"There's not many people that can relate to being stuck on an island without your friends or your family, in a country that you didn't deliberately end up in," Stephens tells CNN Travel.
"Or being locked out of the country that you live in, and then not being able to get back. And being scared to go back to your home country because of a weird virus that's going around. So it's pretty isolating."
She also points out that while Tonga has so far avoided any coronavirus cases, those who live here have still been hugely impacted by the virus.
"We haven't had Covid here, but you still have the feel of it around," she explains. "It's not like we're unaffected by everything."
Like many people around the world, Stephens was initially unfazed when she first heard about coronavirus back in early 2020.
But things took a turn when she left China to visit South Korea and confirmed cases began to increase in the country while she was away.
As the situation became more serious and borders closures were implemented, Stephens chose to continue traveling in order to avoid having to quarantine when she returned to China.
But she realized something was amiss almost immediately after flying into Tonga from Fiji, when her taxi driver told her that the South Pacific country had just reported its first Covid-19 cases.
"I just thought it was a miscommunication," she says. "But I got to the hostel and they were like, "we don't want to take you, you've just come from Fiji.' So, it was pretty instant."
Stephens soon discovered that Tonga would be going into lockdown, and she would not be able to leave for a while.
"It took about a week before flights stopped coming in completely," she says. "We had a three-week lockdown, which was really, really intense. You could only leave your home once a week to go and get groceries and you had your car registration and name taken down.
"Everything in the entire country was closed. Shops, restaurants, everything apart from the odd one or two shops."