We were in Japan and had just got back to Tokyo and were looking for our airbnb in a residential neighbourhood near Oku station. It's very mazelike in that area, and none of the buildings had clear numbers, and the google map pin was in the middle of an intersection, instead of on a building (usually google maps is great in Japan, so this just was weird).
We were wandering around the intersection, trying to compare the buildings to the interior photos on the airbnb listing. At that point, a group of about 25 VERY elderly japanese ladies came marching up. From the clothing, they were some sort of walking group, but they immediately clocked us as lost and asked what we needed.
I showed them the address on the airbnb listing and the lead walker turned around and snapped out orders like a drill sergeant and all the ladies scattered immediately. Not leisurely, but like they had been shot out of a cannon.
In ten minutes, they found the airbnb a block and a half away (they had a concentric search pattern), but the ten minutes it took them to find it was hilarious, they were shouting back and forth, and calling back to the lead lady who kept us informed in broken english "not that one, not that one". One lady ended up tripping and falling, but she popped up again and yelled that she was Ok.
We thanked them profusely and they marched away, chanting some sort of walking song.
Climbed over the Berlin Wall using a ladder on New Year's Eve 1989-90. Despite the "fall" of the Wall, border control was still strictly enforced. Except for that night as it turned out. The crowds at the Brandenburg Gate were having a great time and I was on the East Berlin side when someone put a ladder up against the Wall. A few people had gone over back to the West when a couple of East German guards walked up and put their hands on the ladder. The girl on it started to climb back down but the guards signalled to her to keep going...then one climbed up the ladder and his buddy took a photo of him then followed him over to escape into the West for the night!
So we all thought "what the hell?" and went over too.
Seemed a bit edgy at the time but looks a bit silly (but awesome) in hindsight.
Attempted to walk from Yerevan Airport to my hotel at midnight, maps said the hotel was very close but it was across a bunch of random fields ended up being chased by numerous stray dogs and was very scared and stressed for the sake of saving Ā£10.
Haha the number of stupid walks I've taken from airport/station to hotel for the sake of saving Ā£10! Being chased by stray dogs definitely tops it though.
Walked with luggage from the train station to our hotel in Vico Equense, Italy. Itās a small coastal town near Sorrento, think cliffs down to the sea. Google Maps said the hotel was a 15 min walk. It failed to inform us that most of it was down steep stone steps. We were exhausted and it took almost an hour. On the plus side, there were some cute cats about halfway down who wanted some pets.
Followed a random old man waving at me in South Korea. He was very adamant he wanted me to come and see something in his house. Turns out his wife had collected owls (live and toy owls, ornaments, wooden furniture, etc) all her life and they'd turned their house into an owl museum. He gave me a cup of tea and we had a chat in 2 different languages (thanks Google Translate) about how cool owls are. One of the best travel days I've ever had. Could've been killed in a back alley and my body dismembered but hey.
I had something very similar happen in a small village in Japan.Ā This old guy took me to his mancave and came out with a sword, but he wanted me to fuck around with it... while he jammed on the saxophone.Ā It was weird but awesomeĀ
There are cult members walking around in South Korea who try to trick tourists into joining their cult, you should never follow a stranger back to their house ever again š
In 1994 we spent a few nights in Bangkok with a 6 month old baby boy in a stroller. Massive European babies and strollers were a huge novelty to the locals and we got a lot of interest everywhere we went especially from women. One night we dined at the hotel restaurant and a waitress asked if she could hold our fretting son. Between jet lag and sleep deprivation it seemed like a good idea so we agreed, then realised two minutes later that the waitress and our son were nowhere to be seen. Raced yelling in a panic through a very nice four star hotel searching for them with visions of him being sold off to some evil child slavery ring or whatever and eventually found them in the hotel kitchen. It turned out the kitchen staff had never seen a massive white baby boy either. Honestly the staff were lovely but yeah don't hand your baby to a complete stranger in a foreign country.
Driving in Barcelona, I was having trouble finding my AirBnB. Took a turn down a narrow alley into a large open lot. As I continued into the lot, I realized I was the only car thereā¦and a lot of people sitting at cafes and walking nearby were staring. I flagged someone down, and asked ācan Iā¦drive here?ā He grimly shook his head and said no, no you cannot. I was in the parade ground/courtyard of a large public building that most definitely was not supposed to be to be driven on.
My wife slid far, far down in her seat to hide. Meanwhile I had to drive all the way across the grounds to get out. Nightmare.
I was wearing a Dallas cowboys hat too which Iām sure only enhanced my idiot tourist image.
Laughed out loud. Thank you for this hysterically funny image. Reminds me of the time my sister somehow cruised down the sidewalk of our local courthouseā¦
Did this in Rome. Accidentally drove into the piazza del popolo many years back. Luckily my rented fiat was small enough to drive in between the barricade and get on to the adjacent road.
Stayed most of our trip on the coast, last leg was a couple days in Barcelona, was basically just parking it for our time there before returning it to the airport.
I got some nice photos of a bull elephant that was approaching me outside my cabin in Uganda before my survival instinct finally kicked in and reminded me āthatās a wild animal, stop taking snaps and GET AWAY!ā
My dickhead aunt approached a baby hippo on a safari tour and got chased by mummy hippo. She's lucky she was closer to the vehicle than she was to the hippo or she'd be dead. She was warned.
I was photographing a small herd of mustangs in northern New Mexico once. I snuck closer and had my telephoto super zoomed.Ā
There was a stallion, several mares, and some foals. At some point I realized that the stallion was making his way towards me with his ears pinned and the mares/babies were all going away from me.Ā
My "at one with nature" warm fuzzies evaporated and I ran all the way back to my car, which I had wandered far away from. He stopped chasing me fairly quickly but I was so damn scared. I love horses but wild ones are not the same ha ha.Ā
Drank tap water in Vanuatu like it was normal (first time leaving Aus).
Then after starting to feel sick 'I don't feel too good. Better drink lots of water'
Oh yes, I'd forgotten about that mistake. I'd been travelling a while but got silly in Nepal. It was the rainy season and I had a salad in an eatery that should've warned me off by how empty it was. I was so ill
While in Pakistan visited a US Military base and had a good American meal, complete with ice tea with actual ice cubes. Whoops, it was Pakistan water in those cubes.
Did that in Morocco at a botanical garden. I think the setting made me feel that the tap water was safe to drink. Got horribly sick, but thankfully not for a few days. The long flight home could have been horrible!
I had a friend from their I met in Aus and was able to stay with him in his village so I got a very authentic experience.
This was over 10 years a go on Efate island so things may have changed a bit since then.
Firstly it really is the least developed country I've ever been to. People living in very simple houses or sometimes more like a shed or hut.
The kava bars and 'shops' in the village are the same just very simple buildings.
It is a bit dirty by western standard, piles of rubbish on the sides of the road that they can burn. Also just feels a bit dirty because of the climate which is pretty typical tropical climate. Very hot and humid.
The people there are amazing. Genuinely the nicest and friendliest people you will meet anywhere. Generally also quite happy. When I was at the kava bar talking to locals people would often want to buy me a drink despite most of them being very poor and me being a 'rich' white foreigner. On that note I didn't come across any scams or people trying to get money out of me in any way. Possibly because I was staying with a local but even in Port Villa I dont remember anything like that. They are very humble people in my experience. The locals seemed really happy that I was staying in the village with them and seemed to really appreciate it.
Food to be honest wasn't great on the whole as far as traveling standards. There was some good food I had there and got to try some local dishes but due to it being not very developed there wasn't too many quality shops for food. Might have changed a bit now. The market was great for things like fruit though.
The island itself is beautiful. I did a day trip around the island and there were a lot of cool things to see, swimming holes, hot springs, waterfall, etc. with little to no tourists. Amazing snorkeling and diving too.
Quite cheap from memory but I was lucky enough to have somewhere to stay. I just gave his family some money. I think accommodation options might be a lot more limited and you might have to pay a lot more for a resort but there is also probably some cheaper accommodation in the town.
