AI induced or not, career transitions require savings. I didn't have any, so I tried homelessness in Hong Kong's tropical jungle 🏕️. It was amazing and I learned a lot. More below. ## Context & Motivation For context, this story happens in 2016 when I'm studying in Hong Kong. I got there on a scholarship that makes money so scarce the only expense left to optimize is rent. Lowering it is my only chance at not having to spend years saving up in a finance job before I can afford to build companies. So why not try homelessness and see if I can take it? ## Finding a Place To test homelessness, you need a tent and a location. Finding a good spot takes three days of touring the university's surroundings with two criteria in mind: distance to the university and the probability of being found over the next 6 months. This last one sets a very high bar. For example, the area below the campus swimming pool seemed ideal, but its structure is likely to get audited from time to time. The winner is by the coast. Traffic is minimal because the rocks are hard to climb, especially when the tide is high, and the thick tropical jungle vegetation can be used as camouflage. There's no flat ground to pitch the tent, but it's nothing that 1 or 2 days of carrying rocks and wood chunks can't fix. *The hideout* ![[tent hideout.jpg]] ## The Trial Learnings I borrow a friend's tent (thank you Kieran!) and decide to live in it for two weeks, just enough to get a realistic sense of the daily struggles. The rain's a pain. Day 3 at ~4 AM, I make a wrong move and boom, tidal waves gushing from the puddle my air mattress deflated into soak everything. Not the most pleasant, but nothing a good tent and heavy-duty tarpaulin can't fix. The trial also invalidates my original thesis about the ideal tent being easy to hide but small. Turns out not being able to stand makes dressing up a pain, and limited indoor volume causes water vapor accumulation from breathing, which promotes mold over time. *My original thesis of the ideal tent: discrete but uncomfortable* ![[tent small.jpg]] Everything else seems very promising, so I decide to commit. ## Committing On February 4th, 2016, I become the proud owner of a tent that's twice the twice the size of a local university dorm room! *The USD 410 dream tent* ![[tent dream.png]] This tent is incredible. It features: - An actually waterproof design - A 2.5-meters-high ceiling to stand comfortably - A removable waterproof roof to be able to look at the stars directly through the mosquito net when the weather's good *The view* ![[tent morning view.jpeg]] The realtor listing also boasts: - Scenic views of ocean sunrises - Proximity to the gym (6 minutes and 26 seconds personal record), campus restaurants, and spotless public bathrooms - Direct access to the ocean to windsurf It's a dream place. At least it is in this context, given a not so fun fact is that I saw the same tents years later in the streets of San Francisco. ![[tent in sf.jpeg]] ## The Highs Who would have guessed this kind of intentional homelessness could be so heavenly? First, I get an intense feeling of inner peace. Instead of random 5:30 AM alarms from people sleeping in the next dorm room, I wake up to waves breaking on nearby rocks. Even things as simple as brushing my teeth goes from being a chore to something to look forward to because the view is just so beautiful! *Magnificent sunrises (university view)* ![[tent sunrise view.jpg]] Also, this lifestyle helps to be productive. Having to go to the gym every morning to shower enforces discipline, not being able to have a light inside the tent forces me to spend longer in the library, and having a little oasis of peace outside of Hong Kong's hustle and bustle allows me to fully disconnect and sleep like a baby. *Morning commute* ![[tent morning commute.jpeg]] ## Downsides & Risk Mitigation There are no lows as much as risk mitigation related constraints. **Getting busted by the police** The biggest risk is getting found. Wild camping is illegal, and having to urgently find another place to live would disrupt my life, especially during finals season. There are a couple of mitigations: - Make it a secret. I tell no one but the 3 close friends whose support I'd need if I get busted, make sure they understand the story would spread like wildfire, and have them swear not to say a word to absolutely anyone including their partners. - Hide the tent behind thick vegetation. - Spray paint the tent with camouflage shapes - I don't want to lower resale value, so 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! - Avoid ever using artificial light inside, which would turn the tent into a lamp. *Light + tent = lamp* ![[tent lamp.jpg]] **Getting robbed** The simplest mitigations are to: - Secure the tent opening zippers with a lock - it might look small but the only people likely to find the hideout are old Hong Kongese men who enjoy fishing and international students who enjoy rock climbing, two demographics trustworthy enough to stop at a lock. - Avoid storing valuables in the tent - luckily, aside from a laptop and two suits which I store in a locker on campus, I don't have any valuables. **Getting crushed by a boulder during sleep** The nearby cliffs make this risk non-zero. Touring the coast line doesn't reveal any recent landslide or boulder fall, but these can still happen during a typhoon. I decide to sleep at a friend's place whenever winds reach 35 knots. It will only happen 2-3 times during the whole semester, and every time I come back to a tent that's intact. **Other limitations** - No food - even the tiniest snack is an invitation for wild animals to wreak havoc on the tent. This forces me to rely on the campus' restaurants, which aren't cheap (~$3/meal instead of $1 when homecooked), but this is more than compensated for by the lack of rent, and it's also better for social life. - No electricity - luckily I can charge everything on campus. ## The End This heaven ends with killer weather. During the winter, cold only starts to be a problem when the temperature drops below 2°C (35°F), which only happens twice. It's not comfortable, but thick