What it’s like to solo travel and a how to
Fond reflections of a journey of a lifetime
Above is a photo taken from where I temporarily stayed in Newport, New Jersey before signing my first lease in NYC, living in Herald Square and working in downtown Manhattan. Much has changed since then, but there was a period of just as much change when I traveled. Here are my reflections on those travels.
It’s been pretty much two years since I went on my post-graduation journeys, and the itch to see more of the world is upon me again. But before going on another trip, I thought it would be good to fully analyze my past one: retracing the whole journey and what each destination was like, the framework I used to travel to all of these places, and other takeaways.
The steps of the journey
Sydney: what a lovely place to visit
First came Sydney, Australia: the first destination I traveled around completely solo. A great place to start such a journey, Sydney had plenty of free wifi hotspots galore, English as a national language, and a familiar society to the USA — much different than dropping right into a foreign place where people spoke a different language and technology was difficult to access.
Here, I spent three days total exploring not only the city, but the nearby beaches of Manley, Bondi, and even a former prison on an island that is now a campsite.
What fascinated me the most about this city was what seemed to be a very high quality of life, especially compared to New York City: the suburbs were close enough to the city and accessible via an excellent train system while still feeling like a comfy suburb, unlike the closer parts of Queens or Brooklyn. The streets of the city are very clean. Honking noises were almost nonexistent compared to the frequent blaring horns coming from yellow cabs.
Melbourne: a place with a lot to offer
I then spent four days in Melbourne, living in a suburb which also had good access to the city. Here I spent more of my time exploring nature, most notably driving along the Great Ocean Road. It was very cool seeing a wild kangaroo and penguin on the same day.
While having a smaller city area compared to Sydney, Melbourne is still far cleaner and more civil than NYC. Now, I know that there is a rivalry between the two parts of Australia, so I’ll just mention that I think Sydney is more known for the larger city and sites accessible via ferry while Melbourne is a smaller city but with a great amount of nature sights in the surrounding areas.
Thailand
This was a layover on the way to Shanghai from Melbourne. I snuck out, took the subway into the city (thankfully they have a subway system that runs directly to the airport, unlike how unaccessible JFK and LaGuardia are!), and went to the Victory Monument station. There I went to a food vendor, ordered something by pointing at it, ate, and went back to the airport to Shanghai. I will be back to explore this country more fully.
Shanghai: staying long enough to truly understand living here
Staying in Shanghai for a period of ten weeks, here I lived like a local at my grandparents’ place. I took two jobs, one as an English teaching assistant and an editorial intern at a magazine. Working on the weekdays and exploring different parts of the city on the weekends, I came to know what life was like in the city I spent many summers in as a kid but never as an adult.
The good: Shanghai has a subway system that completely blows the NYC system out of the water. The nightlife here rivals that of Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong — take any club in these locations and chances are, they would be comparable to a high end club in the Meatpacking District of NYC. Also, everything is more modern.
The bad: the mannerisms of the general public still have to develop. It’s not as bad as the crazy people you see walking on the streets of NYC, but it’s still not good: lots of pushing goes on when getting on the subway in order to get a seat. Scrambles occur to get on the bus, oftentimes without regard to forming a line at the bus stop. There’s an attitude of everyone for themselves…
Huangshan, Hong Kong, Xi’an: true solo travel
Being already halfway across the world in China, it was a no-brainer to travel around the country to the many places I haven’t yet been to.
Huangshan came first, a city named after it’s legendary mountain. With weirdly-shaped trees, a magnificent sunrise from a view above the clouds, and many rock formations, the four-hour climb up and three-hour climb down were very worth it.
Next was Hong Kong, a reunion for me as I studied there two years earlier as an exchange student. It was as if I were returning to a place after being gone for a long time, albeit this time I had a weird living experience in the Chungking Mansions, an outpost for foreigners, instead of the dorms of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Despite some silly folly that happened to me in my six-to-a-room “hostel” barely bigger than my Manhattan apartment room, the feeling of seeing familiar faces and places, plus exploring what I did not see, made this a great trip.
Back towards Shanghai I came in traveling Northeast to Xi’an, the ancient capital of China. Perhaps the most foreign part of China I’ve been to by myself, I was thankful for the internet access I had in getting around, making it to the hostel in one piece, exploring the city solo for the first night.
Serendipitously, my neighbors in the 8-person hostel room began talking and ended up looping me into the discussion. At the suggestion of one neighbor, we ended up traveling around the city together to see the Terracotta Warriors, bike around the city wall, and feast on Xi’an cuisine. We even ended up going to karaoke with a neighboring table from our hostel, eating late-night hotpot on the street that was served over a sheet of metal over a bucket of coals. Truly a taste of what fun things could happen when traveling alone.
The West Coast and traveling to Chicago by train
The time came for me to return to the USA in order to walk at the graduation ceremony. That happened. But with a few months left before my full-time job started, I decided to travel to the West Coast and go halfway across the country via train from San Francisco to Chicago.