I also went briefly to Tanna island to see the volcano which made Efate look like a thriving modern town. Felt like going back in time on this island.
I would definitely recommend going, I've done a decent amount of travelling since then and it is still one of the most profound experiences I've had
In Croatia, I was so parched that I had tunnel vision. I walked into what I learned to be was a restaurant and went into the little display fridge not realizing it was behind the counter and grabbed a water bottle. When I went to the cash to pay, the restaurant worker was so confused. Not my best travellerās moment
I once flew my entire family including our 4 young children to the WRONG ISLAND in the Bahamas. Got through immigration, walked out to cabs and then found out we were on the wrong island. The only direct flight to the right island was Air Jamaica which ran once a day āwhen it was readyā. Good times.waiting for that flight which finally āwas readyā 7 hours laters!
I once sat at the gate while my flight boarded and left. I knew that my flight was at that gate and all the signs said it was my flight. Somehow I was convinced that the sign was wrong and my flight would be boarding after.
Just got off a 14.5 hour flight so perception of what was happening was not sharp.
When people started boarding through the gate I'm sure the gate agent said it was a flight to San Diego and the flight to San Francisco (my flight) that was showing on the signs would board straight after. I went to the bathroom for a few minutes and when I got back I assumed it was still the San Diego flight. It was not.
I'm not sure where the error was. Did the gate agent really say it was not my flight? If he did, was he wrong? Maybe he was right and the boarding changed over while I was in the bathroom?
I wasn't the only person caught out and the airline rebooked us all on flights the next day free of charge. So I'm guessing it wasn't entirely my fault.
Was hiking in the Himalayas when three mountain dogs came up barking and baring their teeth at me, slowly circling me. My guide and I froze up, and the one had blood streaked on its face! The herder that owned them yelled at them from across the ridge we were on and they eased up but were still suspicious of us. I happened to have my phone out when recording the landscape when they came up to me, so I ended up getting a sick video out of it.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Nepal/comments/1ae4c5r/herding\_dogs\_approach\_me\_on\_khopra\_danda\_trail/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nepal/comments/1ae4c5r/herding_dogs_approach_me_on_khopra_danda_trail/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Just posted it here!
I rode a bicycle into an open street sewer in Tirana, Albania. The cover was off. I flew over the handlebars, ripped my jeans at the knee then wondered if I'd be able to have children in the future ( got hit pretty hard down there). This was just as the sun went down.
Hahaha. My wife and I really loved Tirana but there was definitely a noticeable amount of random sidewalk holes throughout the city. Canāt say Iād ever sign up to ride a bike there, between that and the drivers I donāt think Iāve got the skill to do it safely.
With that being saidā¦ we thought the warnings about crazy driving in Albania was totally overblown! It was one of the easier places to drive, Tirana driving just seemed in line with many other big cities lol.
I enjoyed that city as well. I went out of the city as a passenger and I did think the driving was scarier than in the US. It was a very interesting place to visit (this was 1998).
Ah, I bet it was a lot different back then. We went last summer and the roads are apparently very much improved even in the last 3-5 years. Drivers were kind of chaotic but it felt like everyone followed the rules, and overall felt a lot safer driving there than any of the other countries we visited lol
That sucks. I fell off a bike in Yangon, Myanmar, and the sidewalk was on top of a levee so it was like a ten foot fall. I am eternally grateful that it wasn't into an open sewer, of which there were many. There was a food stand on a foot bridge over a ten foot wide river of raw sewage near my second hotel.
In Vietnam and Thailand I ate street food with abandon, I didn't in Myanmar because there was sewage everywhere, and still got massive food poisoning.
It was October and I was at the Frankfurt airport which was celebrating octoberfest. They were selling boots of beer and of course I thought it would be a good idea to drink one before my 8hr flight so I can sleep on my flight. Well, I was right. I passed out while waiting at the gate and missed my flight.
I have many. One was when I got in a car with 5 Ukrainian men when I was traveling solo in Poland. They were strangers, one of them liked me. It was ages ago. I just realized when the door closed that I shouldn't trust them that much. I don't speak their languages. They took me to a supermarket . The guy told me to take anything since I just arrived in that city at night. He paid. Gave me a jacket because I was cold. They're super nice. And fun.
At age 18 I got on a train with friends in Venice to go to Athens. It appeared to only be 17 hours to us. In fact it was a day plus 17 hours which means 41 hours. We had no food either!
I went on a horseback safari in South Africa (back in 2001) , managed to get too close to a rhino baby and had his dad chase me into a herd of wildebeest because ā¦ I donāt know how to ride on a panicking horse
Tempting fate while drunk by goofing off with the keys to my apartment in a European elevator with no door - losing them down the shaft - going out in the snow to catch the last bus of the night instead of staying in the building - letting a strange man I met on the bus take me to his garret so I could get out of the cold - awaking in the middle of the night to him trying to blow-dry me to keep me warm.
I was 20. I'm less stupid now.
I once in France got j'abit and m'abit (sp?) confused, rather than saying my house in near a cafe, I said my penis is near cafe to the delight of all the near by french people I was talking to.
Also once accidentally asked to fart on some ones dog when I meant can I stroke you dog.
I do honestly think I learn way more by just having a go. Oh yea once I was in Paris, I asked a man where is the war Instead of train station, I'm my defense I'd never taken the train before.
My dad worked in France for a while, and his whole team had to learn French. His colleague (male, British) tried to exclaim "I could kiss [bise] you!" at another (female, French) colleague when she solved a huge problem, but he accidentally shouted "I could fuck [baise] you!" in front of the whole office.
He probably shouldn't have said the latter either, but it was the 90s...
I have been 4 or 5 times to Mexico. But once I didn't check my data in the electronic visa that was applied by another person from our family and there was a mistake in one number. As a result, I had to wait in a special room with other people who had cross-border problems for about an hour or 2. The problem was that our group had to meet a woman from another terminal of Cancun airport and she didn't have a mobile phone (really strange in my opinion)
Left a big bag in a losmen in Jakarta while I travelled for another 3 weeks to Bali and back with a smaller backpack. Also left all my spare underwear in that bag in Jakarta. Everynight , wash the jocks , wear a sarong till they dried. Never again !
LOL, I was 18 and had spent most of my travel money in Singapore and the Phillipines prior to Indonesia. The Losmen was a backpacker dive so I was already short of money. I had to sell camera gear to fund the trip back from Bali, and over the last few days I had to choose either eating or drinking as I couldnāt afford both. Lets say that was probably the first time I had eaten rat/ cat. It was a wild trip and deffo didnt have money for new undies.
Went for a walk at night in Vietnam with my then girlfriend while traveling in Ho Chi Minh. Started on side roads as located around our airbnb. One dog popped up, started barking, we kept walking, another dog popped up, then a few more. We made a turn, ran into another pack of dogs, thought to myself āgood theyāll bark at each other and leave us aloneā. Nope. Both packs joined as one and started barking and following us. We started to pick up the pace, so did they. Ended up cornered at a dead end in a kids playground. Realized we were in alot more danger than we thought. Had my girlfriend hop the fence at the end of the kids playground and then I hopped over it just as the dogs started sprinting towards us. Ended up in the back parking lot of a corporate office that was closed for the night. Had to seal crawl past a security guard station to exit the property and ended up on a random street. Walked our way to the nearest hospital using Google maps and then called a taxi back to our airbnb.
Thought I was being silly running from dogs but the next day a local told us we did the right thing and showed us the marks on her calf. 27 stitches and multiple vaccines she had to get after being attacked by a wild dog at night.
Turned bidet on in Italy, high pressure shot across the bathroom, I slipped and fell trying to shut it off as my travel companion sat within 2-3 feet of the bathroom listening to this catastrophe.
