I spent months traveling solo around Asia. A trip with a friend showed me how much I'd changed.

After spending two months traveling alone through Thailand and Vietnam in early 2024, I went to Japan to meet a friend. I was excited, but within days, traveling with someone else felt more stressful than being on my own.

For months, I'd made every decision myself: when to wake up, where to eat, and how to spend the day. I could change plans on a whim. Suddenly, every choice involved another person.

After months of solo travel, apparently, I'd become terrible at compromising.

Just a few months earlier, I'd been laid off from a job that hadn't made me happy for some time. I'd wanted to quit after a year and spend months traveling around Asia; losing my job simply sped up that plan.

Within four months, I sold my furniture, found someone to take over my lease, and boarded a one-way flight to South Korea in April 2024, unsure when I would return home.

I'd traveled alone before, but never for this long. I'd never felt I had to wait for someone else to see the places on my bucket list. And, for the first time, I wasn't squeezing travel into PTO or college breaks, or planning a short trip around friends' schedules. I had months ahead of me — and no one else's timetable to consider.

I could wake up without a packed itinerary, stay longer when I loved a place, or rearrange my plans without consulting anyone. If I wanted pad see ew from the same Bangkok restaurant every day, I could. If I wanted to spend hours at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, I didn't have to worry about someone else being ready to leave. And when I met a great group of people at a hostel in Ninh Binh, I simply changed my schedule.

I didn't realize how normal that freedom had become until I met my friend to travel in Japan.

We had a great trip, but our travel styles didn't always align. I preferred social hostels; she was more comfortable in hotels. I could have happily eaten wagyu every night, while she — reasonably — suggested breaks from that much meat. She was right. It was just so delicious.

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These compromises weren't necessarily earth-shattering, but after two months of making every decision entirely on my own, I was surprised by how much of an adjustment it was to factor someone else into my plans again.

Despite being an anxious person, I often found solo travel less stressful. When I was alone, I could prioritize what I wanted to do without wondering whether someone else was having a good time. Traveling with other people, I tended to overthink their experience as much as my own.