Latest / bit of a Rambler / 077 Urban Camping in Hualien

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077 Urban Camping in Hualien · bit of a Rambler

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Kai and I am a bit
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of a rambler. I like to travel, learn and tell stories.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: And we're back to story time in Taiwan. The earlier
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: episode was all about my introduction to Taiwan and staying
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: in the airbnb, and then it ended with me stepping
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: out into the wide world for my first I believe
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: backpacking trip in any capacity where I was just going
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: to live outside out of my rucksack as long as
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I comfortably could. That was the entire plan, and I
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: had a hammock at this point. I also had a tent,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: but I think I just carried the tent with me
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the entire time and never used it and lived out
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of the hammock, lived on the hammock, slept in the hammock.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: So let's get into it. I think my host a
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: thousand times stepped out with the intention of indefinitely backpacking outside,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: living outside, and it's so different stepping out. It felt
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: like leaving America to go to China the first time,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: where I stepped out of the host Airbnb, and now
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I was out on the streets, like in that step
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: across the threshold. Now I was living outside and just
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: like when I moved to China. When I landed in China,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I was like, here I am. I'm doing a new
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: life now. This is a new lifestyle like my life was.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: My life has been broadened now standing in the Beijing airport,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: but this was a lot quicker because there was no
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: flight in between. I stepped out onto the street that
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I had walked on every day while I was staying
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: in the airbnb. But now that now the world was open,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: it was now everything was accessible to me. It wasn't
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: a place I was. The outside world wasn't a place
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I was visiting until I went back into the tiny
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: room on the second floor where I was staying. Now,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: my step outside was the first step into infinite adventure.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I could just go anywhere as long as I wanted.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I didn't have to worry about getting back to anything.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I was fluidly interacting with the environment now, which was
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: a very interesting feeling, and I let myself kind of
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: absorb that. And then I just walked down the street.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: So I wasn't just standing prone in front of their door,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and I just walked around thinking about that again. Another
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: parallel of leaving my country for the first time and
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: being in another country and realizing I could live there
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: full time teaching English, like I had no reason to
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: go back to the States unless I wanted to. Walking
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: around on these streets and realizing I had no reason
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: to live indoors again until I wanted to was incredibly liberating,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: as freeing as landing in a new country the first time.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I was now in the outside world, and that was
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: open to me. Now when I realized I could live
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: indefinitely outside of the States, that's a pretty big improvement
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: on my living situation. Living in the one apartment you
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: can afford I could afford in the States, in the
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: one town with my one sedentary job. And you know,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: it's such a small you can't even call it a
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: pocket of the world. It's a piece of lint in
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the pocket. It's such a small amount of space. And
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: then I realized I could live in any country in
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: the world, either teaching online or in person, and I
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: was the world opened up in that sense. But I
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: would still be living inside a building in a city.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: It was based on teaching to school or online, but
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: still living indoors, and indoors is a pretty small amount
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: of the world. So in Taiwan, when I stepped out
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: of the door, and I had made my commitments to
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: urban camp and live outside. All of a sudden, the
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: whole outside world became part of the world that I
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: could live inside. So initially it was I'll get my
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: own place, my own house in the United States, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: that's where I will live. That's where I can live.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I have to establish a life there. And then when
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I realized I could live anywhere in the world, I
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: was like, wow, I can live in any building in
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: the world, so I can live anywhere basically in the world,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: like a lot of places. But that wasn't really true.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I could live in a lot of pre established settlements
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: around the world, but I couldn't really live in most
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: of the world because there aren't human settlements in most
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: of the world. And then now I was living outside,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and now I could live anywhere. Or I had decided
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: to begin living anywhere I wanted, and I would see
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: how far away from a town can I live, how
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: far outside of human settlements is comfortable for me to
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: live because I don't want to live uncomfortably. I want
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: to learn and experience new things and live comfortably anywhere.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: So I have to see what that sandbox feels like
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: I have to see the limits of adventure versus comfort
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: and preference. But going from thinking that I have to
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: live inside a single house like that was the goal,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: and then leaving the country and realizing that, oh no,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: I can live anywhere. Now my goal is to learn
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: things about all these new places, and then taking this
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: first step outside, realizing oh, not even just these new
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: human settlements like physical settlements. Now I can learn every stream,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: every single coastline, every tree, every forest. They're all open
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: to me. Now I can really live everywhere and experience
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: as much as I want to, and it's all my choice.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: It was the last step in habitation, expanding my conscious
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: awareness of the world, and I hadn't even realized it
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: until that point. I had decided to start urban camping
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: permanently or as long as I wanted to, And then
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: when I was actually living outside of human buildings, it
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: just expanded my mind again because I was much closer
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: to a much larger part of the actual world human
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: built or created or not. I didn't have to choose
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: a house now, I could also choose a forest, a beach,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: a mountain to live on, and that was a very
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: comfortable and comforting experience. Because if you think you have
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: to choose one building that is yours and you can
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: live inside, this is how I think of it. You're
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: confined to a very small perspective on living, like, Okay,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I have to find a good indoor area that I
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: can afford and maintain and all this kind of stuff.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: So when I moved abroad and realized that English teaching
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: was going to be an industry for the rest of
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: my foreseeable life, I was like, Okay, I can live
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: anywhere and I want to now, Like, it's not that
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: I have to stay within one part of one country
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: and follow the corporate culture and the living infrastructure that
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: they tell me is correct. I can live anywhere I
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: want to and any building I want to, in any
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: part of any country I want to. For the most part,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: obviously not DRC or some active war zone, but one
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: hundred and ninety countries or whatever just opened up to me.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: After I lived in China for a little while and
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: taught English, I was like, oh cool, so now I
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: can live anywhere. This is fantastic. And that first step
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: outside convinced me, okay, like I don't feel like I'm
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: missing anything, Like I that first step outside. I went
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: through the inventory in my rucksack. I was like, yeah,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: I have pretty much everything I need. I'll be able
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: to buy food from the supermarkets. Maybe I should look
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: into cookwhere so that I can cook outside. But I
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: have everything. I'm not gonna die. I haven't died. I'm
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: standing outside with my rucksack. I've decided to permanently live
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the elements, aren't you know, exposing me. I'm not dying
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: or anything, so I should be okay. I can just
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: keep doing this. And then I took my steps down
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the alley. I kept walking. I saw my favorite vegetarian
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: buffet and was like, I'll see you in the evening,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: my friend. And I think that's the first thing I did.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I think. I spent an hour or two at the
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: exercise park just a couple blocks away. I didn't even
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: leave my neighborhood that first day until I had to
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: go to sleep. I just tung out at the exercise park.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: And very similarly as when I left the States to
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: China the first time and realize how much more freedom
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: and opportunity I actually had in the world, I was like, geez,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: what do I do now? I have an entire island
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: to walk around, and I love this little town, but
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: there are so many little towns on just this island
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: and the world. It was mind boggling to think of
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: all the places I could live and explore and enjoy
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: and just learn about. And I think that was what
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: I did. I think I just sat in that exercise park,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: did a couple pull ups, like swung on the swings,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: and just thought about how huge my world was now
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: that I could live outside. I didn't even have to
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: sleep the first night because I had slept in a
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: hammock overnight before, just camping, so I knew I could
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: do it, and I loved the hammock. And I was
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: just set off, like my thinking was knocked off its
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: normal course again in such a parademical way, like things
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: had changed again. Now the whole world was open roughly
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: to exploration and learning. And as I thought about that
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: and just how cool that was, immediately, like in that