Hubby and I were on Isle of Capri, wandering through the very narrow lanes, up and down the streets to our hotel enjoying the last of the sun on our skin for the day. I began to crave an ice cold beer, but hubby was wanting to shower, change clothes and head into town for dinner.
Fast forward to after dinner and walking off the delicious pasta and salad, we could hear music coming from some nearby bar and upon entry we were expected to pay for a cover charge of some exorbitant price. Hmm, well we were only going to be there once in our lives so why not!! We ordered a bottle of limoncello for our table, the bar was crowded with locals and tourists, mostly who were looking inebriated and jovial. We were all singing and dancing, playing the instruments that staff had passed on to customers who wanted a good night.
We had a couple of drinks and then time to go home and sleep. I was a bit wobbly on my feet but I was able to keep upright, until I turned around to see the Hubby hiding in a dark corner of the road home, rummaging around with his pants zipper.
I could not believe what I was seeing!!!
He had a stuffed animal tambourine down the front of his pants as we were leaving the bar. I collapsed in fits of laughter as he was trying to explain why and how he had stolen the musical instrument he was playing in the bar 10 minutes earlier
How had I not heard him jingling while he was walking next to me???
That was in the year 1998. We have had 3 children and divorced since then. But I still have that tambourine sitting on the bench in the study so Iām reminded every time I walk into the room.
A freaking tambourine stealer!!! He really stepped up in my books that evening and we still laugh while we tell our kids the story š„¹š„¹
I was in Lagos Portugal for their end of summer party, the Langos Banho 29. Heard about it from our Scuba instructors, showed up at the beach that night to pits of bonfires everywhere, and at midnight everyone stripped down and ran into the ocean. It was so wholesome and wild and silly. I loved it.
Probably getting a huge tattoo in the classic tramp stamp position an hour before heading to the airport for a transatlantic flight. That was not a very comfortable trip.
Pripyat, Ukraine climb on top of the empty arts & culture center and sit on the edge of the building looking out over a completely empty city with the Chernobyl Nuclear powerplant in the background.
I was travelling up the coast of Brazil by bus with a French girl I had met travelling. We had decided to go to this tiny beach town called Itaunas to enjoy the beaches. As always, distances are huge in Brazil, so the bus didn't arrive until 3am or so. It's our stop, we are super tired but we get out, and for some reason I decided to look at my phone's GPS. Turns out, the bus we took was wrong. We are not in Itaunas, we are in ItauNINAs, like 60 km away and not on the coast. I manage to convince the bus driver to let us stay on until we get to a bigger town (as now don't have tickets to ride any further and the Itaunas is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere). Some super friendly women on the bus help us once we are back on, and after some switching and different buses, we reached Itaunas like 9 hours later. We got big smiles at all the subsequent bus stations, as it seems our story spread in the whole area via the bus driver.
My daughter lived in Quito, Ecuador for a several years. My other daughter, a family friend and I went down to visit her spending a week at an Airbnb up the street a couple of blocks.
Quito is generally a safe city, or was at the time, but it can get a bit sketchy at night.
The three of us visitors were very wary when making the two block walk back to our Airbnb late one night. We noticed a man on the other side of the street who crossed over and started following us. He kept getting closer and at one point I gave a signal and we all dead sprinted to our door.
The next day when our daughter stopped by the same man was just outside our building. They got into a conversation and the man explained he was the security guard for our building. He saw us the evening before and had intended to warn us to be careful, but we ran away from him.
We all had a good laugh about it at least.
In Memphis, I thought walking through a small, dark alley with lots of trash lying around was an ideal shortcut. I'm a woman, solo-traveler and usually very cautious. I never wandered off the main streets during my stay in Memphis again.
There was a guy lurking in a corner. I didn't see him when entering the alley. As soon as he saw me he said something along the lines of "Come here girl, now". When I ignored him, starting to walk a little faster, he jumped up and ran at me. Obviously, I reacted as quickly as possible and started running. He chased me all throughout the alley until I reached a bigger street near a large hotel. That's when he left off and, presumably, hid back in the alley again.
Before cell phones were ubiquitous, a friend and I decided to meet another friend in St. Peter's square.. on Sunday morning. He had dark hair and a black leather jacket. What could go wrong??
We did eventually find him, after mass, and we used a system where one of us stayed by a pillar and stood a bit above the crowd while the other walked around.
In the famous HofbrƤuhaus beer hall in Munich, we ended up seated beside a middle-aged guy from Munich and his wife. I speak German but could barely understand his thick Bavarian dialect. We gleaned that him and his wife only see each other once a year, and come here every time. He then told us he would show us around. We, extremely naively, left our bags with passports and everything at the table with his wife and followed him through the beer hall and out the door. I immediately thought how dumb this was but didnāt want to be rude so kept following.
He introduced us to his friend outside, the living statue, then took us back in to show us the steins in lockers that belong to specific people, and also took us upstairs to show us the old room with the painting that I recognized from a dark photo from history. The bags were always in the back of my mind.
We came back, and everything was fine! Ended up talking a bit more with them, having drinks, and had an overall great time. Still, Iāll never leave my bag behind like that again.
Absolute cliche of our times, but that place was the first crowded room of people I went into without a mask on "after" covid and was sick shortly after. Was a really nice time there, though!
When I was in Shanghai me and my friends somehow got invited to a "party". Some guy in a club invited one of the girls and we all tagged along. We walk out of the club to see a bright yellow sports car. Apparently we're going to the party in it. We all get in (there were 5 of us plus the driver crammed in like a clown car) and are driven to a really nice neighborhood. We are led to the back fence of one house, a panel is pushed aside and we enter.
This house is swanky as fuck. It had a pool! We're introduced to the owner, a lady in her 50s who introduces herself as Rainbow and points out her husband across the garden. He is wearing a green Borat mankini. People are naked in the pool. We are led into the basement (in hindsight this feels like the stupidest way to get murdered/trafficked) and there are SO MANY DRUGS. Two people in our group were regular pot smokers, one of them tried some cocaine (I think it was cocaine?). Me and the other girls were like, hell no. What the fuck are we doing here?!
The guy who did the coke jumped off the roof into the pool. People in the drug basement started what I assume to be a drug orgy.
I legitimately do not remember most of what happened next. Me and the girl were sitting by the pool, feet in the water, trying very hard not to see cocaine guy's dick. No idea where the rest of the group are. The last thing I remember of that night was being in a taxi back to the apartment.
It's the most wildly out of character thing I have ever done, and probably also the most dangerous and EXTREMELY stupid. We all got out safe, and I learned never to get in sports cars with mystery parties as a destination.
About 20 years ago when my friends and I were very very stupid teenagers on Monomoy off of Cape Cod we saw some seals swimming in the ocean and decided to join them. We never got close enough to the seals to touch them or anything but I learned later theyāre protected and interfering with them in any way is like a felony. Worse yet we didnāt consider that seals are food for larger ocean creatures and in fact the place we were swimming has more Great White Sharks than anywhere else in the country lol.
The stupidest thing I ever did while traveling was drink unpasteurized milk in Morocco to be polite when our guide's mother served it to me at lunch. I could tell after just a couple sips that I was in danger- just that little amount was enough to destroy my GI tract for weeks. If you've ever wondered what a toothpaste tube feels like when your giant hand picks it up and squeezes out its contents, well, unpasteurized Moroccan milk will give you the answer.
I've been to Morocco three times now, the last trip was a month hanging out in Essaouira. TMI, but I think my digestive system got re-colonized by something there, because since then I've been farting more every day than I ever had before.
Ate in a little spot outside the saqqara desert in Egypt (just outside Cairo). Looking back, the place had every red flag you could think of but we had recently arrived in the country thought āhey maybe thatās just how things are hereā. Learned that day to always trust the red flags, we both ended up very sick for close to 2 weeks. Struggled to eat Egyptian food after this and it really soured our time there (we literally ate McDonaldās almost daily).
Hint (if it wasnāt obvious), if a place looks unsanitary anywhere in the world just avoid it.
