Why I'm talking about solo travel

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Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain Speaking. Welcome aboard Truly Expat Travel, where we're ditching the guidebooks, fastening our seatbelts, and diving into real stories from travelers who have traded the ordinary for the extraordinary, proving the world really is too big to be left upon the table.

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Cabin crew be seated and ready for takeoff. Welcome to the Truly Expat Travel Podcast. I'm your host, Paula, and I am going to do a little bit of a different episode this week. This episode is about traveling solo, especially as a female and at my age. Why am I traveling solo? Why or when did I start traveling solo as well, right? So for those who have only just started listening to me, my name is Paula Barnes and I am a travel creator. I have started I started this, wow, I started

The Wales scare at 21

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this in 2019 when just before COVID hit. So I just started my business. I started traveling solo then. That was the first time, I think it was 2018, 2019. I that was the very first time I travelled and it scared me. I'll be honest, it absolutely scared me because going back to many, many years ago, so when I was 21, I decided that I would travel alone. Not sure why, but I wanted to travel alone. And I had a really bad experience when I was in Wales, where I got chased by a group of guys, and thank goodness nothing happened because I was able to run into a hotel, which I didn't even know was a hotel. It was just literally ran into these random doors and it just happened to be a hotel, and I ended up staying there overnight. I didn't even go down and check the car because I was driving. I actually drove to this little alley where I parked and then I went in to try and find an ATM, which was the biggest mistake, because obviously I I was I was vulnerable and I didn't really know how to solo travel. I'd never I'd been overseas once before with my father, and we went to Italy and to England and to Hong Kong. No, I didn't go to Hong Kong that time, just to Italy and England at that stage. And it was the first time I'd ever travelled overseas. So I'd travelled internally, like domestically in Australia with friends

Testing the waters: Italy, Amsterdam & the UK

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and things before, but I'd never travelled overseas on my own, especially. So it was daunting. Anyway, let's fast forward to 2018 when I first travelled alone. I went over to Italy to look at some property, but that was kind of safe because although it was scary because I got lost on the train, I was trying to get to Como and anyway, long story short, I made it, but I had family there. So I caught up with my cousins and it felt safe, if that makes sense. I then went to Amsterdam where I met my husband and we traveled a little bit, and then I went off to the UK, and then I traveled with friends, so visiting friends. So it was it was a very good way to test the boundaries of of my ability to travel alone. Then

TBEX, New York & my first true solo trip

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2019 hit and I went to a conference in T-BEX, which was upskate state New York, so that was the first time I truly travelled alone. It was a bit bit safer because they spoke English, so that made life a little bit easier. But what happened was that I ended up getting off the plane, staying overnight at like at a hotel near the airport, near JFK, and then the next morning I went and picked up the car. The next morning when I picked up the car, it was it was jet lagged and it was pouring with rain, and I had to drive there all the way up to upstate New York to Corning, and it was scary. I'm not gonna lie, it was really, really scary. I think I had driven before on the other side of the road on my own because we lived in Korea, so in South Korea and Seoul, and so I had to drive on that side of the road before. So that wasn't really the issue. The big issue for me was that I hadn't done it in a long time, and the other issue was that I was jet lagged and it the the streets are big and scary with really big trucks that you were driving up the freeway, so that kind of scared me. Then I went to a conference, I knew nobody, I met I met some amazing people, and that really made me realise how much I love to travel and this solo thing could be a thing. Because I then went from there to meet up with a friend in Toronto, and I met someone at the conference who ended up driving to the the border with me to the Grand Canyon, not Grand Canyon, the Niagara Falls. Gosh, my brain. So we drove to Niagara Falls together. I didn't know her before this trip. The we then caught up for dinner. I went and looked around, and so and then I drove on my own to Toronto to be to visit some friends. That was my very first real trip, and then I flew back to New York, caught up with some friends in New York, and realised that this could be a thing. This traveling solo, I really enjoyed, and it was scary in the beginning, but not scary enough to deter me, determ deter me from going again. And then we all know what happened in the beginning of 2020, where so imagine, so imagine launching a business. This this blog that I was I had I had launched a blog a few years before, a year or two before, where but it was more about expat life. But I wanted to do this travel thing, so I then launched, relaunched my I was able to do a whole new blog and relaunched it and redesigned it as truly expat travel because what happened was in the beginning I was the traveling expat spelt with two two L's, and then realized that there was someone else with the true traveling expat with one L. And so people, when I was at the conference, was confusing me with with those two people. So I decided that I would rebrand over those two years, and that's where my love of travel solo began. I t tipped like I dipped my toe earlier, but then when 2022 came along, I started to travel with my family, then with my friends, and then 2023 really got me to push the boundaries and travel solo. And I realized then that I I loved this and I love this for me. And you know, I just think that because I then became an empty nester in 2020, I became an empty nester, like a f when I call myself an empty nester, it's a but then I was a full-time empty nester. The kids all lived in Sydney, and I lived in Singapore at the time, and I would travel back and forward. So when I was in Sydney,

