Comment by shruubi

I'm willing to admit I may be the odd one out here, but I find this entire article to paint the author as self-entitled and manipulative.

> One might even call the art of accepting generosity a type of compassion.

People may feel good about themselves after performing an act of kindness, but this sentence makes it sound like the author is gifting them the opportunity to go out of their way to do things for him.

And all of these stories of wandering around Asia for eight years sound more like he deliberately put himself in positions to guilt people who culturally feel obligated towards generosity. These don't read like stories of kindness to me, but someone bragging about all the people he manipulated, and then recycled all these stories of manipulation into some ridiculous idea that he is the truly compassionate and kind person because he is accepting their kindness.