Hong Kong's rental or property pricing is just crazy expensive relative to what they offer.
The author wisely talks about safety considerations, but there's an it's-expensive-to-be-poor risk I'd like to emphasize:
One injury or illness caused by the frugality could wipe out that $2K savings, many times over, in immediate costs, and might never fully heal.
I think back to all the penny-pinching I did (less impressive than the author's), and much of it was necessary under the circumstances, but a very poor value tradeoff otherwise.
Cripplingly Expensive healthcare is only an issue in one country in the world.
I’ve been to the ER in Ecuador, Mali, Angola, Australia, Canada. Even as a tourist it was so cheap I didn’t bother using any travel insurance ( less than $50, including prescriptions)
It seems unlikely that there is not a single other country with “cripplingly expensive healthcare” besides the USA. I’m also of the opinion that there are more than 6 countries total.
I went to the ER in Canada (BC) a couple years ago, and they charged $950 to my credit card just to walk in the door. Everything else was extra, and charged at rates not wildly different from what I’ve seen in the US. And I’m a Canadian citizen! (I had temporarily lost my free healthcare eligibility because I lived outside the country for a few years.)
Can’t comment on all the other countries you listed, although I can add that urgent care in Germany was pretty reasonably priced.
Agree. I tried to describe the step by step approach to show how you can try this gradually and mitigate the risks, but if you don't have access to a community and cheap student healthcare it's definitely quite dangerous. I'll add word about this at the bottom.
Then again having an extra $2k in the bank might prove beneficial - perhaps preventing a personal catastrophe in a the near future. Or open doors that might make a significant difference down the road.
Risk is complicated, anything could happen. Not just doom and gloom. Individuals circumstances and appetite for risk versus reward varies.
Wild camping is tolerated in Hong Kong, but this guy is going to ruin it for everyone. Leaving 2.5 meter high tent pitched over daytime near buildings, is lazy and really really bad.
Stealth camping should be done in low profile tents (1.2 meters high). You should pitch tent at dark, and leave before sunrise.
Makes sense. I guess it depends on the location, since in my case there were no animals as long as I didn't bring food in the tent. And another pro is you can pitch tents in places no one would ever go, while it's harder for vehicles. So less chances of getting busted.
Vehicles are tied to roads more or less and make contact with the most dangerous animal much more likely. Keeping food out of the tent is probably enough to discourage most animals from snooping.
Cool story, but this seems like a really good way to get your visa revoked if caught.
I kinda understand doing this if at home, and you have no other options. But this comes off as reckless and somewhat naive. To save 2K over a few months you risked serious injury, violated the terms of your visa and ultimately felt a need to humble brag about it.
I lived and worked on the HKUST campus in the 90's.. Very picturesque. Surrounding coastline very rugged. He picked a good spot. No egress there at the bottom of the hill. Fun fact: He camped just below the historic location of Shaw Studios, who popularized the Kung Fu movie genre
Odd given all his efforts so far, that when attempting to live cheaply in San Fran, getting a drivers license to live in a van was too big an obstacle to overcome.
I get that it's super hard to replicate this and have a good time outside of the HK jungle, but to be honest it made me a lot more optimistic . You see people's real colors when you ask them to host you in their home, and in my case the support was overwhelming.
Interesting article about alternative living, I understand why you would do this for fun, but obviously the risk vs. reward calculation makes no sense.
The convenience of a place with electricity, running water, a table and chair, you are legally allowed to sleep there, etc. Seems easily worth 450 Dollars a month. In the end he says he saved 2k, but that is not a relevant amount of money to save over months if you become a software developer in America.
I'd imagine most unhoused individuals are doing it as a strategic cost saving. Only, they're strategy involves eating and surviving rather than paying for unreachable/unsustainable rents. Maybe they didn't choose it, but it's still the strategy they're engaging in.
There are plenty of folks who can’t find housing for other reasons like background checks, credit score checks, etc. that might not be directly related to their ability to pay rent at that point in time.
I really appreciate the level of detail in this post. Not too little. Not too much.
