When I was about 21, I decided an adventure abroad would be a good idea. I had my heart set on Ireland. I tried to coordinate with a friend but it wasn’t working out, so I decided to just go solo. A little backstory here — a large portion of my bookshelf in high school was Rick Steves’ Europe through the Back Door, aka the best travel books ever written. Seriously, my trip to Singapore and Malaysia years later would have been a disaster if I hadn’t stored away so many random travel tidbits in...