Boldly Go Solo

Solo tai chi and cooking classes in Vietnam

My friend and former work colleague "P," used to rush from work some evenings to make it to her tai chi class. She found it to be a relaxing respite from work tasks and household duties.

When she and her husband booked a trip to Vietnam this past December, she decided she was going to take the opportunity to practice tai chi in a place where it was a common pastime.

So while on vacation, she left husband M behind and headed to a park in the wee hours of the morning to participate in a public tai chi session. Here's her story:

"I have done what I came to do. Achieved my minor dream. Gone out on my own, with the help of a guide, to Hoan Kiem Lake (pronounced Juan Kim) that is to Hanoi what Central Park is to New York.

And there, at 6 in the morning, just as the sun is coming up (though, it doesn't feel like a sunrise since it's overcast and drizzling and pretty dark even when it's daylight), my guide steers me past the doubles teams playing badminton (yes, badminton is still alive and well somewhere in this world) and the men lifting barbells to groups of ladies doing tai chi.

This is what I wanted to do: Tai Chi in a park in an Asian city.

The very essential traveler's guide to bathrooms

Today's post is brought to you by "The Bathroom Diaries." This is one down-to-earth Web site on the essentials of waste, and the receptacles that receive it. Fun, funny and highly useful if you're the type that plans in advance. And you really, really want a clean and comfortable place to go.

Its contributors have scoured the globe to report back on the toilet scene around the world. They give Golden Plunger awards to the world's best bathroom. And offer "true tales of tawdry toilets." Really, this site is a gas.

If toilet talk is not your thing, the time to stop reading is now!

A personal admission: I can get obsessed with toilets/bathrooms. Also known as the loo, the can, the head, the latrine, the throne, the privy, the W.C., the powder room the lavatory (deep breath here - unless you're actually in or on one), the washroom, the chamber pot, the john, the bathroom, the restroom, the lavatory, the commode. Chime in if you've got other faves.

When in Thailand, I was faced with the prospect of the squat toilet. (Upon which "downhill skiers have the clear advantage," according to the site.)

The Thai toilets were mostly clean and worked quite well. But via a bowl and a tank of water on the side that you used to "flush" with. Scoop, pour, scoop, pour, scoop, pour. Voila! Flushed.

But then there was the issue of the foot rests. The porcelain square on the ground usually had a place marked for your feet. What was not marked was which direction you were supposed to stand. I mean, squat.

Holidays for solo travelers from the Mail in Great Britain

Here's a fun read on solo travel from the Mail Online, a British Web site. The writer rounds up "the best" (that's subjective, though, isn't it?) "holidays for solo travellers." That is, the "best vacations for solo travelers" in American English (just taking the mickey, that is, kidding the British friend who gave me the heads up on this article).

Not all of the trips will make sense for Americans because they're based on British pounds and are geared to travelers starting in England. Nevermind. The article is a good basis for ideas and a reaffirmation that going solo can work out well for all types of travelers, including those who leave spouse and children behind.

Besides, how often do you hear about people vacationing in the Isles of Scilly, off the Southwestern tip of Great Britain, or hiking the Atlas Mountains in Morocco? It's a fun cultural experience for Americans and other non-Brits just to read the article.

I also like sharing articles like these so I can have other people say what I've been saying all along: that things often work out great when you take the risk of traveling solo.

In the article, a 29-year-old court reporter went snowboarding on her own in the Canadian Rockies because she was "fresh out of a relationship" and had no desire to go on a singles tour. " I thought it would be all couples, but there were only a few. It was really good fun and very bonding."

A 46-year-old divorcee who went to a health sanctuary in Thailand: "At the end of my stay there were six of us eating together – a German headhunter, New York museum curator, Italian lawyer, Greek fund manager and a lecturer."

I bet she stays in touch with at least one or two of these new-found friends.

Photo: Ellen Perlman. Thai buddha.

The Top Ten Solo Traveler Destinations - says one company's "adventure consultants"

Bora Bora in French Polynesia. Serengeti, Tanzania. Phi Phi Islands, Thailand.  All destination favorites of the folks who book the tours at iExplore. Take it with a grain of salt, naturally. It's likely to be biased because it's put out by a company promoting tours to certain places. And yet...it IS a list of great places. 

What they say about Antigua, Guatemala: 

"With more language schools per capita than anywhere else in the world, it is no wonder Antigua is a favorite stop on the gringo trail for solo travelers. When not studying, you can climb volcanoes, hike, go drinking, and visit with the remnants of the Mayan culture."

A friend of mine toured Antigua with his wife last year and he noticed students of all ages sitting on lawns in the front of houses practicing Spanish one on one. Presumably with hosts they were living with for the week or month while they went to language school. It's high on my list of places to go to learn Spanish.

Another friend, who I went to Thailand with, traveled solo to the Phi Phi Islands (pre-tsunami) after I flew home from our trip together. She raved about the excursion. She's a pretty outgoing person and that helps. But the Thai people I met wherever I went in the country were friendly and welcoming.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, another recommendation on the list, would be a great place to go to a spa solo. Eat Tex-Mex. Buy silver jewelry and belt buckles. Mix with the one-third Angle, one-third Hispanic and one third Native American population that lives there. Relax in the adobe splendor of it all.

I went solo to Santa Fe before joining a hiking and biking tour with The World Outdoors, which I think was called Roads Less Traveled when I went with them. I didn't love the group on that particular vacation, so I couldn't wait to be on my own.

There you have it. A few more vacation spots to ponder.

Photo: Mount Otemanu in Bora Bora by PHG

Go to classes to learn how to whip up Thai food. That's one way to solve the dining-alone problem

National Geographic came out with a book last year called "Journeys of a Lifetime, 500 of the World's Greatest Trips." The entry called "Thailand Cuisine Tour" was written by yours truly.

