SINGAPORE — More Generation Z and young millennials in Singapore are diving headlong into solo adventures — the more uncharted the territory, the better. Many are also posting about it to pay their way.
Spontaneous travel, explained as trips without a consistent plan, took off along with post-pandemic revenge.
Nomadic by nature, these spontaneous travelers alter the quiet regulations of shopping, banqueting, and exuberant resorts with specific, adrenaline-fueled experiences.
The trend is largely subscribed to by backpackers, who prefer to wander the outdoors without a guidebook, keeping to lightweight baggage and tight budgets.
They are usually college-age students or young people under 30, who fly when and where they want, even if it means having to fight for an additional source of income as content creators and micro-influencers to finance their trip.
In 2023, Southeast Asia-based site Klook found in a study that 83% of Singapore’s Gen Z and millennials were willing to invest in experiences: 63% in nature and outdoor activities, 51% in theme parks, and 56% in massages and hot springs.
Studying 2023 data, travel metasearch platform Skyscanner found that up to a third of Singaporeans — 31 per cent — booked trips a mere week before flying off.
In a survey of 1,000 Singaporeans aged 18-34 in the same year, Skyscanner also found that when it came to spending priorities, Gen Z and millennials preferred convenience, allocating 39% of their budget to food and 36% to convenience. . , more than 15 percent for lodging and 10 percent for airfare.
At 27 years old, Singaporean Basanth Sadasivan has visited 195 countries.
He compares it to an addiction: once is never enough.
It continues to fly up to twice a month, on weekends.
His travels have taken him to see emperor penguins in Patagonia, dog sledding in Norway, and the rainforests of the Amazon. One of the last corners of the world you haven’t visited yet is the fiery wilderness of Antarctica.
“I haven’t been to the South Pole yet because cruises there last two weeks. I feel dizzy and I have to take inventory of medicines,” says the official, who is a Skyscanner logo ambassador.
His first plane ride unaccompanied, at age 13, to stop at his aunt’s house in Australia, turned into a penchant for “off-the-beaten-path” travel. His next solo adventure, at age 17, North Korea.
In recent years, an interest in anthropology pertaining to Africa’s tribal ecosystems took him to meet the Bantu and Bedouin tribes in the south-eastern and northern regions of the continent.
But pursuing his dream, he says, is only imaginable with careful planning, as this globetrotter, who speaks Mandarin, French and Spanish more or less fluently, sometimes books accommodations, as well as tour guides or translators, up to months in advance.
He says, “Know what you need to see before you go there to avoid unforeseen hassles, such as not being able to book a room via email at the last minute. “
He advises “getting out of the bubble” to get as involved as possible in local life, whether it’s dining on local cuisine or participating in local rituals, such as festivals.
One of his major discoveries abroad was the idea of insular weather in the Pacific islands, where a leisurely pace of life meant people weren’t on time for parties.
He cites it as Tonga, Tuvalu, an island in the Pacific Ocean. Although its economic performance is low, its partnership is harmonious at the network point and one of the “happiest in the world” due to its work-life balance.
It encourages solo travel as a way to “detox” and open up to chosen lifestyles that are necessarily documented on the internet.
“I tend to view even the most experienced travelers with the natives from a sterile and strange point of view. But with an open mind, even the most remote tribe can transmit values and practices that can be instilled in our lives. ” he says.
In 2023, 22-year-old Sharlyn Seet traveled to 15 countries and forty-five cities in Europe, the United States, Australia, and Asia, while a full-time college student.
The third-year business student at Nanyang Technological University posts about her travels on TikTok under the name @sharsharcheers. She is a micro-influencer with 66,300 followers.
The comedy sketches he posted on his account turned off the Covid-19 kill switch. “One of my random videos recreating viral TikTok audio has been viewed over a million times. I made the decision to take social media more seriously,” she says.
In 2022, she did her first solo in Penang and Langkawi in Malaysia to reunite after a breakup and never looked back.
“What I love about solo travel is the sense of empowerment I get from sailing alone, learning to accept myself as true, and feeling comfortable in my space,” she says.
Since then, she’s ventured to 25 cities (some alone and others with other travelers), from scuba diving in Honolulu, Hawaii, to frolicking on the beaches of Krabi in Thailand.
How do you juggle travel and school?
