Hacker News Reader

Comment by cejast | Hacker News Reader

I have to regularly travel to rural villages in Asia and the people that live in these places have only the most basic human desires. They barely know what an LLM is let alone interact with them. They're some of the happiest people I've ever met.

Of course they'll complain about work or money, and they assume that a Western salary buys me freedom. But they get to live through these luxuries on a daily basis. I'd be lucky to enjoy just one of these in any given week.

View on HN

Not to be glib, but I assume you're not quitting your Western job and moving there. So isn't this romanticizing it?

I have my own family dependencies that aren't too keen on the idea of living the village life. Otherwise I'd already be there.

I saw a video of a guy in his 50s living in a small city in Vietnam. He claimed $800/mo was more than enough, and $1000/mo would let him live lavishly. He just did the math and as soon as his predicted months of life left * 1000 < savings he pulled the trigger.

I think about that a lot because I have already hit that number easily, my family would definitely suffer though and not be into it.

There is a reason that South East Asia is popular for digital nomads and for retired expats. Thailand and Vietnam have still very affordable places if you avoid tourist traps. I would recommend first trying some easier destination like chiang mai or danang (if first time in asia), staying for 2 months (vacation/workation) and seeing if you still like it.

It’s not that easy to emigrate afaik, even ignoring family and obligations like that.

for real happiness it would be the most important thing if not romanticizing.

Yeah as someone whose family left this, you guys are crazy

But is that true though? This seems bit of a romanticism. Having lived in rural villages in Asia, I can tell you people are about as happy as anywhere else. They worry about not being able to afford or have access to basic healthcare. They worry about one off season rain destroying their livelihoods for the season. Depending on where you are, some worry about a sudden onset of escalating violence. Plenty of people don’t even have access to drinking water. Some worry about their land and only source of income taken away by larger interests.

Desires only tend to magnify in intensity and multiply in numbers because there is rarely enough.

Working on desire is a big thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com