Have you ever just picked a small rural town and traveled to it for a week to live the life? Ideally not a tourist town/ one next to giant parks for instance.

What life? Rural towns have a supermarket, a pub, and maybe a visitor's centre. You can see everything in an hour.

>>2796063
Yeah mostly but there are some interesting things to be found if you stick around and talk to the locals. I do independent journalism on cults/communes as a hobby and you would be amazed at how often there is a "group" of some sort or another attached to an innocuous out of the way little town.

There are also unknown by outsiders stuff like local caves or hotsprings, or "haunted" spots. When towns are really small people have all the time in the world to really solidify their local lore and are willing to share it if you show interest.

>>2796052 (OP)
I stayed five days in a remote Lao village 100 km from the nearest city. Got sick from drinking the tap water. People were not outgoing, but the hotel was great and the food was good. There was very little of interest in the area. Walking dusty dirt roads wasn't fun. You'd be surprised how much noise the Lao locals made, along woth their dogs and roosters. Middle of nowhere, but everyone has a party speaker and spends their days staring at TikToks on their phone.

>>2796052 (OP)
Not exactly. I’ve rented houses in out-of-the-way/rural areas several times, and spent at least some time in the adjacent towns or villages—for some years, I spent a week every summer on a farm half an hour into the hills from a small town I came to know quite well. But I’ve never been “living the life,” I’ve been on vacation.

Locals in small towns don’t sit around reading all morning before going swimming in the river in the afternoon, they work, and worry about their kid who’s on drugs or just got knocked up. Feels kind of insulting to pretend that I’m sharing their life experiences when I’m at leisure and they’re busy.

>>2796063
>>2796065
there are lots of poverty towns with dwindling populations, addiction, and its overall grim, vast areas of post industrial rot, centralization.

there are a few towns that are comfy, either they have a solid community or at least a reasonably wealthy community. usually you'd think new england, or home counties in england - but these then start to go against the no tourist theme.

however in some more foreign countries there are dwindling populations post industrial rustbelt but still because its foreign and beautiful landscape can be fun like a central italian town.
yet i think there's so much worth seeing i still go to places that have some tourist appeal but not 1st choice spots

staying somehwere in an off season can be comfy.
like a spansih beach town in winter

Been thinking of doing this in some balkan country, Macedonia looks very pretty

Did this in a few southern chile towns
Kind of pointless, didn't really meet anyone or learn much of anything. But they were comfy places to hang out

>>2796052 (OP)
I've done it for a couple days since I live in NH.
Littleton NH was "cute" but I was bored out of my mind after about an hour. It's a super tiny tourist town. All of the bars and restaurants make you feel like a weirdo if you're alone. They weren't really hangout kind of places, and the whole town is shut down by like 6pm.
North Conway is similar if you're a guy solo. I've stayed there a couple times for hikes. At night, the town is a sundown town and almost nothing's open.
These are tourist towns, not like picrel though.

My experience with picrel is living in Northfield VT for six months.
Northfield was okay once I got to know some locals, but way too small. During that time I hung out mostly in Montpelier, which was actually kind of cool. Had a couple of decent hangout type bars that were comfortable going alone in my mid 20's. Surprising amount of transplants there. Seemed like young people who lived in a 45 minute radius in super small towns preferred to move to or hang out in Montpelier. It neighbored Barre, which was similar size, could also be fun, but it was super trashy. I think part of what made Montpelier cool was all the trashy people went to Barre, leaving Montpelier a cleaner more crunchy crowd than it otherwise would've been.
That was a while ago though, for all I know the place could be a psychotically woke shit-hole now.
Ultimately I wanted to move back to Burlington VT, but looking back, I had fun overall with Montpelier.

IDK that you could really experience "living" there for a week though. It took me probably a month of going out regularly to really start seeing familiar faces and talking to people. Probably 2-3 months before having a couple of friends I'd hang out with.

>>2796052 (OP)
I far prefer smaller places to big cities nowadays.
Big cities are full of aggy faggots.
Can't beat a good ole hike, a fire pit, a local bar full of locals, and a good ole rustic restaurant.

Balkans and Poland are comfy. Italy, too.

>>2796065
>I do independent journalism
Hard to imagine a place you'd be less welcome than a small rural town where people simply mind their business. You sound like a total fag.

While I was in college, Iwent to Jerome Arizona with a former friend. He kept playing this faggy 90s music the entire time we were driving with this guy wailing. I kept seeing cool signs talking about a ghost town and a mining museum. A real “Old West” ghost town was something I always wanted to experience. We get there and this “friend” didn’t want to see the old ghost town or mining museum. He wanted to go to some faggy restaurant and eat expensive pasta and drink expensive wine. I was like WTF?! bro. Then he tells me that the restaurant is owned by the guy singing the faggy music. I told him I’m going to the museum and see the ghost town before it closes. I found him a few hours later and we drove back home. He seemed disappointed that the singing faggot never came to his own restaurant. He really thought he comes to his own restaurants.

Anyways, the ghost down and mining museum were fucking rad. Avoid the gay ass wine and food and see the museum and ghost town in Jerome AZ.

>>2796063
This. Rural """life""" is the most overrated thing on the planet. It sucks for everyone that doesn't have large quantities of land, and that's why everyone fucks off or is trying to fuck off around the world.

>>2796052 (OP)
This is a big dream of mine. Quit my job, buy a new nice car that doesn't have over 100k miles on it, then go around the country staying in towns and cities for between two days, and a few weeks at a time. Walking around the town, seeing a show, hiking in what nature the town has, trying the local specialties, checking out bars and talking to locals. Then moving on to the next one. Basically a vagabond with money. Id like to do that for at least a year.

I love the idea of driving through a new town, hundreds of miles from home, liking it, and immediately getting a hotel and live there for a few days,

If i had a terminal illness or won a bunch of money i would do this. I dont like the idea of quitting my job and spending probably most of my money on this then not having much left at the end.

>>2798384
Just. It a brand new Mitsubishi Mirage. They are bulletproof. Slow as fuck but ultra fuel efficient.

>>2798385

>>2798388
Yeah that guy is a faggot
Maybe watch someone who doesn’t talk like a hairlip homo

>>2796052 (OP)
Yeah , its fun to just wonder around and get ice cream, go bowling, try and find a disco or dance thing going on and its nice to notice the attitudes, behaviors , and niceness of locals, more soul to be found

>>2798390
>>2798388

I drive out to look at other towns but they never have anything to make me want to stop & get out. It's depressing as fuck when you think 80% of the populace in these places do most of their shopping in the one dollar store in their town.

>>2798411
R u clownin on my ride nigga?

>>2796052 (OP)
Yep I've done this a few times, I stayed at a village between Pokhara and Katmandu for a week once. Nothing to do, just chilling out in cafes, reading books and chatting to people.