Sometimes your friends won’t be free or interested in traveling where and when you want to go, so you may as well accept that it’s OKAY to go somewhere ALONE, all by yourself, even if you’re a solo female.
My first experience with that was my spring break trip to New Zealand during my study abroad in Australia, but that wasn’t actually traveling by myself since I was on a bus with 49 other students my age. It was natural and easy making friends, and all of our activities were already planned out for us.
But what happens when you decide to travel to a foreign country where you’re not really sure if English is popularly spoken and you’re a solo female traveling in a developing country?
Well…. you learn to cope and hopefully make good life decisions, meet the right people, and have a jolly safe trip. At least for me, I definitely lucked out on all fronts. I was wanting to explore Southeast Asia but didn’t have friends who would be able to join me at the right times and dates, so in the end, I decided to just book my air ticket to Vientiane, Laos and plan out an itinerary on my own. When I landed, I wasn’t nervous but within minutes, my nerves began to get a hold of me. It was 10:30PM at night, and I had booked a one night stay on Agoda.com where I had added my flight and arrival information and a taxi pickup from the airport. No one was there with my name on it, and slowly, all the lights at the airport were turning off… the airport was closing!! I had to go with one of the cab drivers at the front entrance, and he didn’t exactly make me feel confident that he knew where my accommodation was. As we were driving along, all of a sudden, my cab driver stopped for strangers on the side of the road, and he left the car (and me in it) as he went to talk to them. Thoughts were racing through my head: “Should I run for it? Are they plotting something? Am I in trouble??” But then the cab driver got back in the car, pulled out his cell phone, and called his buddy cab driver to go pick up those nice Europeans (or so he told me).
I did end up getting to my guesthouse just fine…. to find the lights out and the gates locked. My cab driver was nice enough to help call the number listed on the website for me, and the owner woke up and signed me in. As I walked in to the “lobby”, I could see two children sleeping on the floor and an older teenager running around getting things “ready”. It was certainly a departure from anything I had ever experienced in terms of hotel/hostel stays where you expect a certain type of professionalism and service. While I didn’t know it then, I would come to like stays at places like these–homestays–cheap and comfortable, not fancy or luxurious in any way, run by families in their own homes.
The stay was fine, though I realized the next day as I explored the area that it was a bit removed from the center of the city. So I found a new place to stay and I moved my bags and found myself on my merry way to completing my itinerary. I traveled like a local, riding on the public transportation to get to my destination (total cost $3) instead of hopping onto a tour bus (total cost $30) and found it fascinating. On the way to Buddha Park, an area aptly named for the multitude of buddhas in a park area, I had noticed that as I was writing in my journal killing time on the “bus” (a van that was filled to the brim with occasional animal chattel and bags of laundry and folks squatting on chairs in the center), there was a woman very interested in my journal. I would later bump into her again on top of a giant buddha, realize English was a common language of ours, help each other take pictures, and become friends over food as we were temporarily rained out.
Over the next few days, I was so glad I had ended up at that park on that day at that time. I had found two Japanese girls to have dinner with, explore the rest of the city, and even to continue the rest of my trip with one of the girls, where we planned to room together at the next two locations. Along my trip, we would befriend two other girls traveling solo who also just happened to bump into each other and become friends. As a group of four solo female travelers, we were able to add on another group of 3 German girls as we booked taxis to bring us to tourist destinations at a lower rate.
Sometimes it pays off to go on an adventure by yourself. You never know who you’ll end up meeting, and the type of connections you end up making. It’s definitely worthwhile to attempt if you really want to go somewhere. Don’t let the fact that you have no one to go with deter you from going for it. Obviously, it IS very important to make sure to be SAFE. Don’t make it too obvious that you’re traveling by yourself. Don’t carry anything that seems expensive on you. Make sure you keep your friends updated as much as possible about your whereabouts. I may have gotten lucky, perhaps, but I am glad that I was able to explore Laos and to have met such wonderful people while doing so.