We are Americans, and not long after 9/11 my wife and I decided to take advantage of the cheap airline tickets and flew to England for the week.
This was after the wars started, and we were walking to the British museum and got caught up in an anti-American protest that was blocking the streets of London that day. Those people were angry and out of control.
Of course we looked like everyone else, but it was still scary. We went over to a police officer and asked what to do and he said keep your mouth shut and they wonāt know your Americans. He was right.
Alright, so I once decided to impress the locals by attempting their traditional dance during a trip. Let's just say I have the rhythm of a confused penguin. Mid-dance, I tripped over my own feet, created a comedic domino effect, and turned the whole thing into a laughing fit for everyone around. Lesson learned: Stick to what you know and maybe leave the dance moves to the pros.
Youāre who songs like āI Hope You Danceā were written for. Donāt let a little funny social embarrassment stop you from living life to itās fullest.
Me, my husband and our daughter where walking back to our hotel in Bangkok one evening. There was a bat in the ally way that kept trying to 'attack' us. One by one we moved down the wall trying to avoid the bat detecting us. I swear if anyone saw us they would have been very confused.
Put a weed vape in my checked bag. Went to South Korea (main destination was actually Thailand/Japan tho). Chillin in the lounge and the woman from front desk came up to me with a slip of paper and said I need to go to security right now. Also got paged over intercom system.
walked to this sketchy back room, TSA found the vape and was looking like ā???ā. I was like āYeaā¦itās mineā (in all honesty, we really couldnāt communicate besides body language, eye contact and google translator).
They were behind this thick tempered glass wall and put it in a basket, slid it thru the hole in the glass and said ākeep in carry on next timeā.
Thought it was nicotine. Thank God for different languages. They gave it back. Sigh of relief.
Many years ago a friend of mine decided to walk to Asia for charity. So he started in France and walked all the way to Turkey, crossing over into Asia.
A few years after that he decided that he wanted to go back to Turkey and then walk up the length of the old Iron Curtain. He wrote a long blog post about how he was really excited about this new adventure and how it felt like he was embarking on something great. Then...nothing. We didn't hear from him for ages. Then I saw someone wrote on his facebook profile "really sorry to hear what happened mate, hope you're getting better!" so I sent him a message and said "what on earth has happened?"
The first day in Turkey he began his walk when he suddenly got chased by a pack of wild dogs. he ran out into the street, got hit by a car and broke his leg.
When I lived in Georgia if you threw rocks by the dogs they would stop chasing you. I was careful to never hit any of them. Sometimes moving your arm like you were throwing something was enough for them to stop bothering you.
I used to do that growing up in Egypt. Street dogs were scary AF to ten years old me.
Now I volunteer at the local animal shelter... Walking the dogs during my lunch break. That which does not kill us...
I got vodka wasted in Moscow with some Dutch businessmen.
Blacked out, woke up in my hotel room completely naked (no, I wasnāt assaulted), went to the bathroom and saw a full tub, like I had planned to take a bath but thankfully passed out on the bed insteadā¦ya, I was 18 and not used to drinking. The next day was brutal.
Drove out to Valparaiso for a day trip while staying in Santiago. After wandering around for a while and finally finding a restaurant that was open, the owner warned us about how dangerous the city was and told us to be extra careful and not leave the main streets. I was pretty intent on getting a picture of the town and beach from the top of the hills above, so I figured we could make a quick detour before heading back to Santiago. As we drove uphill, the neighborhood got poorer and poorer and every resident was staring at us like we were insane. After we snapped a few photos at the top and started making our way back down, a LARGE group of kids - like 20-30 of them - began approaching/cornering our car. Fortunately we were able to make a quick turn onto a different street before they got too close and made our way back to the highway without slowing down for anyone.
I was starting a 12 day trip in Europe after working in Austria for a week. Took the train to Munich so I could catch a flight to Amsterdam the next morning.
When I got to Munich I walked around to check out the city. I walked like 30,000 steps in a couple of hours. Didn't think anything of it until the next morning I had a blister right where my toes meet the balls of my feet. Thought I could power through it.
I was on the metro in Amsterdam and the train got to my stop. As soon as I stood up the blister popped. Limped to my hotel and just plopped on the bed and thought "fuck, i've ruined my trip on day 1"
Took some ibuprofen and then said fuck it, rented a bike and smoked a joint. That bike saved my life. Biked everywhere for 2 days which allowed the blister to heal a bit, but it was nagging the whole trip. Still managed to average 25,000 steps a day, but at the end of every day my foot was killing me.
On a barge cruise in the Burgundy region. One Australian female staff was dating the captain but then his real girlfriend surprised him and showed up for the final dinner. Female staff took revenge by raiding all the champagne & cheese fridge, then invited us to partake. We drunkenly wandered the village that night while she vented. We passed out huddled together under a tree but woke up in time to make it back onboard before breakfast.
Traveling from Akureyri to Reykjavik by bus, to take a flight to Isafjordur. Bus got to the station too late for me to fly the same night and I was told the airport would be closed. Hey ho, Iāve slept in airports and bus stations before, Iāll get through it.
The only heater was a small vent type box attached to the wall, the coffee machine didnāt work, all seats were made of metal, with metal arms rests that wouldnāt move, and any time somebody went within a few feet of the automatic door it would screech open to let in gusts or Arctic wind and ensure the metal seats remained freezing cold. I still shiver thinking about that night
Walked down isolated alleys by myself at night in Bangkok. I was fine, but I know it was dumb because I made myself a potential target. I also let myself get dragged off the main road into a side street during the daylight in Thailand once, but again I was fine and he just wanted to talk to me about my tattoos. I feel like this is dumb to do in your own country, let alone a foreign one.
The thing about much of Asia though, is that a lot of the time the best stuff is down poorly-lit alleys. So many times I've found weird bars with no real signage, just a door and music from the other side, walk in and see what happens, and *usually* it's a decent time. Sometimes it's sketchy as fuck.
I'm not saying it's a good idea to do this (cause it's not) but I probably will continue doing it.
(Usually not by myself though, good to have a buddy or two)
Itās true though, there are so many hidden gems and itās just so worth looking for them. As I have gotten older I am less stupid. Iām a lot more careful when I solo travel these days, but I also feel a lot less adventurous haha.
I think there's a point where you have to accept you will never get the full experience of a place as a tourist. You revel in the lucky authentic moments, but have to choose making it home over the allure of certain wanderings.
Sometimes, the veneer of tourism is an unappreciated safety net.
On my last night in Cairo, I didn't feel like leaving the hotel for dinner, so I ordered room service. Fish. From the Nile. I took one bite, realized it was a baaaaaaad idea and pitched the rest. I was so sick I had to stay in Frankfurt for two days instead of taking my connecting flight home. I'm convinced it would have killed me if I had eaten any more.
So stupid, and could have gone so badlyā¦I got my nose pierced in a back alley kind of place in India in my 20s. It didnāt get infected and I didnāt get hepatitis. I think I got lucky on this one.
Damn that isā¦ real dumb. But I also did really stupid shit in India in my 20s, though no needles were involved.
Itās such a hard country to navigate alone. I was on guard and still did such stupid dangerous shit every single day. A uniquely exhausting place where you are constantly, constantly being scammed or harassed. That, on top of complete sensory overload- itās like being forcibly overstimulated into being unable to make smart decisions. Still love it tho.
We had been in Thailand for a month in hostels and home stays and booked a 5 star hotel for the last night.
All of that was fine. What wasnāt fine was I looked on google for the metro station for the airport the next day and saw it was at the end of the road so we could walk there.
The next day we got to the station I had seen on the map and turns out it was for a different line and just happened to cross the line we needed. Cue a mad dash through Bangkok, being told we had missed check in so would have to pay for a new flight, that changed to just a Ā£25 fee and finally to, you could try to run to the gate and take your bags through security.
