I did that a few times with a 10 inches Samsung tablet and a Bluetooth keyboard, using the DeX UI. It had Linux on DeX with some Ubuntu version. 16.04?

I can't think about a good way to do it with a phone screen, unless you know that you can find a TV set to connect to. But hotel rooms usually place their TV sets very inconveniently and if you stay at a friend's home, their TV sets will be not so well placed too to be used as a monitor. So maybe a costly large foldable as your next phone?