Hello! Nice to meet you, I’m really glad that somehow you’ve found both this blog and this post. The first post. My name’s Molly and I’ve started this blog to post articles on food and solo female travel. These are about the only 2 things I’m good at, as well as writing (I hope, anyway, but you can be the judge). 

Next year, I’ll be embarking on 9 months of solo female travel around Asia and I want to get this blog up and running now so that I can fill it up with posts about my travels, tips I’ve picked up that I want to tell other SFTs about, recipes, stories, and every other kind of travel content. So, I think the obvious question to answer in a first post, so you can get to know me is; Why am I Travelling?

Post-Graduate Depression 

It’s a real thing guys. Ok, maybe it’s not as dark as the sub-title makes it seem. However I recently graduated from my university degree in history, and for a long while before I finally managed to scrape together my dissertation, I was fidgeting about being thrown out into the world of work and swallowed whole by another mind-numbing job in customer service. 

History is a funny old degree, because you really can get a job in any sector with it, except history. It has boundless research assignments which means any job collecting data, designing customer journeys, and all that other corporate rubbish is within reach of the majority of history graduates. But here’s the catch. I actually really, really like history. But what jobs are there in the history sector? Is there even a history sector? Nope. One of the only ways you can utilise a history degree is to become a historian, and there’s nothing I find less appealing than pumping out history essays for the rest of my days. Three years of that was more than enough. 

It wasn’t so much doubt filling my head as it was the unfathomable opportunity available to me as a graduate. The empty space in my calendar was daunting, and not being able to identify as a student posed the question of, well, what was going to be my identity? What did I really want to fill that post-graduation void with? Travelling may seem like a cop-out answer, and yea, perhaps it is. But nothing seems like a better way to bookend my youth and 18 years of education, and to numb the pain of entering the grind for the next 44 years than to just get lost for 9 months. 

Solo

Travelling solo as a lady is often considered dangerous, or more dangerous than it would be to go with friends. Despite the countless posts out there on blogs with a lot more credibility than this, teaching girls of the globe about how rewarding travelling alone can be, let alone travelling alone as women, it still carries an air of uncertainty.  Can you trust yourself enough to be able to solve any sticky situation? Can you trust the people around you to be…normal? When you travel anywhere you take a gamble, be it in a tour group of 30, or on your lonesome. Hell, when you step out of the house in the morning in your hometown it’s a gamble. 

I sit somewhere between pessimism and optimism-we’re in potential danger everywhere-so why not be in danger on a beach in Thailand? I know if I type this I’ll end up eating my words, but what is there really that can go wrong, that can’t be solved? You lose your passport, apart from the faff at the embassy, you’re sorted. Your baggage gets redirected to Guangzhou, so you buy some new stuff from a market, cross your fingers, and in a week you’re reunited with your PJs. I don’t want to dwarf these problems, I would definitely cry if any of the above happened to me. My point is, most things that seem daunting are never actually that bad in reality, and when you do find a solution you can feel twice as proud because you did it on the other side of the world, all on your lonesome. 

I probably shouldn’t have started with the bad bits about solo travel, considering that’s what I want this blog to be about, but that’s the first place a lot of people go to when you mention travelling alone. But it’s benefits far outweigh the potential problems. No one to tell you what to do, no compromises. It sounds selfish, and…it probably is. But, is it really selfish to exist only for yourself? I really like my own company, I know how my brain works, and I know a lot of women like me. I like to process stuff at my own pace, and deal with issues on my own. That’s what I like so much about solo travel, you get to see things through your eyes only, and experience them as no one but yourself.

Healthy Habits 

I think the ability to be in complete control of your livelihood is actually a benefit of solo travel, even if it is the thing that sets some people off the idea. Travelling can be both a blessing and a nightmare, when it comes to keeping on top of your body, especially when hotels are offering donuts for breakfast. (Nothing is real, eat the donuts). 

But, in all seriousness, there’s some very natural ways in which travelling can help you gain control of your body. On my last trip I averaged 18,000 steps a day, and could walk for literal miles through cities and countryside. Plus, you have to be clean and tidy if you’re spending a month at a hostel. You have to be organised if you’re following an itinerary or using transport in a place you’ve never been to before. 

As for mentally, I found that travelling solo and traveling in general also helped with my tendency to be anxious about just about everything. Even at home when I’m in the supermarket I feel uneasy, and yet in convenience stores across the globe I’m somehow able to accomplish a conversation in a different language. At the end of the day you have to have confidence to be able to do anything and everything in a country you’ve never been to before, the language of which you know 8 words in. Thankfully there’s so many resources out there that can sort this. Google translate being the obvious one, reddit, trip-advisor, and the thousands of other travel bloggers out there, as well as the other thousands of solo travellers on forums who’ve done it all before. It might feel like you’re solo, but you’re never alone. 

The Deep Stuff 

In the September of 2019 I went to Seoul, Korea to help my co-worker move there. I ended up exploring on my own most of the time, so, the first time I travelled solo was kind of a complete accident. I didn’t set out to be a solo female traveller, but by the end of the trip that’s what I was. I remember talking to a friend at home before I set off about possible culture shock and how a month in Asia was the most unique adventure I’d ever set out on. It was the first time I was flying alone. I’m not going to beat around the bush, I was anxious. There were times when I was telling myself I wouldn’t be capable, and it seemed to be Schrodinger’s holiday in the sense that at any one time I was both going and not going. But then I was on the plane, and then I was in Korea.  

The culture shock didn’t happen. Instead it was more like…culture awe. I’d walk around in a daze most of the time trying so hard to take in everything I saw, yet live in the moment. And I’ve got some pretty amazing stories from Seoul, such as getting recruited by a cult, or hanging out with a boss bitch, high-end art dealer at a museum, eating dinner on the roof of a Goshiwon every night, and taking the slow train for 8 hours through Korean countryside to Daegu and Busan. And some not so crazy stories too. Like silently yet wholesomely sharing plums with an old Chinese lady on top of a hill after a hike, and eating the best fried chicken I’d ever had in a street market, (that last one happened quite a lot actually, I really liked that chicken). 

In all honesty I didn’t realise when I was there just how deeply Seoul, and all that it meant for me in terms of exploring, had weaved it’s vines around me. Yet, as soon as I returned I gushed to my best friend Cindy over a plate of chips in my university town about how as soon as I’d graduated I was going, going, gone. I scribbled notes in the corners of my lecture work about how much I missed it there. I relentlessly told my boyfriend how much I wanted to return. 

I’m still not sure I can put into words what it was that enticed me so much. I think because it was all so new, every street was the most exhilarating street that I’d ever walked down, and because I, anxious history student, was the one doing it, it was all at the same time something to be proud of. [Insert some drivel about finding myself here.] I mentioned at the start of this article about searching for some way to identify myself post university. What better place to do that than anywhere but where you are right now. There is some special power in being anonymous, and something beautiful about existing somewhere only as a perceiver.

Anyway, this should be the only post on this blog that’s entirely about me. I want every article after this one to help other solo female travellers and foodies, and everyone setting out on their travels.  So don’t worry, you’ll never have to read such a self indulgent post as this on this blog again, and that’s a pinky promise. I really want this blog to be a place where little tips are commonplace, and other solo ladies can feel comfortable. But for now, I hope you’ve got some insight as to who I am and why I’m doing all this. The main thing I want to leave you with at the end of the first post, is that if I can do it – travel the world alone that is – then you definitely can. 

Love Molly