It does seem that being in school made this experiment distinctly different from just living in a tent. In a sense, tuition was rent. It paid for showers, electricity, and a living room with air conditioning (the library). It also provided a supportive community. School and even society at large is more inclined to help a poor student than an adult trying to cut rent.
I make this observation not to diminish the experiment's value. I am just putting it in context to arrange its utility in my mind.
(edit: I can't imagine why this is flagged. It is def life- hacking if not tech hacking.)
> edit: I can't imagine why this is flagged.
Flagging seems to be one of the big vulnerabilities of HN.
Maybe flaggers should be required to state the reason for flagging, and this reason should be exposed.
Flagging means "no one should even see this on HN", and random people shouldn't get arrogant or cavalier about swinging around that power.
I have my account set to show flagged comments. A lot of flagged comments are simply some form of "wrongthink" but not violating any guidelines. So I've used the function often to "save" a flagged thing but it seemed to have stopped working for me at some point. I can only speculate why, but I think I saw some other commenters saying that happens if you unflag too much.. wrongthink. I want to give the site admin the benefit of the doubt though. Maybe it's simply an automated process that notices you unflagged too many things that were flagged by others too much?
I also have that setting, and occasionally vouch for an inexplicably flagged comment I notice.
There's definitely wrongthink/ideological flagging and downvoting going on.
(On some comments I make, I know when I make it that it's going to get downvoted, because it pushes against an opinion of the kinds of people who will downvote to suppress criticism. It used to be that criticizing cryptocurrency would get downvotes, but now it's popular to criticize. I can get reliably downvoted any time that I suggest that adding a fee for some basic public infrastructure (e.g., to drive on street in a city), in a "market-based" way, is a handout of the basic public infrastructure to the wealthy. Also, suggestions that there's still any bias against women, in anything, somewhere, seems to reliably get downvotes, no matter how relevant; I don't know why, but I'd guess it's because the topic has a lot of general angry sentiment, and people who are angry the other direction aren't represented as much on HN.)
I'd distinguish wrongthink from something being off-topic and done-to-death or a flamewar magnet. Maybe one mental exercise test for this is whether the same person would also still downvote as "topic" if the opinion of the post/comment were flipped.
>There's definitely wrongthink/ideological flagging and downvoting going on.
I actually vouch for a lot of comments I disagree with that was flagged, and upvoted it because I want it to be shown to the world. And in other times I disagree with it but vouch and upvoted because I dont want HN discussions to be one sided.
Throwaway here.
I’ve lived in China for a few years and I noticed anytime I write anything even remotely positive about my experience there I will get downvoted or flagged. Even completely neutral comments sometimes gets downvoted.
I don’t think anyone doubts there are good things that come from China. Using a throwaway account won’t help your cause marketing China. Like every other “superpower” China has their major, major flaws. The kicker is trust. Pro-China rhetoric on a highly-moderated forum should be met with skepticism.
This isn’t opinion. The great firewall of China isn’t a farce, it would be good to remember that.
one common misconception is that "the downvote is not a disagree button". it absolutely is. I made that mistake before, in the early days of reddit they used to stress that mantra, and I made the false assumption it was true here. You are getting downvoted because people disagree or don't like what you have to say. simple as that.
silencing the opposition creates an illusion of consensus. in the deluded minds of the terminally online, it is paramount to maintain that illusion.
in every remotely political discussion here, reddit opinions are allowed to be expressed as non-constructively as you please, but all dissent, no matter how factual and constructive, gets flagged within minutes.
Apparently it's because the original headline had the unfortunate juxtaposition of "homelessness" & "experimentation"?
I wouldn't be so quick to call delusion/dissent when designers of our spaces have simply made it far too easy to turn private affects into public effects..
(& It might be rude of me to be so concrete.. so.. apologies)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44213954
& What if everyone starts camping on pristine beaches? That'd be something! To marvel at!
Appreciate the feedback!
100%. It's a lot easier when you live next to a Google campus. And it sorts all the menial matters that make a huge difference, like access to washing machines.
About the flagging, you seem to have been here for a while, any hint? I get the word usage can comes across as disrespectful now that people mention it, but didn't think a link would get flagged for that.
I have been here for years. Most things that get flagged are extremely objectionable or touch a political nerve.
