How to make friends while traveling alone
Every time I mention solo traveling, people always look at me like I’m crazy.
“You mean to say that you packed a backpack and flew to Vietnam by yourself? Do you know anyone there? Won’t you be lonely? Who will you do things with? Travel is so much better when you have someone to share memories with - you should find someone to share this experience with. Also - you’re a GIRL. You’re gonna get kidnapped.”
If you’ve ever solo traveled, I’m sure you’ve heard something along those lines more than just once - and it can be so frustrating! Not everyone has friends or a significant other that loves to travel or has the means to, and if you wait around for someone to go with you, you’ll probably never go. ( stay tuned for a post about staying safe as a solo female traveler!)
And everyone deserves to make their dreams into a reality - and to not be limited by others.
The good thing about solo traveling, however, is that besides the initial first few days in country, you never end up ~really~ being alone. This is especially the case if you choose to travel a well worn backpackers trail where everyone more or less takes the same route.
Making friends while traveling alone is SO EASY. For one, you already have the shared interest of traveling with literally every. single. person. you meet. Second of all, you’re probably staying in hostels who’s literal job is to create a friendly atmosphere and put on events that encourage meeting people. And lastly - do you remember that feeling from freshman year of college, where everyone you meet is your friend because no one is your friend? - Same vibes.
Most everyone out there is traveling alone and on the hunt for people to check off all the crazy bucket list items, and you will never be at a loss for people who are also trying their best to make friends.
I remember one moment in Vietnam. I had just flown in the previous day from Laos, and throughout the course of the day, ran into 14 people I had met on the southeast Asia backpacking route in the last month and a half. I was in a new country, I traveled there alone, but I literally felt like I was home thanks to the amount of good friends I ran into.
That doesn’t even happen to me in my hometown in America - LOL.
I get it though, it can be really intimidating, and potentially the thing you’re most hesitant about when it comes to solo traveling.
I’m here to tell you that it’s really not that deep! But to ease your nerves, I’ve come up with the top 5 ways I’ve managed to make friends while traveling alone for when you need a little boost of inspiration and to show you just how easy it is.
How to Make Friends while Traveling Alone
Stay in Hostels
I’m going to start with the most obvious way to make friends while traveling alone: stay in Hostels! Hostels get a really bad reputation thanks to a few horror movies and the collective idea that they’re kind of dirty, but not once did I ever feel unsafe in a hostel, and they were super clean for the most part!
I mean: just look at a few of these hostels I’ve stayed in: (Well, one is a hostel and the other is a view from a hostel bar - but STILL)
While typically not as nice as hotel rooms, they are super affordable, an incredible travel resource (the receptions at hostels can get you tickets to wherever you’re trying to go), and they’re the perfect way to have built-in friends immediately.
Most hostels have amazing common areas to hang out that you should definitely take advantage of. I made so many friends by simply doing my little mid-afternoon instagram scroll (you know the social media break you sometimes need after a full day of site-seeing or doing activities to unwind? please tell me I’m not the only one) in the common room instead of in my bed.
It’s so easy to ask how long someone’s been traveling for, if they have any travel tips for the area, where they’re from, and BOOM - next thing you know you have your next dinner buddy and someone to go snorkeling with the next day. It’s really that simple.
I stayed in hotels a few times during my 3 month southeast Asia backpacking adventure, and I always found myself headed to the nearest social hostel when the evening rolled around and I was alone in my room.
I will sing hostels praises until the day I die. I don’t even have the desire to stay in hotels anymore. How am I supposed to make friends if I stay in hotels bro like ??? Hostels 4 lyfe.
Stay in big dorm rooms
Continuing with the hostel topic, I’m going to get slightly controversial with this point. If you book your accommodation on HostelWorld, you have the option to choose how many people are in your dorm room. There are private rooms, 4 person rooms, and some hostels even go up to rooms with 25 dorm beds.
Obviously the more roommates you have, the cheaper the room is. You might have to deal with people snoring, turning on the lights, or talking loudly which is sometimes a major deterrent for people.
This was actually a blessing in disguise for me, I LOVE the big rooms, AND I also got to save my money. With the smaller rooms, you have a much smaller chance of meeting someone and clicking with them, and a smaller chance of people actually being in the room when you first check in.
With the big dorm rooms, you walk in to drop your bags, and chances are there’s already people hanging out in there. I always turn to them and say “Hey roommate!” which normally starts a conversation about how long you’ll be in the city or at the hostel, where you’re going next, etc. Boom. More friends.
Bonus points if they’ve been there longer than you and have already made a few friends! That way when you see them in a common area you can go up and say hi, and meet all of their friends.
And snorers and light-turner-oners are no match for a sleep mask and ear plugs. Or if you’re like me and full time traveling absolutely exhausts you, you’ll sleep through the night regardless of noise and sounds.
Participate in Hostel events
One more point to drive home my belief that hostels are God’s gift to travelers, and then I’ll let it rest, I promise.