Taking a Thai cooking class or going on a culinary tour would be a good way for a solo traveler to go to Thailand alone and feel at ease. You will be cooking side by side with others. Talking, laughing, chopping, cutting, bleeding. It's downright social!

Gourmet on Tour offers lodgings and cooking classes in Bangkok, Chang Mai and Phuket. You can find cooking classes on cruises, in rural areas, outdoors and on farms. The Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School opened in 1993, and is run by an international Thai chef. Move over, Rachael Ray, if you're not whipping up some Pad Thai.

I have at least two friends who learned the art of mixing rice or noodles with fish sauce, lime, oil, chopped peanuts, cilantro, egg, and more in Thailand. They came home enamored of their Asian culinary skills.

Of course, cooking classes are just one of the things that draws visitors to the land of wats and rice fields, mountains and night markets, bamboo huts and a beloved monarchy.

But for solo travelers, it's a good entree to it all and a way to socialize and sit down and eat with others for a few days at some point during a vacation to Thailand.

Photos:

1. By Goab, a friend who visited a Thai festival in Washington, DC, that included fruit carving.

2. By Ellen Perlman. A scene from rural Thailand.

Travel on your own to these seven spots, and all over the world

The editors at Frommer's recently chose seven places suited for solo travel, from Istanbul to Mexico to Texas. Great trips are to be found in many places they left out, obviously, but they state their case for each pick. So, here, forthwith, are the: 7 top spots for the solo traveler.

 

Loving travel, despite the pre-trip anxiety

If you love to travel and do it a lot, it should be as easy to get on a plane as venturing out for a quart of milk, right?

Wrong. A few months ago, I wrote about the difficulty many travel writers have before every trip. They poured their hearts out on a thread on a travel-writer's Web site. These people love travel enough to do it for a living, yet still struggle beforehand. Some more of these "inner thoughts:"

"Jeeze, I thought I was the only one. I, too, have been all over, from China to Istanbul and in between...it never fails. I get irritable and very nervous before leaving. The night prior to a trip I am a bear not to be approached with little or no caution." --Vazandri

"The evening before the day I head off on a trip is hell for me. I always say, 'I wish I wasn't going.'  Many's the time I've even picked up the phone to cancel before I think better of it." --Petra

I know this dread well. But, after arriving, poof. Gone. The Big A, anxiety, is replaced by other Big A's: adrenaline, adventure, 'appiness, axcitement. (Okay, I ran out of pertinent "a's.")

Best outfitters on earth, or so National Geo Adventure said

I may be sooo 20th century, but sometimes I prefer to pick up a magazine instead of heading for the Internet for trip ideas. I'm looking, as we speak, at a section I ripped out of my National Geographic Adventure from November 2007. It's called Best Outfitters on Earth.

When you don't exactly know where you want to go or what you want to do, a listing like this can be helpful. And inspiring. The section sorts outfitters into: Do-It-All, Biking, Hiking and Trekking, River and Sea, Safari and Luxury.

Five to 10 companies are listed under each category, along with each one's "signature" trip and its price.

If you know you want to go to Greece and bike with Aegea Adventures, you don't need listings like this. But if you're wondering what you should do for vacation, it helps to have a lot of random ideas and companies all in one place.

Great Expectations, and the trips that change them

I was on the phone with a St. Louis travel agent for a story I'm researching, and our conversation turned to the mismatch between a traveler's expectations and what happens once he or she arrives.

Agent Stephanie (sounds like something out of "Get Smart") sent her daughter and a friend, both in their 20's, on a motor coach tour, only to get a frantic phone call the first night. Her daughter wanted to come home. Everyone on the trip was so much older.

Stephanie convinced her to stick it out for a day or two. The young traveler probably had been expecting a lot of people just like her, and freaked out when she found parent-aged people.

But things turned around. The daughter and her friend got friendly with two women, one 30-something, the other 40-something, and they hung out together. The rest of the group "adopted" the two young women, as nice "old people" are wont to do. Stephanie's daughter ended up loving the trip.

I had a similar jolt. I booked a tour of Thailand, expecting a lively group of men and women. Instead, it was three women, including me, and a guide. I spent the first night fuming. I was so disappointed.

At dinner that night, we sat at a table for four. It felt constricted. Where was the big, laughing group I'd pictured?

Over the days, I calmed down and settled in. By having Sua, our guide, to ourselves, we learned a lot of the culture. We talked with him about his life and his time as a monk.

Take my wife...please. Sometimes I'd rather go alone

Solo travelers sometimes feel sorry for themselves. They look around and think everyone's luckier than they are. "Look at 'em. They're all paired up. Except for me. Waahhh."

Hey, plant this idea in your head instead. 

I was at a formal work dinner, chatting with a nice businessman, telling him about my blog. Don't know how it came up but it did.

When he heard about my traveling-alone adventures he looked wistful and said:

"I've been traveling with my wife for 40 years. Sometimes I wish I could travel alone. You take your house with you. You have the same arguments. I've argued with my wife every place we've been."

Arguing isn't the only issue. I was on an early morning shuttle van to the airport for a flight to Thailand, where I was going to meet up with a British friend. I was on my own, but only for the first 36 hours.

The van wound through downtown Washington on the way to Dulles Airport. The dawn light was illuminating the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol.

I caught myself smiling, thinking how, soon I'd be halfway around the world. Where most of the residents had only seen these sights on television. In 24 hours I'd be on their side of the planet, experiencing the land of Buddhas, wats and floating markets.

My reverie was interrupted by the conversation of the couple in front of me. Honey, I think it's beginning to rain... I didn't know a Home Depot had opened up there... I should bring my golf clubs in when we get home...