blankets make it surprisingly manageable. The real issue is heat. Hong Kong's summer is scorching hot, with temperatures routinely hitting 35°C (95°F), which translates into close to 42°C (107°F) in the tent. Sleeping there feels like getting slow-cooked in a sauna, and mold starts colonizing all textiles. Against the ever-rising temperatures, I must leave the tent late May, with a full month to go. *The insufficient ceiling ventilation system* ![[tent sky view.jpeg]] ## ROI Even if I have to cut it short, this experiment is already a financial success. Offsetting ~$450 in dorm room rent paid back the tent within a month, and saved me close to $2k over the 4.5 months. Most importantly, this expriment triples my runway. Living in Hong Kong without a dorm room would push rent up to at least $700 a month, meaning the ability to crash in a tent lowered my soon-to-be monthly expenses from $1k to $300 a month. And that's without taking into account the interest rates from having to take a loan. ## Community Support I’d hate to impose on a single friend’s hospitality for two whole months, so I start openly telling everyone about the tent. The word spreads like wildfire. I get dozens and dozens of hosting invitations! I'm in shock - even people I barely know warmly invite me into their homes. It's really touching. To spread the burden, I accept many invitations but limit my stay to half a week. 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. Also, it's insane how wildly different are the lives of people who go to the same classes in the same university! One host is a Chinese friend who lost his dad and barely sees his mom who works night shifts in a Chinese factory across the border. Their tiny flat is constantly dark because aren't any windows, and electricity's too expensive. To pay the bills, they cram 4 foldable beds into a room and rent them online for $13 a night. And he's still generous enough to invite me into his home! Right after, I find myself in an exclusive condo with a cinema, music rooms, sauna, restaurants, bars, and multiple pools. My host is a banker who asks me to stay a longer because he feels a bit lonely. We have long conversations about him being sick of Hong Kong, which has us realize he's not sick of the city as much as of his monotonous life in the city. There's so much to be lived here! Just a few kilometers away, friends who later host me are launching their first rap album, prototyping fixed-wing drones in the living room, and discussing the Vedas by the house shrine. ## Learnings This experience changed my life. First, it gave me a sense of freedom from the material world. Removing runway related anxieties allowed me to make bolder moves, like directly focusing on entrepreneurship instead of taking a job for years to save up. A decade later, I still feel freer knowing I can survive on close to nothing. Second, this experience increased my faith in humanity. It's still quite emotional to think about all the support I got from both friends and almost strangers who invited me into their homes. Also, meeting dozens of people in the intimacy of their homes changes you. Besides friendships, you get a much deeper appreciation for how insanely different people's lives are. ## Failed Attempts at Replicating it Replicating this outside of Hong Kong turned out to be quite hard. I really showed how privileged of a setting I had earlier lived in. **Berkeley Mountains** I scouted for tent locations when I was later studying in Berkeley. There were several suitable spots in the mountains, but the only ones that were far enough to be safe from the local homeless were too far from the university. **Berkeley Sailboat** Living in a van wasn't an option given I didn't have a driver's license, so I instead explored living on a sailboat. It turns out this requires a permit which locals said is really hard to get, but I found what seems like a loophole. Permits only seem required for American boats, not for foreign boats that are *visiting* the region. This means that you could in theory buy a boat in Vancouver or Tijuana, sail it to San Francisco, and rotate across marinas. I didn't explore this further as I found a crazy good deal with the local rowing team's house, but would love to hear from someone who tries it. ![[tent_tijuana-sf.jpg]] **Paris Cave** One close friend was looking for someone to rent his cave for about $100 per night. I of course proposed to turn it into a dwelling and raise the rent if he allowed me to use his bathroom from time to time. First step was to rent professional air quality measuring devices (radon, mold, carbon monoxide, etc), which assessed the cave as safe. Second step was to spend a night and measure CO2 buildup. After a deep clean that crushed both a personal and a professional vacuum cleaners, I quickly fell asleep - light insulation was pretty good - but woke up with intense asthma. We contemplated renovating the cave to fully sanitize it, but the combination of heavy investment, uncertain payout, and uncomfortable lifestyle had us drop the whole plan. **Shackled to the Good Life** I'm incredibly lucky to have met a beloved one who's worth every bit of not running more of such experiments, but I'd really love to hear from people who try them, especially so if that's about the sailboat in San Francisco loophole. -- *Head to [Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44210736) for comments, and to [Twitter](https://x.com/SudoCorentin) for updates about upcoming posts. *Note: the overwhelming majority of homeless people are exceedingly less privileged than I was. If helping them speaks to you, consider donating to your local NGO helping the homeless.* *Note 2: do not reproduce "at home", especially if you don't have a good health insurance. One injury or illness caused by this experiment would have wiped out the savings many times over.* *Disclaimer: wild camping and some of the other aforementioned activities may be illegal depending on local laws. This information is provided for educational purposes only. I do not endorse, encourage, or promote any actions that violate applicable laws or regulations.*