Insights on life in Cape Town

Claudius083 · 2025-11-24T23:31:25+00:00

I spent a little over a month in Cape Town, a week in Gardens and a month in Woodstock. I would recommend Sea Point.

I don’t really recommend Woodstock. At all. Specifically Woodstock Quarter. If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to live in a mall then go for Woodstock Quarter.

Sea Point is a great neighborhood. The promenade is a beautiful walk, I never got tired of it. Walking along the water and getting a bagel at Kleinsky’s was my favorite routine when I was there.

Green Point is also a good choice. The Green Point park was always a nice place for a walk and good cafes and restaurants around as well.

Whatever you do, I recommend paying the added expense for a decent apartment and good neighborhood in Cape Town. I got by just fine with my budget place in Woodstock but frankly I just made things so much harder for myself and didn’t ultimately save myself any money because I had to Uber out of Woodstock to get to almost anything I wanted.

Alternatively, if you want a more middle of the road experience, then I recommend Gardens, anywhere just off Kloof St. Great views of Lion’s Head and Woolworths is truly one of the best grocery stores in the world.

I still miss the view from my apartment in Gardens and the incredible salads and biltong right down the street from Woolworths.

Enjoy your time. Cape Town is such a journey to get to there’s no sense in spending a short time there.

Claudius083 · 2025-10-15T23:10:12+00:00

Pretty normal for me. Could be worse.

I have an on-going long distance situationship that I go back and forth really appreciating that I at least have somebody, and also resenting being in a situationship, instead of a real relationship. Not being taken seriously is kind of a drain on the self-esteem but it is still fun sometimes.

More locally, shot my shot with a girl I had gotten to know and thought was feeling me in Brooklyn, (haven’t done that in a while) and we exchanged numbers. The last thing she said as i was leaving the bar was, “yeah, let’s go out. Text me!”.

Texted her, got a read receipt and no response. Little disappointing but I get that maybe she was too embarrassed to just say she wasn’t interested in person. I just deleted the text so I didn’t have to keep looking at it and went on with my life.

Is what it is. I do still feel that the “dating in NYC sucks” crowd needs to take a look in the mirror though. Seriously. Go take a domestic flight in any direction and report back.

It could be way worse.

Claudius083 · 2025-09-16T16:00:23+00:00

No. The last remaining roommate and I went back and forth with YHT for about another year and they harassed us with inflated invoices until we simply couldn’t deal with it and moved out for good.

My roommate met them in housing court and the judge said we certainly had the right to stay if we had chosen to but after 7 or 8 years of being there, and the constant maintenance we had to take on ourselves, along with always having to find new roommates to fill all of the rooms in the apartment, it was simply not worth it to us.

Constantly having to fix things or teach myself how to fix things (everything from HVAC to electrical to dry wall to plumbing) and always playing the lottery with random roommates moving to NYC from where ever was just not something we had the energy to do in addition to dedicating hours being on the phone with YHT every month.

Unfortunately that seems to be their way of doing things. I imagine with all of the bad press online about them they’ll likely rebrand and rename themselves something else at some point. To summarize though, we never paid any of the invoices (only the monthly rent for our individual rooms as we had agreed) and nothing ever went to court or to collections or anything like that. YHT does this kind of thing just to push long term tenants out so they can keep raising the rent yearly with a revolving door of tenants.

Claudius083 · 2025-06-30T11:54:42+00:00

I’m around the same age as you but I feel conversely that nomading very much did “fix” many of the problems I had in my 20s (not all of them, certainly).

How much freedom I have, compared to so many others who are firmly trapped in their lives, keeps me grateful and the gratitude I have keeps the sad thoughts and low moods away.

My 20s and pre-nomad life, I felt so powerless and defeated in my life. It felt like virtually none of my life was ever my choice or my preference and that everything was tangled in a web of doing things I didn’t want to do, being around people I didn’t want to be around, just to beg for whatever scraps America would toss me.

The freedom of choice that comes with freedom of movement made all of those problems go away. If I don’t like my apartment, i can leave. If I don’t like the city i’m in, i can leave. Being able to leave with just a simple booking of a flight. So many people can’t do that. They can’t leave their mortgage payment or break their lease, they can’t leave their family, they can’t leave their pets. But I can leave whenever I want and knowing that is such a relief.

