Ian and I spent our last few days together in Bangkok in luxury with our own apartment, a beautiful pool on the 8^th story, a gym, a spa and library room. He left this morning and I flew to Krabi, checked in to my single, bunk-bed mixed dorm room and already I feel very alone. I knew these blues would happen, that’s why I booked onto a 6 day yoga retreat starting tomorrow to ease myself into solo travelling with some structured relaxation.

Small differences between solo and couple travelling have already become really apparent. Here are my observations so far (4 hours in):

Staying in a dorm rather than a double room

• I didn’t realise how much I appreciated having an ensuite bathroom. Having to take all of your clothes, wash stuff, towel and ROOM KEY into the shower cubicle is really annoying.
• Having to confine yourself to one single bed rather than an entire room is very difficult for someone like me, who likes to spread her things over the whole space.
• Distrusting your roommates/ the cleaners and having to lock your valuables up every time you leave the room gets tedious very quickly.

Eating alone and safe

• Eating  alone is a strange feeling in its self but I’ve only been in Krabi for 4 hours, so I’m sure that will change soon *fingers crossed*.
• However, the biggest change I’ve noticed is that I wasn’t attracted to the street food as normal, rather to the more western looking restaurants. I’m an adventurous eater and am not that hot on food hygiene but I think I was attracted to the other Westeners for safety (it turned out they were French so we didn’t even speak).

Public and private transport

• I was glued to an app called Maps.ME which is an offline maps service, to make sure the taxi driver wasn’t going anywhere he shouldn’t or to make sure I got off at the right stop on the bus. Normally Ian did the navigation so that was a new sensation.

Fingers crossed Future posts will be a little cheerier..