She says making strategic plans helps. He traveled to three countries in a row during his exam season. A getaway with friends to Vietnam during school recess week was followed by media trips to China and Malaysia to advertise a bank debit card.
He burned to the ground, turned a six-day itinerary into four, worked on his assignments between events, and opted for an eight-hour flight layover to return to Singapore in time for his exams.
But she has no regrets, saying: “This was my childhood ambition, and I feel privileged to be able to live this lifestyle.”
Some of the advertisers on its social media platforms include UOB’s multi-currency account, Mighty FX, sports giant Adidas, and online platform Trip. com. She declines to say how much she earns from those sponsors.
At the same time, she runs a virtual marketing agency, Shark Digital Media, and is a part-time spin bike instructor at fitness chain Revolution SG.
She is racing to create income-source resources to create a way of life where she is less dependent on location or time.
He adds, “It gives me the ability to move from anywhere and, as a result, the freedom to fly to places whenever I want. “
Known for her interactive content, she occasionally seeks viewer suggestions for her next destination and turns these into vlogs.
One of his viral videos, titled Visiting the World’s Most Dangerous City, documented his 2023 trip to Tijuana, Mexico, a city with one of the highest homicide rates in the world.
Seet has also flown a paraplane — a motorised parachute — in Chiang Mai and camped in the deserts of Monument Valley in Arizona to photograph the Milky Way. Her bucket list is brimming, and she intends to conquer South Asia and Eastern Europe in 2024.
But she’s honest about what it means to rush to travel.
“A lot of people have asked me if I plan to be a full-time traveler and content creator who relies on sponsorships to sustain their lifestyle,” says the business and finance student.
“While it may be a dream for many, it’s quite tiring to travel for a living. You are dealing with deadlines from clients and running around different places to produce content, which may compromise the authenticity of the experience one shares.”
After all, a lifetime of adventure depends on sums. Last year, he introduced an Excel budget spreadsheet for his subscribers to help them organize their spending and save money.
Seet adds that his adventure comes with many rewards and sacrifices.
“Thanks to social media, we have realized that it is possible to change the traditional lifestyle. However, in order to continue with my secondary activities, I no longer participate as I used to in school activities and in the hallways. “
In 2022, the final-year student decided to take a gap year to explore internship opportunities. She ended up doing business internships in financial institutions.
What the travel influencer made the decision to do once the year was over was to work as a freelancer, her goal. But he laments, “There’s really no formula or educational rules in Singapore that teach you how to be independent. “
However, it remains pragmatic when it comes to the features offered to it.
“Travel and content creation will be a vital component of my life. But I don’t think it’s wise to put all my eggs in this basket. These paintings can only be sustainable with the right sponsorships. “
For Nicolette Wee, 23, a graduate trainee in e-commerce at TikTok, travel is compelled by impulse. She has checked off a personal goal to skydive off a plane in Bangkok, as well as parasailed in Penang and surfed in Bali — all on the spur of the moment.
Less thinking, just doing, is her motto, says the single, who books flights a day after deciding on her next quest or destination.
The seasoned backpacker, who has travelled to 18 countries, needs less than an hour to shove a fixed set of essentials — passport, four sets of clothing, adapters and a medical kit — into a 50-litre backpack, before she is out of the door.
She says the appeal of spontaneity has become more palpable with TikTok, where content creators teleport from one destination to another seamlessly through video edits, giving the impression that they can have it all, right now.
It’s not uncommon to see other young people traveling, just to notice new scenarios and the aesthetics of social media, he adds.
On his first solo trip to Hualien County, a mountainous region of Taiwan, at age 19, he drank rice wine and then jumped off a cliff into rocky waters, as a challenge.
Unlike some who painstakingly plan their itinerary months in advance, Wee is willing to accompany the strangers she meets along the way and learn their side of the story.
No photo, no proof, says the content creator, who says her best way to break the ice is to ask other tourists to take pictures of her. She posts her exploits on TikTok under @nicolettecalliewe and has 32,400 followers.
“I do it for ‘the conspiracy,'” the globetrotter responds when justifying her extremist activities.
“Plot,” in the lexicon of Generation Z, is explained as the overarching narrative or “plot” of a person’s life. The term refers to videos and television series, in which an individual imagines themselves as the protagonist of their life story.
Wee’s reasoning (doing it out of intrigue, in the same vein as the Latin aphorism “carpe diem” (seize the day)) justifies taking risks for the sake of it. He has noticed that she rides strangers’ motorcycles and makes friends with foreigners. Translate.
