In Episode 13 of 85 Percent, host Beth Santos introduces Alexa West founder and CEO of Solo Girl’s Travel Guide and author of The One-Way Ticket Plan.
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- 18 minute read
In Episode 13, we sit down with Alexa West, bestselling author and creator of the Solo Girls Travel Guide. Alexa’s story is one of transformation – using travel as a tool to rebuild, discover purpose, and empower women around the world. From publishing her latest book, The One Way Ticket Plan, to offering advice for solo travelers, Alexa shares how she turned her adventures into a career that helps others find freedom through travel. If you’ve ever dreamed of packing a bag and setting out on your own journey, this episode is for you.
New to 85 Percent? Here’s a quick intro
Did you know that women make 85% of travel decisions, and yet make up just a tiny fraction of who we see in travel media and leadership? 85 Percent: A Wanderful Podcast showcases the trailblazing women of travel and the stories they have to share with the world. It’s hosted by Wanderful’s founder and CEO, Beth Santos.
The format is part interview, part narrative style, sharing the powerful, passionate travel stories that have changed the lives of the women who are changing travel right back.
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Introducing Episode 13 with Alexa West
Alexa West, founder and CEO of The Solo Girl’s Travel Guide and author of The One-Way Ticket Plan: Find and Fund Your Purpose While Traveling the World, is a multiple-bestselling and award-winning travel author who teaches women how to travel solo without going broke or getting kidnapped
She’s the winner of the Wanderful Award presented at the 2024 Bessie Awards. For a brand that has gone above and beyond to support, empower, and represent women in the past year.
Alexa West: I wrote it with younger women in mind. I wrote it with like college me in mind because the way I grew up with like a father not around and a mother distracted by substance. It really was not an equation for me to succeed. It wasn’t. And I always feel like travel is rescue. It was my opportunity to decide what I wanted for my life.
Welcome to the 85 Percent Podcast
[00:01:19] Beth: Did you know that women make 85 percent of travel decisions, whether booking a trip for our families or cleaning the hotel rooms? Women are the backbone of the travel industry, but the people we see in travel shows, marketing, and leadership, they don’t look like us. Now we’re cutting through the noise to talk to the change makers, the trailblazers, and the women who make travel what it is and how we can make travel better for all of us.
This is 85%. I’m your host, Beth Santos.
Meet Alexa West
[00:01:47] Beth: As travelers, we often overlook the subtle yet. Amazingly profound shifts that can redirect the course of our lives. Sometimes, it’s not a majestic grand adventure that sets us on a new path. It’s a single, unexpected moment. It starts small, an alteration in your intentions. Maybe it builds a little bit.
Maybe at some point, You take a bigger leap and suddenly you look back and realize, wow, I’m on a totally different path than I ever imagined for myself. In today’s episode of 8 Percent, I’m introducing you to Alexa West. Alexa is a multiple bestselling and award-winning travel author, the creator of the Solo Girls Travel Guide and author of the One Way Ticket Plan: Find and Fund Your Purpose While Traveling the World.
Which was published in September of 2023. Alexa teaches women how to travel solo for as long as you want. Without going broke. She’s also the winner of the Wanderful Award at the 2024 Bessie Awards. Which is a really special award that’s so close to my heart. It’s given to a brand that has gone above and beyond to support, empower, and represent women in the past year.
From Heartbreak to Empowerment
[00:03:18] Beth: At 19, Alexa’s vision for herself was very different than how it actually turned out.
She saw herself marrying her college boyfriend and living a large portion of her identity as his wife and a mom. That is, until he broke up with her. Before that happened, a chance encounter with the Peace Corps planted a seed, but it wasn’t until she found herself utterly heartbroken that she realized she had the opportunity to change everything.
For those of you who might not be familiar, the Peace Corps is a program that was launched by President John F. Kennedy back in 1961. The idea was simple yet powerful. Send qualified American volunteers abroad to help with development efforts, fostering goodwill, and cross-cultural exchange in the process.
It’s a 27-month commitment where volunteers work in areas like education, health, agriculture, and community development in countries that request assistance. And it’s been running for over 60 years. Alexa’s story takes us from college campuses to the dirt roads of Bulgaria, and eventually to the jungles of Thailand.