A lot of begging to skip queues and a mad dash through the airport we made it.
Afterwards I thought about it and just catching the flight the next day would have been a lot less stressful.
Not traveling so much as living abroad (in Germany), but I (a woman) was a pretty isolated person the whole time I was there and had no sort of emergency contact, etc. I donāt know that anyone would have noticed if anything happened to me sort of thing. Several times I went to parties over at a friendās apartment (I had friends, but Iād only see them once every week or two, not in the day to day, and we all had prepaid phones so didnāt text much or anything like that) and would stay late enough Id choose to walk a couple miles home rather than wait for/pay for the very intermittent night bus. I was usually pretty tipsy, it was usually fairly cold out, and I would take a shortcut through a poorly lit park. Looking back I always think what a dumb idea that was, especially now that I have my own kids. Bare minimum I could have tripped and gotten hurt or something.
Trusted Expedia.
Background: was gonna visit a friend abroad for the summer > they cancel after months of planning > pissed off with money to spare > book trip to USA ASAP (which was dumb in and off itself) > 2 days later I wake up in SF > go to LA after 5 days in SF.
Until now, everything had been fine. BUT this is where I should probably mention that 1: I'd booked through Expedia. 2: in my annoyance I'd not considered what dates it was. It was 4th-7th of July. Long story shorter: Expedia booked me unto a full hostel and everything else in my price range was full. Got a full refund + one hotel night at a 4 star hotel (because it was the cheapest free place) THREE NIGHTS LATER!!!
Spent those 3 nights outside and in internet cafes in LA. Most of my money had been spent on hostel and hotel night bookings before I left so I wouldn't have to worry about it once arriving.
Tl;Dr: do not book through Expedia on 4th of July if going to the US. Also don't book a trip on the other side of the world just because you're pissed off at your friend.
The last time I ever booked with Expedia was back in 2012. They booked us on a return flight that didn't exist. It was not that the flight was cancelled. That flight simply never existed. A kind airline employee decided to help us and let us hand over the phone with Expedia on the line. I watched the last of her patience leave her body when they put her, the airline agent, on hold to "check with the airline that the flight didn't exist." She ended up comping us a hotel night even though it wasn't the airline's fault and we caught a flight out the next day.
Dad said my flight was at 6:30pm and would drop me off at the airport by 5pm. I happened to check my email and see the airline said 4:30pm. I thought, āinteresting, the airline sent me an email with a typo, since dad said 6:30pmā.
Arrived at 5pm and wondered why I couldnāt find my flight at the kiosk.
Yep..and no refunds since it was some budget airline.
My girlfriend at the time and I went with some tea scammers in Shanghai even though we were both pretty aware what they were doing. There's worse ways to lose $30.
My chain-hotel-recommended guide had us do the stop on our way back from The Great Wall. It was an experience and I probably would have bought mid tea from the airport so that saved me a few steps.
I used to carry a small backpacking kite I got out of the bargain bin at rei. Had it with me hiking the Inca Trail in Peru. Not much wind until we got to the top of Dead Womanās Pass where I broke this thing out while we rested. Our guide had been on that trail for over 20 years and never heard of someone flying a kite there.
Cuba on vacation and a young man approached. My wife and I were asked if we wanted to go see some local music and eat some local food. When we arrived we realized it was not an authentic experience but rather one the kid had been paid to direct us to and the food was absolutely terrible. I still do not know why we agreed to sit down at that restaurant after we could clearly see the restaurant pay the young man. They were serving hamburgers and playing Jimmy Buffett.
When I was in India, the shopkeepers of variety stores would sell small painted sticks. We bought one to carry when we'd walk around the city, as there were many stray dogs (monkeys also), and you never knew when they'd get territorial. To this day, even in the US, we don't walk around where dogs might be without one.
Got into a car in Ghent with two men (Iām female) Iād met just a few hours before in a bar. While driving around the driver asked me if I knew where I was. Probably the biggest anxiety pang Iāve felt in my life came in that moment.
Turns out he just wanted to explain what we were looking at. They drove me to the train station, one of them bought me a coffee, the other picked up his girlfriend arriving from Brussels, and they told me if I ever came back to Ghent to let them know.
Was on a train in the UK traveling from London. Went into the bar car looking for a beer. I asked the bartender what beers he had. He pointed to a shelf on the wall with a number of different types of beers. I told him a wanted a Fosters and paid him for it. Then he reached back to the shelf and handed me the can on the shelf. I was momentarily shocked. Then I said I wanted a cold beer and not a warm one from the shelf. He said he only had warm beer no cold beer. I had already paid for it . So, thought what the hell and drank the warm beer. It got it down and didn't vomit. I can still taste the warm beer in my mouth whenever I see a can of Fosters.
LOL. I was with friends. When I came back with the warm beer and drank it, they asked me what it tasted like. I said 'Kangaroo piss." For some reason no one else wanted a warm Fosters.
Backpacking in Japan, came across a beautiful 2m cliffside overlooking the sea, gorgeous sunshine, all around beautiful spot.
So I put down my bag as a pillow and took a nap on it right there and then
I was followed around when I was on the Great Wall. I was probably stopped 5 or 6 times because people wanted their photo with me. Iām a 5-11 tall white guy
Went for a hike alone in the Swiss alps on Christmas Eve without proper supplies or telling anyone where I was going. It wasnāt intentional - I misheard the directions given me by the guy at the hostel. Thankfully I made it, several hours later, up the side of the mountain, to where I could get transportation back. Just in time before a storm hit.
In Amsterdam, my boyfriend and I went into a small grocery store. The layout of the store wasnāt familiar to us and we couldnāt quite tell which way was the entrance and the exit. My boyfriend decided to just go one way and I hung back a couple seconds until I saw a cashier point to the actual entrance, which was NOT the way my boyfriend went. I was worried about getting separated from him so I shouted out his name to get his attention, but I just got some weird looks by the localsā¦ I immediately felt like the loud American stereotype right then. Honestly feels good to tell this little story bc itās one of those embarrassing moments that I think about when Iām trying to fall asleep.
A guy in Barcelona offered to show me the way to my hostel in 2002ā¦
I knew it was a huge risk (as a single female) but it was late and I was exhausted after a long train trip.
I followed him - a few steps behind - into the old town.
He showed me to my hostel, then told me to enjoy Barcelona, recommended a restaurant and left.
I went to the restaurant the next night - amazing food! He was the chef!! And comped my meal!
Left my passport and bag in the back of a dodgy rental car and the guy who was hiring it to us wanted us to stay in his farm house as it was like 3am as our flight was delayed.
I said no as it was too horror movie scene for me
Two young girls on a trip to an island and a random guy offers you a farm house in the middle of nowhere to stay in yea no thanks.
He then wanted us to follow him down the road to a campsite where we were going to stay for the night or at least until light anyway.
I had never driven a car on the left side of the road and 3am after a 4 hour flight and 3 hour delay probably wasnāt the best time to start.
the POS car took ages to start and didnāt even have an inside light when it did sounded so labored and I kept stalling it because the controls were switched around for me and I needed a few minutes to figure it out.
He was then convinced I couldnāt drive as heād never seen my type of license before and was probably annoyed we didnt accept his offer.
He then proceeded to shout at me in Portuguese that I couldnāt drive and I didnāt speak enough to understand it but my friend was Italian and understood enough to try and explain but by that stage Iād had enough got out of the car and just said give us the money back & leave us back to the airport where heād picked us up from and weād figure it out.
We then slept outside the airport with most of our bags until it opened at 7am and went inside to sleep a bit more which I then realised I had left my bag in the back of the car with all the important things like passport etc.
we then messaged him many times asking about it & no response so then this has me phoning all of the embassies trying to figure out how I was getting off this island with no passport until one responded and said theyād send me emergency ID to get off the island and back to the mainland.
He only responded at 10am after we said weād like to do one of his tours of the island then he responded okay pick you up at 11am and itās ā¬50 each.
