This is a bit of a longer post about some of my own experiences.
The scariest story is at the end, so stay around!

When you’re traveling alone, you sometimes get into sketchy situations and do things that could have ended badly.
I have done some of those things, and luckily they all ended fine for me.
A maybe dangerous trait of me is that I trust people way too easily and try to find reasons to trust them when others tell me not to.
So be sure to stay safe out there.
I am very lucky I only met good people and I got out of everything safely.
Make sure to have some safety measures when you travel with strangers on your own.
I always shared my location with a friend and sent them or my parent’s contact details of that person.
If you want to be really safe, you can always ask if you can take a picture of their ID and send it to someone.
I have done that once, but only because he wanted to reassure me that I was safe with him.
It is also a good idea to share your planned travel route with someone, so they know where you could be when you don’t have any signal and If you are traveling by car, take a picture of it, and its license plate and send it to someone.
These are all easy steps for you to feel a bit safer and after some time together I think you can really tell who you can trust and if you don’t feel safe, talk to someone and try to leave.
There will be other ways to get around that might feel safer.

Now, a disclaimer before I talk about my own experiences.
My parents do actually know about all of these things, and I always tried to reassure them that I am safe.
I have also heard even crazier stories from friends, and they got out of it safe, so I guess a little bit of danger is part of traveling, and you will learn how to deal with it.

1. Getting driven home by random guys from the club

I guess that is a situation that you could run into everywhere, and it might be sketchy sometimes, so I wouldn’t tell you to do it, but I have done it multiple times and always got home safe.
If you ever do that, make sure your driver is sober!
The guys that drove me and my friends home were friends, and one of my friends talked to one of them for some time at the club.
They promised us his friend was sober, and they dropped us off at our homes.
It was pretty funny actually because we had to wait when dropping off my first friend because my other one was thirsty.
The drunk guy showed us his backflip during the time my friend got her some water, and they laid on the grass, when a police car drove by and just made sure we were ok.
Often me and my other friend told people to drop both of us off in the middle of our houses and we both walked home 3 minutes, so no one of us had to stay in the car with strangers alone.

2. Getting driven to the club by a random guy

Most of my stories will be about getting around with random guys.
This might be a scary situation for some girls and there were definitely some situations where I could have been more careful, but often I was with friends and my trait of trusting everyone kicked in.
Anyway, we wanted to get to the club and missed the bus because in Australia you have to signal the driver that you want them to take you and at that moment she showed me something on her phone, and we missed it.
The next bus was not until one hour later, and we did not want to wait that long, as it was already pretty late.
The bus stop was next to a petrol station and there was a guy in our age getting petrol.
After he came out of the station, we went over to ask him if he could drive us to the club which was in the direction where he came from, but we thought it was worth a try.
He felt pretty bad for us for missing the bus and called his friend to tell them he was coming a bit later and drove us to the club.
He seemed so nice, and we talked for a bit while he drove us 30 minutes to the club and wanted nothing for it in return!
That was so extremely nice of him.

3. Me and motorized vehicles…

I honestly love driving cars and have never had any problems with it, and it mostly went great in Australia as well, but there were always things that my dad warned me about.
He works in vehicle safety and always cared a lot about our safety in cars and in traffic.
One thing he warned me about was quads.
That they can fall over easily and injure me badly.
A friend of my family actually fell off a quad and broke several ribs, and my parents were even more worried after that.
They never worried in a controlling way, though.
My parents warn me about things, but want me to use my own understanding.
In New Zealand, I did use a small quad on the farm I was on, and it was pretty rainy that day.
I had to bring the cows back to the paddock, and on my way there I drove straight through a deep puddle.
On my way back, I tried to drive around it on the side and got stuck in the mud.
I got off and drove backwards standing next to it, which eventually got it out, but knocked me down, right in the mud.
Luckily I was wearing mud boots and pants and a raincoat that could get dirty.
Well, I did get it out and went back through the puddle again, but I now understood what my dad told me about.
The second thing that he was worried about was me on a scooter in Bali with bare legs and no safety equipment except a helmet.
I tried to drive a scooter twice, but I don’t have the feeling to start it and always got in the wrong lane because I had so much momentum.
There was never anyone in that lane, but for the rest of my trip I left the driving to my friend and rather sat on the back of the scooter.

4. me and my friend drove on a scooter of a random man in the night

This was in Bali, and me and my friend wanted to check out a club in Canggu.
The club we first went to was pretty bad, so we were back on the street, taking pictures of me with half a coconut on my head, when a man on a scooter asked us for directions to a surf store.
At 11:30 pm in the night!
He said it was a friend’s store, and he just wanted to see it.
We talked a bit, and he told us he is from the region in Australia, where we have just done our au pair, so we were already obsessed.
He asked what we were still up to tonight, and we wanted to get to a club which was a bit away, so he offered us to take us there on his scooter.
He seemed a bit dodgy, but my friends’ brother would also come to the club and knew where we were, so he drove us both to the club together.
We knew he wanted to party with us, but that was a bit too weird for us, so when he said he had to park the scooter, we met my friend’s brother and vanished in the crowd of the beach party.
We saw him again on the side of the crowd, but stayed out of his way.
That was a such a fun situation and I always like to be reassured that I am with friends and someone knows where we are, when I do something like that.
But I think these crazy stories make life so much fun!