Becoming an empty nester

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when I was with the kids, I didn't have an empty nest, I had a full house, and then I go back to Singapore where it was just my husband and I. And so I used to call myself an an part-time empty nestor, and I had been doing that for a a number of years, actually about six years apart from the COVID years. So then when I when my son, my eldest or my my youngest son finished school, I realized I can know I don't have to feel guilty anymore about wanting to travel to these amazing places. My husband was busy working and he was traveling. So quite often I would go with him on business trips and explore the areas and stuff while he was at work. So I was kind of started to learn how to travel on my own, even though I'd go back each night and he'd be, you know, we'd we'd be in the hotel together. But ju generally during the day I would do walking tours or I would explore the the cities on my own, and it gave me a real taste of and it also gave me the confidence to take the next step, which was actually fully travelling solo on my own. And I think because I traveled back and forth to Sydney quite a lot, that traveling alone wasn't an issue, it was the actual booking into hotels or sorry, checking into hotels on my own and then having to navigate transport on my own because I tell you what, I'm awful. If I am ever with you traveling, please never listen to my directions. If I tell you what's left because my gut tells me, please go right. I'm awful. Like I'm really, really awful. And so for me to navigate the streets on my own, especially when there's like you can use Google Translate now, so it's not so bad, but especially when you don't have a GPS or whether when the language there's a language barrier, it's scary. I'm not gonna lie, it is scary. And so the more you do it, it's like anything, the more you do it, the better you become at it. And I just have now I've got safeguards now. I've got my GPS, I've got my Google Translate, I've got my apps in my phone that allow me to be able to do everything from be able to pay, book hotels. I think solo travel for me, I didn't think it was gonna be a my thing. I really didn't because I'm one of those people that love people. I love being around people and I love, you know, creating these memories. And so for a very long time I never thought that was who I was going to be.

Why I love travelling solo

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But the more I've done it, the more I've really enjoyed and I just have fun. Like I can get up in the morning and if I want to go on a walking tour, I can go on a walking tour. If I want to go and try out this restaurant that I saw maybe on social media or someone posted, I can go try that without someone complaining. I know it can't eat this, or I don't like that, or I don't want to do this, or if I go to a museum and I can actually read everything that's on the wall, I can look at every artifact because there's no one behind me saying, Have we finished yet? Like can we go now? I can do it all on my own. And I think that's when I realized, hey, this is fun. This is real fun. Anyway, so that's how I got started. But what I wanted to kind of talk to you about is some of the fears that I had and that you probably do

Fear #1: My age (and my luggage)