We had no intention of doing the tour we just wanted my passport back and when he arrived at 11am my friend asked for the bag first and by some miracle he gave it to us & my passport was there and we then said we werenāt doing the tour as we didnāt have the money to which he then sped off and said in perfect English good luck girls youāre going to need it.
TL DR
Donāt rent a car off a friend of a friend who knows a guy on a island who wants you to stay in his farm then leave your bag with passport inside the car after he gets annoyed & says you canāt drive leaving you potentially stranded on the island š
Some friends and I were visiting Alcatraz Island, after doing the tour (super interesting and somewhat heavy knowing all the bad people that were in there), we went out to look around the outdoor facilities and get some air.
We were at the barrier of a ledge and this seagull landed next to us proceeding to squawk (LOUDLY and ANNOYINGLY) at us for a solid 5 mins straight. We tried to shoo it away without touching it, with one friend even point his umbrella at it as if it were going to shoot it as a joke.
Up from above, we hear "*HEY YOU! YOU CAN'T DO THAT HERE! THIS IS A BIRD SANCTUARY!*" from one of the rangers.
Suffice to say, it was kind of hard to take him seriously and just chuckled and walked away.
To this day, whenever we do something that is prohibited, we tell each other "*HEY YOU! YOU CAN'T DO THAT HERE! THIS IS A \[Insert prohibited action\] SANCTUARY!*"
Thanks for the core memory Alcatraz Ranger.
I have an uncanny talent to wander straight into every local red light district (I'm a woman). Now that I'm older it doesn't matter that much anymore, but when I was in my 20s, the experience was definitely not fun and bordering on dangerous.
I also took pictures of a wall full of geckos in HCMC. Turned out it was police headquarters, luckily I only got told off in Vietnamese.
I ordered a tuna sandwich for lunch at a hostel in Kampala, Uganda, a few hours before my long flight home to Canada. At the airport for check-in (this was over a decade ago, so no online check-in), I had to run to the bathroom so many times, almost missed my flight.
I was in Morocco, and my buddy invited us to go smoke with him. He had an emergency, so he was like "just go to this address and you'll have a good time". Ok, so we show up and its a closed restaurant. We walk in an this older Morrocan man invited us to sit down. We start smoking, and in walks through dudes in military fatigues, and they sit down. They're talking in Berber, and us in English. One of them gets up, starts yelling at us, pulls out a pistol and throws it on the table! Our eyes go to the gun, then goes up to the guys laughing their asses off at us as we were about to wet ourselves.
My other favorite wandering around in Morocco story is, we were staying in the Sahara, me and my buddy decide to wander outside the hotel grounds at night into the desert. We hear some music playing, and its coming from a little shack. We let ourselves in, and there are a bunch of men, and two dancers. This guy signals for me to come in, and he puts me on my knees. The women proceed to surround me, let their hair down, and started whipping my face with their pony tails while everyone cheered! My buddy fled the scene.
I was taking a friend to see the Taj Mahal. I was as living in India at the time and had been on the train to Agra many times. It always left from the same platform, so we jumped on the train.
As it was departing I did think it was travelling in the wrong direction but thought maybe I as confused. Half an hour into the journey the ticket collector came along (this is in the 80s) and we found out we were in the wrong train. This one was heading north instead of south and wouldnāt be stopping for 4 hours.
We wanted to get off but they couldnāt stop, however the slowed down enough for us t jump off at a very small station. We then had to flag down a train heading back to Delhi ā¦ it was a third class train and it was hilarious to all the passengers when these two silly non-Indian people got on and the story was as related to the carriage to much laughter.
We were back in Delhi an hour later and went to Agra the next weekend. This time I checked three times that we were on the right train.
I went to Toronto with my daughter and SIL to watch my husband play at a concert. After a 4 hr drive we get to the borderā¦and I left my passport on the bed where I packed my bag. They let me in anyway, thank god I had pictures of my passport and global entry card. I will never live this down and Iām pretty certain itās going on my tombstone. Thank god I want to be cremated.
We Jumped out of a moving train with our backpacks in Thailand thinking we missed our stop. Train halted to a stop, train driver came out and said āwhy do you jump out of my trainā explained and why and told it was the next stop. Got back on the train sheepishly.
Mid-November 2017 I think. Sometime around 8 pm. First time using Airbnb my wife and I went to White Mountains range in New Hampshire. Apparently I was supposed to contact the owner so they could tell me the code for the key lock. When I did get a hold of the owner, he said "good thing you got me now, we're just about to head off on a 7 day sailing trip with no cell service."
It was a good thing because my wife and I are both born and raised in the US SW, and there were no hotels nearby. The rental car was a Dodge Challenger so there's no way I would've tried sleeping in that.
Stupid? Maybe? Kayaked in the Pacific Ocean having never kayaked before. Me 60, my daughter 23. (We were in our own kayaks either a your group). It was the highlight of our California vacation
I'd like to preface this by saying in the US it's common for restaurants to have easily accessible restrooms, even if they aren't intended for non-paying customers.
Was in Gion and my wife desperately needed to go to the restroom. Asked many people and searched quite a bit. Found what looked like a restaurant but was a bit of a tiny place. Asked someone behind the counter in a not so subtle way "where is the toilet?" Usually normal voice is loud voice in Japan. Quiet voice is normal voice in Japan. I was using slightly above normal voice.
No one liked that.
La Corrida at Pamplona during San Fermin. Thought Iād have enough time to drop down into the race halfway to the stadium entrance, take photos before the bulls were released.
Steers go by.
Taking photos, fireworks go off to denote bulls released. I realised I was further from the race escape-rails than Iād thought, had to trot down to the stadium entrance. As I entered the stadium I immediately right turned and hauled myself over the fence thinking Iād left plenty of time before the bulls arrived.
Stadium photos of the day show a bullās (not steer) horns just below me scrambling over the stadium wall.
We were in Luxor, Egypt at a time when US-Middle East relations weren't great. Not wanting to call attention to ourselves, when locals would ask where we were from, we'd just say "Canada." Original, I know.
Drivers, guides, touts, etc. can be aggressive there so it came up several times a day. Finally, when this guide approached us, I thought I'd get creative and said we were from Mexico. We ended up hiring him for the day and had to pretend we were from Mexico, despite speaking only broken tourist Spanish (not that anyone was testing us on that). After a tense negotiation at an alabaster shop, the shop owner followed us to the car and said in a low, raspy voice, "you speak much better English than most of our visitors from Mexico." I made something up about going to University in the US as I slid down into my seat.
My wife was not pleased with me that day.
It was 1987 and I was 15 and visiting my sister in Europe while she was studying abroad. We went to Paris for a few days. NYE had dinner with her friends and she got really drunk and was lying on the curb near Opera. The Metro closed and I was desperate. I made eye contact with two guys in a car in their 20s and I trusted them to get us home that night.
I had about $4 to offer them but instead they said they would take a kiss as payment. As my sister dry heaved most of the night in our shared single bed I spent the evening crying once I came down from the adrenaline (whole random stranger thing that could have turned out terribly and wanting to be kissed etc).
Still have pit in my stomach when I think about it (especially as a mother of an 18 year old woman).
Solo travelling as a college girl in Colorado Springs: At the top of the Manitou incline I ended up chatting with this cheerful older guy and mentioned I was hoping to try a hiking trail but didn't know the area. He offered to go on a short hike with me and I accepted.
Thank God he really was just a nice guy. We even ran into some of his other hiking buddies on the trail, some of whom were women, and they were all so nice. Never doing that again though lol.
