The Most Inspiring Way to Travel Abroad Alone
Experience a different country in a whole new light
You know your last trip was great. But was it inspiring? Did you experience it to the fullest? Did it change your life? Your view of the world?
If not, you missed out on a good opportunity. But the next one could be what your life has been missing. So here are some lessons learned from a trip that changed my life.
In the summer of 2010, I went to Korea for two months. It was my first trip alone and the first time I went to Asia altogether. I was planning on getting a working holiday visa for two months but back then, you had to stay for a year. I came to learn this about a month before I left.
My plan of working a bit to survive and enjoy was gone. I had to find another way to make this experience worthwhile instead of the nightmare it could become. Luckily, it worked out well. It even flew way past the expectations I had set for it.
Why You Should Travel Alone
Travels with friends or a partner are incredible experiences too. You get to spend time with the people that matter to you in a whole new environment. It thus deepens the relationships and for this reason alone, it’s important to travel in the company of others once in a while.
But traveling alone opens a whole lot more opportunities to experience the country. Lost in an environment you don’t understand, you have to innovate to find ways to make each day pleasant. If you don’t, you’re bound to end up visiting the main tourist places. You’re bound to feel lonely when you see all the couples and groups of friends present there.
To turn this experience into an incredible one, you can do many things. I found the below six ways to work well in that sense. Combine them and you’re in for the most inspiring trip of your life.
1. Go do some WWOOFing
If you’ve never heard of WWOOF, you’re missing out. Big time.
It means WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms and is a type of volunteer work. It consists of living with a host family and helping them for a few hours a day with their work on the farm. During that time, all your standard daily expenses are taken care of by the hosts.
In 2010, I did two WWOOF experiences.
The first one was in a high school in a small peninsula. I was living with the students and helped with the rice farm during the morning. I had the afternoons available to visit the surrounding mountains. And in the evening, I would spend time with the children.
As high school students, they had difficulty speaking English. That was very useful in improving my Korean skills. They did make efforts and I even ended up being invited to spend an evening at one student’s house for dinner. It was a beautiful immersion experience.
The high school principal also had me join his many evenings out drinking with his friends. During those, I had the opportunity to exchange with much older people and hear about life on a small peninsula.
My second experience was near Busan, the second-largest city in Korea. There, I was living in a very comfortable house, helping with the garden in the morning and going on hikes with the family during the afternoon. I was pretty much cut from the rest of the world for the week and learned to appreciate the small things in life. It was a peaceful experience during which I shared a lot with the hosts.
WWOOFing is the best way to learn more about a country, in my opinion. You get to spend a short amount of time living at an entirely different rhythm. You appreciate nature and see a widely different side of the country you’re visiting.
2. Stay in one place
Sure, you could go around and visit as much as possible and check out all the tourist spots. That’d feel good, wouldn’t it? But apart from bragging about it later, what would that bring you?
Think about what you love about where you live. Are the things you like most touristy? Or is it the café next door, the small bar you go to often, or the park by the river? I’d bet it’s the latter ones…
What makes any experience memorable is its uniqueness. You could go a thousand times to the Tokyo Sky Tree Tower and it’ll always be the same. Of course, it’s a beautiful scene to watch, but the experience won’t vary.
I was in Korea for two months and a week. During that time, I spent three weeks in Seoul, three weeks in Gwangju, two in the peninsula mentioned above, and one near Busan. The length of my trip allowed me to travel and I could have gone around most of Korea. But not moving around much allowed me to live experiences I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to otherwise.
I went to a university class with friends from there. I went on a retreat in the mountains. I stayed in an apartment for free since a friend had it available. I saw what life there was truly like.
I even set a sort of morning routine after a while.
3. Be flexible
After spending two weeks doing some volunteer work helping a traditional market in Gwangju (with 14 other people), I was supposed to go do another WWOOFing experience somewhere else. At that time, a friend asked me to stay for longer. I could have left but I decided this would be a more interesting experience.
I’m glad I did! That’s when a friend gave me an apartment for free and when I really started being part of a group.
The next 10 days were a magnificent experience. I became a citizen of the city. I found a coffee shop I loved. I met numerous people from the town’s university and bonded with them. To this day, when I get to this city, I feel like I’ve arrived home again.
We often set a very strict schedule when we visit a foreign country. After all, you don’t want to waste any precious time over there, right? This, unfortunately, carries the risk of passing by opportunities for a more worthwhile experience.
4. Experience nature
There’s nature in every country, but experiencing nature in a foreign country is quite a different thing.
First of all, if you go to the mountains or in a park in your country, you’ll have, at least, 3G or 4G wireless service available on your phone. For this reason, you’ll keep receiving messages. You’ll keep wondering about the rest of the world.
In a foreign country, you’re on your own. Sound scary? Yes, it might be for the first 30 minutes to an hour alone. But then, you’ll start enjoying the beauty around you. You’ll have the time to experience nature under a new light.
On top of this, you’ll get to reflect upon your life as a whole. The calm and time available will allow your mind to wander. You’ll see your life in a more creative and positive way.
I’ve been a smoker for the past 10 years, living my life without participating in any sport whatsoever. I always pushed away from the idea of going for a walk, run, or visit in general.
Yet, when I climbed the closest mountain, I felt re-energized. The difficulty of climbing — the time spent on my own — had opened up my eyes to the pleasures of hiking. Since then, I try to go rather regularly and those hikes are often the highlights of the month.
5. Meet natives
Traveling alone does not mean you should stay alone during the entirety of the trip. On the contrary, it means having the opportunity to exchange words with as many natives as possible. It means discovering more with your ears than with your eyes alone.
Despite traveling by yourself, you’ll notice all the above factors share a common aspect: they rely on meeting other people. Even in the above picture, I had to ask someone to take the picture and we ended up talking for a few minutes afterward.
On my first day in Korea, I got lost on my way to the guesthouse. One Korean university student asked me where I was going, paid the bus for me, and directed me until I got there. Just thinking about it makes my heart pound harder. Such a nice gesture!
The students I met on the peninsula, the teachers there, the Korean people at my workcamp, their friends, the host family near Busan, the random Koreans who helped me in the street, the owner of the coffee shop I went to in Gwangju…
So many people who made this experience in Korea what it became: a life-changing trip.
To this day, I hold Korea dear — more so than any other country outside of France. Even more than Japan, where I’ve now been living for close to five years.
Traveling without speaking the language is possible and will provide similar insights, but speaking the language makes it even better. Speaking Korean to a reasonable level made this experience so much more meaningful. There’s no doubt about that.
Learning a language doesn’t have to be hard and will expand your world anyway. So why not do it if it can also transform a great trip into an incredible one?
Go out and have yourself a nice trip abroad (alone). Not only will you love it, but you’ll soon realize that traveling alone means joining a new country for a little while. You won’t be alone. You’ll be with all the locals, loving a side of the country that most people miss.
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Mathias Barra is a French polyglot living in Japan and who has learned 6 languages and dabbled in numerous others. Being a curious child full of wonders is how he keeps on learning and can’t stop sharing about every tiny idea, even non-language-related.