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too. Firstly, my age. My age was an issue, I guess, because I thought I can't do the things that I did in my 30s, my twenties, my thirties, even my forties, that I could can do now. I can't take a massive backpack like I did when I backpacked through Asia and through Europe with my husband in my twenties. I can't, you know, carry big things anymore. Although I tried to do it on the Camino, I can only take a small bag. I I can. It's just me. I'm not I don't know, maybe somebody my age can do that, but I knew that my ability would be that I needed to carry things that I had to rely on myself, you know. A perfect example was last year excuse me, I was in France last year, and what happened was I had loads of those pebblestone streets that I had to lug my bags across. No one else was going to do it. I had to do it. And then when I got to the hotel, thinking that it was because it was a big hotel, thinking that a lift would be a given, but it wasn't. And so I had to carry my luggage all the way up through flights of stairs, and which isn't an issue. I feel like these days I am pretty used to packing relatively light, but because that was going to be a four months trip, I had a lot of luggage. I I have to admit, I had a lot of luggage because I was travelling I had thought because I was travelling most of that period in a car in Sicily that the carrying the bag in and out isn't such an issue, but it was, and it was for there it was an issue, and also when I was in the car, having to drag that suitcase in and out of hotel rooms was also an issue. So I ended up what I ended up doing is having a backpack and I would fill that day or that night, because most of the times I was staying there one night and so or sometimes two nights, and I would just pack up enough for me to get through the next two nights or the next night so that I wouldn't have to be carrying that luggage because a lot of places in Italy the car parks are outside of the old towns, and I like to stay inside the old towns because generally speaking that's where most of the things are happening, and that most of the places that I want to visit it are visit are. So yeah, I had to walk with my backpack quite often. The other thing is the loneliness. I thought that I would be so lonely because I am, as you know, a talker. I do love to chat, but I have found that the more places I go on my own, the more people come and talk to me. And I think that is because when you're with someone, you don't tend to look like you want to chat to someone else. So people don't come to you and talk to you. But if you're sitting at a restaurant having dinner on your own, quite often people will approach me or talk to me from the table next to me, and then you know, or if I'm sitting, if I'm about I'm lining up to go on, you know, a ferry

Fear #2: Loneliness & the Camino

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or a bus, you tend to start talking to someone in front of you or behind you, especially if they're traveling alone. So I think that the loneliness has never been a problem for me because I also feel like you've got FaceTime, you have all these ways where you can talk to your family and friends on the on the go anyway. And I quite often feel like that I'm bringing my family with me because I'm showing them everything that I'm doing. And I guess now that I'm documenting everything as well, that I feel like I'm talking to you, you know, like I'll talk to the to my phone, and that used to scare me, I have to say, that used to embarrass and scare me. But you know what? I'm never gonna see these people again. Do you know how many people there are on the planet? The chances are that that person standing next to me looking at me strange while I'm talking to my phone is really gonna do I care anymore? No. So it's like I'm talking to, you know, to you all. And I think I discovered that during when I did the Camino, I've done it twice, and the second time I did it, I did it on my own. And every day for the first at least five days, I think I saw maybe one or two people on that whole route because I went at the hottest time of the year where nobody goes and I went in the middle of this the country from Portugal, which isn't a very popular route, especially at that time of year. So I would walk days without seeing anyone and I talked to camera and I would post things that night and I would be so surprised at how many DMs that I would get the next morning to say, yeah, you can keep doing because quite often I'd break down and say, I can't do this on my own, blah blah blah. But I think that what happened was that people would turn around. I mean, that that made me realize that I'm not alone on these ventures. I'm never alone. Whether it's you listening on on the podcast or listening, watching me via my Instagram or TikTok or whatever it might be, I'm not alone. And the people that I meet in the street, at the restaurant, on the tours, they're also n, you know, become part of my journey. So yeah, that never now worries me. And it's funny because for the first couple of years, I never ate out ever. Like at night on my own. I would eat in my hotel room, which is a little bit sad. Uh now I think about all those missed opportunities, because I always felt embarrassed and weirded out that I would sit at a restaurant and eat alone. But you know what? It's my favorite thing to do, and I think that's because I love to people watch. And so it might be a little strange in places like Asia because people don't people watch, but definitely in Europe, sitting out, you know, our fresco, watching people walk past, just seeing what life has got to offer, it's great. And I love that in Europe you could people watch, and it's not weird, and people aren't on their phones. Like you go into Asia and you go into a restaurant, everyone's on their phone. Nobody is really, even if they're in a group of two or three or four, people are on their phones. Nobody's really conversing. When you're looking out in the street and people