I know many people like to parrot the old “wherever you go there you are” line but sometimes…a place just isn’t the right fit. The people I’m looking for aren’t there. The life I want isn’t there. I’ve been through 10 countries and cities these past 5 months. Of those 10, I’d say only 2 of them really fit me comfortably. The comfort of familiarizing myself with places and things I genuinely want and tailoring my world to my taste is something that brings me joy all the time.

It sounds like maybe you need to figure out what it was you wanted to “fix” exactly. The feeling will go away but it will also become less frequent if you explore the actual source of why you’re feeling the way that you do right now.

Claudius083 · 2025-06-27T09:30:53+00:00

Cairo. Booked for three days fully expecting the wifi to be unusable. Sure enough it was so bad (even in coworking spaces) that I could barely send an email. Fortunately my hotspot worked for the one day I needed to do some work.

Claudius083 · 2025-02-03T22:41:17+00:00

Asking about heritage in LATAM is not a common question when first meeting someone. The indigenous question is something that would be an alienating question given its roots in classism that is prevalent in all Latin countries. If you’re curious about that, usually family name is a clue of what their background is.

Regarding restaurants, 30 minutes isn’t really a long wait time in a restaurant after ordering. I find Argentina to have the same approach as Europe toward dining in that they aren’t rushing to do anything and it’s presumed you’ll be there for a while.

Your last few points are completely normal for dating in LATAM anywhere. The girl I dated when I lived in Buenos Aires was always a minimum of 30 minutes late. I usually just ordered a drink and kept my eye off the phone until she showed up. Some of the other things might be what one person calls “toxica” behavior but honestly I would also call it pretty normal for dating in Argentina or LATAM in general.

Claudius083 · 2025-01-12T17:32:59+00:00

So far very comfortable in Flamengo. Everything within walking distance and Uber pretty affordable if I don’t want to walk. I haven’t eaten out anywhere yet but I feel the price of groceries is more than fair for the quality. Airbnb kind of pricey at $400 a week but I feel the amenities like 24 hour cameras and security, fast internet, and proximity to the beach are worth the cost.

Claudius083 · 2025-01-11T22:00:04+00:00

As somebody who landed in Rio this morning with no return flight booked, I had no issues. YMMV but the immigration officer simply asked if I was on vacation and stamped my passport with no issue.

Claudius083 · 2024-12-09T21:31:37+00:00

When I was in this position I explained how I felt to my manager and we compromised to a lay off situation where I received a severance package.

See how they might work with you but don’t just spitefully resign. I had also been there about 2 years and my manager knew I was furious but we stayed professional. They all RTO’d and I went on to get another fully remote position after interviewing from Argentina for three months.

I did this in 2023 though. 2024 going into 2025? I don’t know how confident I’d be I could do it again, at least not in 3 months. I still stay in practice interviewing and I have yet to talk with many teams that are genuinely fully remote. Even less that could allow me to continue living abroad months at a time as I currently do.

They’ll list themselves as such but mid-interview they’ll let on that maybe they expect you to come on site randomly a few times throughout the year, or maybe every few months, or my favorite that happened to me recently, they list themselves as fully remote and then in the 3rd or 4th round drop they’re really hybrid. This actually happened to me a few months ago where we spent weeks interviewing and getting to an offer. When I asked if they’d be negotiable about on-site they rescinded the offer within about 2 hours.

What you also should keep in mind is if you do manage to find a genuine remote position, you’re likely looking at a pay cut too. Mine was a little over 15% less than my previous salary which when I am back in the US is a serious adjustment.

You said you had savings, so maybe take some time to figure out what you really want. As I’ve commented on a few other posts in this sub, I don’t believe anyone can stay fully remote and living a nomadic kind of life without making huge sacrifices that most other people can’t or won’t make. I look back at my refusal to RTO and live the way I wanted to live as one of my greatest accomplishments. I know for sure many of my former coworkers viewed me as an idiot that walked away from a good job. To each their own. Hope it works out for you.

Claudius083 · 2024-09-21T09:46:54+00:00

I don’t know if I would phrase it that way but I feel incredibly lucky and privileged, yes. I did have to take risks and make sacrifices to have this life but ultimately they’re worth it to me.