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: first afternoon, I'm pretty sure I was already making plans.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, I got to get to Japan,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: then go sleep there. How cool would be during cherry
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: blossom season. Oh, and then Ireland that's supposed to be
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: legal also, so that first. Yeah, just that first day
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: of urban camping was like, Wow, now the world's open again.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: And I'm not spending any money either. I am also
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: saving money so I can actually afford the plane tickets
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: to these places. Even making the three hundred dollars, I
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: was a month like teaching English online because I wasn't
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: touching any of my savings. I had plenty of savings,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: but I didn't want to spend it if I didn't
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: have to, because teaching English pays so well, and I
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: invested a lot of my money. I haven't spent any
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: of my savings since I left the US for the
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: first time. And yeah, I just like having a bunch
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: of money for whenever I do want to do something,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: or I'm like, oh, yeah, I gotta fly across to
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: another country to go that concert or whatever whatever I
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: want to do, or if I want I have enough
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: money if I go back to the States like I
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: have before, and I want to just buy a car,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: it's nice to just have the money to do that.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: So I try not to touch my savings if I
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: don't have to. And since I was living outside, most
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: of my living expenses, I didn't have to worry about
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: I had to eat food, but I had my hammock
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: with me, so I didn't have to pay rent anywhere.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: And I was so happy with that vegan or vegetarian
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Buddhist food. I was like, well, that's easily five dollars
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: a day. Would be plenty of calories for me every day,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: And that's one hundred and fifty bucks a month if
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I ate there every day. And if I start cooking
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: for myself, that'll be even cheaper because I can just
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: get like curry and noodles, and I'll probably be down
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: to a dollar a day, so I'll only spend thirty
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: bucks a day if I want to save money. But
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: by that time in my planning, staring off into the
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: sky on a swing set in a public exercise park
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: in Hualien, Taiwan, a couple hours had passed by with
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: all my daydreaming, and I was sat up with a jolt,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god, the Buddhist buffets open.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: And I walked back down ten minutes back to the
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: neighborhood where my airbnb was. It's like half a block
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: from this my favorite vegetarian buffet, and I showed up
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: with my rucksack and everyone was like, oh, hey, how's
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: it going, recognizing me and I had my huge meal
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: and it was my first time outside, so I was like,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I better eat enough just in case, just in case what.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It's not like they're going away or
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: there's not other supermarkets or whatever. But living outside the
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: first time had me feeling this, I'm in the middle
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: of a city like or a town, I guess, but
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of an urban area suburban ad max.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: But it just felt like now you're out, or maybe
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: it was just that now my only concern was food.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: That's all I really had to worry about. Everything else
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: was open to me. If I wanted to read books
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: all day, I could. I didn't have to. I had
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: enough money to buy food. There's public potable drinking water,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: and I had a mini Sawyer filter in case I
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: ever needed to filter water. I was teaching online at
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: the time, so people I had a SIM card and
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: I clicked online. I could go offline and then I
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be available, or I could go online using Palfish,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: an app to teach English learners. And when I was online,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: people could call me up whenever they wanted to and
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: we would just talk. I wasn't a formal lesson. We
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: would just have conversations in English, and I would get
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: very low. You could set your own pay per minute.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Basically they paid you per minute on the phone just
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: to practice English, and you can set your own price,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: but I set mine at one u N a minute.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I think after I was comfortable teaching because I wanted
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: to make sure that anybody who wanted to call me
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: could call me when u N is sixty one an hour,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: which is like ten dollars an hour, maybe at that
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: point ten USD per hour, so pretty low. Not a
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: super low price, but pretty much anyone in China could
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: afford that if they wanted to talk for like twenty
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: minutes a day, they could spend twenty one a day
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: on an English lesson. And sometimes people called up and
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: they did want to form a lesson and me to
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: teach them things, and I did that. So if you
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: did want to call up and have me teach you,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: that was fine. But more than ninety percent of the
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: people just wanted to talk to a foreigner and in
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: English and just learn what life was like outside of China,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: or just as often tell me about their lives in
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: China and ask for a different perspective from outside of China,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: like what did I think of their lives? Or what
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: did I think of this relationship they were in or
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: interaction they had had earlier? Did I see something different
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: than they did? Because I wasn't integrated into that culture
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: from birth, a very strong monoculture. And that was why
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I stayed with that job. I actually, with all the savings,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: I didn't need to work at all, But like I said,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: I liked not having to use my savings, and I
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: also liked the job much more than the ten dollars
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: an hour I was making. That wasn't really as important
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: to me at all. That wasn't nearly as important to
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: me as discovering things, because when when people talk to
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: you and ask you questions, you learn things about them
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: by the questions they ask you. I think so, Like
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: I was just spending time with a girl this week,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: and the first thing she said when she saw me was, ah,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: you don't like to spend money, huh. And probably because
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: my DIY sandals and you know, I was wearing shorts
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: and a T shirt rather than dressing up or anything.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: But that conclusion that she drew tells me about how
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: she sees the world, and the same thing would happen
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: when I was talking with Chinese people on the internet.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Anytime someone says you know, you should listen to what
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: they said. What did they say right before they said
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: you know? When da? Because that means that that is
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: something they accept as a truth about the world. If
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: someone's complaining about their girlfriend giving them a hard time about,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: you know, working on their car, and then they say
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: she hates when I work on the car, you know
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: they are sharing what to them is a fundamental truth
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: of their world. Your significant other gets angry at you
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: for fixing a car. That's something that might not be
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: a part of everybody's life, but now you know that
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: is some fundamental part of this person's life. It's how
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: they see the world and understand it. So there's like
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: everything else I experienced in the world. You know is
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: a very interesting phrase because it reveals what that person
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: thinks the world is. It reveals what someone thinks a concrete, definite,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: taken for granted part of the world is. And that's
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: a good puzzle piece because anytime someone thinks the world
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: is immutable, that's false because it's always changing. So knowing
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: what they take for granted means you know a little
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: more about that person. You don't have to judge them.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: It doesn't you know, You're not like, Ah, that guy's
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: a bad person because he thinks all women are angry
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: at you for working on cars. It's just another piece
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: of the puzzle of that person. It's another piece of
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: how the world works anyway. That is how I like
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: to learn about people, and this job was perfect for
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: me at the time. I didn't have to be indoors even.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: All I had to do was have a phone with
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: data and that app on it, and then I would
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: click online and people would call up and seventy percent
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: of the time they were just like, hey, I just
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: want to talk practicing. Let's just have a conversation. Cool,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: and then we talked, and then another twenty percent would say, hey,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I want to have a lesson with you. Can you
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: teach me? And then after five minutes they would say,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: you know, let's just talk. Do you mind if we
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: just talk. I actually just want to practice and hear
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: about what you think of China and if you can
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: tell me about the countries you've been to. And it
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: turned into just a casual conversation like most of the
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: other people who called. After a couple months of doing
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: pealfit wish, I realized that it turned out only one
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: in ten people actually wanted some kind of formal lesson,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: even if they were calling up four tefl like teaching
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: English as a Foreign language the test they were taking,
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: or anything like that language proficiency tests. After a while,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: they'd be like, you know, I'm pretty okay with my studies.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Can we just talk? Is that okay? Or do you
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: need to teach me? And I hated formal teaching. I mean,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: it's fine, and I loved doing it in a class
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: with my students and even helping these online students. But
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: whenever I don't whenever something's more casual, great, And I
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: was like, nope, we can just talk all day totally normally.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: That's perfectly fine by me. I love talking. Do you
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: like Pokemon? Or I would just ask whatever was on
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: my mind at the time, what do you think about trees?