His fondness for exploring new lands stems from his childhood, when he would travel to New Zealand and Australia with his parents, who work in the tech industry, and his older brother.
“Growing up, my family and extended family (about 18 people) would take long road trips every year. “
Even her parents think her madcap solo travel schedule — where she takes off at least once every three months — is crazy.
“But now that I’m a corporate employee, they’re more supportive of my decisions. My mother even asks me if she can stay with me,” explains the communication graduate from Nanyang Technological University, who began funding her own trips at the age of 18 thanks to her supporting performances. Dance instructor and marketing assistant.
While her business acquisition assignment provides her with the money to travel, she is limited to 18 days of annual leave and weekends to satisfy her hustle and bustle.
In the two years since, he has flown to countries such as Thailand, Taiwan, Japan and Korea, just for a three-day weekend.
He regularly plans to travel around $800 to Southeast Asia and stays in hostels to save costs. He skimps on forgoing checked luggage and eating street food, adding fried grasshoppers, to his meals.
Travel compatibility simplified her priorities with a potential partner. She once booked a Singapore Airlines flight to meet her then-boyfriend in Spain. He canceled it, wasting $1,800, when their relationship deteriorated a short time later and he had to forgo the trip.
“I know I want someone who has an adventurous streak, is ready to start a family and have children, so that one day, I may take my kids travelling,” she says.
Her travel has been laced with spontaneous romantic interludes.
She remembers visiting Hualien’s night market with an American tourist she met online in 2019. He even had dinner with his family.
“When we met, I felt a connection and we went to play arcade games,” she says, adding that they had two more dates before she returned from Taipei.
As a solo traveler, Wee equips herself with security tools, such as an audible alarm that emits misery signals in the event of a possible attack and a hidden detector camera to identify secret recording devices that would possibly invade her privacy. She also avoids walking through red light districts. .
“In hindsight, I was lucky enough not to have any incidents because I’m a pretty gullible person,” he says.
Dion Ong, 27, has tread a winding path in pursuit of wanderlust.
This bachelor and small business owner says, “My plan is to do everything I have to do, whether it’s a trip to Paris or beyond, before the age of 35, when singles like me will be able to buy a build to order. (BTO) flat. “
The Zillenial, a portmanteau of Gen Z and millennial individuals born between 1995 and 2000, says he relates to the idealistic streak of Gen Z youth, as well as the pragmatism of millennials.
After graduating from Singapore Polytechnic with a bachelor’s degree in Tourism and Hospitality Management, Ong followed in the footsteps of her cousin and older sister, flight attendants, and worked as a cabin crew member from 2019 to 2022.
“I had intended to fly for only two years and return to Singapore to get a full-time career, but Covid-19 happened and I couldn’t save enough money. I didn’t need to touch my parents’ cash, so I continued to work,” says the son of a renovation and hardware businessman.
But the glamour of the flight soon disappeared. His enthusiasm waned and he grew tired of going to the same places, even the mythical cities of London, New York, Dubai and Rome.
She started a jewelry business during the pandemic, when flights were suspended, and lived mostly on a $1,500 stipend from the airline. He stopped working at the airline a year after the borders reopened.
In September 2022, it joined Lemon8, an app operated through TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, which gained traction in Singapore that year for its catalog of lifestyle content.
He earned $1,000 generating career-related content and travel on the app for two months, an amount that covered the charge of an impromptu backpacking trip to Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he went on a solo hike in the mountainous region of Mon Jam, a village community in the highlands.
Someday he hopes to embark on a six-month odyssey alone, from Singapore to Paris, via public land transport.
He perked up after reading a blog post published in 2016 about someone who completed this feat. The road to London will see it pass through China, Russia, and then Poland, a region that has noticed significant disruption with the Russia-Ukraine war.
But Ong, who has visited 30 countries, avoids dangerous adventures.
It says, “In December 2023, I booked a 16-day trip to Mongolia for $4,000 on a Mongolian excursion website, which is particularly less expensive than the packages sold here, which cost nearly $7,000. I decided to stay with an excursion organization and he didn’t look at the route.
It was a four-day horseback ride through a snowy desert to meet a reindeer herd located in Dukha, a rural province in northeastern Mongolia. The hikers’ beds were teepees, tents made of animal skin. Halfway through, temperatures dropped to -40°C. .
