I spent over a year traveling like this person. I agree with most of what he said.

My most treasured experiences were from being a regular somewhere. I think that is the most important lesson of the post. Friendship is proximity + time, so without spending a lot of time in one location you won't make friends.

Random aimless walking through non tourist areas is also an enriching activity.

I also found that traveling to places local people would visit to be far more interesting than the major tourist destinations.

If I had one uncommon piece of advice, it would be to invest in an extremely comfortable pair of shoes. After your phone, your shoes are by far your most important investment.

I personally prefer to travel with more stuff, although the author is absolutely right that you almost always travel with a lot more than you need. I like large cities more than the author, mostly because larger cities have more English speaking people so they are significantly less isolating. In larger cities it's nicer to have more clothing (and shoe) choices. I travel with a 55L osprey bag. I put all my electronics and papers in the day bag, and in the main bag I have clothes shoes and toiletries. If you know you are going to a single climate, you can pack less, but if you are going to both hot and cold places, you will want to pack more. The size of your pack mainly determines the rate of your laundromat trips and number of times you have to wait at baggage claim.

If you are an American tech worker, your credit card is almost certainly better than cash anywhere you can use it. I could also withdrawal cash from ATMs at the official forex exchange rate with my bank card. You do have to be very careful because all forms of payment will ask if you want to pay in local currency or your own currency. If you choose to pay in your own currency, you will be charged a predatory exchange rate, so you must always pay (or atm withdrawal) in the local currency. I left the US with $400USD and came back with $300USD after a full year of travel abroad, I gained a lot of peace of mind from traveling with cash I wouldn't be heartbroken to lose and electronics (chromebook) that I didn't particular care if they were stolen or destroyed.

After traveling without valuable items, I did feel mildly deprived. I would put a grand or two aside as "just the cost of traveling" money and use that as my "bad things happen sometimes" budget to get peace of mind about having valuable stuff in poor areas. If nothing bad happens, call it karma and donate it to a good cause.

The author talked about visas. The hardest problem for me was that countries wanted round trip tickets. They wanted a ticket showing you were going to leave the country. This can often be circumvented by buying a $10 bus ticket out of the country. That's the only way I found to reliably purchase one way tickets to various countries ad hoc.

> When I decided to go to Vietnam, everything and everyone told me to go to Ho Chi Minh City. It had better food. More art. More high culture. Less government. So I went to Hanoi.

I experienced this when I visited Vietnam as well. I thought Ho Chi Mihn felt kind of empty and not too different from other major cities. Hanoi was a wonderful city and felt much more lively. I liked Da Nang a fair amount as well.

A lot of the authors post can be summarized fairly succinctly:

If you want to grow as a person, you need to be uncomfortable. So don't optimize for comfort.

You can choose big comfortable cities with comfortable sights, comfortable food choices, and comfortable companions, but that won't lead to personal growth.