I could see conservatives disliking that it questions capitalism's viability post AI. I could see liberals thinking you are making light of folks experiencing homelessness.
I think those are absurd, but with a low vote count, your post may only need a few absurd people to flag you.
Naturally, there could be other reasons things get flagged, but I never see them because they disappear too fast.
You could always ask @dang to weigh in. He might see something which violates the guidelines.
Makes sense. Thanks for sharing!
Looks like it might have to do with the title, or at least the title was changed before it got unflagged. Good learning!
It was flagged because it originally had a totally different (and inappropriate) title.
I want to be able to upvote this comment just to show everyone how rules like "don't change the headline as originally given by website" or "let randos (with unpredictable emotional structure) flag stuff" lead to suboptimal outcomes
I have to admit I never had to consider falling boulders in my brief bout with homelessness
I lived in the woods during my undergrad too: https://medium.com/@caydenpierce4/the-homeless-hippie-cyborg...
This was in between two stints living and working in a mobile RV hacker lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT1gPmQQkxI
I'm in SF now and we'd probably be best friends.
The ROI calculation is way too short sighted to be meaningful. To start you are already paying college tuition, and the expectation is to get an education that will help you pay off the loans (and then some). Going a few hundred deeper in the hole every month to have a roof over your head (you know, the most basic requirment for humans after water and food) is a no brainer and will massively increase your education ROI. A couple months of "homeless man" cosplay is probably fun and games but start to face the heat, cold, humidity, animals, police, theft, physical danger and more and those As aren't going to remain As for long.
You're right that I was arguably irrationally attached to not ending uni with too much debt.
For the rest, I'm with you it might be hard to replicate beyond this n = 1 sample, but I'm convinced this experiment's ROI is actually much more positive than suggested in the post.
Not only did I get better grades that semester from being forced to spend more time in the library, but I learned a lot living at people's places afterwards, and, most importantly, the feeling of freedom from materials matters allowed me to make bolder bets that paid back multiple times over.
You can even go further: even if my grades had gone down, I still would have been more employable for many types of companies, starting with early stage startups.
Doesn't living in a tent also make you less vulnerable to smartphone and laptop addictions?
I noticed in myself that when I stay in minimal places (camping/jungle hut/tent), I tend to be more connected to the real world and less addicted. More productivity, clearer thought.
I read a comment on Reddit along the lines of ‘if you doomscroll every day to wake up, you wreck your dopamine levels for the day before even getting out of bed’.
I don’t have enough medical knowledge to assess this claim, but I made a simple rule: don’t touch the phone before getting out of bed! (except to turn off the alarm)
So far, it really seems to work!
This is not homelessness. This is "bandit camping". Not a value judgment on the act - when I was young climbing bum I did me a fair bit of it. But calling it homelessness is pretty insulting to the actual homeless, who aren't doing it by choice to optimize their time for a relative luxury.
There's a place for policing language, but you're not doing anyone any favors by gatekeeping homelessness. This is not involuntary homelessness, but then a large number of unhoused people could live under a roof if they were willing to accept certain tradeoffs, whether that be living with an abusive spouse, with an estranged parent, in a sober house, or far away from a community of friends. There are unhoused people who could scrape by in menial, arduous--and possibly dangerous--jobs who instead choose to live life on their own terms.
Trebaol was not forced into homelessness, but he was not play-acting or apeing a lifestyle for kicks. He was in a situation where he judged squatting four and a half months illegally in the jungle was worth saving a mere $2,000.
If you prefer to describe your past lifestyle as bandit camping instead of homelessness, by all means do so. But don't insist the rest of the world conform to your arbitrary redefinition of a term from its everyday meaning because it doesn't always fit your preconceptions.
Are you really helping the unhoused by insisting that someone is only truly homeless if they are schizophrenic, strung out on fentanyl, or otherwise totally incapable of being a productive member of society?
No but it definitely normalizes the issues around homelessness as no big deal when you write something where you’re intentionally homeless for financial gain.
Does it? How so? If anything it showcases some of the trials otherwise unknown to those who don’t face them (eg weather, tent mold).