Eating alone & people-watching

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are on their phones on tra public transport or whether they are standing in a line or even walking across the street, people are on their phones. In Europe, the only people on their phones were people taking photos. So they were using it as a camera, not as a phone. So won't watching anything, not so I never really saw anyone, you know, on their phone and in their own little world. So people want to talk to you because someone next to you is chat wants to chat to you because there are people watching too, you know, and I think that's why I realized I'm never alone. Like I really am never alone. I think so. Now I guess people quite often ask, firstly, the safety about women. And so there's a couple of things. Firstly, the the only time I've ever felt unsafe was once last year in unfortunately in Toronto where I stayed in the wrong neighborhood and I did not feel safe at all. Like at all. It was it was a little scary. And you know what? It's times like that where you realize, okay, do not go out at night and don't go out too early in the morning. Make sure that there's people around. When you're walking down the streets, there's a few things, you know, like don't put your headphones

Staying safe as a solo female traveller

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on when you're walking down the street because someone can snatch a bag, or someone can come up behind you and you don't hear them, or you're walking across the street when it's busy and you've got your headphones on, you can't hear the traffic. So the one thing would be if you have to just have one headphone, just have if you can have like obviously if you've got big headphones, you can't do that, but if you can only have one in your head in your ear at the time is probably the best solution, especially if you like to listen to podcasts or you're listening to a narrative of of a two-hour or self-guided tour or whatever. Generally speaking, I only ever have one in my ear. Different on a plane, but you know, don't you having it on your in your ear. Also, if I don't feel comfortable in a city or in a country and I don't, although I'm traveling alone, but I don't want to be alone because of safety reasons, then I will book a tour. I'll book a city tour, a walking tour, so then I get to know the neighborhood and the area through a local's eyes. That's also really helpful. And or I'd go on a tour tour, you know, like two, three, four days. Just because there's some places in the world women unfortunately, and men I guess, it's not that safe to travel. Especially when you look different and you're a foreigner, there is more chance that you will be spotted or you're targeted, you know. So that is just being precautious. Doing some research before you go to a destination is also a really great idea because you can never be too prepared. I'm one of those people that I just like to prepare. I love to be prepared for everything. I love schedules. I love, like if you could see my whiteboard right here right now, I have got every colour coordinated, so it's colour coordinated, but every destination I'm going to in the next few months, all the things that I need to do, all the things that have been done, that's my life. That's what I like. I use an app called Tripit just so that all my stuff is in there and it's easy to access. But lately what I've been doing is also writing, doing my own little itinerary, printing it out. So I've got a hard copy as well because I have been stuck where my phone wouldn't open. I couldn't I couldn't turn my phone on, so I had no way of getting to the trip it. So that that is something that I do now. I I print that out. I also think that there's there are lots of apps that you can use when you're traveling that do help. Trippet is one of them, maps is another one. There are other things like Google Translate that is honestly a godsend. That is probably my favourite thing. I know that Apple has these ear translations now, which I bought I bought some a couple, well no, last year. I bought some last year, not the Apple ones, another brand, and they didn't really work very well. So I'm gonna wait a little bit longer before I investigate whether or not I should be using something like that. They're the ones I use the most. I also use the hotel ones as well. They're really helpful. Whether you book through booking.com, Marriott who else, traveloca, not traveloca, oh my gosh, Expedia, a heap of them. Whatever one that you you tend to use, they're it's really good to try and be able to create, you know, especially if you're doing

My must-have travel apps

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something like I did with Sicily, where I was going to a different destination pretty much every night, having it all in one place, gosh, it makes a difference because you can message the the hotels, you can because there was a perfect example where I I had booked in to stay at a hotel near the airport in Palermo, and it was more of a pension, like a Airbnb, like not Airbnb, but like a more like a very small boutique y kind of hotel rather than a proper big not proper big m big chain hotel. And so I got there and nobody was answering. Nobody was answering the phone, nobody was answering the door. doorbell and I just thought, Oh, okay, I'm not sure what to do. So I quickly went online to try and book somewhere else for that night. And I was standing out the front and the lady just walked, you know, as you do in Italy, just opened up the gates and said, Oh, and I said, Oh, I've been here thinking that you're not, you know, you're not gonna be here. Because I think it was like five o'clock or something. And so she's like, oh no, sorry, I just took some guests to the airport and I and I just thought, okay. So you don't obviously she didn't answer the phones. But anyway, long story short, had I needed to, I could book something on the fly. And it's also a great way to get in touch with the hotel people if they are online. It also gives you all the other information as well. I also tend to share my itinerary with people back home. That's also a good thing. Through Tripit, you can do that through trip it and so that they'll always know when you're there, when you're on where where you're going. The other thing that I have started to do is that if I for example when I was in Turkey I was in East Stanbull I arrived late like it was 11 pm and I got in a taxi and I didn't feel comfortable. My phone had I couldn't turn my phone on. That was when I couldn't you know and I was struggling to figure out where I was supposed to be going and I so I pretended I was on the phone to my husband just saying yeah yeah no that's fine I'm okay he is driving a little bit fast because he was literally can I on it was the scariest thing driving super super fast. I think he was doing like 110 or 120 down the freeway 1130 at night pack pitch black and there wasn't that much