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: I said, swinging on my swing staring at the park,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: And that was a great little job. It paid for
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: more than my monthly cost once I was urban camping,
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: because again, no more money spent on rent, so all
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: I needed was money for food, and okay, so I
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: thought of the cookware where I was like, man, if
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I just cooked my own curry and rice, then that's
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: like a dollar a day. And so I was trying
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: to think of where could I get a cookwar and
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: the only thing I could think of was cartoons. I
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: had seen where people build a campfire and then Yosemite
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Sam pulls out a pan and fries an egg on
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: the skillet with bacon or whatever. Like I could think
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: of Looney Tunes people cooking on a pan over a fire,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, I guess I need a
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: pan if I'm going to cook for myself. I guess
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: that's what I should get, some kind of cookwar. And
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I was already thinking like, well, how do you clean it?
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: How do you store it? But I knew people did it.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I knew people cooked outside. And I was like, you'll
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: figure out whatever. And so I tried to think of
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: where I could buy a pot or a pan. And
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: my first idea, of course, was we'll go to the supermarket.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: They'll have pots and pans. And so I went to
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: the supermarkets and walked around. This was the second day. Now,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: oh right, I didn't talk about sleeping. I decided to
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: sleep on the beach. I walked all around this town
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: that I was in and was looking for a great
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: spot to sleep. Dense forests the mountains were like an
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: hour walk away, though, so if I wanted to sleep
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: in the forests and the mountains, which would be very easy,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: mostly uninhabited and beautiful, I would have to walk an
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: hour into town every day. And I didn't want to
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: walk that far. So I kept walking around looking at
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: all the public parks, because you can sleep in public
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: parks also, but it's a very tiny island taiwanas and
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: so the things are more close together. Parks aren't as pry,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I guess, as they happened to be in Japan, I
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: later found out. So it was difficult to find a
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: public park I could sleep in in the town that
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: I was in in Huaian, And I kept walking around
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: until I saw the beach and there were some trees
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: on the beach, but I was like, I don't know,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: right on the beach people walk on the beach all
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the time, and I dismissed it and kept walking around
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: the town. But then it was midnight and I was like,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I guess the beach, and I went down there and
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: put up my hammock in two trees on the shore
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: a bit set back. There was like ten trees, and
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I just threw up my hammock in two of them.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: I think I kept my rucksack inside my hammock the
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: first night because I was nervous about someone grabbing it,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: which is crazy because that doesn't happen. I did I do,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: like tie it to the tree with paracord. I think
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I can't remember how I did it, but I think
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: that's what I do, or maybe I just tied it
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: to the hammock line. Anyway, that first night, I slept
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: with my rucksack in the hammock with me, used it
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: as a pillow, and fell asleep to the sound of
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: rolling waves on the beach. And I woke up completely
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: rested because hammocks are the most comfortable thing in the
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: world to sleep in, and I felt great. And there
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: were people on the beach, but everyone, if they did
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: look at me, glanced at me and then looked away,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: and most people just didn't even care that I was
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: sleeping on the beach, And just the fact that nobody cared.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: After that first night, I was like Okay, great, so
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: I can I can just sleep anywhere I'm not, you know,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: obstructing a walkway, and I'm kind of out of the way,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and I'm good. I think I was playing Pokemon Go
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: at the time, too, and there were new Pokemon on
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the beach, so I was catching all the mant I
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: stayed that. That's definitely what happened. I stayed in the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: hammock and flicked to my finger, so I was throwing
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: poke balls at all the all the animals. And once
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I had caught all of the new ones in my hammock.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Only then was I like, well, I guess I'll get
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: up now. I've been playing Pokemon Go over forty five
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: minutes in my hammock. So I rolled out, packed up
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: my hammock and started walking around. And that's when I
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: thought of the cookwear again. I knew I was going
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: to go to that vegetarian Buddhist buffet again because it's
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: my favorite restaurant in the frickin world. I knew I
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: was going to go there, but I was like, well,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: what if you're in any other country in the world
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: that doesn't have your favorite vegetarian Buddhist buffet. One of
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: these days you'll want to cook your own food, or
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: maybe you'll just want to save money one day and
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: cook your food. Like if you're making three hundred a
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: month and you want to spend twenty dollars on something
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: that's not sustainable over the month, so you should figure
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: out how to cook for yourself, and then if you
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: need to save money for a few days, you can.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Plus it'll just be cool to be able to cook
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: whenever you want to. So back to cookware. My cookwaar adventure.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I walked to the supermarket and I looked at all
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: the cookware stuff, and they even had one like folding
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: cup thermos kind of thing, like a cowboy cup or
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: whatever they're called. So it has a handle on it,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: but it is also just like a large cup that
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: you can drink. But I could make soup in it
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: if I wanted to. And I was looking at all
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: their stuff, and they cost five dollars or ten dollars
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: for like a really nice sized pan. I was like, okay,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I could make anything in that pan. I can make
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: rice or noodles, or stir fry or a beef stew.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I can make anything in that pan. But it was
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: large and heavy ish and it was ten twelve dollars,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: and I was just like, that's perfect. It would be
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: worth it, Like twelve dollars, totally worth it because you
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: would use it forever. You'd use it as long. But
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: it's kind of big. How would you store it? And
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: I just figured i'd keep looking. I was like, just
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: keep going around, keep looking at stuff, figure out exactly
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: what you want. Like that pan is a good start
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: because it has a higher sides, so you can cook
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: anything you want. You know, it's thick. But keep looking
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: because if this is the first supermarke you went to
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and you found something that looks pretty good, you'll probably
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: find something better in the future. And I walked to
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: the next supermarket and the next one, and I kept
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: seeing things, and eventually I found a foldable pan, so
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: you can fold the handle into it, so much smaller,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: easier thing to pack that way. And I was like, okay,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: that's pretty cool, like a frying pan sort of thing.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: And then like I said, there's the cowboy cups. I'll
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: call them metal things you could hold over a campfire
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: by its handle. And I found a foldable pot, so
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: it was an actual like pot pan, pot, saucepan, I guess,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and the saucepan like that was good because very high
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: like a bowl, you know, a saucepan, smaller size, it
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: folds on itself. That was like twenty bucks but still
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: worth it because I was going to use it every
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: day and it was made of metal obviously, so it's
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: going to last for as long as I take care
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: of it, so it seemed like a good investment. It
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: had a bunch of utensils and all this stuff attached
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: to it that I didn't really need, but I was like, well, whatever,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: you'll have them, and that if you don't need them,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: you can get rid of them later. But I didn't
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: buy that one, and I kept walking around trying to think,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: like why didn't I buy that? It seems like that's
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the one I should buy if I want to cook
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: for myself. It's a perfect little saucepan. And it even
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: has a rice tray on top, so you could boil
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: the water on the bottom and then put rice on
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: top on the tray on top that fits on there,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: and the heat will soft heat, double boil the tray
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: on top that fits right into the pan, and you
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: can cook rice right on top of there. And that
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: was very cool. So I started to walk back, but
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I had this misgiving in myself, like it's not the money,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: it's a good investment. You do want to be able
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: to cook for yourself if you need to. Maybe you're
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: going to be traveling between towns, you'll want to be
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: able to cook. And then I looked up and I
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: saw R Show Dent, which is a second hand store,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: and I was like, ah, that's why I should check
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: the R Show DNN. I should look at the secondhand
