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Comment by 11thEarlOfMar | Hacker News Reader

This is awesome. My wife and I are planning a round the world trip to celebrate our last college tuition payment. We've talked about becoming 'Citizens of the World' and eschewing the canned tourist experiences to instead live the same lifestyle as the citizens of the countries we visit: Stay in a neighborhood instead of a high-rise hotel, shop at the same grocery stores, eat the same home-cooked meals, get around via the same transit, I mean as high-fidelity as is reasonable. We expect the main friction will be language, but we anticipate that we can work through that.

Thinking a little bigger, I can see no better way to combat bigotry and nationalism than to experience life the same way as humans from the other side of the planet, and realize that we are the same in so many ways.

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I highly recommend HelpX to get a really good feel of the lifestyle in foreign countries. Rather than just staying at someone's place like Airbnb, you do light work for your host in exchange for free room and board. You get a place to live in a place where locals actually live, homecooked meals in the local style, when your host don't feel like cooking you get taken out to eat at places where locals actually eat, get shown around the local sights by your host on evenings and weekends, and you also get to experience some of the work they do. It's an incredibly easy, low-cost, and effective way to temporarily live somewhere.

I stayed with 2 families in France that way, and got to label wine bottles at a local domaine (vineyard), drink their wine at dinner, shovel horse manure at a farm, harvest honey, ran to the boulangerie for bread, went shopping at the local supermarket, got shown around a spectacular nearby castle and a monastery carved into a cliff that I'd never heard of, ate cheese and charcuterie at their favourite restaurants, they made an effort to cook traditional food like raclette and canneles for me to try.... really I can't rave about the experience enough.

https://www.helpx.net/

This sounds tempting, but I have a hard enough time arranging regular visas on international trips, and work visas (even short term ones) sound like a nightmare and a half...

Do you need a work visa if you are being "paid" in kind (board, food, internet access)?

I don't know the official answer, but given that it's all under the table, short term and no money is being exchanged, I think you'd be crazy to even try getting a work visa. I'll be honest that it didn't even cross my mind.

Sorry, late response, but most countries (including France) require a work visa for things like unpaid internships, or being compensated in any way. Paying for board/food counts as compensation.

Look at it from the perspective of the US -- you can't just recruit programmers from India, have them come over "on vacation", pay them in room/board, and expect to not have any problems with border control. Work is work.

> to instead live the same lifestyle as the citizens of the countries we visit: Stay in a neighborhood instead of a high-rise hotel, shop at the same grocery stores, eat the same home-cooked meals, get around via the same transit, I mean as high-fidelity as is reasonable

Until one of you gets severely sick or something like that, in which case you'll be very happy to not live like a local anymore and fall back on your home country.

This "citizen of the world" rhetoric seems to only ever be "citizen of the world that we like". How about being a citizen of the world in North Korea, or as a woman in Saudi Arabia, or as a gay teenager in Somalia?

Sorry, I have a hard time swallowing the "bourgeoisie traveling the world with Airbnb is the best way to combat bigotry" bait.

You might try thinking about this from the other direction. I can tell you from first-hand experience that once-shocking levels of South Korean nationalism, and really, ethnic nationalism, have been calmed down to something far far friendlier and more cosmopolitan, and it very much seems that travel and exposure to other cultures (especially the West, but not only) are what has done the trick.

Now as for being a North Korean, well, you are kind of proving the point because North Koreans' number one problem is isolation from the world.

Back in the USA, what percentage of Trump voters do you imagine hold passports? Sure, correlation is different from causation, but still...

So I can respect your call to realism, but at the same time it reminds me of some old aphorism about babies and bathwater or something.

Incidentally, another baby that people seem to want to throw out when the bathwater gets dirty is international trade.

>Back in the USA, what percentage of Trump voters do you imagine hold passports? Sure, correlation is different from causation, but still...

About the same percentage as Hillary supporters? In my experience holding a passport is more correlated with income than any particular political leaning. What they do is likely a lot different (e.g. religious mission vs French wine binge), but there is nothing particularly Democrat/Republican about a passport.

I'm not quite sure that the numbers are as equal as you might think.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/americas...

Also we should note that being Republican and bring a Trump supporter aren't necessarily the same thing.

Btw most of the Trump supporters I've met overseas have had tied to the military.

Thus article seems to support my conjecture that it's correlated to income.

So, people wanting to learn about the world should go to Somalia and North Korea to round up their experience?

The notion of global citizen is misguided in the first place, because there is no global entity to be a citizen of, at any socio economic level that matters.