The Istanbul taxi ride

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traffic around maybe it was even later because there was wasn't that much traffic around I couldn't I don't know where I was going because there was no GPS. He was watching TV like he had a his phone up watching a soccer game he was talking on the phone to someone and he was just zooming down the highway so I was like I don't know if he's going to the right place. I don't even know where I'm going. He could be taking me absolutely anyway. So anyway I pretended to be on the phone but generally speaking I don't normally do that. What I normally do is send I don't normally catch taxis either if there's a hire car app an Uber or a grab or something like that or a live I tend to use those so that I can send that tracking to my husband or someone else so that someone always knows where I am and where I'm going. Just it just makes just it just makes me feel a little bit more comfortable in trouble. I do catch trains and buses and stuff from the airport as well but only during the day I don't do it at night I don't ever do it at night. If I arrive anywhere at night I try not to I try to get there in the morning if I can or during the day because it's not that the night scares me it's just that yeah it's a little more spooky it's a little little safer during the day so I tend to catch trains and buses and stuff during the day rather than the night they're kind of my main safety tips. The other thing is there are countries that I just won't travel to on my own. I just don't feel comfortable traveling on my own. So what I have started to do is started and that's where this hosting of trips started for me. So I host trips to destinations where generally speaking I won't don't really want to travel on my own. I don't know if it's a place that is safe or not or if it's off the beaten track. So I did yeah so I decided that you know in the beginning of 2024 25 what month of what year are we in 2026? Last year beginning of last year I went took a my first trip with a group of women because I wanted to see if this would be a thing that people wanted and so that's why the trips that I do are for the women over 50 usually originally it was 45 and that was because I did have someone ask me whether or not they can come on a trip and they were 45. So I kind of went yeah okay 45. But generally speaking it's for 50s and over because these are the women that are in my boat that understand

Why I started trips for women over 50

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where I'm coming from that want to travel but have got no one to travel with or they may be either recently divorced, never married, have been an so there's a whole reason why at this age we're starting to travel we're seeing more people travel independently because we also I think quite often we have the courage to travel but not so much travel alone. So that's the other reason I wanted to start something to show people that we can do it on our own. And if you come with me and meet all these like minded people then you can be part of this travel club that I've created that you know it's it's a great community of women who fun. So that's the other thing one thing that I have to say is that if you're going to come on my tour, you have to be up for fun. You know I'm not saying you have to do bungee jumping and being adventurous but you have to have a sense of humor on you and you have to be around people that also are fun to be around. There is no whinging and nagging and unhappiness on my tours. This is about exploring countries that we probably wouldn't normally explore and doing it together and having fun together. And so if you're up for that then that's when you should come along on one of my trips. This year we've only I've got two more to go. I've got one in Morocco that will be starting well by the time this episode is live I will actually have been in Morocco so on the trip. But if you there is also an another trip in October that I'm doing I've got I've opened it up and had there's a few more spaces now for the trip to Taiwan and the reason I chose Taiwan was because it's not that I don't feel comfortable travelling there on my own. It's just that a few of the women felt uncomfortable traveling alone and or they didn't have anyone to go to go with because their partners don't really want to go to Taiwan. And Taiwan's a bit special for me because it's the very first place I ever lived outside of Australia. And so for me you know it was 19 years ago I packed up our life and took my three little kids and my husband and we went yeah and lived in Taiwan and started this whole journey. So it's a bit special and it's gonna be a really lovely walk you know take walk back in time you know and it's not going to be my birthday as well so it's a it's a little it's equally as exciting and and special for me. I also think that you know there's another couple of things about safety that I forgot to mention. One is try to use a VPN as much as you can if you can because especially if you're looking up your bank account details some banks unfortunately don't block you from even using a VPN so just be mindful of that. But don't use the free public Wi-Fi if you're actually going to look at your bank details at least use your own eSIM I get an eSIM from every country that I go to or region and other people or sometimes I use my phone but it's expensive. It's more expensive than just getting an ESIM eSIMs for me game changers you know like back in the day when I used to have to take out my one my sim and then put a new one in now you know eSIMs are incredibly easy to use. I also always have a copy of my document so whether it's your passport and your visas and stuff like that and have them somewhere handy so that you can pull them out at any time that's really handy to have especially in something ever have a happens you've got copies of them. Do you know exact y it's the other day I've never done this before and I've been through Sydney Airport one zillion times and it's probably not un it's probably the safest way place I could have ever done it. But I um when you come through the gates in in Sydney Airport through immigration you need to put your passport in it's all digital right so I put my passport in I got the the picture that showed a photo of me and my details so then I can go through immigration and for whatever reason I was in a rush it was night time. I have never well in the last say five years arrived into Sydney airport at night for whatever reason the the flights always arrive in