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: stores and see what cook where they have, because one
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: sure it'll be cheaper and everything's made out of metal,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: so it'll probably be pretty good quality. But secondly, the
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: R Show DN is going to have the cook where
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: that people if it's there, it's going to the cook
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: where that people buy and use, and there'll be a
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: bunch of different kinds. So I can expand my definition
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: of the camping pot I'm looking for, or maybe more
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: accurately define the attributes I'm looking for after seeing various examples.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: But it's the cook where they don't want maybe, but
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: maybe it's just the cook where that they got rid
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: of because they stopped camping. And I went in and
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Taiwan has my favorite secondhand stores in the world. And
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: I love second hand stores. I go to them, and
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: every country that has them A lot of them don't,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: but Thailand has some, Japan has a bunch, Ireland has some.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: They're pretty common and I love going into them. But
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Taiwan has my favorite second hand stores because every store
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: has sections for everything. They have a camping section, they
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: have a backpack section, they have a coloring section, they
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: have a painting section. They have everything, and it's very
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: well organized in Taiwan, and they have the stuff that
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: I want. Specifically, they have more practical stuff. They have
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: foldable knives because I want to cut fruit or open
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: packages or whatever, and they have well here this cookware set.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: So I saw the R Show Enn, I was like,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: That's what I've been looking for. That's why I've been
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: wanting all these supermarkets. But I don't feel like it's right.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: I want to go see what people are actually using.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: And so I went into the R Show Dan and
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: I walked in and I was like, ah, I am home.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: There was foldable knights hanging by carabineers right there, and
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: I was like, Carabineers, I should get those. Those would
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: make my hammock more efficient, and I did. I got
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: a couple of carabiners, and I was went into the
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: cookwear section. And when I went into the cookwear section,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I was like, holy cow. I didn't even think of this.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: There was collapsible metal chopsticks that you could screw together
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: and then unscrew when you were finished eating them, or
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: just shorter chopsticks, like they were half a foot instead
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: of like a foot long, So like half sized chopsticks
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: in a small little case that fits in the palm
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: of your hand. In China, when I camped, I carried
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: around this switchblade knife and fork, so they like locked together,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: but it was just a knife and a fork that
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: flipped out. That is like military surplus. And I liked
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: the military surplus stores in China, but they never had
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: little collapsible chopsticks, which is crazy. But I don't have
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: no idea why they didn't, or maybe why the places
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: I went to didn't. But in Taiwan, very common. They
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: had ten twenty different boxes of collapsible chopsticks and full
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: sized chopsticks if you wanted that I could choose from.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: And I just went through all of them and I
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: found a great tiny plastic set of collapsible chopsticks, and
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: they even had a plastic collapsible knife and fork and
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: spoon in the same set, so I got that, although
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: I got rid of the western utensils very quickly because
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: I prefer chopsticks. I just find them easier to eat
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: food with. Generally, if it's soup, I'll just drink it
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: out of the bowl that I cooked it in. And
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: if I need to cut anything, I had my foldable
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: knife anyway, So yeah, all I needed was the chopsticks,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: and I yeah, I got a great set collapsible chopsticks
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: for like thirty cents. It was thirty cents or something
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: like that. It was so crazy cheap because of a
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: secondhand store. And then I look to the right and
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: there is like a dozen different collapsible sets of cookware,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and half of them looked significantly different than the standard
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: shape and size I had seen in all of the
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: supermarkets so far in terms of pots or collapsible camping pots.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know if camping is really popular in Taiwan.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing that's what it is, because most of the
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: countries where camping is legal, especially socially accepted, they have
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: a better camping culture, so people do it more, and
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: there are more goods available in stores that are commonly
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: used by campers, and I could buy those stuff in Japanese.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: I saw when I went to Japan that I could
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: buy that kind of cookware when I went to japan
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: second hand shops, but Taiwan has It was just all
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the practical stuff, collapsible metal cookware with a steam tray
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: on top, small enough that I could fit it in
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: my backpack, but large enough I could cook a meal
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: for two in it if I wanted to, and it
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: was just perfect. I went through all of them and
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: I just looked and looked, and then I found this one,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: and I was like, that's it. That's that's the one.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: I looked through it. It had the steam tray, the
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: bottom of it was not too thin so the heat
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: would distribute evenly. The sides were very tall, so I
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: could cook a curry in there very comfortably, with vegetables
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: and noodles. But it wasn't huge. It was just a
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: bulbous pot cookpot and yeah, again not large, just like
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: the perfect size. It was exactly what I wished I
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: had found in a supermarket. So someone had used it
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: before it was used. But it's metal, and I'm gonna
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: cook with it. It's gonna be it super high temperatures.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: And it's a second hand up, like that's what I'm
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: looking for. And it looked very clean, and I loved
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: how it folded. I loved how I loved how well
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: the pot lid fit and the steaming tray fit like
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: it was just fit perfectly. It was just the perfect
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: little travel cook where camping cookwear set. And it was
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: two dollars. It was something. It was also like nothing.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: So I bought that, and I bought my chopsticks, and
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: I think I got a little bag or something also,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: I can't remember, probably got something. Oh the knife. I
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: got a little foldable knife also, And man, when I
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: put that cook where I put the knife and the
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: chopsticks inside the little pot, put the lid on the pot,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: folded the handle in, and then there's a little latch
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: so that it locks tight like pressure tight. Like the
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: switch doesn't close unless you push with just a little
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: bit of pressure, so it kind of locks under its
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: own pressure, just under the mechanism of how the metal
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: is folded and just snapshot and having everything in that
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: cookwar set was so satisfying. I walked outside. Now the
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: cookwhear set was inside. I was like, Okay, now I'm
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: self sufficient at least for urban camping, assuming any sort
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: of store exists in the world. If I buy a
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: bag of rice or a packet of noodles, I have
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: a week of food on my back in my rucksack
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: for barely any extra added weigh a couple pounds of rice,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: I can buy or even cook local fauna flora flora inside,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: you know, I pick some edible plants and cook that
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: in whatever I want and carry blocks were in my head.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh right, I can just buy like
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: eight curry blocks in a pack and I have eight
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: meals right there. So I was over the moon with
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: this development. It had taken me one daylight to day.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: It had taken me a few hours to figure out
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: a crucial part of an urban camping or outdoor living set,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: like how can you comfortably cook anywhere? The only thing
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: was I didn't have an oven or a stovetop. Rather
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: to put my cookwar on top of so I could cook,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: I needed fire. So I was like, I got to
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: build a fire, and I hadn't built a fire from
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: scratch until I lived in China, and I had done
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: that a few times over the years, but it's kind
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: of a pain in the ass, so I didn't want
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: to build a fire every time. Even if you have
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: a lighter and tinder, like, yeah, you can get it
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: done in a minute. But it wasn't if they're not contained.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: If you build them by wood, you have to have
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: wood around all this stuff. And I was like, okay,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: so what's the smart thing here? And I went online
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: looked up cooking camping and I found all these butane stoves,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: super collapsible tiny buttane stoves or Sterno's you know, it's
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: just like a little soda can size thing. And I
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: was like, man, that's pretty good. I'd still have to
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: buy the buttane, which is kind of a pain. I
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: don't really want to do that. And even collapsible, as
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: small as it gets, it's not as small as I
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: want it. And I just watched every single YouTube video
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: on camping until someone mentioned the penny stove and I
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: was like, ding, ding ding, And what a penny stove
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: is or a soda cans stove is you cut a
