1. Use a VPS.
2. A write-up please. This is beyond my current understanding of Docker networking and more resources would really help

You can access it from any device (assuming relevant client apps and its over the network)

There have been reports of OpenVPN traffic being discovered as VPN traffic even after using obfuscation with obfs-proxy. I believe SSL VPNs are coming out for the self-hoster, and I’m personally very interested in SoftEther

I plan to use podman at home since I just have one node and I don’t care about HA as much (what will I even do HA with? VMs?).

If you have multiple nodes for an HA setup, sure, go right ahead. It will be a massive learning curve though. But so are most things in life. I think everyone can learn a lot by running kubernetes (godly complex networking in my opinion).