Hello to all my good friends in substack world. Before I jump in, if you have any feedback on these weekly blog posts, I’d love to hear it! Good, bad, or ugly, shoot me a message on WhatsApp (same number as my phone number) if you have any thoughts.

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What a week it has been! In Singapore I continued my streak of positive experiences with locals and exchangers alike.

On Tuesday some guys had a poker night until 3 in the morning and in between losing too much money, I met a couple of locals and this guy from UNC who studies CS and is also working on a startup.

The next day, the NUS basketball team took me out to some local spots in Singapore and we ate more Thai food than I knew what to do with.

I’ve concluded that having a skill that is commonplace in your home country, but rare in a foreign country is an excellent gateway to meeting and engraining yourself with locals. Luckily for me, that skill is basketball, but the most obvious one that foreigners can take advantage of is speaking English, especially in a non-English speaking country. I met multiple people who came to Asia and taught English, either to a school or as a private tutor in exchange for an integrated local experience.

For me, this concept of seeking out a local experience is the most rewarding part of traveling. My first trip as an adult outside of the US, I found myself in Greece, and the most fulfilling and enlightening part of that trip had nothing to with the Acropolis or beautiful Greek islands. It was solely based on my host, Apollo, who introduced me to his friend group, and for the next 3 days we flocked around the city together, giving me an unfiltered understanding of how they live their lives.

This weekend I traveled to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It’s probably not the first city on anyone’s mind when it comes to southeast Asia, but I’d done some research and it was a place I badly wanted to go.

No one from Singapore wanted to go with me, so it ended up being a solo trip, my first ever solo trip, to a third world country no less. Any experience I had would be my own doing which is both terrifying and thrilling to think about.

The thing about solo traveling is that every second of the day, you are in some sort of survival mode. When you travel with others, you don’t have to make every decision, you have mental and emotional support, and you are always with someone you know and trust.

All that goes out the window in solo traveling, but it’s not meant to be lonely.

It just means you have to go out of your way to meet people who can help you gain the experience that you want. The easiest way to do that is at the hostel bar. Dozens of travelers ranging from “I’m here for work” to “I have no idea what I want to do with my life” to “I’m traveling until I have no money left in my bank account.” Some are looking to explore the city, others are just looking to party, and honestly a little bit of both is quite healthy when you’re in survival mode.

When I arrived Friday evening, there was some party going on at the hostel, so of course I joined in. I immediately met two guys from California who definitely fell under the “I have no idea what I want to do with my life,” category.

To me, it didn’t matter because they were my new best friends for the evening.

We mingled around and met some travelers from the UK, France, Belgium, and South Africa. After a couple hours, one of the hostel reps offered to take anyone who wanted to a nearby club. The hostel had a few of these people, whose job was basically to ensure you had a good time.

The club started out pretty dead, but our traveler group hyped up the party quite a bit. I began dancing with this one local girl who spoke decent English, and I was having a fantastic time. I had to stop and sit there for a second to take it all in.

I’m really in Phnom Penh, Cambodia right now, dancing at this club with complete strangers, having the time of my life. Damn.

I was quite interested in this girl, but her friend group was going to a new club. One of the guys in her friend group invited me join however.

Hell yeah.

I just got the in with some locals to come party with them at 2 in the morning. For the first time in over 4 years, it felt like Athens, Greece all over again.

I figured we would walk or call a Grab to the next club. Instead, the whole group walked around the block to where they had parked their motorbikes.

Oh man. This is where you have to stop and realize that this isn’t just a casual ride through some cushy suburb. This is Asia, and for all intents and purposes they don’t have traffic laws. Here’s a video I took of a random intersection in Phnom Penh to understand what we were riding through.

Regardless, this whole friend group was still alive so they probably knew what they were doing. I hopped on the back on my new friend Yany’s motorbike and we rode through the streets to the next club, Heart of Darkness. I would later learn that this was known as a gay club, but honestly I just threw all assumptions aside and partied like it was 1999.

Yes, I would know what that’s like.

The club featured a drag show on an elevated stage, but once that was done, I got up on the stage and gave the drag queens a run for their money. I don’t think I’ve ever danced so freely in my life. The girl who I was interested in ended up with one of her co-workers, but I didn’t care. I was having too much fun to let that ruin the vibe.

We partied until 4:00 AM and it was genuinely one of the best party experiences of my life. Just me and my Cambodian squad, all of them wanting to make sure I had a good time. Apparently, they do this every weekend. I don’t know how they have the stamina for that. I was wiped.

I didn’t end up getting back to the hostel until 7:00 AM, at which point I slept for 3 hours and got my Saturday started.

Cambodia has been described as a country that you’ll fall in love with, and then she’ll break your heart. I kind of get it now. It has a vibrant, and proud culture, but also a devastating past that it’s still working to overcome.

In the 1970s, a regime called the Khmer Rouge was put in place that basically wanted to establish a socialist country where everyone was a self-sufficient farmer. China backed the regime, but the US played a part as well: fighting the neighboring Vietnam War and hoping to destablize the region, they bombed most of the Cambodian country-side for a few years, which actually paved the way for the Khmer Rouge to gain support and take over Cambodia.

All in all, the regime began massacring its people, torturing and murdering anyone with a connection to the previous government, as well as most religious and racial minorities, and even anyone who showed any intellect whatsoever (held a degree, could speak multiple languages, even people who wore glasses). All in all, over 20% of Cambodians were massacred before their regime was overthrown by a Vietnamese army.

I visited one of the prisons where they would detain, interrogate, and torture their own people, as well as a nearby “killing field” where they would dump the bodies of the dead after they were finished with them.

It’s quite sobering really. In the entire tour, they concentrate on the stories of maybe 3 different people.

Twenty thousand people made their way through the particular prison I went through and only 12 survived. That’s 19,985 lives that are gone, with no one around to tell their story.

It’s hard to really feel the magnitude of the genocide unless you’re there, but it’s understandably an implicit part of every Cambodian’s life now. The 1970s were not that long ago, and there are plenty of people who lived through it and remember it today.

The country is clawing its way back, but it’s quite hard to do when that’s the hand you were dealt. There’s a lot of poverty, pollution, and the cost of living is extremely low. I once again stayed in a hostel for $6 a night, and at one point paid a TukTuk driver $16 for him to be my personal chauffer for 4 hours.

My time in Phnom Penh was short but sweet. I understand why people say that Cambodia will break your heart, but right now it still has mine. I was seriously unsure about going because of the whole solo thing, but I’m so happy I did. It forced me out of my comfort zone and became the basis for the unique experience I had in the city. Man, I can’t believe I still have 12 more trips planned 😂.

If there’s one thing I learned this week, it’s that everyone should travel solo at least once in your life. If it terrifies you, then go somewhere extremely safe and make sure you have a local contact if needed. If you’re a girl and still think it isn’t for you, I met 3 different female solo travelers at the hostel I stayed at, and they’d all been traveling solo for one month or longer.

It can be done.

Even if you have a ride-or-die travel buddy soulmate, take a weekend without them! I’m a firm believer that the best way to grow is to throw yourself into uncomfortable situations and find out how you respond. I can hardly think of a more palpable way to discover yourself then to just send it in a foreign country without a clue what will be in store for you.

I can’t guarantee that you’ll end up in Cambodia the back on a motorbike at 2 in the morning, but the odds are your story will be so much more.

And it’ll be yours to cherish forever :)

Answers I’ve received to my question: “If you have one piece of advice to share with the world, what would it be?”

Learn everything you can from other people - Juliette from France