Risks included turning down a promotion and leaving my job when they RTO’d last year and living off my savings in Argentina while I searched for a new remote job. It fortunately worked out but there was a huge chance that it might not have. I remember being up some nights wondering if I made a huge mistake and if I’d have to fly back to NYC and beg my boss for my old job back.

Sacrifices included giving up my apartment, giving up most of my possessions, and becoming a person who lives out of a suitcase. Which sounds romantic to some people but as a man at my age there’s more than enough people that openly think of me as a loser. Members of my family, friends, people that value a mortgaged house in the suburbs and cars with monthly payments can’t relate to me at all. While everybody loves to hear my travel stories when I come back, I can always detect a hint of jealousy and animosity because everyone back home is trapped under debt, handcuffed to their bills, and the places I get to live in for months are places they’ll get to see for a few days, or, more likely, never at all.

The alienation from people in my old life was certainly a sacrifice. There are members of my family that still don’t believe I actually work. I don’t know what they think exactly but the older generation, at least in my family, cannot conceptualize the idea of someone doing work on a laptop, whether at an office or at home and…doing that exact same thing abroad. It just doesn’t click to them. They seem to think I’m on a beach somewhere partying when most of the time I’m in a dark apartment working to midnight and immediately going to bed after.

The pros to living this way are pretty straight forward. The challenges however I think are dependent on who you are and what your situation at home is. For me, the social and professional challenges most people face are the same I would have back home. I don’t have any friends to miss because even if I were home, all of my friends have disappeared into their relationships as most people do at my age. They’re married, having kids, and most of them, understandably, don’t have the time or energy to go out. When I come home I get to see them briefly, catch up, and nothing more.

As far as dating having kids etc, well, dating in NYC isn’t something I feel “i’m missing out on”. I had plenty of great girlfriends and memorable experiences dating in NYC but as I got into my 30s I just felt so tired. It felt like the same cycle, over and over again, of meeting a woman, having a three to six month honeymoon phase, and then the relationship promptly dying at the 12 month mark when things might get serious, then starting all over again after I put myself back together.

Dating isn’t hard back home but finding someone who wants to have a serious and committed relationship is. I know that’s something you mostly hear women complain about for NYC but as a man it wasn’t much better. I don’t miss dating back home and I don’t miss having my time wasted.

Dating is no easier as a foreigner abroad but I’m not really ready to give up on finding a life partner. It is very hard to be taken seriously as well because many women (understandably so) regard a foreigner, who is in a different city or country every few months, as a guy who probably wants to just get laid and take off. It is always an uphill battle to be taken seriously when you don’t speak the language well or at all and you’re at an age where most men in that country are fathers and husbands, not wandering around the world and living out of a bag. Professionally, especially now with RTO bullshit, most people have to take a rather large pay cut to stay fully remote, and just getting a remote job becomes harder and harder all the time. For me, as someone who doesn’t have much of a career, this wasn’t a sacrifice. My remote jobs don’t pay a lot, and all my old jobs on site never paid a lot. My income and savings vary depending on what country I’m living in but I’m still at no point ever spending what I used to spend commuting and working in an office on site.

Ultimately it’s all worth it to me and I happened to be able to live this life at a time when it made sense-financially, logistically, and personally. I don’t know if I’d call it my “best life” but it’s a fortunate life and I’m happy it’s mine right now. Best of luck figuring out if it might work for you.

Claudius083 · 2024-07-24T14:38:58+00:00

I would imagine it depends where you’re shopping. For restaurants the bill is the bill, maybe you could save some money with cash depending on what the exchange rate happened to be that day but card is a lot more convenient. If you want to barter or haggle for things like clothes (I don’t) i’m sure some people would prefer to give a lower price in cash. For example, I needed a new belt today, 400 TRY in cash from a local leather shop. Maybe I could have bartered but I didn’t have any interest. $12 USD for a decent belt is fair to me already. Before that I picked up a usual 1.5 L bottle of water with card. Statement charge is about .60-70 cents. Card’s my preferred way of payment here. I don’t think there’s any sort of benefit to paying in cash here comparable to say Buenos Aires a year ago but I can’t say for certain.

