The day before her 31st birthday, India Hendrikse arrived in Vietnam to start a month-long solo backpacking trip. She writes about what it’s like to backpack solo in your 30s and the art of making friends along the way.
Booking a trip alone as a woman in your 30s runs the risk of everyone thinking you’re having an Eat, Pray, Love moment. In the best-selling book, Elizabeth Gilbert is just 34 years old. She’s gone through a divorce and ditched her day-to-day life for a soul-searching mission.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with needing an Eat, Pray, Love moment. We can be at a crossroads at any age. However, we should also be allowed to be a woman in our 30s, just going on a trip for fun. Not to prove anything, not to escape, not to find our ‘true self’.
As the next chapter of my life looms – ‘When will I be ready to have kids? When will I actually have enough money to buy a house?’ (cue a boomer with too much of a public platform declaring ‘You’d probably have enough money to buy a house if you didn’t go on this trip!’) – I’m trying to discover ways to skirt the edges of predictability. I love my partner, I love my little life in Raglan. But it’s also okay to crave difference.
So in the spirit of prioritising novelty, I arrived in Hanoi the day before my 31st birthday. Here’s what travelling alone taught me.
You don’t need to see all the sights. Magic happens in the moments you least expect.
It was hot, muggy, and I was overstimulated and overwhelmed when I first arrived in Hanoi. An 18-hour flight, coupled with 35-degree heat and a cacophony of 50 men yelling “taxi?” at the airport will do that to you.
Once at my Airbnb, I decided to accomplish small missions first. Finding bottled water (you can’t drink tap water in Vietnam) required a 10-minute scurry to a local market through narrow alleys in the dark.
As a woman, I’d usually be terrified of walking alone in the dark in a foreign place. But every inch of the alleys was alive; dogs yapped through gates, people swept doorsteps with bamboo brooms, and old ladies sat shoulder-to-shoulder on couches singing karaoke (a beloved Vietnamese pastime). When I arrived at the local market, customers rummaged through stalls of mangosteen, dragon fruit and durian, and men sat around tables on the street, drinking cheap beer and playing cards. I stood there, frozen, in awe of it all.
Similar magic happened during my time in Ho Chi Minh. I was walking, without a plan and without poring over Google Maps, and saw a stall selling cold drinks. I ordered a lemonade, and the old woman pulled out a tiny chair for me to sit and observe the rush hour traffic. Suddenly, the sky turned stone grey and rain pummelled down. The woman put an umbrella over me, but when the sky showed no sign of giving in, she encouraged me to step inside her home. I played with her grandchildren and she offered me a share of their dinner. We didn’t share a language, but through Google Translate and giggles, we made it work.
All this to say: you don’t have to do all the must-dos or expensive excursions to carve out core memories. They can just happen if you go for a wander and appreciate the sheer privilege of getting to see how other people live.
There’s no ‘right’ age to backpack.
It’s easy to feel that in your 30s, you’ll be the oldest person in the backpacking circle. But while there are many (well, mostly) 21-year-olds who have just finished studying, this isn’t the only demographic. What I found most interesting was why people were travelling. A French man I met was travelling to connect with his Vietnamese heritage; a 22-year-old English couple had fallen in love prior to her travel plans and decided ‘fuck it’, they’d do it together; a 30-year-old German woman wanted to see the length of the country by motorbike, so that was exactly what she was doing; and a late-50s couple from Spain and Colombia had taken six months off work and had nothing but a small daypack each.
Everyone warned me I’d struggle to make friends if I didn’t stay in a shared room. But I’m a fussy gal and sleep with a silk eye mask and earplugs, so I knew I’d need the luxury of my own space. I booked the cheapest, cleanest private rooms I could find in homestays; they averaged $20 a night, and the bliss of being able to tune out the world when I’d had a long day of exploring was so worth it. I discovered a strategy for making friends: I’d simply chat to people on walking tours or to my neighbours at restaurants, and see if we clicked. I had to be bold, but many of the conversations turned into real connections, and I ended up finding people to hang out with, for sometimes days at a time.
Gut feelings are your best guide.
As a solo female traveller, gut feelings are your saving grace. I didn’t think I was someone who got gut feelings or had an intuition. But when you’re on your own and it’s just you and your decisions getting you from A to B, you learn to tune into the little voice in your head or the knot in your stomach that tells you something’s not right.
Gut feelings don’t just apply to sinister situations; they can arise during something as simple as the vibe of a hostel being off or being ill-suited to your needs. I checked out of one homestay after an hour because of a family feud. Another hostel I left because the area was too quiet and I felt uncomfortable walking at night. One smelt like toxic chemicals and I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. You can only glean so much about accommodation from photos. In person, a place might feel entirely different.
While these reasons might sound fussy to someone not in the situation, I learnt that we all have a different level of tolerance. Travelling requires pushing the limits of your tolerance, sure, but it’s ultimately about enjoyment; if you don’t feel somewhat comfortable and safe, then you don’t have to persevere to prove a point.
Spending a birthday alone is wonderfully freeing.
Normally, birthdays give me anxiety; I’m worried about others having a good time, and generally go through some kind of existential crisis. But spending a birthday overseas and on your own removes any preconceived notions about how the day should go. On my birthday, I did a lotus tea ceremony with a tea master, went out for lunch with my Airbnb hosts, took a walking tour of Hanoi’s Old Quarter, then went out for dinner on my own.
Yes, there were moments of intense loneliness on my trip. Times where I’d look at groups of friends and wish there was someone who could snap a photo of me, hold my bag while I went to the loo, or grab me something from the pharmacy when I was feeling sick. But a solo birthday was bliss.
I can cope (and even thrive) outside of my comfort zone.
Food poisoning on day three. A van driver who went 60km over the speed limit on a winding highway. The night where I had to catch a flying cockroach in my room. Days of heavy construction noise outside my bedroom. Trying to rescue a dehydrated kitten from a drain and failing. Seeing various animals about to be slaughtered, suffering from the heat in tiny cages. A neck injury and a very bumpy bus ride. Collapsing from heat stroke in the street, with all my bags.
As a creature of comfort, the hard parts of travelling can feel extra jarring. Sometimes I’d cry and call either my partner or mum. Other times I was able to laugh things off and see the harder moments as part of the experience.
However, there were incredible moments outside of my comfort zone, too. Getting lost on a rickety rental bicycle and finding myself on a thin dirt track in the middle of a rice paddy. Trekking through the jungle and swimming in a pitch-black cave. Using the South-East Asia equivalent of Uber and booking a Grab, where I’d cling to the back of a stranger’s motorbike and whizz through crowded streets.
The reward of stepping outside your comfort zone can truly pay off. Never did I think I’d make a local friend; the language barrier is challenging and I assumed I’d only meet fellow travellers. But my trek through the jungle in Phong Nha connected me with Leena – our wonderful Vietnamese tour guide who spoke fluent English. She invited me to dinner with her friends, where she cooked me vegan Vietnamese food (we’re both vegan) and we bonded over similar outlooks on the world. We’ve connected on Instagram and I hope that if she ever visits Aotearoa, I can cook her dinner and offer her the warmth she showed me in return.
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