It’s a story about transformation, not just from heartbreak, but from choosing to live life on her own terms. From a one-way ticket to building a career that empowers women travelers, Alexa navigated her way through the unknown, embracing the uncertainty that comes with stepping into a new world. This isn’t just about travel, it’s about finding purpose and what happens when you leave behind the expectations that others may have for you and choose to forge your own path.
It’s about how travel, in its own way, can be a rescue and how it can offer a sense of freedom when the world you thought you’d inhabit no longer exists.
[00:05:21] Alexa: I was in college and I had a boyfriend and I thought I was going to marry that boyfriend. I remember walking by the office for the Peace Corps. And I was with him and I was like, gosh, I just would love to do something like that.
And then he broke up with me. But when he broke up with me, there was like a little voice. behind my crying being like, you get to do this now. You get to choose a completely different path now.
I did like one day of crying. And then I remembered an office that I walked by on the campus. And so I went down to that office. I set up an interview and I started the process.
Alexa West
Lost Baggage, Immersion and Independence
[00:06:04] Beth: Let’s step into Alexa’s world. A world where travel becomes more than just an adventure. It becomes a way to rebuild, to heal, and to discover in so many ways who you’re meant to be. Be careful where you step. This world also begins on a dirt road with donkeys everywhere.
The donkeys are definitely a bit of a shock for a recent transplant like Alexa. It’s her first couple of months in the Peace Corps. And the city of Seattle feels like millions of miles away. Those tall skyscrapers are replaced by shorter red roof buildings and cobblestone streets. The only thing that feels similar to home is the everlasting presence of the mountains nearby.
That crisp air whisking through the mountain passes. Except this air is anything but crisp. Every time someone passes, a new dust cloud is kicked up into the air. It’s particles drifting through an open window. It’s morning, and Alexa is in a small mountain town in northwestern Bulgaria. Her arrival was less than grateful.
[00:07:27] Alexa: So this was my first, like, real international trip. And they had lost all of our bags. And so I was like, okay, off to a great start.
[00:07:35] Beth: Alexa, who had a penchant for languages, thought she’d pick up a little Bulgarian before arriving, but showing off turned out to work against her. She caught the attention of the program directors and was put into classes with some of the best Bulgarian speakers in the program. Great.
[00:07:53] Alexa: The other volunteers they put me with were the best language speakers. So I had a guy from Kazakhstan, I had a girl that spoke Russian, and I had some other girl that was like very intense with learning. And then there was me.
[00:08:05] Beth: The program was intense. She took three hours of Bulgarian class every day in a classroom, five days a week. Then she’d go home and she’d live with her Bulgarian host family. The experience was total immersion. And yet Alexa adapted surprisingly well.
[00:08:24] Alexa: Because I was 21, you know, I didn’t have routines and things I needed. It was just so easy being young, being thrown into a village and being like, okay, this is my life now. It was just so easy.
[00:08:38] Beth: Alexa’s early life was shaped by some real challenges. Her dad was absent. Her mom struggled with alcoholism. Alexa found herself navigating a home that lacked the stability that so many of us take for granted. Her brothers left the country to carve their own paths. Her fractured family dynamic wasn’t easy.
But one thing that came of it was that Alexa became very independent very quickly. She wasn’t surrounded by the kind of support system many rely on, and in many ways, that pushed her to look outward, to find her sense of belonging and stability elsewhere. When she left the Peace Corps, she knew her home was not in the States, so she kept moving.
Becoming a Travel Writer
[00:09:25] Alexa: But I wasn’t ready to move back home. So I moved to South Korea and started my like five years of English teaching abroad.
[00:09:33] Beth: But no matter where she traveled, one thing always provided her solace. Writing.
[00:09:41] Alexa: I actually applied to UW in Seattle as a journalism major. The way that I stopped teaching was that I started freelance gigs on like Upwork.
So then I was writing full-time freelance. Then the way that the Solo Girls Travel Guide series came about was I was house-sitting in like the jungles of Thailand. And I had been traveling for like six years. By this point, and on the daily, I would have people write me and be like, Hey, my cousin’s going to Thailand. Can you like help them out? So I would find myself like writing all of these itineraries for people not making any money off of it. Honestly, it didn’t really cross my mind at that point that I could make money, but I was like, screw this. I’m just going to write the book. I’m going to write the book that I needed.
There was also not a travel guide series for women. So I was like, “There’s a lot of lessons that I would love to tell about me just being in the jungles of Thailand by myself for three months”. I was like, I’m going to do this.
