Since moving to Japan in 2016, this was my first solo overseas trip—and boy, was it a trip to remember! I’ll be honest, though—since it was my first solo overseas trip and I was a young and inexperienced traveler, I was—subconsciously, perhaps—a bit nervous/anxious. I initially planned on going to Vietnam, but then looked a bit into their visa requirements for US citizens and decided it was too last minute to prepare for that. So, I looked up cheap flights for those dates that I had off work, and there, I found Taipei. I actually booked with an app called, “Hopper.” If you’ve never heard of it, it’s basically an app that analyzes flight price patterns and will predict flight prices ahead of time. So, if you search for a specific flight, it’ll either tell you to “buy now” because the prices are good, or it’ll tell you when they believe the prices might go down and to wait. The flight I chose was with Scoot, a Singaporean LCC (low-cost carrier), which I had never flown before and was within my budget. After taxes and fees, it came to $379 for a roundtrip flight from Tokyo to Taipei from April 30th to May 4th. So, here I was—in my little apartment in Saitama, Japan—sitting on the floor in pure excitement of this overseas journey to come.
After booking my flights, I had a few weeks before my flight to Taiwan. And though excited for my trip, I had a lot going on at work—Japan’s fiscal year starts on April 1st every year, so we had a lot of end-of-the-year stuff and, consequently, beginning-of-the-year stuff to prepare for. Because of that, there wasn’t exactly much time during those weeks to really focus on planning for my trip. I did, however, get a chance to do a little research on things to do and where to stay—last minute, OF COURSE haha. If you stick with me and my stories to come, you’ll surely come to see that I am not exactly the best at planning things. When it comes to travel, I’m often what you call a “procrastinator.” OR, as my friends will say, a “spontaneous procrastinator.” ( ;
Thanks so much for sticking around to read my first travel article on my blog! If you liked it, please give it a thumbs up and share with anyone you think might be interested! I want to share my stories with as many of you as possible!
What was your first big solo trip? Comment below!
Check below to read more about my time in Taiwan!