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: coke can in half, or rather two coke cans and
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: you put you take the two bottom halves and you
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: put one half inside the other half, and you do
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: a few cuts so that air can go through, and
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: then you poke holes in the top. You put rubbing
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: alcohol inside light it. Put a penny on top so
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: that the holes in the top where the fire's coming
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: out go around the penny like a burner, and you
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: have a penny stove. That's the basic setup. And right
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: when I was looking at it, I was like, that's
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: not efficienty, I don't like that enough. I don't want
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: to have to carry a penny around. I don't it's
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: not compacting. It's great, like, I like that a lot,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: but I bet there's a better design. And I kept
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: looking and I finally found one that was exactly what
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: I wanted. Just like when I found this cookpot, I
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: was like, ooh, that is the stove I want to make.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: So it was still a soda can stove, but you
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: didn't need a penny to make the burner action, and
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: this was a much more efficient, better burner. You use
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: less fuel, so you do the same thing, but instead
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: of half the can, you use like maybe a couple
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: inches a very small height of the bottom of the can,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: and you cut fan wedges along one side of it,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: and then you poke sixteen eight or sixteen holes along
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: the bottom curved part of the can that's going to
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: be your top, so you have little burner holes where
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: the gas can escape, because rubbing alcohol gives off the
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: flammable gas that lights on fire from rubbing alcohol. Okay,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: so you put the two inches of the bottom of
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: a coke can, a soda can into the two inches
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: of the other soda can that you have, and you
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: used to have a couple inches of soda can with
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: aluminu on top aluminum on bottom. So you take out
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: one of the bottoms of the coke cans, whichever one's
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: going to be your top, and you just take that
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: whole thing out, and then you'll be able to pour
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: the rubbing alcohol into your stove. And when the pans
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: on top, that'll create a seal. So now you have
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: the seal on top of your stove, but a little
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: bit of air will get inside. And then all around
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: the rim you poke holes with a thumbtack, and those
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: are going to be the holes that the flammable gas
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: from the flammable fumes from the rubbing alcohol escape from
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: and once the pressure builds up, and once the rubbing
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: alcohol gets hot enough, all of those burners will ignite.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: So you leave the stove open, pour in a very
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: little amount, maybe an eighth of a cup of rubbing alcohol,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: you light it. You'll hear the rubbing alcohol start to
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: like bubble as it gets hotter. And if you've made
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: this efficiently and well, then the reason you make those
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: cuts into the bottom that you've put on the top,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: that you've taken the aluminum off so you can pour
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: the rubbing alcohol onto. The reason you make all those
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: cuts is so that there will be place for the
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: rubbing alcohol to go into between the wall of the
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: outside cocine and the wall of the inside cocan, and
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: the gathered alcohol in the outside there is giving off fumes,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: and when it gets hot enough, it's going to start
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: shooting out of all those burner holes you made with
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: the thumbtack, So you'll have the fire in the middle
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: coming out the big hole in the middle. But once
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: it gets hot enough, that burner on the outside is
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: going to light up. And once the burner holes are
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: all going, then you can put your pot on top
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: and the burner's holes will keep taking all the flammable fumes,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: and you can cook for fifteen to twenty five minutes
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: on less than an eighth of a cup of rubbing alcohol,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: highly compressed, highly flammable alcohol fumes, and you can just
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: cook anything you want. And I did. I love this
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: little stove top, this little It was so useful. I
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: used that stove to cook all of my food on
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: until now, until today. If I was still camping outside
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: at all, I do so much audio work that I'm
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: inside all the time, and I would make these stoves
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: a lot, and I would give them away to people
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: campers that I met. Whenever they saw the one I
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: was using, they really liked it because I didn't settle
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: for that first design either. I really liked it, but
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I kept making improvements, and after like my eighth one,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I couldn't. I couldn't make it any better. But by
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the eighth one. A big problem with those ones is
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: you have to light the fire in the middle, and
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: then it can take up to five minutes before the
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: burner starts working around the rim all the little thumb
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: tackles you have because the pressure has to build. The
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: faster it gets hot, the faster the pressure of the
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: gas will build, and the faster the actual burner you're
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: going to use to cook will work. If you just
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: use the main middle flame, you'll only get about five
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: minutes because it's using up the fuel so quickly. But
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: if you use the burner like I said, you can
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: get up to twenty five minutes of cook time. It's
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: all about making that little soda can stove as efficient
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: as possible. And I kept on doing that until I
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: got it down to less than a minute, about forty
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: five seconds from me lighting the fire in the middle
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: of the stove to the entire stove and the alcohol
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: between the walls of the two cans getting hot enough
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: that it was shooting out all holes of the burner.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: And once its shooting out all the holes of the burner,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: you can put your pan on and it works. So
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: that's extremely efficient for that style of soda can. And
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: like I said, it was less than an eighth of
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: a cup for twenty five minutes of cooking. So one
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: small bottle of rubbing alcohol could last me weeks of
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: cooking curry and noodles every day. And it wasn't that
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: I was using it sparingly. I would fill up about
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: half of this thing, so like an inch of liquid.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: It's just that that's all I needed to cook for
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes, which is as long as I needed to
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: cook stir fry or curry or noodles or rice. I
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: could cook pretty much anything within twenty twenty five minutes.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: And if I needed to cook more, I would just
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: pour in more rubbing alcohol. And it's already hot, so
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: you just light in. It'll just keep going right there,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: so you can get fifty minutes or hour, fifteen minutes
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: and you just keep going. Very efficient system. And even
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: after I moved into a house. I moved into a
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: house for a year back in the States after like
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: a decade, a few years ago, and I still use
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: that little thing to cook sometimes when it was convenient.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: It's just such a useful set of cookwar. Like if
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: I'm going to cook outside, I'm not going to carry
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: a hot plate and find an extension cord and all
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: that crap. If I just want to, like if I
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: just need a burner outside, I would just grab my
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: little soda can stove, pour in alcohol, light it, and
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: forty five seconds later I would be cooking whatever I
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: wanted to cook outside. That's fun to just cook outside
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: in your backyard, a curry or yeah, whatever you want
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: to cook. So I was pretty happy with my setup,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: and like I said, now it was complete. Now I
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: would make further improvements the bugnet, the rain tarp, all
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: sorts of things to my hammock and other parts of
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: my setup. But with this addition of cookware and especially
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: the stove, I was on fire. I was untouchable. I
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: was I could just live anywhere outside. I had curry
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: blocks too. I went to the store and got some
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: curry blocks. So that's eight meals in my pack. And
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: that's how I cooked for the foreseeable future. And if
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I ever go camping again, that's exactly the setup i'll
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: go back to. I think. I think I have the
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: cook where set up somewhere, either in my mom's house
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: or my friend's house. It's somewhere. But if I don't
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: have it, I'll literally go back to Taiwan because I
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: love living there. Anyway, I'll get all the new cookware
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: stuff there and then start traveling again. It's a great
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: stepping off point. But now I was an urban camper
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: and I was like, well, I can camp anywhere, but
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: I wanted to do urban camping first and figure out
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: how I liked that. And I loved it is the
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: conclusion that I drew very quickly because every day I
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: could go get my vegetarian Buddhist buffet, the best food ever,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: and then I could walk around playing Pokemon Go all day,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: which is usually what I did. I could exercise at
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: the exercise parks. I could go to the beach, walk
