My experiment
of solo travelling to Krung Thep Maha Nakhon aka Bangkok, Thailand went well,
Alhamdulillah (All praises to Allah).
As
a simple girl with big dreams it’s a huge deal for me. I’ve never been outside
of Malaysia before. Well, I’ve been to Brunei a couple of times but it’s about 2
hours from the town I’m living in so I don’t consider that as overseas haha! I
chose Bangkok because it’s kinda cheap (not backpackers cheap mind you!) My expenditure
was more than MYR1K but less than MYR2K altogether (around 1900K for 5 days 4
nights..?? It’s consider expensive for some people but for me it’s fine and it’s
the comfort that matters!). Other reason is that it’s safe to travel alone
there (at least that’s what I read before I go, and now that I have the
experience, it is safe if you don’t do anything silly).
I
mustered all of my courage and told myself, let’s do this, with or without a
company. I did ask one of my friend (only one-haha!) whether she wanted to join
me. Still, 70% of my gut tells me that I should travel alone. Try new things.
New experience. Welp it’s a sign to go alone when my friend says no to my offer
because she doesn’t have a passport. And so I booked myself two way tickets and
hotels and be done with it.
Before
I start, this intro is specially for Muslims travellers:
Tawakal
Now, as a Muslim, this is an important
concept. You need to trust Allah and submit yourself to Him whenever you wanted
to do something. No matter how hard you plan and how great your itineraries are,
it won’t happen if you do not have His blessings. As a human, we can plan all
we want, but if Allah feels like it’s not good for you, you might not get it. Don’t
be sad, fill your mind with positivity as He knows better. He knows what’s best
for you. Keep in mind that you came from Him and to Him you will belong. By
submitting yourself to Him, you’ll feel humble and packed with sudden bravery (that’s
how I felt along the journey, because I know I have Him all the time, I trusted
Him, Allahuakhbar!)
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| credits to google & pinterest |
Okay,
here are the tips for solo female travellers :
Research, research and
research!
The most important tips! Please do
your research thoroughly before visiting new places alone. How you do your
research is up to you as long as you understand completely where you’re going,
which area you will be staying, how do you get around the city; using what transportation, and what you’re going to do. If you’re
travelling to non-speaking English country, do learn a little bit of their
phrases so that if emergency occurs you can at least communicate.
For
my preparations, I read up a lot of blogs and Tripadvisors reviews and forums. Being
a fanatic lakorn lover, I researched a lot about Thailand and I know that not
everybody in Thai speaks English. The youngsters do, so does the places where
there’s a lot of tourists, they do know basic English. But if you’re going to
certain area, some of them do not speak English at all. Also, in my experience,
most of the Thai Grabmotor don’t speak English. So it’s best to at least to write down the
basic questions and answers to help you later. Or easier, just show them the Google translate on your
phone. I did that most of the time and it does help. I also googled up
whether it is safe to travel alone in Thailand and most of the answers came up
as SAFE. So that gave me courage and bravery.
Watch a lot of videos if you’re too lazy to read long
articles or blogs.
We’re so blessed as we’re living in
the tech era where everyone shares their stories, opinions, pictures and videos
on the internet. You can just search for the ones you would like to watch and
make a note out of it. Plus some of the videos are fun to watch. Just go to
YouTube and watch some of the vlogs to feed your mind. Some of these are samples so enjoy. Credits to the owner and a million thanks to them!
Common
sense!
Like all of the other bloggers and solo travellers
always say, use your common sense! If you sense
something is wrong then it’s best to avoid it. If you’re unsure, abort it. If
you feel like it is not safe, abandoned it. Saying NO is great sometimes. And sometimes
maybe you will think that to hear and to experience it is two different things.
Even so, just try your best to use your common sense and if you realized that
you’ve been ripped off even after doing all of those long hours of research (felt like a waste of time, you did your research
but shit still happens), don’t be in despair. Learn from it instead of
repeating the same mistakes again.
What happened to me was on the second day I got
to Bangkok I’ve decided to use the
motorcycle. It’s easier and faster, plus, you can avoid the traffic jam. Sounds like a great deal right? Yes it was,
but my mistake was that I didn’t bother
to use the grab apps that I’ve installed on my phone. My negotiation skill is terrible so if you put two and
two together, you can certainly guess that I
got ripped off by the motorcyclists. HAHA! At the end of the day I told myself, so I’ve wasted my money on
transportation which I can save more, but what
can I do? It’s my first time here, so learn from it, it is fine. Nothing is perfect.
Make
Google your best friend...... And other
apps too!
