My complete 5-season setup was less than $50 and lasted for a decade. Under 5 dollars a year for travel lodging.
Let me know if you’re interested in details or getting started!
I urban camped for 3 months straight across Japan, the best country for urban camping, from Tokyo to Osaka. It was very comfortable and saved me a couple thousand USD in rent that I used on sushi, public baths, sushi, and sushi!
Japan is the best country for urban camping since it’s fairly dense with population centers but abound with protected nature, there are public baths in every town, and public urban camping is both legal and culturally acceptable.
Thailand, Vietnam, many SEA countries allow urban camping. Ireland does, Italy doesn’t expressly allow it but I didn’t have trouble urban camping there. Portugal urban camping is easy.
If you’re not in Japan or a legal public-camping country, just find a relatively isolated spot not directly in pedestrian traffic, set up camp after dark, break down camp in the morning.
I’ve urban camped in most countries I’ve been to and Queensland NZ was the only time I’ve been asked to move, and that was to another small copse because they needed to set up for the Festival of Lights in the meadow where I was resting.
Honestly I’m in the boat of not being able to do a lot of travel when I was younger, as such I’m super curious of longterm travel (proper vagabond vibes). So anything around that, never considered urban camping!
Long-term traveling is by far the most comfortable form of travel, and it’s totally up to the preferences of each person. I like to:
Urban camping in Japan specifically is great, just find an out-of-the-way spot, set up your sleeping gear, sleep. Any public land is legal to camp on, and of course it’s Japan so everything is clean.
Japanese 24-hour convenience stores have very healthy and tasty food available at every convenience store, and if you want sushi after ~2pm almost every supermarket in Japan marks down their fresh sushi made that morning to 30-80% off, so you can have great sushi according to your budget as well as the 24-hour teriyaki chicken, onigiri, edamame, fresh fruit, 2beeeeeer, haha.
Legal and culturally accepted camping is awesome, but it’s the public baths that make Japan number one for urban camping. For 3 months, over 2000 miles from Tokyo to Osaka, i could walk as far and up mountains and everywhere, and whenever I passed through the smallest town or largest city, there was always an available public bath for $2-7 USD, $4 was very common.
If there’s an innocuous looking building with the fish symbol painted on it, that’s your public bath, and you can just use the shower facilities, or wash up and then lounge in all the different luxury baths and relax as long as you want, all day if you feel like it, before drying off and putting your rucksack back on.
Urban camping is great because it’s so inexpensive you can spend all the saved money from lodging on great food, massages, jetskis, whatever you want. I prefer sleeping in a hammock to all other forms of beds also, so it’s really the best of both worlds for me.
Backpacking in Japan was one of my first episodes and recommendations.
This is what I’ve been doing the most the past year since I started the podcast to have a quieter environment for recording, and this is greeaaaat for a slow traveler too.
I tried a lot of platforms and exclusively use Airbnb now. Nearly every country, well over 9 out of 10, have Airbnb and there is a huge range of options to choose from, and since you are traveling, you get to choose from the entire country, giving you the best options. It’ll be around $350 a month in most countries for a private house/apartment including rent, utilities, wifi, kitchen, washing machine, whatever amenities you search for, and up to $700 in countries with housing crises(US, Germany, Australia). It’s so cheap because as a traveler you’re not tied down to choosing the options from only one neighborhood.
Always order by the month, the discounts are 10-90% compared to the listing price, and new listings are constantly added on Airbnb.
I just stayed in a 3-br 2-ba immaculate condo with tiled floor, full kitchen, washing machine, hot showers, for 2 months in Cusco for $300 bucks a month. There aren’t any tricks, most countries cost around that much money for monthly rentals, things just cost significantly less outside of the US, and if you browse the listings on airbnb for rentals by the month, you’ll find these deals in nearly every country.
If you want some privacy and stability, monthly rentals are fantastic.
Private rentals can be very comfortable to the point you end up self-isolating. That’s fine, I’ll hole up and play video games or watch movies for a couple weeks, but when I decide a dose of interaction will be healthy I’ll get a dorm room in a hostel, sometimes a private room. I walk around daily wherever I am, so this usually isn’t an issue, but in a large city where things get busy it might be easier to spark conversation in a hostel setting than by just walking around and meeting new people by chance, which usually works fine as a traveler.
Hostels are great because they’re going to be cheap as hell, usually under $100 usd per month, and you will interact with people through simple proximity. You’ll still have hot showers, storage lockers, bunk, privacy curtains, but many hostels also have pools, bars, restaurants, offer tours and any number of amenities, plus someone near you will be playing a guitar or like me, not shutting up about their previous adventures and you can listen to as much or as little as you want.
There are capsule hotels, and homeshares, and volunteering options, farmstays, a LOT of different ways to travel, but those three are the ones I use the most.
Living abroad is very affordable, very fun and educational, and I’ve been loving it for the past decade and a half.
If you want more details or information, or just want to bounce some ideas around about your own travel musings, let me know and we’ll dive in.
Oh, I should add 4.
I spend weeks or months walking between cities, and after you walk between your first couple towns, it becomes apparent how simple and straightforward backpacking is. Basically all the same benefits as #1 except you’ll find some truly wonderful natural landscapes and peace and quiet by walking the road between two population centers, even the main roads, although if you’re up for it the less-traveled roads are even more fun. All you need are offline maps, a destination, rough estimate of distance, and start walking.
There are always small towns along the way and you’ll be able to get food or water, and if you want true vagabond vibes, there’s nothing more real than choosing to step out of one town and walking for an indeterminate amount of time until reaching some random temple or small town you glanced at on your map and thought sounded cool.
I’d like to add that long-term travel is very accessible and affordable, and if you’re interested in it, you can very likely start traveling right away.
Get your passport, choose where you want to go, buy a ticket, book your lodging, start living abroad.
US Americans have visa-free or visa-on-arrival in ~180 countries, so you have options available, and these days visas are all online and are easy to fill out anyway, if you do want to go to China or one of the few places that don’t offer visa on arrival.
You’ll save money, have an abundance of free time(case-in-point my rabid lemmy engagement) and be able to choose how you want to live your own life with a few hours on a plane.
Any aspect of travel you’re curious about, feel free to ask here, message me or post in the community.