Those are trials of camping. The cops coming and tossing your tent and everything else you own in a dumpster, that's a trial of homelessness.
This was specifically addressed in the blogpost. This is illegal in Hong Kong too.
Oh, and it's just the same. Excuse me for briefly disturbing your comfortable complacency. Carry on.
> But calling it homelessness is pretty insulting to the actual homeless
I'm sure homeless people have more pressing thoughts than what words nerds on the internet use to describe outdoor living
Not if the nerds on the internet are stirring the societal discourse around you. That affects the unhoused whether they care or not.
So you're protecting people from something that even you admit they don't care about?
You can be affected by something and not care about it. You can be affected by things you don't even know about, like the way regulations shape the houses we can live in.
Actually the ETHOS classification system for homeless focuses more on where a person is living as opposed to why they're living like that. OP would alternate between two categories.
If there's a more accurate and neutral title, we can change it above.
Edit: I've taken a crack at it. If there's a better way, we can change it again.
So sorry you had to spend time changing the title! Learning the lesson for next time.
Oh get over yourself with this contrived bit of supposed offense. Aside from it being nonsense, are you yourself homeless, a representative of a group of homeless people, someone who interviewed a number of them and asked if they're "offended" by anyone who doesn't absolutely have to live outside also using the phrase "i'm living homelessly"?
Also, by your invented criteria for language monitoring, many homeless people in many cities would themselves no longer be considered homeless.
Quite a few of them could somewhere, under some circumstances, find a place to stay even though it cost them just a bit too much to like, just like the guy who created this clever and interesting post.
What should you call this person without a fixed home? Perhaps "temporarily unhoused"?
> This turns into a surprisingly intense experience. I get to meet people in their most intimate space and bond over late-night conversations in ways that never would have happened otherwise.
This is much like the couch surfing experience: staying with people for a few days and sharing their space, which often ends in these deep, late-night conversations. It's an incredible experience.
There are a few platforms for that, I recommend Couchers.org. It's free & open source (and I'm one of the core maintainers).
>and saved me close to $2k over the 4.5 months.
Ok I was expecting a lot more. So it is one $450 USD per month? That doesn't very low. I guess HK Uni have decent discounts. But
>Living in Hong Kong without a dorm room would push rent up to at least $700 a month
Unless you only rent a bed with share washrooms and kitchen I can assure you it is not $700 but much closer to $1K if not higher depending on your living standard requirements.
If only this experience could reach media outlet. Hong Kong's rental or property pricing is just crazy expensive relative to what they offer.
> and saved me close to $2k over the 4.5 months.
The author wisely talks about safety considerations, but there's an it's-expensive-to-be-poor risk I'd like to emphasize:
One injury or illness caused by the frugality could wipe out that $2K savings, many times over, in immediate costs, and might never fully heal.
I think back to all the penny-pinching I did (less impressive than the author's), and much of it was necessary under the circumstances, but a very poor value tradeoff otherwise.
Cripplingly Expensive healthcare is only an issue in one country in the world.
I’ve been to the ER in Ecuador, Mali, Angola, Australia, Canada. Even as a tourist it was so cheap I didn’t bother using any travel insurance ( less than $50, including prescriptions)
It seems unlikely that there is not a single other country with “cripplingly expensive healthcare” besides the USA. I’m also of the opinion that there are more than 6 countries total.
Please name one with cripplingly expensive healthcare.
I went to the ER in Canada (BC) a couple years ago, and they charged $950 to my credit card just to walk in the door. Everything else was extra, and charged at rates not wildly different from what I’ve seen in the US. And I’m a Canadian citizen! (I had temporarily lost my free healthcare eligibility because I lived outside the country for a few years.)
Can’t comment on all the other countries you listed, although I can add that urgent care in Germany was pretty reasonably priced.
If he was on a student visa in Hong Kong he was able to access public health care for close to free.
All Hong Kong residents are eligible (anyone with an HKID and permission to remain >= 180 days).
Agree. I tried to describe the step by step approach to show how you can try this gradually and mitigate the risks, but if you don't have access to a community and cheap student healthcare it's definitely quite dangerous. I'll add word about this at the bottom.