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: around the sand, or catch Pokemon Go. I could go
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: to museums, the library. I mean, I could visit everything
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: in the city. And then whenever I wanted to, I
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: could go get food at a restaurant, or if I
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: felt like it, I could go to a park or
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: someplace out of the way and cook with my little cookstove.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: It was just so convenient. I was living in this city.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: But since I could go camp on the beach, I
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: could camp on the beach. I could just if I
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: just got tired, I want to take a nap, I
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: would just walk fifteen minutes to the beach, put in
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: my hammock, can fall asleep for a few hours. It
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: was such a comfortable lifestyle. So after I saw all
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: of the museums in Hualien and all the stuff I
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: wanted to visit. I started walking further out of the
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: town I was in and into proper Hualien City, and
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: I just kept walking and I lived around that entire city.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: Oh you know what, though, I did stay in my
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: little town in Juaalian for a while because they had
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: a huge amusement park slash, not really an amusement park.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: It was like a games like you shoot the targets
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: with a pop gun. They had a whole bunch of
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: like fun fair games and a whole bunch of fair
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: food every single night in this town fifteen minutes away
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: from that airbnb, Like it was really close to the beach.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: It was a five minute walk from the beach maybe,
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: And I could get to this giant fair ground and
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: I'd be walking around with my rucksack, and there'd just
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: be a bunch of families and couples and single people
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: just walking around playing the games or eating some barbecue
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: or they had so many different foods, so many different
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: like traditional Taiwanese snacks. And I was, you know, trying
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: not to spend too much money, but I spent you know,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: I didn't have to pay rent, so all of my
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: three hundred a month or whatever from my online teaching job.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Just went to snacks every day, and I bought breaded
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: and fried mushrooms, not breaded fried skewered mushrooms, and chicken
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: and pork and beef, and bowls of soup. I think
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: they had chodfu, stinky tofu. There, just everything, just every
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: single snack they had. I just tried three or four
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: of them each day, which was enough food for me
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: for the day. And then I would walk around look
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: at the other stuff that was going on. I discovered
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: a sushi restaurant that you could just buy sashimi from,
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: and they just had a counterout front. You didn't have
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: to order a dish or anything. You'd just be like
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: a kilogram of sashimi, salmon, please, and they just chop
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: up a salmon sashimi for you and give it to
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: you right there. And I got that a few times.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: It was twelve bucks or something for a plate. I
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: don't know, but there was plenty of food. Anyway, my
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: throat is dying. I'm gonna keep talking because I barely
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: started talking about my backpacking in Taiwan, but my throat
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: is dying. Okay, let's continue. So I have my cook
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: where I have my sleep set up now, I'm perfectly
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: comfortable carrying the bag around the rucksack around all day.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: I don't like the strings on my hammock though. The
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: ropes that hold up the hammock are too thick for me,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: and I think, well, why not just use perichord. Record
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: is also a common variety of It is known as
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: five point fifty cord because it holds five hundred and
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: fifty pounds and I am four hundred pounds less than that,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: and it's super thin and lightweight. So I was like, well,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: instead of this I have to fold up this big
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: pair of ropes every day, why I just get pair
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: record and use that. And I did, and that does
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: work pretty well. I don't use it anymore because I
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: found a slightly thicker, stronger cord because of this story
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: coming up. But I did find pair ofcord in this
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: one outdoor camping store and you can just buy as
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: much as you want. They have a huge spool, and
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: I bought I don't know, several meters of it for
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: a few dollars. It's like a less than a dollar
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: a meter. I can't remember. It was very cheap. I
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: bought a bunch of pair of cord replace the ropes.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: I might have even given the ropes to that store,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure, But now it was took up way
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: less space my hammock because my hammock folds up to
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: my hammock is quick dry, and it folds into itself,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: and it has like a self attached pocket to fold into.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: But the ropes had barely fit. I could barely fit
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: it all inside the package. And now with the paracord, great.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: I was saving a ton of room in my rucksack,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: and it was a little bit lighter instead of heavy ropes,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I was carrying the light paracord and that was a
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: good development. And I slept on and then I just
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: lived my blissful life for like two more weeks. I
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: was sleeping on the beach every night. I was walking
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: around the city playing Pokemon Go every day, and every
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: day I was discovering new little restaurants, mom and pop shops,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: new outdoor markets, the shurchhongs I talked about just daily,
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: outdoor markets, new parks, and just it was great. Every
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: day I was just exploring. I just got to explore
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: the city every day, sleep for free every night, and yeah,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: sometimes I'd talk to students who wanted to practice their English,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: and I sleep in a hammock or eat good food
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: the rest of the time. It is such a gray life.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: If I was feeling bored with the food, which I
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: never was because the vegetarian Buddhist buffet, I probably ate
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: there every other day, but sometimes I would go to
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: a different restaurant. I found this great people who were
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: from China, Chinese who were making Don Don mien or
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: what's it called. There's this spicy minced meat noodle that
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: was great that they made, but they were from China,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: and so they were really excited to learn. I had
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: lived there for a while and I would eat at
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: their store and they had a little outlet on the
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: wall next every table, and I would charge my phone
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: every time I ate there. And by that point I
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: had a Taiwanese phone because they're so much better, and
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: there's this really interesting charging protocol called VOOC And when
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: that came out, when usbcs were still new, it was
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: much faster than even USBC charging. It was like thirty
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: five watts or something developed by this Taiwanese company, So
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: I could charge my phone to one hundred percent from
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: zero in thirty minutes or something. It was about one
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: point five percent a minute, and I wasn't usually charging
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: it from zero. I charge it at like thirty percent
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: or forty percent. So yeah, maybe it took forty five
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: minutes to get up to one hundred percent, perfect amount
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: of time for a meal. So I'd go to my
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: noodle shop, talk to my friends there, eat some noodles,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: charge my phone and my battery to full, and then
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: be like great, see you again, wago, and I'd leave.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: And I didn't stay there longer, Like if my battery
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't fuller whatever, I didn't charge it to full and
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: just stay there using their electricity. I just had a
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: meal there, which usually took me twenty twenty five minutes.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: My phone would be at about one hundred percent, so
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I'd have enough time to go play Pokemon Go again.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: And looking for outlets became a big part of urban camping.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: So whenever I was walking down the street or when
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: I was in a park, I would walk around and
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: I would be surreptitiously just glancing around seeing if there
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: were outlets anywhere. And there are outlets in every country
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: I've been to, there's always some free public outlet somewhere
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: that's usually it seems like it's forgotten about by the
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: town or city it's in. So in Taiwan, there was
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: one in a park people jogged in that I like
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: to hang out at. There was a small pavilion and
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: there were four outlets and three of them didn't work,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: but one of them worked fine, And that's the main
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: While I was this was still in my little town,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: the original town I got the airbnbn, I was still
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: living in that little just in that little section, that
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: little suburb of Hualien City. There were so many businesses
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: and museums and rivers, just so many things to see.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: So I was exploring every day. But I still had
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: so much stuff to see. Plus I had to play
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: my Pokemon Go, and so whenever my battery would drop,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: I'd go to this park and charge up for like
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: thirty minutes, shove my charger in my rucksack, put it
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: back on, and get back to catching chanceys or whatever
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: it was. And playing Pokemon Go was a lot of
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: fun because all the points in the game are sites
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: of cultural importance in the real world country that you're inside.