I’d only ever been to California through airport connections, never stepping outside until my five-day trip to SF where I spent one day exploring Palo Alto, another throughout San Francisco and the rest around Yosemite.
Palo Alto came first, and the most notable part of the area would come from the drivers — they are far more laid back than East Coast drivers. And I’m not even saying this from a New Yorker perspective, I grew up in New Jersey and people from both areas drive far more aggressively than those of NorCal.
All joking aside, going to Silicon Valley was like making a trip to the Mecca of startups. Inspiring, the headquarters of Google, Apple, and Microsoft were footsteps away as I walked around the campuses. Stanford, a campus perfect for the skateboarding I did to get around, was truly aspirational.
Then came the train trip. To travel all the way from Emeryville (located close to Berkeley) to Chicago’s iconic Union Station.
Stepping aboard Amtrak’s California Zephyr, this was my first time traveling long distances via train in the USA. I had been in sleeper cars before in China, and the most noticeable difference was how much more spacious the Amtrak train was, as well as how few people took it — most riders looked to be elderly; though, it made perfect sense due to how frequent the Amtrak was delayed since it received lowest priority on the tracks it borrowed from freight train companies.
Overall, it was a slow, scenic journey that allowed me much time for reflection, jotting into my phone notes from all of my travels while seeing the sprawling landscapes of the West.
I stopped first at Denver, Colorado to visit the city where I was born. Having lived in Denver for only the first few months of my life, I had absolutely no recollection of what it was like and thus my two days in the city gave me some insights: marijuana was legal to purchase and people would frequently smoke (illegally) in public, downtown Denver was very new and modern, and a lot of other places could use some work such as Colfax Avenue. Unfortunately, I picked a hostel just by looks and it was in far worse condition than even a frat house after a post-finals rager (I wouldn’t recommend the Denver Youth Hostel).
It was then onwards to visit the city of the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet. Armed with only a skateboard as a means of travel, I first tried to go to the birthplace of Malcolm X but it proved too far. Instead, I ended up hanging around a huge park and the “city” area, eventually spending the night in the train station to wait for the next Amtrak. That was as close as I got to being a homeless person, having 24 hours to kill in Omaha, and I fondly remember the peacefulness of the place.
Last came Chicago. Arriving with a greeting by the well-preserved Union Station, I headed out onto the clean streets to skateboard to my AirBnB on the Gold Coast. Spending three days wandering around and exploring the sights, I saw what might be my favorite city of the USA if not for the brutal winters. I even made it a goal to try as many deep dish pizzas as I could, visiting Lou Malnati’s, Giordano’s, Pizzaria Uno, and Gino’s East. On another note, I didn’t venture to any of the areas where crime was high, so from the looks of traveling around the main areas, I loved Chicago.
My Framework for Solo Travel
There were too many experiences to condense into the above paragraphs, hence why it took so long to write this. On the other hand, the framework I used for traveling is simple:
- First, decide the timeframe your journey
- Then figure out how to get from the airport/transit hub to where you are staying, as well as how you will get back
- Once those are figured out, pick a few places you want to go to
- Plot an itinerary to fill the in-between of arriving and leaving the destination. I typically try to make the day’s journey follow a route to avoid going out of the way to go to a location. Thus, the route would typically be a circle, starting at my place of residence and going through the destinations to then end where I started
- Bonus: if anything didn’t go according to plan (if I got lost, if I decided to stay at one destination for longer) then I’d go with the flow and explore where I’m at. On the same night, I’d then tweak the plans for the next days to adjust for it.
Why solo travel you say?
The main benefit for me was freedom: being able to choose whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it. I’d wander from point to point, getting lost in my own thoughts as well as the surrounding sites, trying to be present. Traveling alone allows the whole experience to be yours; traveling with others is not just about the traveling, but also about sharing the experience with your companions.
Takeaways
Now comes the lessons learned from the journey. Any statement stemming from a specific experience will of course require experiencing it to confirm it’s applicability, but there are universal bits of knowledge here as well:
- your comfort zone is only as wide as your most trying experiences — something as immediate as going to eat at a restaurant alone can make the thought of it in the future not so intimidating.
- people live in different ways — it’s one thing to read or watch other lifestyles, a whole other to experience it.
- the people make the place — walking around a new destination to take pictures of landscapes and buildings presents a fun but cursory travel experience. Engaging with the people there (oftentimes I was the one being engaged as they could tell I was a tourist) makes the experience far deeper.
- minimalism — you only need so much stuff when traveling around so frequently.
- technology — this is so helpful and makes the world a smaller place
Back then, it was the opportunity to do something completely different with zero downside. I had a job lined up and a few months free, so why not? Though I took it and ran with it, hindsight is 20–20 in how I could have done more during that period of time; however, the focus that I have now was only developed was not there in the past, and the memories of this journey will always be with me.