Edit: added! thanks for the feedback again
Then again having an extra $2k in the bank might prove beneficial - perhaps preventing a personal catastrophe in a the near future. Or open doors that might make a significant difference down the road.
Risk is complicated, anything could happen. Not just doom and gloom. Individuals circumstances and appetite for risk versus reward varies.
The "Community Support" section is really touching.
Glad you liked this! It was so great I've been meaning to do this again for years but never made the leap by fear of being a nuisance.
I honestly think everyone would be much happier and less lonely if sleep-overs didn't stop being a thing as we reach adult age.
I concur. The experiences couch surfing were the most interesting part (aside from the psychological calm of sleeping and waking outside)
For camping in humid summers, it's amazing how much difference a power bank and little fan can make. A little electricity goes a long way.
Wild camping is tolerated in Hong Kong, but this guy is going to ruin it for everyone. Leaving 2.5 meter high tent pitched over daytime near buildings, is lazy and really really bad.
Stealth camping should be done in low profile tents (1.2 meters high). You should pitch tent at dark, and leave before sunrise.
"I first try putting a friend 3 meters away from the tent and asking him to find it. Vegetation is so thick he can't. No need to spray camouflage!"
You're safe! No one found me, and I took it away a decade ago.
Why does it matter if literally no one discovered it?
Tents aren't a good long term plan IMO. They don't protect you from animals. Vehicles are much better.
Makes sense. I guess it depends on the location, since in my case there were no animals as long as I didn't bring food in the tent. And another pro is you can pitch tents in places no one would ever go, while it's harder for vehicles. So less chances of getting busted.
Vehicles are tied to roads more or less and make contact with the most dangerous animal much more likely. Keeping food out of the tent is probably enough to discourage most animals from snooping.
Cool story, but this seems like a really good way to get your visa revoked if caught.
I kinda understand doing this if at home, and you have no other options. But this comes off as reckless and somewhat naive. To save 2K over a few months you risked serious injury, violated the terms of your visa and ultimately felt a need to humble brag about it.
Not everything needs to be shared.
It was a fun read nevertheless
Is that UST? If it is - it's really incredibly stunningly beautiful, that view. I envy the bravery giving you that sight to see every morning.
Yes exactly! It’s UST. Beautiful view :)
I lived and worked on the HKUST campus in the 90's.. Very picturesque. Surrounding coastline very rugged. He picked a good spot. No egress there at the bottom of the hill. Fun fact: He camped just below the historic location of Shaw Studios, who popularized the Kung Fu movie genre
There are a number of homeless students at UC berkley
Odd given all his efforts so far, that when attempting to live cheaply in San Fran, getting a drivers license to live in a van was too big an obstacle to overcome.
Inspiring. Bold choices.
let me know if you try the sailboat thing in san francisco!
In San Francisco you’d need to worry about the pirates.
Why doesn't Hong Kong fix their real estate problem?
Very nice write up, cool experiment and very intriguing
Hmm, really makes you optimistic...
I get that it's super hard to replicate this and have a good time outside of the HK jungle, but to be honest it made me a lot more optimistic . You see people's real colors when you ask them to host you in their home, and in my case the support was overwhelming.
Interesting article about alternative living, I understand why you would do this for fun, but obviously the risk vs. reward calculation makes no sense.
The convenience of a place with electricity, running water, a table and chair, you are legally allowed to sleep there, etc. Seems easily worth 450 Dollars a month. In the end he says he saved 2k, but that is not a relevant amount of money to save over months if you become a software developer in America.
TL;DR foreign guy tries living in a tent in the tropics but finds it too hot and humid
I uhh, is this homeless larping? What in tarnation
yeah. wouldnt have been fun if it was out of necessity
How about homelessness as a strategic cost-savings experiment?
I'd imagine most unhoused individuals are doing it as a strategic cost saving. Only, they're strategy involves eating and surviving rather than paying for unreachable/unsustainable rents. Maybe they didn't choose it, but it's still the strategy they're engaging in.
There are plenty of folks who can’t find housing for other reasons like background checks, credit score checks, etc. that might not be directly related to their ability to pay rent at that point in time.