VPNs, eSIMs & copies of your documents

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morning I was tired and I zoomed through and I was and I didn't have any luggage. So I zoomed through went to go outside and realized that I didn't have my passport on me I had left my passport in the c gate and so I I did panic a little bit going oh my god what happens if someone just picks it up you know because people can do people do weird things so you know I've heard of identity thefts you know I'm I'm not I just yeah anyway I went straight up to the security guy and he said yep no worries we'll get it for you and within a minute a lady came up to me and gave me my passport so lucky very very lucky and being in my country was very lucky because if I did need to get in a passport that's the best place to get it from. I think the things that I've learnt along the way the one thing that I've learned about myself in particular is that I like to try and never used to I used to like the comfort of knowing where things are and what what what the comfort of my own home kind of thing. And so pushing the boundaries was never my thing when I was younger. I think I needed I think because the kids were we had kids young so I just wanted them to be safe and I was always nervous about the kids and what they were up to and so now I push boundaries I never thought I would and I never thought I wanted to but yeah like whether it's driving on the other side of the road or whether it's ziplining across I think there things that really test me and my resilience and I am a much stronger confident person for that reason it has taught me I'm awful with languages but I can communicate through different ways you know and utilize the things around me. You know if for example I was try I remember when I was in Spain looking everywhere for somewhere to to wash my clothes. I found somewhere and I needed to because I only had a small backpack on with me and I really needed new clothes or clean clothes and for the life of me got into the laundromat nothing's in English looked at Google Translate the instructions weren't didn't make much sense there was no one around I couldn't call anyone because my eSIM didn't allow me to call but it does allow me to so I normally the old Paul would have gone I'll just find somewhere tomorrow but I walked next door into the to the cafe tried to speak my little bit of Spanish that I was using through Google Translate and he rang for me the number on there they called