Typically, you can choose a really chill hostel or a social hostel, depending on what you’re feeling. For instance, when I knocked my tooth out in Laos and had to go to the hospital, I steered away from my usual social hostel scene in favor of a really chill hostel where I could really rest if I needed a surgery or procedure. And some people prefer chill hostels if they find it hard to sleep when everyone else is partying or the music is bumpin’.
So obviously, there’s a space for these type of hostels, but if you’re trying to make friends, they won’t be your best bet. The chill hostels typically don’t put on any events for their guests or run too many tours, and for me, the events are one of my favorite things about staying in hostels.
They’ll do trivia night, bar crawls, day trips, pool parties, beer pong tournaments; anything you can think of, hostels do. At one point I won a limbo competition that somehow became the event of the week and people knew me as the limbo girl.
Listen, when you’re switching cities every three days and making new friends every time, sometimes you don’t care if people know your name - as long as they recognize you for something you did, they’ll come up to you and say hi.
Two months after the Laos tooth incident, I’m driving my motorbike on an island in Thailand and some guy looks at me and shouts, “OMG. ITS TOOTH GIRL.”
Period. That’s me.
Trivia nights force you to join a group of people and collaborate as a team, and things like beer olympics where everyone gets super competitive are a fantastic way to make friends. One hostel I stayed at had a gender bender party, and I was doing makeup on boys and lending them bikini tops, and they were bringing me options for cargo shorts for me to wear. It was such a silly idea but like I’ve mentioned so many times, is such an easy way to make friends. I made loads of friends in Koh Phangan by sharing my body paint with everyone and offering to paint their faces! Hostels really know what they’re doing.
Go to fitness classes
Another way to make friends while traveling alone is to go to a fitness class! It’s especially easy to find things like yoga classes while on the road, and the fact that it’ll keep you in shape is simply an added benefit. I made some really good friends at a Muay Thai class in Thailand who I proceeded to get scuba certified with. Hostels sometimes host their own classes which help you meet people staying there!
There’s also some really cool, unique fitness classes that you can do in all different corners of the world. Aerial yoga, Trapeze, even something as simple as surfing lessons are things that you might not have access to at home, are a perfect way to make friends while traveling alone.
You do have to do your best to interact with other travelers before, during, or after class - and sometimes the group of people you get aren’t people you connect with, but I stand by the fact that the majority of people you meet while traveling are stellar A+ people, so hopefully they are.
Do organized tours
Now listen, I know that organized tours can have a bad reputation. They’re crowded, you sometimes travel on big, obnoxious busses, and it just gives off annoying tourist vibes.
But when I was traveling southeast Asia, there were some things I just couldn’t do on my own. Drive the Ha Giang Loop, go on a Ha Long Bay cruise, hiking volcanoes at sunrise, and visiting Elephant sanctuaries are just things that you can’t do solo.
Fortunately, this presents the perfect opportunity to meet some new people!
In Vietnam, I signed up for a Ha Giang loop tour through the hostel, and the second we all got onto that horrific overnight bus that would take us to the north of the country, I knew that I was going to have a bond for LIFE with these strangers.
Shared experiences are the best way to form true friendships. Getting off your motorbike at the end of a long day of driving the Ha Gian Loop, walking into your accommodation and seeing that its a room full of mattresses pushed together and realizing you’re about to have a 40 person slumber party is a surefire way to make a few friends.
I met a group of five girls traveling together and a group of three girls that were friends from home on that tour, and the way they merged their friend groups and just adopted me in convinced me that travelers are the best kinds of people.
And those are my top 5 suggestions for how to make friends while traveling alone!
I want to leave you with one more thing before you click away - you have to be bold. I know it can be scary to put yourself out there, but you won’t make friends if you don’t put in effort (well, you probably will but when you’re traveling, the more friends the better - aka the more chances you have of knowing someone when you get to a new city LOL). I had 24 hours in Thailand, and I really wanted to find friends to go to Khao San Road with. I walked into the hostel lobby, asked if I could squeeze into a table that was full of people, and introduced myself.
We went out that night and had a blast! I only knew those people for like, 18 hours, but I gave them travel tips when they went to Laos and they gave me travel tips for the Islands of Thailand. We still keep in touch and comment on instagram stories, and it just goes to show that the bonds you make while traveling are for life, no matter how short lived.
Anyways, I personally love solo traveling, and the people it gives you the opportunity to meet and connect with - it’s part of the reason I’d ~rather~ travel alone than go with someone! If you travel with a friend, you’re so much more likely to stick together and not have a reason to put yourself out there in the name of making friends.
And while it is really hard sometimes, and it definitely takes some intention and effort, I think that you’ll find that making friends while traveling alone is something you’ll have absolutely no issues with.
Have you gone on a solo trip before? How did you meet friends? Do you have any tips for anyone else? Leave them in the comments below!
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