5. I traveled around in the van of an American man

I guess most people try to find people around their age to travel with.
Sometimes I found that really hard and still wanted to see some things and didn’t have transportation.
That time I went to Waitomo glowworm caves and some other stops with a middle-aged man from America.
In his pictures, he seemed nice, and he was really Christian, which honestly made me trust him in the first place.
He had a really dodgy white van, though, not gonna lie.
He also offered me to sleep in his van (in a nice, not a creepy way, trust me), but I got an Airbnb for these nights.
We had a great journey to all the places and good conversations about religion, traveling and our lives.
We met again the next day to see some other part of the city, and it was always nice spending time with him.
I found that there weren’t many “older” women traveling around.
It was rather men.
That is why I often traveled with older men, but there was always much I could learn from them, and that is what I enjoyed about getting to know many different people.

6. I traveled alone with a 47-year-old man for 5 days

This is another story about how I traveled with a rather older man for 5 days.
I planned my road trip from Perth to Exmouth differently, but my plans have not aligned with any other people, even though there were so many people going up there for the solar eclipse.
I decided last minute to travel with him because I tried to find something else, but couldn’t.
In his pictures he had a family and kids a bit younger than me and that made me trust him.
He lent me a tent and a sleeping mattress for our trip.
He hadn’t planed anything because he just wanted to get to Broome because he recently got divorced.
I was able to plan the route and stops a little, and we saw great things.
He was very chill and seemed a bit depressed as well because of his whole familiar situation.
It felt good to be able to talk to him about it and to offer him companionship.
Sometimes he asked me questions concerning the youth nowadays because he didn’t understand his kids sometimes.
These few days really opened my eyes to how one thing can shatter your whole world and what you can do to get back up, and I was able to learn so much about Australian life from him.
On my way back from Exmouth I joined another group with a van, with 3 girls and a man, and it felt good having girls around my age around again and being able to have lots of fun, because these few days got me down a bit as well, but I still enjoyed these 5 days with him and he has such a good soul.

7. I almost had to sleep on a junk pile

This might be the scariest of my stories.
After my au pair, I planned to work on a horse farm for 2 weeks, but they cancelled a week prior because the girl that was staying with them wanted to stay a bit longer.
I decided to have a look for something different and found something where they said it is bush style living and I would help with recycling and could try off grid driving.
The man was Indian and seemed pretty nice over text.
My host mum and my parents told me to rather not do it and to stay careful.
Well, I still did, and he picked me up at a train station after my flight with a truck with an endless, long loading zone.
I asked him what he needed the truck for, and he just said it is for recycling and big machines he sometimes buys.
I thought the whole time that it was for his job, but found out otherwise later.
We had dinner out and went grocery shopping, and it got dark pretty fast.
We had a great time together ranting about what plants we grow at home, about how we live eco-friendly and so on.
His place was a bit out of Perth and I didn’t have any idea where I was at some point.
For my security, my friend had my location, but there was no signal there anymore.
We drove onto a literal junk pile, and he got out of his truck.
I was confused to not see a house, and he showed me around.
There were lots of old cars he was working on, some random big and small metal parts lying around, a lot of rubbish everywhere, and he warned me about spiders on the property.
Around it was a field on one side and a forest on the other, so there was nothing else around.
He showed me one big old bus with his fridge which was really filthy and the back of the bus was full of broken wooden pieces, and he told me his ex broke that.
His kitchen was a stove outside the bus, and he got electricity from a very loud generator.
The next thing he showed me was the bus I was supposed to sleep in.
We passed his sleeping caravan and the shower, which he was very proud of because it was a steam shower.
It was in the middle of the junk pile though and had glass walls and probably no warm water.
In the bus I was supposed to sleep in was a small bed that still had the bedding from the girl that stayed for a few days before me.
He told me there was another girl staying with me before, that’s why I thought I would try it, but she left on short notice the day before after 2 nights there.
I don’t even get how she was able to stay 2 nights there.
When I asked about a toilet, he gave me a stool with a hole in it and plastic bags.
That shocked me a little, and I asked about a sink to wash my hands.
Other than I expected, he showed me his collection of metal sinks and when I asked about running water, he told me he had another toilet on the property.
When he walked me there, I felt so overwhelmed by the situation and also pretty scared, I started to cry a little.
By every thing he showed me, I counted down the nights I would try to stay there.
When he showed me the toilet with a sink, which was in a pitch black stone hut, I was so shocked.
We walked back to his truck, when he jokingly asked me if I found this a bit scary.
At that moment, all my tears started falling down, and I tried to explain to him that I don’t think I can stay here.
I told him I don’t feel safe here, especially as a girl, and couldn’t tell my parents that they don’t have to worry about me.
He was so understanding of it.
The man said he never thought about how this place might make others feel, because he was already used to this.
I told him I would rather book a hotel last minute (I also couldn’t do a hostel right then because I knew I just needed to cry for a bit to get rid of the shock) and he offered to drive me back to Perth.
Out of the last corner of the property he pulled a small car.
All the warning lights of this car were on, but I just wanted to get back to Perth as fast as possible.
He apologized many more times on the way back, that he made me feel scared while I had tears running down my face.
I assured him that I was fine, and he realized himself that he might have to get his life sorted before having people live with him on the property again.
I felt so relieved when I checked into the hotel and immediately called my family to get some comfort.
This was probably the most scary situation in my life ever because if this man wasn’t that nice, he could have done anything to me and no one would have known.

I am sorry this last story turned out so long, but I really wanted you to get that there are freaking scary things out there, that you should take care of when you are traveling alone.
I feel so lucky that all the people I have met were so nice which didn’t help me with trusting everyone though, because I will probably continue doing so.
Always stay safe during your travels and make sure to take some of the safety precautions I told you about earlier, but don’t let this danger hold you back because there are awesome things and people out there that you might not expect to see.
These things all shaped me so much as a person and made my travels so unique.