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: So I found a bunch of museums and statues and
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: cool stuff by walking around following the Pokemon Go landmarks. Taiwan,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: like ten years ago, was the number one POKEMONO country
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: users per capita in the world. It's still pretty high.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: I think it's I just checked a couple of days ago.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: It's number eight or something like that. But at the
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: time it was number one. And so when I was
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: walking around, I would see other people flicking at their screens,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: and I knew that we were all just having a
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: fun time Pokemon going back before Pokemon Go was pay
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: for play Pokemon Go. Another great spot I found there
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: was this shuttered business and they had outlet's all over
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: the place. Outside there was like a counter outside where
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: you probably ate your food at, but two of the
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: like sixteen outlets outside were still unexplainably operational, and so
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: sometimes I would get food and put it on the
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: counter and just charge my phone and eat and have
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: a meal. Oh I wish I had my bottle the
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: day back then, because after I had my meal and
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: my phone was fully charged, I'd have to go to
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: the restroom. And luckily there was this hospital nearby, and
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: they always left their gate open and their bathrooms were outside.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: I don't think they were public I'm not really sure,
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: but there weren't posted private property signs, and it was
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: like a pretty quick walk to the public facing bathrooms,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: so I used those. I don't know how else I
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: used the bathroom. I think maybe I just mostly went
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: to that one place and it was very well kept.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: You know what, they might have had the days in Taiwan.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: The days might have been common enough in Hualien. But still,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: I wish I had my bottle the day. I would
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: that would have made traveling, that would have made back,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: that would have really completed my backpacking setup. I can't
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: believe I didn't find out about the bottle the day
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: until like this year, until ten years after I started
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: traveling full time. But that's what life is for, for
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: learning and discovering and exploring and enjoying and struggling and
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: then not struggling. Okay, So anyway, my Hammock setup was
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: it was pretty great. By that time. I had the
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: para cord. It was very nice, and I was putting
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: that up every night in the same spot. And I
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: saw these two clear foreigners walking around on the beach,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: like looking really worried and like discussing something, and I
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: was just in my hammock hanging out, and I reached
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: up as they walked by, like hey, guys, and they
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: both were like, oh, because no one noticed me. My
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: hammock's like a stealth hammock. It's pretty common that people
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: just look at it and then look past it. But
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: I said, hey, how's it going. Are you looking for something?
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: I've been living here a while, and they said, yeah,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: can we camp on the beach? We were trying to
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: figure out can't see signs, but we don't know. And
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: I was like, yep, I've been sleeping on this beach
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: for weeks. It's completely okay as long as you, you know,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: don't make a mess and everything. It's perfectly legal to
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: camp on public land and tie on. And they looked
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: so relieved and so happy because they had wanted to
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: camp and had left their airbnb or hotel that day,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: and they were they didn't really plan it out, just
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: like just like me, but I at least read about
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: the legal use of public land. And so they said
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: thank you, and we're gonna go eat now, but we'll
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: probably see you back here tonight. And I was like, okay, great.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: They both seemed pretty laid back and it wouldn't be
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: a huge issue. So I was happy to share information
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: with them, and I was happy to share a camp
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: spot with them because there was plenty of trees around me.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: And when they showed up, they both had a couple
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: of tents and they unrolled it and they asked where
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: my tent was, and I was like, nope, hammock, this
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: is it. I'm just gonna fall asleep. It was a
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: couple hours later. I had probably got a couple Pokemon
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: Go runs in and then went back and they showed
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: up and they unrolled their tents, and I explained the
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: virtues of hammet camping and how fast did was to
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: set up and take down and how you know none
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: of the dirt from the ground got on it like
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: on tents, and they were both like, shoot, that is
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: a good point. Like setting up my tent and cleaning
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: it up is kind of the biggest pain in the
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: ass of my backpacking days. And we talked for a
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: while and just enjoyed each other's company. And then the
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: night said in a beautiful sunset on the beach, and
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, I have a good night, and
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: I retreated into my hammock and I had the velcrow
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: sewing on there by that point, so I did close
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: it up, so it was like a little cocoon and
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: I totally played Pokemon Go for another like forty five
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: minutes in my hammock before I fell asleep. And then
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: to my great surprise, I woke up because I heard
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: a weird like pop and I was like, the heck
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: was that? And I looked around but I didn't see anything,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: and I just was like huh, And then I heard pop.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, what that was? Definitely there's a
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: popping then like I can hear it pop and I
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: was like, okay, what the frick? Pop? And it just
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: kept happening and I was like, this is so weird pop.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: And I fell onto the ground from the hammock. And
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: as soon as I fell, I stood up immediately and
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: I was like, what the heck? And I saw the
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: guys like pop their heads up, but they went back
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: into their ten right away after they saw me standing there.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: And I was already working on the hammt because what
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: had happened was that my hammock line the paracord, the
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: five point fifty, I guess was in real five point fifty,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: or maybe it was just really old. I don't know,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: but it broke, which is crazy, and I tied it together,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: just a square knot so that I tied the two
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: ros back together, and like two hours later I fell
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: down again because the square knot didn't break. It held fine,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: but another part of the paracord had broken. I was like, right,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: and I just got up tight a squarenot of fell
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: down again, ty square out have had And that one
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: held for the rest of the night. And when I
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: woke up, the two tent guys were getting out of
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: their places and were like, pretty nice sleeping on a beach.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: I was like, pretty nice. My paar acord broke twice
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: and I fell on the ground a couple times, so if
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: you heard that, and they were like, yep, we were
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: wondering what that was, okay, And I showed them the
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: square knots I had tied, and then we just yeah,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: we talked, and then they headed off to breakfast, and
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: I think they stayed there for a couple nights and
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: then moved on. They were gonna they were going around
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: the whole island right away. But I was still loving
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: urban camping and I had visited most of the spots
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: I had put on my offline maps, like most of
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: the landmarks and statues and temples and everything I had
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: put on my maps, only had a couple left that
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: I had originally put on. But I had just as
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: many new discoveries, like walking around every day, so I
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: was finding something new every day. And I just wasn't
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: ready to leave Hualien yet, and there was so much
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: to investigate just in this one city town. So I
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: was coming up on my second month. I think of
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: living in Taiwan, but I was just gonna stay Injualian
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: because it was so nice. There were supermarkets, I was
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: cooking food in my cookwear sat every now and then
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: there's a big footpath you have to cross across the
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: main highway that goes around the whole island. And you
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: know what, I just remembered another thing I met that
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: changed my life because I was my feet got cold,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: in particular in the hammock sometimes if the temperature dropped
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: really low, and I was planning on going to Japan next,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: and I knew that could go down to like zero,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: even though Taiwan was still pretty comfortable at the time.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: I think it only went down to like high fifties
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: at night, but Japan would be freezing. So I was
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: eating gienjiao, no jaw jiao. What was I eating? Oh?
