Hi, I'm Alex Chen

How I Became a Solo Traveler

In 2018, I did something that terrified me: I booked a one-way ticket to Bangkok with nothing but a 40-liter backpack and a rough idea that I wanted to see the world. I had never traveled alone before. I didn't speak Thai. I had no itinerary past the first three nights.

That trip changed my life. Within 48 hours of landing, I went from sitting alone in my hostel room wondering what I had done to eating pad thai on Khao San Road with five strangers who would become friends I still talk to today. By the end of that first trip — six months through Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, and Indonesia — I was hooked. Not just on travel, but on traveling alone.

Since then, I have built my life around solo travel. I have driven Iceland's Ring Road in a campervan during a September blizzard. I have eaten my way through every night market in Taiwan. I have gotten hopelessly lost in the medieval alleys of Venice at dawn, hiked to Machu Picchu through the Salkantay Pass, and watched the Northern Lights from a hot spring in Iceland while snow fell on my face.

I have made every mistake a solo traveler can make — booked flights for the wrong month, trusted the wrong taxi driver, packed way too much, packed way too little, and once accidentally ended up at a Japanese funeral instead of a festival. Every mistake taught me something, and I want to share those lessons so you can skip the worst of them.

Why I Built SoloAtlas

When I was planning my first solo trip, I spent weeks reading travel blogs and watching YouTube videos. The problem? Almost everything I found fell into two categories: (1) generic listicles with two sentences per destination that told me nothing useful, or (2) beautiful but impractical stories that made every place sound like paradise without mentioning the downsides.

Nobody was answering the questions I actually had: Is this place actually safe alone? How much will I really spend per day — not the sanitized tourist board number? Can I get by with English? What does nobody tell you about this destination?

So I built SoloAtlas — a guide written by someone who has actually been there, for people who want honest answers. Every destination on this site is a place I have personally visited. The safety scores come from my own experience walking those streets at night. The budget numbers are what I actually spent — not what a tourism board wants you to believe. The "cons" sections include things most guides are too polite to mention.

I do not use AI to generate content. Every word on SoloAtlas is written by me, based on my own trips. When I haven't been somewhere, I don't write about it — I'd rather have 15 deeply-researched destinations than 100 thin summaries.

My Travel Philosophy

Where I Have Traveled Solo

Here is the full list of countries I have visited as a solo traveler. Those marked with ★ are destinations I have visited multiple times and know particularly well.

How I Research and Rate Destinations

Every destination on SoloAtlas is rated based on a combination of firsthand experience and structured data. The process looks like this:

1. Personal Travel: I visit the destination myself, staying in hostels and budget accommodations, eating at local restaurants, and using public transportation — exactly as a solo traveler would. No press trips, no sponsored stays.
2. Safety Research: I cross-reference my personal experience with government travel advisories (U.S. State Department, UK FCDO), the Global Peace Index, and Numbeo safety data. Our safety scores are updated quarterly.
3. Cost Data: Budget numbers come from my actual spending records, verified against Numbeo cost-of-living data and Hostelworld/Booking.com price averages for the current year.
4. Community Feedback: I regularly talk to other solo travelers — in hostels, on Reddit (r/solotravel), and through reader emails — to make sure my experience is not an outlier.
5. Quarterly Updates: Every score, budget number, and recommendation is reviewed and updated every three months. The travel world changes fast, and a guide written in 2023 is already outdated in 2026.

Transparency & Reader Trust

SoloAtlas is a reader-supported site. Here is exactly how it works: