What it’s like to live on a boat while studying in London

It’s a different kind of peace when you get to fall asleep to the water’s gentle lull on a boat.

Hsiang Jien discovers this after she moved into a residential boat while studying in London, at a mooring site situated along Regent’s Canal. She was told that the best sleep you could ever have is on a boat, unexpectedly. It was all in the light sway of the water, like a cradle that rocks you tenderly back and forth — and the tranquillity is what she’d wake up to instead of an alarm.

“It’s like a storybook, because you’re in your little boat, and it feels like you’re in this tiny little house,” says Hsiang. “But it doesn’t feel very cramped when you’re inside. It feels like the perfect amount of space for one person.”

Each residential boat along Regent’s Canal has its own personality. Source: Naik Hsiang Jien

London is one of the most romanticised cities in the world, and has even surpassed the likes of Paris and Rome in a study of the “world’s most romantic city.” It’s an architect’s dream, drawing the perfect line between ancient and modern. It’s diverse and filled with eccentric, hidden spots you won’t find on those lists of tourist attractions. But like many big cities, studying in London presents a double-edged sword. It is beautiful, but it is imperfect, and certainly not a fairytale: high cost of living, high crime rates, pollution, overcrowding.

Still, there are pockets of the city that will embrace you with that warm, fuzzy feeling — much like when you’re watching the romance in “Notting Hill” unfold. When Hsiang began pursuing her master’s at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), she had been eager to experience what this side of the world felt like, having spent several years in North America.

Though, a boat was frankly the last place she thought she would ever be.

Studying in London and living in a very un-London-like housing. Source: Naik Hsiang Jien

A stroke of luck

It’s incredibly difficult to rent a residential boat if you don’t know someone in the community, so the fact that one would pop up on the rental app Hsiang was cruising through was very much a stroke of luck. Even more so, when you consider that she’d made her final university decision a lot later than the usual timeline, meaning accommodations were booked up.

“I didn’t really want to live in student accommodation anyway, because I like my freedom, I was having my sister come to visit, and I don’t like being stuck in one place,” says Hsiang. “Rent is really expensive, and some of the places that were available just didn’t look like somewhere I wanted to live. So I decided to just sublet for the time being and keep looking.”

Before studying in London, the idea of living on a boat felt more like a holiday escape for Hsiang. While she was still in Malaysia, searching for housing online, one opportunity came up, but the boat was located an hour away from campus. It didn’t make sense. But it seemed like fate had a funny way of turning its gears: the second sublet Hsiang rented ended up being right next to the canal. She’d walk along the canal all the time to get to her climbing gym and witness how the boat community simply looked like they were living their best life.

Regent’s Canal is a nine-mile waterway that runs along the River Thames at Limehouse to Paddington. It served many industries in London and beyond as a trade and transport route for about 150 years, but has slowly evolved into a leisurely area. You’ll find people walking and cycling along the towpath, as well as mooring sites with colourful, homey boats. The trail is framed with foliage, and you’ll see fish, ducks, and smaller animals wandering about.

“I almost didn’t go see the boat — it was more expensive than other rooms, but also more private,” says Hsiang. “I decided to go anyway, because when am I going to have an opportunity to go on a houseboat? And I fell in love. Unfortunately, I had to do it.”

Life slows down to a peaceful rhythm when your house is a boat on Regent’s Canal, unlike the usual living and study in London experiences. Source: Naik Hsiang jien

When peace beckons you

London is far too imperfect as a city to read like a fairytale, but when you’re living in Regent’s Canal, those flaws suddenly feel far, far away.

“I was also working part-time, so I would be spending long hours of my day in a store, at uni, in class, or on the tube. There are people everywhere, and it’s moving, and it’s a very hectic city,” says Hsiang. “My mooring has a gate — the second you open the gate, and then you lock it behind you and start walking down that little winding path, you just feel like everything doesn’t matter. I don’t live in London anymore.”

Mornings on the water hum with a countryside rhythm: Hsiang would wake up without an alarm, and either jump or use a step to get down from the bed that occupied the whole width of the bedroom. Since there’s not a lot of storage in a boat, beds were mounted up high, and you’d use the space underneath. During the winter months, she’d light a fire in the hearth. The fireplace was connected by these rods throughout the entire boat, which would eventually heat up the entire space, including the water.

“I’ll usually leave it running when I go to bed, the fire,” says Hsiang. “So when I wake up, I have hot water. I have to stoke the fire. If the coals are still hot, I’ll add wood so that the fire will keep going.”

Then, she boils her tea atop the fireplace.

Hsiang claims she wasn’t good at starting fires, but it’s necessary to survival when studying in London during the winter. Source: Naik Hsiang Jien

Of course, things aren’t picture perfect. There’s the plumbing situation, for example — or rather, the lack of. People often used cassette or composting toilets, something that didn’t need to be hooked up to the sewage system. Bathroom business needed to be disposed of frequently and, depending on the type of toilet, emptied in a facility.

“People make it kind of fun,” says Hsiang. “They’ll be like, ‘hey, does anybody need a pump out?”

There are other things too. If you don’t have heating, you’ll need to learn how to start a fire, lest you allow yourself to freeze. Hsiang lived in a gated community, but boats that were parked temporarily along the canal had to move every two weeks. In that case, safety is also an issue, because anybody could walk past and break in.

If you’re willing to look past those downsides, though, the payoff is worth it.

After her tea and breakfast, Hsiang would water the plants inside her boat, and feed some treats to any passing cats and dogs. The world would greet her in historic buildings, animals like cats, foxes, and squirrels, and the people who were walking their dogs at dawn. Everybody in her community loved to garden, so there’d be fresh plants dotted everywhere, thriving waterside flowers — and Hsiang never thought that studying in London could ever be this good.

“You just feel at peace, which is so hard to feel in the city,” she says. “When I lived in an apartment, or when I lived in different rooms, it just didn’t feel the same.”