Alexa West
My first travel guide was actually a Bangkok travel guide just to test the waters.
[00:10:45] I woke up at 2am to publish it, like US time or whatever I pressed publish. And then I went back to bed and I told no one, I told no one. And it did well. It sold. Like I love the, the backend algorithms of Amazon and I nerded out on that. So it did well. I was like, Oh, and I started getting like reviews and like, dare I say, like fans.
So then I was like, okay, let’s do a Thailand one. And then I, the Thailand one, I really, I really like went in on it. So, yeah, and then I just kept expanding Cambodia, Vietnam, South Korea. I just was able to create a series because I had lived in all these places. All the books we have are Asia and Mexico because Emmy is Mexican.
So we have expanded into Mexico. We’re writing about places that you really know, like really, really know. With writing, It’s your heart, you’re delivering. You really put your heart in it and deliver it. When you read something, it syncs with your soul, like it intertwines with you. So when people read my book, they read it not from, I mean, it is, even the Solo Girls Travel Guide is like first person.
Like I write it as me, but when they read it, they’re able to imagine themselves. So it’s not just that they’re watching me do something. It is, they’re holding a book, they’re reading it, and they’re thinking about how it’s going to be for them too. For me, the travel, I think was my destiny.
Helping Women Thrive Abroad
[00:12:14] Beth: Over the years, Alexa has published nearly a dozen versions of the Solo Girls Travel Guide, focusing on different places around the world. And in September 2023, Alexa published her first book with a traditional publisher. That book is called The One Way Ticket Plan: Find and Fund Your Purpose while Traveling the World. Published with New World Library.
[00:12:36] Alexa: I wrote it with younger women in mind. I wrote it with like college me in mind because the way I grew up with like a father not around and a mother distracted by substance, it really was not an equation for me to succeed. It wasn’t.
I always feel like travel is rescue.
Alexa West
It was my opportunity to decide what I wanted for my life. Chapter 2 is called ‘Travel Paths’. It’s all the ways that I traveled coming from a family that, I mean, a household that didn’t have a lot of money. We struggled. So the way that I wanted this book to show up in the world for people and for women is like showing that you don’t have to accept the shitty cards you were dealt. And instead, here are all the programs that supported me becoming myself, like the Peace Corps paid for my travels, teaching abroad. Paid for my travels. House sitting was where I was able to start my company. So there are ways to go out in the world, figure out who you are, create a new life for yourself, rescue yourself from an environment that isn’t healthy for you.
And you don’t have to have a bunch of money in the bank. You can do good in the world and do good for yourself. And there are programs that will support you doing that. I want to represent the girls that don’t think they have the opportunity, and I want to help them figure it out.
[00:15:55] Beth: For Alexa, travel wasn’t just an escape. It was a lifeline. The one-way ticket plan is Alexa’s way of offering a roadmap to others. Especially women who feel trapped by their circumstances, but long for something different. She wanted to show that you don’t need to have it all figured out or come from a picture-perfect background to make big, bold moves.
Instead, through practical advice and personal stories, Alexa shares how travel and the opportunities that come with it can be a powerful tool for transformation. Her goal with this book was to give others the courage to take that leap, even when the odds seem stacked against them.
[00:16:38] Alexa: My readers, they’ll buy a book for Bali and then they’ll send me messages cause I’ve answered every question for Bali, but then they would send me messages being like, okay, but I’m scared to go. I’m nervous to go. Or they would be like, what if I don’t make any friends? Or they’d be like, I’m in Bali, I love it, I want to stay. How do I make that happen? And then I also had a lot of questions about safety and fear. And, you know, am I going to get kidnapped? I took all of the questions from my readers and I made it into a book.
How Alexa Turned Her Life Experiences into a Self-Help Memoir
When I wrote this book and searched for my literary agent, I actually proposed a memoir. And she was like, listen, let’s take this memoir, flip it inside out and make it a self-help memoir. So it’s like all of my lessons that I’ve learned, it’s very much how I write my guidebooks too. My guidebooks are very personal. And then I extract the lessons from it.
[00:17:29] Beth: From writing guidebooks to creating the One Way Ticket Plan, carving out a space for yourself requires more than just determination. It takes a deep commitment to believing in your own vision. Even when it feels like the world around you doesn’t. There’s no roadmap for creating a life for a career like this. Sometimes to really build something meaningful, you just need to trust yourself and lean into the discomfort.
