I've been traveling for about 14 years and living abroad is a very attainable goal and comfortable lifestyle.

tldr is get a passport, get any remote job for 10-15 hours a week, move to one of the $500 countries, rest, recuperate, live.

Take it from there without financial pressure weighing you down; build up passive income, get access to better healthcare, great food, world wonders and innumerable other benefits.

If you are an English speaker, you have immediate access to thousands of teaching jobs that pay anywhere from $2000-10000 USD per month.

FAQs are in the community sidebar and feel free to ask any other questions about living abroad in the comments, messages, or this travel community.

Video has the goods.

Humans ran too, but bots beat 'em.

A couple Beijing hostel travelers struggling with the tones here asked me for advice, and this always works: you can learn these tones in about a minute, then memorize vocab, then you can speak Mandarin. There's not much grammar and no gendered vocabulary.

Tones:

Aside from the neutral tone, which means you don't need to place any special emphasis on a syllable, there are the four flat, rising, falling then rising, and falling tones - bad descriptors.

length, intensity, volume are not described.

Most English speakers know what robot(flat), question(rising), unsure(falling and rising) and angry(falling) sound like intuitively, it's how we talk.

ni2hao3 is question, then unsure.

ni2 question, like you're asking a question - "knee?"

hao3 unsure, "yea-a?" first syllable falling, second rising.

bu4yao4 - angry, angry. "boo!yow!"

It takes even less time to learn when you hear the four examples in audio of course, so here's a short podcast episode explaining this method.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/46266694

In the world of Instagram / YouTube influencers, aggressive promotions and hidden ads it is hard not to have false expectations.

The reality of cruise was different: some mediocre things were oversold, and others that are trully enjoyable were never mentioned. Some minor problems were exaggerated by Temu sellers, others, like squicking cabin, were missing.

We decided to put together expectations vs reality to counter false expectations.

My friend chose a not-superb restaurant initially, so we went looking for a better one and really hit the jackpot here.

Warehouse now, moved to Yizhuang in 2010

Seafood steam. Seafood broth. morel mushrooms, some tofu skin, buncha veg, good stuff.

Working through all my favorites, this is chopped bullfrog in extra 麻辣(numbspicy) soup.

I complimented the waitstaff that I've been to their restaurant twice now because they use the real chongqing oil, very fresh and tangy compared to chili oils from other cities and provinces.

They proudly told me they fly it in from Chongqing to ensure quality and I believe it.

Very tasty, although i had to reckon with my chinese friends hating spicy food all over again.

chili peppers are always available and almost always refused in china. still surprises me.

Very interesting half-modern half-Crusoe way of life.

Just flew into Tangier yesterday and I've already had about 5 mint teas. First time in Morocco, and it's pretty incredible.

go say hi to a billion and a half people and a 3-5000 year old civilization. China is almost entirely cashless and has been for several years now: you scan a QR code or the vendor scans your payment code, and money is deducted from your balance or Chinese bank account.

thing is, getting a chinese bank account/card is a huge pain in the butt, not technically difficult but time-consuming and functionally non-essential but insisted upon.

Now, you don't need to waste your time. Connect your own no-fee credit card and pay through the national systems without any fees!

transportation, hotels, hostels, grocery stores, massages, basically everything in the country is now open to anyone with a credit card instead of requiring a Chinese bank account.

Wechat promoted this "overseas card function" for years but it didn't work for the entire time I lived in China, and I still couldn't connect my no-fee credit card last year when I visited.

Sometime in the last year, however, foreign credit cards have actually been integrated into the national payment systems. This is huge, especially since so many countries now have 10-day visa-free travel in china.

Now, you can connect a no-fee card to Weixin(wechat) and for the first time, don't need a Chinese bank account, phone number or card to use your local card to pay for thins in China! This is a pretty big payment revolution for travelers interested in visiting China and traveling around without undue hassle.

Every vendor has a qr code on the wall or a little scanner, so you look for the wechat or alipay symbol, scan the qr code or they scan your qr code and, done.

important notes(official regs):

Sign up with a passport and no-fee debit or credit card. You can sign up with any card, but if you have tx fees then the charges will rack up way too fast to be of any use.

No minimum transaction amount - i bought a single beer yesterday for 83 cents

No transaction fees under 200 RMB($26 USD equivalent) although you can pay multiple times, so if the bill is 340 RMB, you can pay 200 + 140 in two separate transactions.

Roughly $10000 USD yearly limit, which is more than enough to pay for a year of living in China, and way more than enough for a vacation.

It's made this trip wayyy easier than before, where I was one of the very few cash-using people in the country because I didn't want to deal with the time-suck of reactivating my Chinese bank account.

I'm going to go buy snacks and stuff.

me and all the grannies got our steps in.

First time I can remember hearing about this fruit although I think I've seen them in markets. My search results for "Korean melons" fortunately didn't fly too far in the indecent direction, I bought a box after these were recommended to me by a cop I met in the Busan supermarket. We also talked a lot about SK cinema.

They are reeeally good, like a cantaloupe//apple/vanilla ice cream flavor, very unique.

tea-infused is actually how I prefer whisky.

tea and whisky in Busan

B b b busan

Party of one. Also, the crab was previously fresh and I picked it out. A nice Japanese lady told me that if I'm going to korea, I should definitely get the crab because it's crazy good right now.

It was pretty good!

cooked perrrfect for sure.

The dozen side dishes, which I love, were only three bucks, which I initially thought was for the plate and forks and then realized it was for literally over 10 side dishes that come with the steamed crab.

The plates are so diverse and they switch out at least two dishes every day. It's been very easy eating here four days in a row.

Self-examination is healthy.

Thought the streetlamps looked really nice through the Busan blossoms.

Korean hard seltzer

The buildings are really clean and nature is everywhere and the parks are beautiful and the food is great.

The buildings are weirdly clean, like I can't understand how the buildings and the vehicles are all so clean here. It looks like all the buildings were painted yesterday and all of the cars just went through a wash.