Solo travel in Southeast Asia, answered before you have to ask.
Sola reads the reviews, the guides and the ground detail for every city and every place to stay, then writes down what a woman travelling alone actually needs in order to decide. Nothing to post, nobody to wait for.
You should not have to ask a stranger where you are sleeping.
The usual answer is to post in a group and wait, or to read an evening of reviews written mostly by couples and families. Both mean telling people you have never met exactly where you will be, and neither tells you the thing you actually want to know about the specific place you are looking at.
So we read it first. For every hotel, hostel and homestay here, we go through the published reviews and what the property itself says, and write down the parts that change a decision: how reception works overnight, what the walk from the main road is like, whether the door locks behind you. It is already written when you arrive, and you never have to say where you are going.
Where you are going
Southeast Asia
Thailand77 provinces, from Bangkok to the Andaman coast
10 cities
Vietnam3,260 km coastline, 54 ethnic groups, 8 UNESCO sites
5 cities
Indonesia17,508 islands across 3 time zones
3 cities
Philippines7,641 islands, English-speaking, 3 main island groups
12 cities
Malaysia3 cultures, 2 coastlines, connected rail and bus networks
5 cities
Singapore733 km² city-state, 4 official languages, MRT-connected
1 cities
Cambodia181,035 km², Mekong River to Cardamom Mountains
4 cities
Laos236,800 km², landlocked, Mekong River runs north to south
3 cities
Myanmar676,578 km², over 2,000 Buddhist pagodas in Bagan alone
3 cities
Further afield
South Korea100,210 km², Korean Peninsula, 4 distinct seasons
2 cities
Taiwan36,193 km² island, 268 mountain peaks above 3,000m
2 cities
Japan377,975 km² archipelago, 6,852 islands, shinkansen network
3 cities
Portugal92,212 km², 1,794 km Atlantic coastline, 17 UNESCO sites
2 cities
Morocco446,550 km², Atlas Mountains to Sahara, 9 UNESCO medinas
3 cities
South Africa1.22M km², 3 coastlines, 11 official languages
6 cities
Lesotho30,355 km² mountain kingdom, entirely above 1,000m
2 cities
Zimbabwe390,757 km², Victoria Falls, Great Zimbabwe ruins
3 cities
Namibia825,615 km², Skeleton Coast to Etosha, among lowest population densities on Earth
3 cities
Mozambique801,590 km², 2,470 km Indian Ocean coastline
3 cities
Or start with the kind of trip
Seven ways into the same library, each one a decision rather than a category.
A good first solo trip
Where going alone the first time asks the least of you
Female-only stays
Dorms and properties that take women only
Walkable after dark
Cities with lit streets, short distances and people about at night
Somewhere to slow down
Quiet places to stop moving for a while
Easy to get around
Transport that works without local knowledge
Where solo women already go
Places with an established solo community, so meeting people costs nothing
Wellness and retreat
Yoga, spa and meditation destinations
Take it with you, and read it without signal.
The website is the whole library and it is free to read. The app is for the aeroplane, the night bus and the twenty minutes at an airport before you find a SIM card, which is usually exactly when you need to decide something.
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How this is made
Every place here has been read rather than listed, and every page says where its read came from. Where the reviews do not record who wrote them, the page says that too, rather than implying a voice the source does not carry.