[00:17:55] Alexa: I have a big lesson. It’s also a very simple lesson, but for me, again, coming from like a background where it didn’t have money to really like survive almost, is that I realized that living abroad was the sole reason I was able to focus so much time building up my career.
So if there is someone listening to this that’s like, I have all these dreams, going and living in a place that you can afford, cost of living in Vietnam, I was able to afford an apartment. I was able to like, feed myself. And I was able to focus on my work and like, I lived abroad for 10, 11 years or something like that.
[00:18:36] I know that’s not the answer for everyone, but for some people that want to go live this life, go do it. I know that I wouldn’t have started my company if I was living in the States, working a 9 to 5, hustling to put a roof over my head. Instead, I was able to like, house sit, or like, afford my apartment, that I was making money while freelancing, I could afford my apartment, and then I could focus on other things that I wanted to do, like build a book series.
So for me it was that moving abroad was how I was able to do this. There is the argument, Americans going and, you know, gentrifying or pillaging, done correctly, like you can do this with respect, contribute to like local economies and stuff. But what I found is because I’ve lived my entire adult life abroad, moving back home, it’s not that the world is so cheap, but it’s that America, it’s very expensive.
It’s really what it is. There is like this theme of painting women as like, you got to be fearless to do something.
[00:19:39] Beth: But being fearless has nothing to do with being courageous.
[00:19:44] Alexa: And I’m actually afraid of everything. Mostly transportation. I’m afraid of cars. I’m afraid of boats. Like, I’m afraid I’m going to die all the time when I travel.
And I don’t, and I’m not, and I’m here. What I say is, I choose my locations and destinations based off of safety. You know, it would be one thing if we’re picking up a dart, throwing it on a map, and asking you to just go there. You might run into some unsafe things. There are unsafe places in the world, and in our own country, there are unsafe things.
You do need to navigate the world with safety in mind, for example, living here in Seattle, Seattle is more dangerous than like Seoul, South Korea. How about this in the One Way Ticket Plan in Seoul, I would go out at midnight, grab a bite to eat, have a beer like on a curb and like watch like street performers until like 3am and be completely safe and walk home completely fine.
As long as I’m using my street smarts. I would never do that in Seattle. So it is literally that you can pick yourself up and drop yourself somewhere in the world that’s actually safer than maybe where you live. It is street smarts mixed with doing this intelligently, like doing this with thought to safety.
If you travel and you stay in like a guest house, the people that are there, like the people that own the guest house, their number one job and goal is to keep you safe and comfortable. We paint adventures with like a scary brush, but in reality, it’s not that scary.
[00:21:13] Beth: If the world of travel safety is interesting to you, you have got to check out Alexa’s new true crime podcast. It’s called True Crime Travelers, and in it, Alexa and her cohost, Amelia, investigate cases of missing or murdered travelers abroad, while also teaching you the reality of how to travel the world safely. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.
Lessons Learned from Alexa West’s Story
[00:21:41] Beth: A huge thank you to Alexa West for sharing her powerful story with us today. As we wrap up, let’s take a moment to reflect on three key takeaways from our conversation.
1. Embrace change as an opportunity
Alexa’s story began with heartbreak, but instead of seeing it as an end, she viewed it as the beginning of a new chapter. Sometimes life’s biggest setbacks can open the door to transformative experiences.
2. You don’t need to follow a traditional path
Whether it’s joining the Peace Corps, moving abroad, or creating your own career through writing and travel, Alexa shows us that the conventional route isn’t the only way to succeed. Often, the most fulfilling journeys are the ones that break the mold.
3. Independence is built from within
Despite a challenging upbringing and a fractured family dynamic, Alexa carved out a life of adventure and independence. Her story is a reminder that resilience comes from within and that we all have the power to create the life we want, regardless of where we start.
Learn More About Alexa West
If you want to learn more about Alexa or buy her books and travel guides, Or even learn more about her new podcast and sign up for her course, publish your damn book. You can find all the information and more on her website, Alexa-west.com or on Instagram @sologirlstravelguide. Be sure to check out our show notes where we have all of her links.
Our Community WanderStory
[00:23:15] Beth: And now for my favorite part, our Community Wander Stories. Each episode, I’m sharing a story from you, one of our listeners. This one comes from Kirsten Maxwell of KidsAreATrip and GroupsAreATrip.com. She tells a story about how a Grand Canyon road trip with her family turned into a middle-of-traffic snowball fight.