Sure you can say that you're a creature of Mother Earth, we're all brothers and sisters united by a common bond, all that; at the end of the day you're still paying taxes to a very specific, non "global citizen" government, and depending on that government for basic services like healthcare or educating your kids.

> The notion of global citizen is misguided in the first place, because there is no global entity to be a citizen of, at any socio economic level that matters.

Well duh. I'm pretty sure people who use this phrase are well aware that they're not literally becoming citizens of some world entity.

> Sure you can say that you're a creature of Mother Earth, we're all brothers and sisters united by a common bond, all that; at the end of the day you're still paying taxes to a very specific, non "global citizen" government, and depending on that government for basic services like healthcare or educating your kids.

Yes, this is what the term "global citizen" means.

Theresa May, is that you?

>Thinking a little bigger, I can see no better way to combat bigotry and nationalism than to experience life the same way as humans from the other side of the planet, and realize that we are the same in so many ways.

The people rich enough and willing to do this in the first place are usually not that bigoted/nationalistic. Someone who hates the French isn't going to volunteer to go live in a village in France for a month... especially if it means quitting their job and spending a 20% of their annual income to do so.

Think about the other side of this - the host side. For hosts of these experiences, they don't need to be rich or capital-owning at all in order to be exposed to people of many different backgrounds through experiences.

To experience the rich capital owners of other countries?

i think would be very cool if there was an app that would do the reverse and enable the have-nots to have what the haves have, even for a short period of time:

- private heli trip to a private island villa,

- 300' yachts, aventadors, 488s, 911s all free to use,

- private shopping sessions (fully paid for) at hermes, chanel,

- meet-and-greets w/ robuchon, redzepi etc,

- take a whimsical trip to some middle of nowhere farm to work for a day..

at a totally affordable price for the typical middle class in a middling country.

it's not real obviously, it's all a show, rich people don't live like this every day, just substantially more likely to experience something like this than the not-so-rich.

obviously, it's not going to happen, but it is a hope.

That's sorta of the point of resorts and cruises.

And Vegas! The underlying reason all of those things suck.

Relevant: David Foster Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." You should read it — it's a hilarious takedown of these sorts of experiences (specifically a 7 day Caribbean cruise).

My parents have money and love cruises.

I don't get it at all. I suppose it's because it's cheap if you know how to hunt down a deal.

Is it the same as the essay "Shipping Out", that David Foster Wallace published in Harper's Magazine in the mid-90s?

https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/HarpersMagazi...

Yep! That'd be it.

So your idea is for an app that would allow anyone to have private heli trips to island villas and free-to-use Aventadors for a "totally affordable" price?

Is that right?

Right about that. But if travelers have no preconceived notion one way or the other, this can provide a true notion that they can carry back to friends and family, Tweet about, Instagram, Facebook, etc. etc. The message will get out.

> combat bigotry and nationalism than to experience life the same way as humans from the other side of the planet

it's hard to do as a tourist because the whole point of travelling is to momentarily disconnect from the existential demands of life, which drives national sentiment.

unless in your quest to live like a local, you also experience the angst of employment, family, social pressure and social standing, and where your place in the world is going to be.

that's just not going to happen.

If you come to Los Angeles, you can do my laundry and buy my groceries for a real locals experience.

It's a nice idea, but if the rest of AirBnb is anything to go by, it'll very quickly be filled with generic experiences that cut costs and under deliver.

I've had some great times staying at AirBnbs, but over time the ratio of good to bad/average is sliding fast.

I've had good experiences with professionally written descriptions and not going too cheap on the price. Any straying and it's very hit and miss.

I've done this abroad in a few places — Costa Rica, Taiwan, Greece. While it is pretty trendy, it's actually somewhat difficult to "live like a local" in places where you don't know a local. That said I think staying in an Airbnb spare room with a local host simplifies things a lot. I suppose they can kinda become your impromptu host family.

Also, you might like the short book Vagabonding by Rolf Potts.

So just use couchsurfing.org

My wife and I did the same for all of 2014 and 2015, living out of airbnbs, one month to the next.

Nothing but amazing people and experiences and nothing but 5 star reviews in both directions, with us singing Airbnb's praises all the way.

And then last week, I tried to find a place for new year's, and discovered that Airbnb had deleted my account without notice and without cause. It is impossible to contact a human being without an airbnb account, and we are effectively blacklisted from doing business with the company.

Checking online, this is hardly an isolated case, so do yourself a favor and have a backup plan for that eventuality.

Wow, you are deep and impressive. Very cool!

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