Backpacker towns are social by design: hostels with common rooms, free walking tours, cooking classes that seat eight strangers at one table, shared minivans and night-market benches. If you are travelling alone and want company, go where the machinery is. Our destination pages carry an editorial social score (out of five); the towns below score four or five and have the infrastructure to match.
Southeast Asia
Pai and Chiang Mai are where groups form for the Laos slow boat and the northern loop. Hanoi's Old Quarter hostels organise Ha Long cruises and the Ha Giang loop, the most sociable four days in Asia. Siem Reap fills with people doing the same three temple days. Bali's Canggu and Ubud hostels and surf camps are permanently social. Bangkok's Khao San area still works for a first night, though the quieter hostels on Phra Athit are better for sleep.
Latin America
Antigua Guatemala is the Central American hub: Spanish schools, volcano climbs and shuttles everywhere. Medellín's Poblado and Laureles have the continent's biggest hostel and nomad scene; Cartagena's Getsemaní the most sociable plaza. Cusco assembles trekking groups nightly; Buenos Aires has tango classes, asados and some of the best hostels on the continent.
Europe
Budapest and Prague are the party-hostel capitals, with bath days and walking tours for the daylight hours. Lisbon and Barcelona have Europe's highest-rated hostels and surf-school socials. Split in June or September is the base for island-hopping groups and sailing weeks. Tbilisi's Fabrika and the Caucasus trekking crowd make Georgia the Eastern surprise.
Elsewhere
Kathmandu's Thamel is the world's trekking assembly point; Cape Town's Gardens and Observatory hostels mix backpackers with the November-to-March nomad crowd; Zanzibar's Paje and Nungwi beaches run on kite-school friendships.
How to use it
Book a hostel with a kitchen and a bar rather than one with a pool and no common room. Say yes to the first walking tour, the first group dinner and the first shared taxi; the people you meet in the first 48 hours become the route for the next two weeks. Private rooms in social hostels give you the people without the dorm. And when you have had enough, the quiet towns are a bus away.
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