[00:23:40] Kirsten: Hi, this is Kirsten Maxwell with KidsAreATrip and GroupsAreATrip.com. Um, one of the things that I would love to share is just how, uh, my family travel has progressed from the years of doing this for the last 10 years. And now my kids are older. I’m 22, 20 and 17. So sharing tips about how travel changed with them.
In the beginning, you’re so worried that everything’s going to go okay to getting to teenage years. You have to make sure you appeal to everything they want. And then when we try to make those trips happen and be as perfect as we want them to be, sometimes the littlest thing can set them off a couple of years ago, we’re doing a road trip from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon to up to Zion and then back to Vegas and along the way between Vegas and Flagstaff, Arizona, we got stuck and nobody knew why we were stuck.
It was just dead stop traffic and there’s no alternate routes. You are stuck on the road traffic. As far as I can see in both directions, probably about an hour after we stopped, snow starts falling down. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Arizona. I grew up there, but they’re not very good with snow. So you knew it was going to be a problem when the snow started falling and people have groceries or suitcases, whatever. Kids start getting out of cars. They’re having snowball fights. Our family’s having a snowball fight. Everything’s fun. And the time just keeps going on, keeps going on. There’s nothing on the news, nothing on Twitter about it. Can’t find anything. And we ended up being stuck there from probably about five in the evening or maybe earlier till one in the morning.
When a cop knocked on our window, cause we’re all asleep, told us the road was cleared to go. We ended up spending the night at the local gas station. And then the next day continued on our trip to the Grand Canyon.
[00:25:26] Beth: Don’t forget, if you want to share an interesting story that changed the way you saw the world, submit your Community WanderStory at 85percentpodcast.com. That’s 85 percent, all spelled out, podcast. com. Every week we’ll pick one to share with the group!
Our Next Episode features Vanessa Fondeur
On the next episode of 85 Percent. I’m speaking with Vanessa Fondeur, who founded the award-winning global community, Latino World Travelers with the mission of empowering her Latin community to explore the world and diversify the face of travel.
[00:26:01] Vanessa: I was already traveling and I felt like I didn’t have a community to share my travel stories with whenever I wanted to share it with my friends, they didn’t want to hear it, so I wanted to find other people that were feeding that desire, that wanderlust desire to travel.
And I started joining other groups. But in those groups, I didn’t really feel like I fit in because I didn’t speak English that well, and I wanted to be able to speak Spanish or Spanglish or, you know, and I just wanted to connect with other people of my culture and not feel so alone in this journey.
[00:27:25] Beth: Thank you so much for listening to 85 Percent. Make sure if you want to follow along this journey, you hit that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts so you can keep up with new episodes every week as they drop. Of course, we want you to follow along online as well. Or you can follow me on Instagram at @MaximumBeth. Catch you next time. Safe travels, everyone.
About the 85 Percent Podcast
Women make 85 percent of travel decisions. So why are we not 85% of travel marketing?
85 Percent explores what it means to be a woman in travel through interviews with leading women in the travel, tourism and hospitality industries.
From CEOs, to travel influencers and writers, to women who work in cleaning and maintenance, we’re cutting into the underbelly of an industry that is predominantly made of women, but still fails to include them, and is hosted by Beth Santos, founder of leading women’s travel network, Wanderful.
About the Host, Beth Santos
Beth Santos is a passionate entrepreneur and community builder out to disrupt travel for women worldwide. She is founder and CEO of Wanderful, an international collective of travelers and travel content creators on a mission to make travel better for all women. She is the creator of the WITS Travel Creator Summit, a leading event for women and gender diverse travel creators, the annual Bessie Awards to honor women of impact in travel, and the first major outdoor travel festival by and for women, Wanderfest.
Beth has been named one of 17 changemakers shaping the future of the travel industry by Business Insider, one of 12 women to follow by Conde Nast Traveller, and one of 20 influential women in the travel industry by Travel Pulse. In 2022, she was named Godmother of the Azamara Onward cruise ship.
She is the author of WANDER WOMAN: How to Reclaim Your Space, Find Your Voice, and Travel the World, Solo and works to amplify underrepresented voices in travel while challenging each of us to do better in her work as a keynote speaker, an industry consultant, and a startup and small business coach. At home she is a co-owner of Ula Cafe, an inspired cafe and community hub in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, where she lives with her husband and children.
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