“I love camping, but coming from a tropical country I wasn’t prepared for the trip. The thermal garments I had brought were useless,” he says.
Remember hydrating by melting ice in a metal pot over a wood fire, buying a Deel (a classic Mongolian wool garment) to keep warm, and answering nature’s call in sub-zero baths.
“By the end of the horseback ride, my knees were so frozen that for 10 seconds I could walk lightly. “
She now makes a living sponsoring logos on social media, as well as with an online jewelry company, Delicate Ornaments, which she founded in 2020. She also runs a YouTube channel, @diongdion, as well as posting on TikTok and Lemon8. 7,000 subscribers on all 3 platforms.
Since 2021, she has also been studying Communication part-time at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. He intends to pursue content creation, before it’s time to pay for his apartment at BTO, and he doesn’t plan to take a full career. Working time.
In July, he hopes to attend summer courses in Japan and plans to expand his own there with a painting visa.
“I have a different outlook on life than my friends, who form a circle of family and work full-time. I respect their decisions, but when it comes to a point of tension and exhaustion, it’s a problem,” says Ong. who rents a room from his sister.
“I need to be able to look back on my life and laugh at every moment. I did what I wanted to do and I didn’t stop just to rush. “
Budget is paramount for Ng Yi Yang, an avid 28-year-old backpacker. Whether it’s enjoying the nightlife of Phuket, Thailand, in the Sapa Mountains, Vietnam, or conquering the Grand Canyon and Yosemite in the United States, limit your spending. at $50 per day.
Packing no more than four sets of clothing into a backpack weighing just 10kg, he skips shopping and scours for experiences outdoors, such as scuba diving and hiking.
The CEO of Zyrup Media, a multimedia company that includes an art studio, a children’s cultural publication, and a podcast network, is also a content author on Lemon8 known for his backpacking trips and tips.
The communication graduate travels spontaneously after graduating from Nanyang Technological University in 2021.
“After my semester ended, I had a week with no exams, so I took a train to Penang without thinking about what activities I would be doing.”
Then the travel virus hit. Since then, it has taken off at least once every two months, except for the pandemic when borders were closed.
Last year he visited 16 cities, including the fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein in Germany and diving courses on the Gili Islands in Indonesia.
This bachelor, extroverted by nature, says that traveling has opened him up to many aspects of himself. On a solo trip to the U. S. When I arrived in the U. S. in 2019, I spent five days in total silence and found that I was perfectly content with getting things done. alone. “
He prefers hostels to hotels that charge no more than $30 a night in Southeast Asia and $50 in Europe, as he sees them as an opportunity to meet new people. Striking up conversations with other backpackers in hostels allowed him to make friends with foreigners from Poland and Germany.
“When put into the hostel environment, people tend to be a bit more open and accommodating. Some hostels organise activities and host communal dinners, places for you to break the ice and meet people,” he says.
The backpacking community is dominated by individuals in their early 20s, an age of much soul-searching, revelry and drinking, but he warns backpackers new to the game to play on the side of caution.
During a trip to Berlin, an 18-year-old female American backpacker got drunk, collapsing outside a train station. He and another friend spent three hours trying to take her back to the hostel.
Although M. Ng criticizes overrated tourist attractions, he visits those hot spots with other innmates. “I don’t stick to plans and I go in to tourists and ask them if I can get involved in their projects. Sometimes I ask them if they need to spend time with me to express places,” he says, recounting how some of those encounters led to dizzying adventures.
Being self-employed gives you the flexibility to plan your jobs based on your vacation. The virtual nomad says: “I take advantage of all the merit of weekends, long weekends and holidays to paint, even when I’m abroad. And on the days when I’m traveling, I only dream of traveling. “
Next on his travel list are the mountainous regions of Yunnan and Tibet.
But he opposes traveling to overly touristy places like Paris and Bali, where tourism has generated a lot of controversy around environmental degradation and cultural disrespect.
“Ultimately, when you travel, you may end up being complicit in a system that directly disadvantages the locals, hence why I’m a huge hater of the over-touristed side of Bali, which can be hot spots for disrespectful, unruly tourists.
“Be careful that your footprint in the countries you scale into is positive and doesn’t directly affect or destroy what you’re there to see. “
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This article first appeared in The Straits Times. Permission is required for reproduction.