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: They were just jiatza, just like steamed dumplings steamed potstickers
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: at this restaurant. It just for some reason, I saw
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: that jiaozza restaurant and thought, yes, that's where I want
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: to eat steamed dumplings today. And I walked in and
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: I got them, and I noticed the old lady who
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: owned the shop. When she was finished making my giazza
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: and gave them to me, she immediately went back to
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: the corner of the room and started crocheting in her
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: hand something, and I was like, whoa what, And thus
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: began my interest in fabricating clothes by myself. So I
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: asked her about how to crochet. And after the five
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: minut and it's of you can speak Mandarin. Oh where
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: are you from? What did you do? She explained how
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: simple crocheting was, and how she made all of the
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: sweaters of like her grandkids and her kids, and she
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: just made everything, blankets and scarves and all kinds of clothes.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: So I asked her to show me how it worked,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: and she showed me just the super basic stitch, and
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: I asked what I needed and she was like, you
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: need this a crochet needle and then you need yarn,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: but that's it, and that blew my mind. But I
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: was already thinking, Okay, if I can learn to crochet,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: then I can make socks, and socks are not the
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: easiest thing to make, you know, feed or shaped weird.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: But I was just pondering how crocheting worked, and I
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: went around thinking about how useful it would be, and
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: after another night of cold feet, I was like, well,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: just try it. All you need is a crochet needle
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: and some yarn, pretty low investment for something that maybe
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: you can make thick woolen socks from or a scarf.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: So I thought about where I could get one, and
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: I knew there were some fabric shops, and then I
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, you know what, and I went straight
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: to my second hand shops, and of course organized as
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: everything else, there was a tiny section of there's a
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: tiny sewing section, and I looked around and there was
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: a small pile of crochet needles and I didn't know
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: what gauge to get, or size, length or any of that,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: so I just grabbed one that it seemed like would
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: be easy to hold with a not too big not
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: too small hook. And then behind that they had several
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: skeins of yarn and I picked one light blue one
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: and one dark blue one, and I think all three
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: items added up to a dollar. So I was beaming,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: and I took that out with me. I set up
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: my hammock somewhere, probably on the beach, and I remember
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: watching several YouTube videos and none of them clicked. And
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: I just kept watching different channels, like different people giving
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: crochet tutorials. And then one girl showed how to make
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: a hat, and when she did it and she explained
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: how to crochet, I was like, oh, and it clicked.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: You pull the yarn through the yarn and you can
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: make chains of cloth or chains of yarn, and of
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: course a chain becomes several chains, becomes a sheet, becomes anything.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: And after I learned the basic crochet stitch, I was
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to make socks. But I
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: could see that again because of the weird shape of
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: the foot, it was going to be difficult. And I
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: was like, Okay, then don't do any of these YouTube videos.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: How else could you make a sock? Because I didn't
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: want to make three things, you know, the toe section
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: and the foot section and the ankle section. I was like,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: that's too hard for me. And I just like sat
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: in the hammock and stared at my foot and the
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: crochet needle, and I was like, what can I do
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: instead of stabbing my foot with a crochet needle. I
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: realized that if I just made a rectangle of yarn,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: I could fold that rectangle into kind of a sock,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: into a pocket that I could put my foot inside.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: And that's all a sock is, a pocket you put
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: your foot inside. So I crocheted a rectangle, I think,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: I you know what. I had a notepad and I
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: drew out the rough dimensions of how tall and wide
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: I would need the rectangle of yarn of crocheted yarn
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: to be so that when I folded it it would
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: be a sock. But I figured out those dimensions, like
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: it'd be thirty percent longer than my foot or whatever
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: it was. And I folded one corner back so that
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: it would cover at the toes on the top of
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: the foot, and then I, yeah, I folded the other
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: corners and they all just fit into the shape of
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: a sock. And I just used the same crochet yarn
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: to tie the corners together. How I or agamied the
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: rectangle over my foot, but it worked perfectly. I kind
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: of couldn't believe it, and I had those socks for years.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: I wore those definitely in Taiwan that night, I wore them,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: and I made both of them that afternoon and my
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: feet were warm. And then I wore them in Japan,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: which saved my toes. Those were the only warm, warm
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: socks I really had, so that was great that I
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: had those when I wasn't prepared for super cold weather
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: camping in Japan. Wore them in Beijing when I went
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: back to start my new school, actually Chungdu in Chung Dou, Ireland.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: Every country that I went to where it was freezing,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: those socks saved my toes. And I'm not sure of
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: the timeline, but I also made several hats, beanie hats,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: I made mittens, and I made scarves and I carried
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: those around with me too. My scarves went everywhere with
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: me for years. And yeah, that's how I learned to
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: make clothes for myself by crocheting, or at least outer layers.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: I guess I would say I could never figure out
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: how to make them tidy enough to be just a
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: shirt or whatever, but it was great for making warm clothing,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: and that was another thing that I learned urban camming
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: around Hualian, I was a little better prepared against colder weather,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: so I was even more comfortable walking around because I
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: knew if the temperature plummeted at night, I would be okay.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: And so I was more comfortable walking for a long
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: time at night, not knowing where I was gonna sleep.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: And my cookwar and stovetop were still working great. So
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: I was cooking in more and more places, getting more
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: comfortable cooking anywhere because I knew it wouldn't take too
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: long to cook and set up the stove and everything.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: To get to that huge fairground with all the games
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: and the seafood restaurants and the fried mushrooms that I
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: like to eat and all that huge place, I had
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: to walk across this very tall, very broad footbridge with
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: huge corners and like step places, and it was used
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: very sparingly. And one night I was on top of
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: it and I was walking back to the beach for
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: the night, and I was going to cook dinner, and
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: I was like man, it'd be cool to cook here.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: And it was super windy on top of the footbridge,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: but there was a ton of space. Like I said,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: it wasn't used very much because it was in the
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: middle of two crosswalks, so you can use the crosswalks
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: pretty easily. I just liked to use the footbridge, even
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: though I was carrying my rucksack up the stairs. And
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: I keep saying footbridge, but this was abnormally wide, Like
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: I wasn't taking up a lot of space even by
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: trying to cook and sit there. It was like four
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: meters wide, and as I said, very infrequently used by pedestrians.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: So I posted up in a corner where one of
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: these steps, so that you could look out over the
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: ocean were I just put up my little soda can stove,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: lit it up, put on the pot, threw in some water,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: noodles curry, and then at the end I threw in
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: my vegetables and mushrooms, and I had some great curry
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: on top of the footbridge, because it's right the end
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: of the footbridge is right before the huge beach, and
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: I just looked over the whole beach and the sunset,
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: just watched everything go down looked back at the can
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: graun It's just like great. It was just a great
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: fun meal that I made on top of this quite large, spacious,
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: comfortably spacious footbridge. And there's even like steps on the
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: side of the footbridge, so I could sit at kind
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: of a removed not on the actual foot path area,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: and I had dinner, and that was one of the
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: first times I cooked. It wasn't the first, but one
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: of the first times I cooked a curry inside that saucepan.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: Because there's so much good food in the town, there's
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: always something new that I mostly was buying food, but
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: that was kind of my proof in the putting point
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: for buying all that cookwear and working so hard on
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: these alcohol stoves that I was making more and more efficient.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: I even on a super because it was very very
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: windy up there, So even on that really windy area,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: I was able to start the stove in a little
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: over a minute because I timed every time I started it,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: and with wind going so far, the sodacan vapors and
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: liquid weren't heating up as quickly, so the burner didn't
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: start as fast, so instead of forty five seconds, it
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: took a minute ten or whatefter startup. But even in
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: those unfavorable, super windy conditions, my burner worked as it
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: should after a minute, and I was able to cook
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: my meal after a minute, and it was just great.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: It was a great night. And I went to bed
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: in my hammock on the beach triumphant and then I
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: woke up to you who or something like that. I
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: wish I could remember exactly what she said, but it
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: was something like hello. It definitely sounded like a fifties
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: grandma you who at you? But I'm going to tell
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: you about Missus Robinson in the next episode. Thank you
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: very much for listening. Lookout for Urban Camping and Hualien
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Part two coming up, and after that we'll go to
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: outside of Hualian.