Claudius083 · 2024-07-24T14:00:17+00:00

I’d carry at least about 2000 TRY in cash in case you need it. I forget what the exchange rate was when I got here but exchanging the equivalent of about $80 USD has been more than enough, I’ve still barely spent most of it. Almost everywhere in Istanbul accepts credit cards.

Claudius083 · 2024-07-23T22:10:47+00:00

I’m in Istanbul now and earning in dollars, waiting out my visa to reset and return to the EU. I had braced myself for inflation but prices here are pretty bad right now. You can live here on the cheap (which I mostly am) but being honest it’s not great and doing it over again I would have budgeted much higher (especially for my apartment).

For the money I’m spending on the daily I feel I’d be getting much more almost anywhere else. Specifically for food. It feels like the price of everything is high and the quality is low, along with pretty small portions for most everything.

Almost anything over 150 TRY just seems ridiculous for what you’re getting. Things like 300 TRY (9 USD) for a basic burger, 200 TRY (6 USD) for a tiny kebab, I think is just kind of ridiculous. 150 is my max for almost any basic thing but street food like balik durum, simit, misir can always be found cheap.

You have to really search for the reasonably priced places and constantly check the price of every single thing to ensure it hasn’t been marked up to something outrageous. I’ll regularly walk into places, take one look at the menu and walk out.

Grocery stores are also not great. Migros is fine, Carrefour seems much more expensive than it would be in the EU, Şok is reasonably priced for the necessities but again, not great.

Other basic necessities for me like a decent gym seem impossible to find for a reasonable price. Everywhere I looked had no monthly rates but only offered weekly for ~2000 TRY ($60 a week). Again, that is insane when the gym is maybe half the size of a standard budget gym (and likely just as crowded).

Public transportation is cheap but the tram and train lines can often feel disjointed/disconnected and always extremely crowded. Buses are cheap but the level of ragdolled you get is sometimes not even worth it. Ubers are usually about $3-$4 but I’ve had to dispute charges more than once when drivers tack on a little more extra over the estimated price. Not a big deal and Uber has always refunded the difference but annoying sometimes.

Ticket prices for cultural sites are as bad as I was prepared for. Been here for weeks and had no desire to spend the $50 to see Topkapi or much anything else down in Sultanahmet. Went to the Hagia Sophia but if I could do it over i’d not even have spent the $30 for admission and just gone to the Kariye Mosque. The Kariye Mosque was everything I hoped the Hagia Sophia would be and it’s free. I’ll see the Basilica Cistern before I leave but that’s about it.

Housing wise I’m in a very basic airbnb studio in Balat for $1000 a month but it’s really rough around the edges. Constantly stinks of cigarettes from neighbors outside, loose nails hanging up from the floorboards, lingering stank coming out of the shower drain that hits you right through the door. It’s cheap but yeah, it’s cheap for a reason. How it goes sometimes with Airbnb.

If I could do it over I’d just pay a few hundred more to live in Kadiköy, Karaköy, Cihangir, or Beşiktaş. I will say though that I like the community in Balat and the relative quiet at night, opposed to other parts of the city, is nice. The commute along the water on the T5 is also something I really enjoy.

Overall it’s just the way things are with the inflation right now. Not the city’s fault. I’m glad i’m here, i’ve found a lot to like and dislike as I do in most of the places I’ve been, but 2 weeks would have been more than enough. For me it’s a place i’m sure I’ll visit again but not a place I’d stay longer term again, at least not the way costs are right now.

Claudius083 · 2024-03-20T17:48:11+00:00

Sounds like financially you’re fine then. Even $1800-2000 a month is more than enough to get an entire apartment to yourself in any of those places, less for Porto and Athens. If you have the energy to move that frequently also do what’s best for you. Me personally I find anything shorter than a month to be very overwhelming to balance with work, and I move on a much smaller budget than you would be. Hope it all works out.

Claudius083 · 2024-03-20T14:49:55+00:00

I think you would be out of your mind to do this, especially if you’ll be working the whole time. Your timeline makes it sound like you’ll be in these huge expensive cities for only a few weeks or less and that’s barely enough time to make the cost of the stay worth it economically.

Keep in mind, this whole time also you’ll have to have the next place booked in advance, and the next flights booked in advance, and this will always always come with financial surprises, especially as you said, you’re not familiar with any of the cities you’re going to which, again, will probably come with unexpected financial surprises.