Be
it Google Search, Google Maps, Google Translate or even Google Mail, be sure to
download these apps to your phones and use it throughout your travelling
period. These apps are useful. Other useful apps includes Grab, Muslim Pro (for
Muslim travellers to keep track of the prayers time), banking apps, and
insurance apps.
For me, 90% of the time I used
Google Maps and Grab to get from one place to
another. Google Maps is as accurate as it can get while Grab is convenient. As for insurance apps, I just downloaded
it in case anything happens (Alhamdullillah,
nothing happened)
Internet
Back to tips number one, do your
research on how are you going to get access to the internet. Ask yourself, do
you really need internet when travelling? If yes, are you willing to pay for it
or do you prefer free wifi? Free wifi is kinda impossible if you walked around
a lot you know. Sometimes you can only get free wifi when you’re in certain places
like your hotel room or airport or others. Or perhaps you prefer buying sims?
Or perhaps rent a connected broadband for a few days? It’s all up to you. Be
sure to know what do you want and make up your mind.
My initial plan was to rent a
connected broadband wifi but due to insufficient funds, I’ve decided last minute that I’m just gonna buy myself
a local simcard as it is way cheaper.
Plus I do not have to carry the broadband everywhere (extra weight) and mind you, you do need to charge
the broadband so there’s 2 cons there.
Plus, we’re talking about travelling alone, so why do you even need a broadband for? That is unless if you’re
phone is super sophisticated and ate up a
lot of internet data which is unlikely to happen.
I brought my simcard at the airport,
next to the departure hall. There’s a number of
brands and lots of plans to choose from. I chose AIS 4G Net Sim which costs me 259 Baht (can’t remember the exact plan, but
I think it’s 7 days, 2.5gb and 50
Baht free calls to local; I need to make phone calls to the hotel and to my tour guides). On my 3rd day
of using the simcard, there’s a text in Thai saying that my data is finished (I asked several Thais bout the
text and they said so). I felt like,
shit, that’s fast! I planned to top up the credit and subscribe to a new data plan but I didn’t do so and in fact, I used
the data as usual (IG, FB, Whatsapp).
It went perfectly normal and the internet is working well, not too slow and there’s no restriction. I
think the credit is not deducted too. Maybe I’m just lucky after all eh?
Travel Insurance
Please, pretty please, when
travelling alone, well not just alone, generally speaking, do purchase a travel
insurance plan if you’re travelling. If you already have a life insurance plan,
do look up whether it covers your travel or your holidays. If you don’t have
any, hit up the internet or asks around about which travel insurance you should
buy. You need travel insurance in case shit happens (anything can happen!). You’re
in a foreign country, and suddenly you’ve lost your documents or valuable
things (God forbids!), what can you do? You certainly do not want it to ruin
your holiday. If shit happens, you can claim the insurance. Now, claiming won’t
be easy for certain insurance brand and different insurance have different
policies. So before buying one, read up thoroughly and make sure you understand
the T&C.
Some of you might think that what if
nothing happens? Will I get back my money? It’s a simple NO. haha! That’s just
how insurance and the wonder of lives works. If you don’t buy any insurance,
shit happens and you cannot claim and do anything about your lost. And if you
do buy one, nothing happens! Well it’s not like this all the time. We should be
prepare right? Before it happens we can do something to prevent it am I right?
After all, prevention is better than cure.
I do not mind paying more for
insurance because I know if anything happens, I can claim them. I brought AXA Smart Traveller Insurance n took
the Smart Traveller VIP plan,
which costs MYR 26.25. It covers from the 3rd May 2018 to 7thMay 2018. I chose this insurance
as I heard some good stories from someone I know about
this insurance. And Alhamdulillah, Thank
God, nothing happened. Be sure to check this link and choose the right ones for yourself :
There’s
actually a lot more tips but these are the general ones. Why travel solo you might ask? It depends on the person. I do not
like travelling with others as there will be different needs and different
people have different preferences. I do not wish them to follow my preferences
all the time and I certainly do not want to follow their preferences all the
time. It’s much easier to be alone and feel free. If you happened to miss the
crucial places to visit, or made poor choices, or even picked up a bad food,
there’s no one to blame but you. Even if I do blame myself for making bad decisions,
I’ll still be able to sit down and reasons myself to why I did that and what
not. In this case, you do not have to think of other people’s feelings. Sounds
selfish eh? Well I’ve traveled with few persons before and sometimes it ends
up badly. One person is not happy and the rest are affected by their bad moods
and negativity. Again, it depends on you.
So
this is it for you. I’m hoping these humble opinions and general tips might
help you doing a solo travel. May you have a safe trip!
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