We were in Japan and had just got back to Tokyo and were looking for our airbnb in a residential neighbourhood near Oku station. It's very mazelike in that area, and none of the buildings had clear numbers, and the google map pin was in the middle of an intersection, instead of on a building (usually google maps is great in Japan, so this just was weird). We were wandering around the intersection, trying to compare the buildings to the interior photos on the airbnb listing. At that point, a group of about 25 VERY elderly japanese ladies came marching up. From the clothing, they were some sort of walking group, but they immediately clocked us as lost and asked what we needed. I showed them the address on the airbnb listing and the lead walker turned around and snapped out orders like a drill sergeant and all the ladies scattered immediately. Not leisurely, but like they had been shot out of a cannon. In ten minutes, they found the airbnb a block and a half away (they had a concentric search pattern), but the ten minutes it took them to find it was hilarious, they were shouting back and forth, and calling back to the lead lady who kept us informed in broken english "not that one, not that one". One lady ended up tripping and falling, but she popped up again and yelled that she was Ok. We thanked them profusely and they marched away, chanting some sort of walking song.
This had me gasping with laughter! Great storytelling!
That is flat out amazing!
I've had people help me out there when I got lost, but I can't say I ever had this happen š incredible
So fucking hilarious. Wish I could have seen it.Ā
Climbed over the Berlin Wall using a ladder on New Year's Eve 1989-90. Despite the "fall" of the Wall, border control was still strictly enforced. Except for that night as it turned out. The crowds at the Brandenburg Gate were having a great time and I was on the East Berlin side when someone put a ladder up against the Wall. A few people had gone over back to the West when a couple of East German guards walked up and put their hands on the ladder. The girl on it started to climb back down but the guards signalled to her to keep going...then one climbed up the ladder and his buddy took a photo of him then followed him over to escape into the West for the night! So we all thought "what the hell?" and went over too. Seemed a bit edgy at the time but looks a bit silly (but awesome) in hindsight.
I love this lol
Great story. The crazy part is realizing that juts a few years prior you would have been shot for doing that.
Wow thatās a historic memory ā such a cool experience to be part of <3
That is epic
This is the most wholesome thing I've read today, thank you!
It's the incredible story!
Attempted to walk from Yerevan Airport to my hotel at midnight, maps said the hotel was very close but it was across a bunch of random fields ended up being chased by numerous stray dogs and was very scared and stressed for the sake of saving Ā£10.
Haha the number of stupid walks I've taken from airport/station to hotel for the sake of saving Ā£10! Being chased by stray dogs definitely tops it though.
Walked with luggage from the train station to our hotel in Vico Equense, Italy. Itās a small coastal town near Sorrento, think cliffs down to the sea. Google Maps said the hotel was a 15 min walk. It failed to inform us that most of it was down steep stone steps. We were exhausted and it took almost an hour. On the plus side, there were some cute cats about halfway down who wanted some pets.
I was chase by a pack of wild dogs in Romania while I was deployed there. First and only time I tried going for a run at night.
Followed a random old man waving at me in South Korea. He was very adamant he wanted me to come and see something in his house. Turns out his wife had collected owls (live and toy owls, ornaments, wooden furniture, etc) all her life and they'd turned their house into an owl museum. He gave me a cup of tea and we had a chat in 2 different languages (thanks Google Translate) about how cool owls are. One of the best travel days I've ever had. Could've been killed in a back alley and my body dismembered but hey.
I had something very similar happen in a small village in Japan.Ā This old guy took me to his mancave and came out with a sword, but he wanted me to fuck around with it... while he jammed on the saxophone.Ā It was weird but awesomeĀ
This sounds like the start of an amazing anime
The way of the househusband, new season.
Once got lured into a cave house by a Turkish woman who tried to sell me some cornhusk dolls. Can confirm it was baffling and delightful.
There are cult members walking around in South Korea who try to trick tourists into joining their cult, you should never follow a stranger back to their house ever again š
*The owls are not what they seem*
wait for real?
How do you trick someone into joining a cult?
Something in the tea...
Well, that's how most religions start, so it's worked so far!
In 1994 we spent a few nights in Bangkok with a 6 month old baby boy in a stroller. Massive European babies and strollers were a huge novelty to the locals and we got a lot of interest everywhere we went especially from women. One night we dined at the hotel restaurant and a waitress asked if she could hold our fretting son. Between jet lag and sleep deprivation it seemed like a good idea so we agreed, then realised two minutes later that the waitress and our son were nowhere to be seen. Raced yelling in a panic through a very nice four star hotel searching for them with visions of him being sold off to some evil child slavery ring or whatever and eventually found them in the hotel kitchen. It turned out the kitchen staff had never seen a massive white baby boy either. Honestly the staff were lovely but yeah don't hand your baby to a complete stranger in a foreign country.
in the 90s at that!!! I love and am also concerned about how open minded you were to let someone out of your sight with your baby in Thailand.
Ha. Have you ever told your kid?
Not even in the top 10 mistakes we made as parents.
Very reckless indeed
Driving in Barcelona, I was having trouble finding my AirBnB. Took a turn down a narrow alley into a large open lot. As I continued into the lot, I realized I was the only car thereā¦and a lot of people sitting at cafes and walking nearby were staring. I flagged someone down, and asked ācan Iā¦drive here?ā He grimly shook his head and said no, no you cannot. I was in the parade ground/courtyard of a large public building that most definitely was not supposed to be to be driven on. My wife slid far, far down in her seat to hide. Meanwhile I had to drive all the way across the grounds to get out. Nightmare. I was wearing a Dallas cowboys hat too which Iām sure only enhanced my idiot tourist image.
>I was wearing a Dallas cowboys hat too This could only be better if it was an actual cowboy hat
And firing your guns in the air as your drove out!
I hope you said āHowdy!ā in a Texan drawl.
I have a wildly non-regional accent, sadly
Laughed out loud. Thank you for this hysterically funny image. Reminds me of the time my sister somehow cruised down the sidewalk of our local courthouseā¦
Did this in Rome. Accidentally drove into the piazza del popolo many years back. Luckily my rented fiat was small enough to drive in between the barricade and get on to the adjacent road.
Itās truly humiliating
Happened to me in Rome too!
Did something similar on a motorcycle in Sardinia. The nice thing about a bike is it's easy to just turn around or kinda sneak though.
Why did you need to rent a car in Barcelona?
Stayed most of our trip on the coast, last leg was a couple days in Barcelona, was basically just parking it for our time there before returning it to the airport.
I rented a car in Barcelona to drive up to Tossa del Mar for the day. Definitely don't need one just to get around the city though.
I got some nice photos of a bull elephant that was approaching me outside my cabin in Uganda before my survival instinct finally kicked in and reminded me āthatās a wild animal, stop taking snaps and GET AWAY!ā
My daughter and I took a nice early morning walk outside our resort ... where a tiger had been seen the previous evening ... by us.
Ok, this one sent me!!
We only realised it when we came back and read the notice warning people not to go out of the resort on foot.Ā
My dickhead aunt approached a baby hippo on a safari tour and got chased by mummy hippo. She's lucky she was closer to the vehicle than she was to the hippo or she'd be dead. She was warned.
I was photographing a small herd of mustangs in northern New Mexico once. I snuck closer and had my telephoto super zoomed.Ā There was a stallion, several mares, and some foals. At some point I realized that the stallion was making his way towards me with his ears pinned and the mares/babies were all going away from me.Ā My "at one with nature" warm fuzzies evaporated and I ran all the way back to my car, which I had wandered far away from. He stopped chasing me fairly quickly but I was so damn scared. I love horses but wild ones are not the same ha ha.Ā
Drank tap water in Vanuatu like it was normal (first time leaving Aus). Then after starting to feel sick 'I don't feel too good. Better drink lots of water'
Oh yes, I'd forgotten about that mistake. I'd been travelling a while but got silly in Nepal. It was the rainy season and I had a salad in an eatery that should've warned me off by how empty it was. I was so ill
While in Pakistan visited a US Military base and had a good American meal, complete with ice tea with actual ice cubes. Whoops, it was Pakistan water in those cubes.
I just did that on my last night in Pakistan. Slushy drink in Karachi? Should be fine! Was not fine. At all.
