dope post. read through everything.
questions: was it scary at any point because you were alone? which country had the most challenging language barrier?
South east asia was incredibly easy, there is no expectation for foreigners to learn the languages because tourism is one of their biggest industries. That said, even if you learn just a tiny bit e.g ordering food in Thai they are so appreciative that you're at least giving it a go that they'll be incredibly patient and help you with punctuation and the service you will receive will be 10x better (this obviously only really holds true for the tourist routes, if you get off those I imagine it's quite a bit different).
I remember one time ordering a noodle soup in Thai and the lady taking my order was so happy that she started running around the room yelling in Thai and then getting the chef (her husband) out from the back to come and talk to me. Even though I could say a few sentences they were super happy and invited me to stay at their house and cook all my meals for me for free as well.
I found when I first arrived in Spain that it was probably the most difficult, even though most people spoke English it was the first time I felt like I should make a massive effort to learn the language as I felt like an outsider and people would be totally different to the tourists speaking in Spanish than those speaking in English.
Brazil was probably the most frustrating because by that time my Spanish was actually pretty good and Portuguese/Spanish are incredibly similar written down but the punctuation is completely different. In the end I was speaking some type of Spanish/Portuguese hybrid with a bit of English thrown in and I was able to make myself understood - but I couldn't hold a conversation. That was incredibly frustrating because Brazilians are over the top nice and always want to chat (especially girls with me having almost blonde hair).
was it scary at any point because you were alone?
Even though you're travelling alone, you're never really alone unless you chose to be so (apart from moving inbetween different cities/countries and even then you can find somebody going the same route).
The scariest point for me as arriving at Rio at about 3AM in the morning. Me and a friend had booked an apartment but we didn't really pay attention to the area it was in because the inside of the place looked incredible and it had a great view.
Turns out we had booked a place in Santa Teresa (not that bad, it's right next to Lapa which is kind of dodgy but also the non-beach party area). Unfortunately it was also at the top of a favela.
Thankfully when we arrived we met a German guy who wanted to share a taxi (queue "Taken" flashbacks) with us, when he told us where we were going he just started laughing and saying how bad of an area that was. We ended up getting the taxi with him but when we arrived at the apartment the chick that was supposed to be there with the keys wasn't. Thankfully the German guy could ask the taxi driver if we could borrow his phone to call the girl with the keys, then it turns out she doesn't speak English so the German guy translates for us and we finally work out she is out dancing but would be there in about 15 minutes.
He got the taxi driver to stay with us (and stayed himself) and we were just constantly being harassed by drunk people laughing at us and I couldn't have felt more unsafe (except if we weren't in the taxi). We eventually got the keys and had a great time in carnivale. Everybody in the Favela was super nice, we got invited to BBQ's, people would throw us down beers when we were off walking to a blockade and even give us lifts up and down the hill.
Protip: If you want to get ladies, don't learn how to say creepy shit like "You're so beautiful" in the other language. Literally every guy does this and it rarely works. Instead either learn something mundane "What's favorite place in <country you are in>" or something weird that there is no point in you knowing how to say, for example in dutch I can say "You are a dumb donkey, let's have another drink".
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