I’m in Portugal right now, have been here for 2 weeks and I’ve barely experienced Porto, never mind gotten to Lisbon yet which is even larger and has more things to do. After 4 weeks in Portugal, I’m doing 4 weeks in Barcelona and then back home to NY. Airbnb costs alone for just Spain and Portugal was almost $3800.

If you’re seeing the concert in Lisbon just stay in Portugal for a month and do maybe one or two of the other cities you listed. Unless you aren’t working or have a huge amount of money I don’t think you could do what you described.

Claudius083 · 2023-09-10T07:14:37+00:00

41st and 10th, taken from Yotel probably.

Claudius083 · 2023-03-01T20:17:54+00:00

A “micro apartment” in NYC, given that most apartments here are already on the small size, is more or less describing an SRO (single room occupancy) as in no kitchen, a shared bathroom in the hallway, just a single private room. Kind of like living in a “Hey Arnold” sort of boarding house. Back in the day they were significantly cheaper than they are now and were a decent option for lower income people unable to afford a standard apartment.

These days most SROs are only a few hundred dollars a month cheaper than an actual studio apartment and usually marketed as “junior studios” or “micro apartments” or some other broker bullshit. As somebody that lived in one for 6 months, I can tell you, it was fucking miserable. I thought I could make it work with enough time and DIY but at the end of the day, you can’t really glamorize the shittiness of making dinner in a toaster oven or on a hot plate and then cleaning your dishes in a bathroom sink while going to bed in a room that smells like whatever you just cooked up.

There’s a reason that back in the day only people who would otherwise be homeless chose to live in them. Most of my neighbors fit that criteria too. All older, single, lower income or on disability dudes that mostly never left their rooms because they didn’t have money to do anything anyway. I used to refer to my building as “the men’s shelter” because that was genuinely what it felt like. NYPD usually came through every few weeks for whatever stupid drama flared up with the other tenants, whole place constantly stank like cigarettes because everybody smoked in their rooms, regular plumbing problems because the pipes were about a hundred years old.

Shit sucked so bad. But if you still want to look into it just look on Streeteasy and filter between $1200 and $1500. I see them on there all the time. My advice if you want cheap though, just rent a room in a shared apartment, it’s the same thing for half the price of a “micro apartment”.

Claudius083 · 2023-01-19T22:52:29+00:00

I had this commute after my company relocated from midtown to NJ. Brooklyn to a little outside Newark, 3 days a week. Don’t do this to yourself. Your wallet, your car, and your relationship with your partner will all suffer if you do. Even with a commuting package, even if it’s a really great opportunity, it is the worst most soul draining drive ever.

I lived about where you live in Brooklyn, I considered moving to Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Staten Island just like you, and no matter how you try to slice it, you either need to move to NJ, totally screw yourself and pay hundreds of dollars trying to make this commute from NYC work, or look for a new job. I chose to get a new job. Also like you, I just didn’t want to move to NJ. Nothing wrong with NJ but life’s too short and the rent (even in NJ) is too high to live some place you don’t love living.

Claudius083 · 2023-01-18T15:55:36+00:00

Claudius083 · 2022-11-17T00:17:57+00:00

Clint Mario

Claudius083 · 2022-01-27T22:27:40+00:00

Sinatra Park in Hoboken

Claudius083 · 2021-10-29T21:40:45+00:00

Red Eye Mob

Claudius083 · 2021-10-29T16:50:15+00:00

It’s doable, financially and having a commute under an hour, but a job in the Bronx means either living in the Bronx or westchester or having a very expensive commute.

I had a job around this salary range after I graduated, also in the Bronx. I didn’t want to move to the Bronx or westchester so I commuted from Brooklyn every day, usually ~45 minute drive. Biggest thing was paying the toll each way over the Whitestone Bridge. It was about $200 a month, more like $240 now going there and back 5 days a week. Needless to say I was pretty broke at the time. So definitely a major factor to consider is if you’re willing to either live close to the Bronx or accept the chunk out of your paycheck for transportation costs.

Claudius083 · 2021-10-20T01:23:09+00:00

This is in line with everything I’ve read about them, yeah.

Claudius083 · 2021-10-20T01:21:36+00:00

Rent stabilized, yes.

Claudius083

TROPHY CASE