What solo travel taught me

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him explained how I was to use the the laundromat there was actually an issue with the machine so he can he came and helped me fix that. They're little things I know it doesn't sound much but they're little things that really make a difference in me and encourage me you know I a perfect example of that was I remember I was so afraid so I was in Tiamina in Italy in Sicily and I drove up this almighty winding road to get up to the car park and I had just spent an hour down near I think it's called Nexus Beach something like that trying to get into my accommodation it was so busy that there was nowhere to park there was nowhere to stop so I just drove around and around and around and then I thought you know what I can't get into this accommodation. It told me that I could double park out the front and knock on the door and then they'll show me the car park but I couldn't double park because people were big buses were like beep beep beep so anyway by the time I got up to the top I was a nervous wreck. I parked the car because I knew there was a car park up there because I'd been to Tejamina before with my husband and family. I went on a tour I got a call I got a message from my that that accommodation that I was staying it said we're gonna close the reception desk in it was like in an hour and if you're not here unfortunately we you'll have to come back tomorrow. And I was like what? What do you mean? And so I had to go back to the car park and in at that stage I had rung my husband saying I'm gonna sleep in the car tonight in the it's so much safer and I'm so scared to have to drive down at dusk. And so he was like no you can't do that. You that's so ridiculous. So I was like okay okay I've got to do this I've got one hour and by that stage I had like 45 minutes. So I got in the car drove down this winding so even the car park the winding little ramp to get out was so scary and it was completely covered in white and yellow marks where people have and black marks people have scraped their cars. And so I was petrified. I got out of the car park drove down which was actually not so bad got to the place there was no cars. I had just gone really early in the morning when it was super busy but that time at dusk there was no cars around so I double parked knocked on the door she opened the gate and I you know so I hadn't given up I think that's where I'm going with this story because the old me would have just slept in the car because I was so scared I was literally so scared. So yeah that's kind of what it's taught in myself that taught myself that I can do this I can do this you know the the eating alone thing I've spoken about I yeah I used to be so scared but but I'm not anymore. So the tips for me if you are wanting to travel alone and and you have decided that that it's something that I really want to do but I'm super scared there's a couple of things that I would suggest one is go and go somewhere local somewhere not far from where you live it might be an hour's drive away it might be an hour on a plane it might be an hour in in on a bus. Go somewhere local go for the weekend see if you even like it you might not even like to travel solo you know check into a hotel look around go on a tour or walk around the streets and put the people you can speak the language you know what food to order you kind of even though you may not have been there before you kind of know what to expect because that's your country so I I would suggest starting small to go somewhere local and you might do that two or three times before you have the courage to then do another tour or another destination. So if you're traveling for the very first time and you're still not a hundred percent sure go on a tour. Absolutely go on a tour because at least you've got people around you where you can form some sort of friendship. Doesn't have to be a women's only tour it can be any type of tour but go on a tour that's also suitable for you. Don't go on a tour that's like I don't even know it's uh exists anymore but like a context tour with 20 and 30 year olds and they're drinking all night or getting up you know that it's not if it's not your thing don't do that. Go somewhere where you know it's going to be 40, 50, 60 plus because you will know that the pace will be more your pace and you will be more likely to really enjoy the company of the people around you. Not that the 20, 30 year olds aren't fun because I've been on lots of tours with lots of fun 20, 30 year olds. In fact I love travelling with my kids because they've got so much energy but if it's not your thing don't do it. Just don't do it. And if it means maybe you still need to stay in your country and just do a

How to start solo travel if you're scared

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week tour in another state or another province or another city then or if you're in lucky to be in Europe and you can go to a country that's only an hour away that's also another option. So they would be the two things that I would suggest before you go on your trips around the world on your own and start to really travel on your own. And like I said before if you want to you you know you get to a destination do a city tour a walking tour you meet people you know I was in Osaka they did a walking tour you know and we were all like oh you want to get something to eat so then we went off and we went and had a look at we went to the castle because we wanted to go and have a look at Osaka Castle went to Osaka Casa together there was like three or four of us and then we went and had some lunch you meet friends you do meet people that that would that would be my biggest suggestions and then also if the first time you travel alone it and it and it's not doesn't go to plan and you get scared it's okay but give it another go. Promise me you'll give it another go because it's usually the second or third time that you get your groove and you end up loving it. I promise you. So that's it. That's the end of my solo travel adventure information. I hope that someone has taken some of this for either they're going to go on travel on their own for the first time or you're already traveling and you know maybe some of the tips that I gave you might be helpful. Or you might not be a trial solo travel person. That's also okay but you'd like to come on a trip uh then contact me and come on one of my trips with me. I do offer once a year trips with partners as well so we do do we are going to be doing another Bhutan trip next year. So if you're interested in that hit me up and I'll let you know you know all the information about it. I'm looking at about maybe doing it in May at this stage April May that's when the we've been talking about it. Already got a few couples that are interested. So yeah I think that solo travel has changed me and I think that it I think travel in general will change you. So yeah safe travels and until next time bye