Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

The last time I was in Kunming, the air wasn't exactly clean.

Sure, Kunming is the provincial capital so a worst case example. The rest of the province is pretty damn clean, and being semi-rural to outright wilderness much cleaner in most cases than western cities. Personally I'm on the next lake over... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Fuxian ... it's like Kunming 15 years ago. We still have horse-drawn carts, and you can go fishing, horseriding, or paragliding with ease. We also have some of the oldest fossils in the world, a submerged neolithic village and a not-so-secret Chinese navy submarine testing base.

What kind of tech work can you do in Lake Fuxian? Or are you doing remote? If remote, then ya, there are a lot of nice places in China to hang out in, though personally I would pick Bali or Thailand.

Kunming was ok 12 years ago. I'm getting old though.

I work remotely for Silly-Valley and change bases frequently. This is just one of them. Bali is too crazy-drinking or hooneymooner for my meetup tastes, and Thailand while safe enough does still mean a new visa run for a lot of people, which is why keeping any potential meetup in China might be nice. I too was in Kunming from ~2001, however I am definitely not getting any older!

China has been cracking down on visas lately also...I'm not sure I would pick China if I could go anywhere, it is more expensive than the alternatives, and I still feel like I'm crossing into the developed world when I fly to Thailand or even the Philippines. And still no Chai Tea Lattes at starbucks (though Indonesia doesn't have them either).

I'm dreaming about moving to India, but I like my current job too much, and my next move is probably back to the states to settle down.

Can't be worse than Beijing. Shangrila is very nice.

Definitely better than Beijing, but it used to be much better. There are no tech jobs in zhongdian.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com