Solo Traveling East Asia: A Retrospective

In September 2023 I booked a one-way ticket to Hong Kong with one small backpack and no itinerary. For years I’d flirted with the idea of being a “digital nomad.” Not forever, but it sounded like something worth doing for a while. I’d followed Pieter Levels and browsed Nomad List more than I’d like to admit. A sabbatical between jobs gave me the window, and honestly I was in a pretty privileged spot to take it: the means to travel, vaccines making international trips possible again, and months of nothing scheduled.

What followed might be the most formative stretch of my life. Hong Kong to Taipei to all over Japan: three countries, three very different cultures, and more conversations with strangers than I can count.

What solo travel actually feels like

It’s cheesy, but my takeaway was that travel (and life) is about as beautiful as you let it be. Solo travel in a culture that isn’t your own forces you into the present. You can’t read the signs, can’t follow the conversations around you, and have no one to hand a decision to, so you end up paying attention to everything. It’s almost meditative, and you feel your emotions a lot more sharply.

There’s a ton of awe in it: standing alone in a Kyoto shrine at sunrise, total silence. There’s also real fatigue and loneliness: eating dinner by yourself for the eighth night running, wondering if anyone back home is thinking about you. It can feel like one long rollercoaster, and the trick is just to ride the swings instead of fighting them.

The thing that stuck with me: when you have complete freedom, the choices you make say a lot about who you actually are.

Tips for other solo travelers

CouchSurfing is underrated

CouchSurfing is built for finding hosts, but the part most people miss is the hangouts and events. In bigger cities you’ll find dozens of travelers posting that they’re up for a hike, a drink, dinner, or just wandering around. I found it easier to meet people there than at hostels, and almost everyone I met was friendly, open, and a serious traveler with a stack of outrageous stories.

Two catches: it’s really only useful in major cities with a decent traveler population, and it’s a paid app now ($3/month, not much but enough to thin out the crowd).

ChatGPT as a travel guide

This was 2023, and ChatGPT was already the best tool I had for figuring out what to do. Something like “I’m solo traveling in Kyoto, staying near the Imperial Palace. What should I see before I leave?” gets you a wall of suggestions and the ability to keep asking for more. The one place it fell over was restaurants: it would happily recommend places that were too far away, or didn’t exist at all.

Miscellaneous

• Japan made me book a return flight before I could clear customs. I think they don’t want you overstaying the guest visa. Never had that anywhere else, but I had to book one on the spot at the gate.
• Google Translate’s point-the-camera-at-text feature sounds incredible and is genuinely wishy-washy in practice. Useful sometimes, clunky to pull out every time, and not enough to make the language barrier disappear.
• Hostels in Japan are surprisingly… not cheap. They were often the same price as a mid-tier hotel, so I usually just took the hotel.

The takeaway

Solo travel strips away the social scaffolding you lean on at home, and what’s left is mostly just you. I came back with fewer answers about what I want from life, but much better questions, which felt like the right trade.