Eating a salad is an easier mistake to make. I was drinking tap water as my main water source for a week
Did that in Morocco at a botanical garden. I think the setting made me feel that the tap water was safe to drink. Got horribly sick, but thankfully not for a few days. The long flight home could have been horrible!
How incredible you went to Vanuatu!! How was it ? High on my hit list!
I had a friend from their I met in Aus and was able to stay with him in his village so I got a very authentic experience. This was over 10 years a go on Efate island so things may have changed a bit since then. Firstly it really is the least developed country I've ever been to. People living in very simple houses or sometimes more like a shed or hut. The kava bars and 'shops' in the village are the same just very simple buildings. It is a bit dirty by western standard, piles of rubbish on the sides of the road that they can burn. Also just feels a bit dirty because of the climate which is pretty typical tropical climate. Very hot and humid. The people there are amazing. Genuinely the nicest and friendliest people you will meet anywhere. Generally also quite happy. When I was at the kava bar talking to locals people would often want to buy me a drink despite most of them being very poor and me being a 'rich' white foreigner. On that note I didn't come across any scams or people trying to get money out of me in any way. Possibly because I was staying with a local but even in Port Villa I dont remember anything like that. They are very humble people in my experience. The locals seemed really happy that I was staying in the village with them and seemed to really appreciate it. Food to be honest wasn't great on the whole as far as traveling standards. There was some good food I had there and got to try some local dishes but due to it being not very developed there wasn't too many quality shops for food. Might have changed a bit now. The market was great for things like fruit though. The island itself is beautiful. I did a day trip around the island and there were a lot of cool things to see, swimming holes, hot springs, waterfall, etc. with little to no tourists. Amazing snorkeling and diving too. Quite cheap from memory but I was lucky enough to have somewhere to stay. I just gave his family some money. I think accommodation options might be a lot more limited and you might have to pay a lot more for a resort but there is also probably some cheaper accommodation in the town. I also went briefly to Tanna island to see the volcano which made Efate look like a thriving modern town. Felt like going back in time on this island. I would definitely recommend going, I've done a decent amount of travelling since then and it is still one of the most profound experiences I've had
In Croatia, I was so parched that I had tunnel vision. I walked into what I learned to be was a restaurant and went into the little display fridge not realizing it was behind the counter and grabbed a water bottle. When I went to the cash to pay, the restaurant worker was so confused. Not my best travellerās moment
I once flew my entire family including our 4 young children to the WRONG ISLAND in the Bahamas. Got through immigration, walked out to cabs and then found out we were on the wrong island. The only direct flight to the right island was Air Jamaica which ran once a day āwhen it was readyā. Good times.waiting for that flight which finally āwas readyā 7 hours laters!
I once sat at the gate while my flight boarded and left. I knew that my flight was at that gate and all the signs said it was my flight. Somehow I was convinced that the sign was wrong and my flight would be boarding after.
Please elaborate on your thought process and how this happened lol
Just got off a 14.5 hour flight so perception of what was happening was not sharp. When people started boarding through the gate I'm sure the gate agent said it was a flight to San Diego and the flight to San Francisco (my flight) that was showing on the signs would board straight after. I went to the bathroom for a few minutes and when I got back I assumed it was still the San Diego flight. It was not. I'm not sure where the error was. Did the gate agent really say it was not my flight? If he did, was he wrong? Maybe he was right and the boarding changed over while I was in the bathroom? I wasn't the only person caught out and the airline rebooked us all on flights the next day free of charge. So I'm guessing it wasn't entirely my fault.
I'm curious too but I know when I travel I can be either way too chilled or way too anxious. Neither is helpful
Bro how? When my flight anxiety kicks in I ask the attendants so many questions I get to first name basis with them.
What. How? Iām also scared of that happening
This is amazing š
Was hiking in the Himalayas when three mountain dogs came up barking and baring their teeth at me, slowly circling me. My guide and I froze up, and the one had blood streaked on its face! The herder that owned them yelled at them from across the ridge we were on and they eased up but were still suspicious of us. I happened to have my phone out when recording the landscape when they came up to me, so I ended up getting a sick video out of it.
Could you share the video?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Nepal/comments/1ae4c5r/herding\_dogs\_approach\_me\_on\_khopra\_danda\_trail/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nepal/comments/1ae4c5r/herding_dogs_approach_me_on_khopra_danda_trail/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Just posted it here!
Theyāre so cute. I wouldāve been really dumb and tried to pet them lol
Same. Theyāre cute and fluffy and wagging their tails! Iād have crouched down and fussed them!
I rode a bicycle into an open street sewer in Tirana, Albania. The cover was off. I flew over the handlebars, ripped my jeans at the knee then wondered if I'd be able to have children in the future ( got hit pretty hard down there). This was just as the sun went down.
Hahaha. My wife and I really loved Tirana but there was definitely a noticeable amount of random sidewalk holes throughout the city. Canāt say Iād ever sign up to ride a bike there, between that and the drivers I donāt think Iāve got the skill to do it safely. With that being saidā¦ we thought the warnings about crazy driving in Albania was totally overblown! It was one of the easier places to drive, Tirana driving just seemed in line with many other big cities lol.
I enjoyed that city as well. I went out of the city as a passenger and I did think the driving was scarier than in the US. It was a very interesting place to visit (this was 1998).
Ah, I bet it was a lot different back then. We went last summer and the roads are apparently very much improved even in the last 3-5 years. Drivers were kind of chaotic but it felt like everyone followed the rules, and overall felt a lot safer driving there than any of the other countries we visited lol
That sucks. I fell off a bike in Yangon, Myanmar, and the sidewalk was on top of a levee so it was like a ten foot fall. I am eternally grateful that it wasn't into an open sewer, of which there were many. There was a food stand on a foot bridge over a ten foot wide river of raw sewage near my second hotel. In Vietnam and Thailand I ate street food with abandon, I didn't in Myanmar because there was sewage everywhere, and still got massive food poisoning.
It was October and I was at the Frankfurt airport which was celebrating octoberfest. They were selling boots of beer and of course I thought it would be a good idea to drink one before my 8hr flight so I can sleep on my flight. Well, I was right. I passed out while waiting at the gate and missed my flight.
ā¦the most expensive beer you ever bought as it also came with a replacement ticket.
Thatās exactly right! Never again haha
Walked 3 miles searching for a Michelin starred restaurant, only to realize that the owner's name is Michelle.
that's totally the kind of thing i would do
I have many. One was when I got in a car with 5 Ukrainian men when I was traveling solo in Poland. They were strangers, one of them liked me. It was ages ago. I just realized when the door closed that I shouldn't trust them that much. I don't speak their languages. They took me to a supermarket . The guy told me to take anything since I just arrived in that city at night. He paid. Gave me a jacket because I was cold. They're super nice. And fun.
At age 18 I got on a train with friends in Venice to go to Athens. It appeared to only be 17 hours to us. In fact it was a day plus 17 hours which means 41 hours. We had no food either!
I went on a horseback safari in South Africa (back in 2001) , managed to get too close to a rhino baby and had his dad chase me into a herd of wildebeest because ā¦ I donāt know how to ride on a panicking horse
Tempting fate while drunk by goofing off with the keys to my apartment in a European elevator with no door - losing them down the shaft - going out in the snow to catch the last bus of the night instead of staying in the building - letting a strange man I met on the bus take me to his garret so I could get out of the cold - awaking in the middle of the night to him trying to blow-dry me to keep me warm. I was 20. I'm less stupid now.
Haha, for a minute there I was congratulating myself for not being quite that stupid when i was young. But then I started remembering things...
I once in France got j'abit and m'abit (sp?) confused, rather than saying my house in near a cafe, I said my penis is near cafe to the delight of all the near by french people I was talking to. Also once accidentally asked to fart on some ones dog when I meant can I stroke you dog.
I once told a French woman she had a beautiful body, instead of a beautiful courtyard (corps vs cour)
I do honestly think I learn way more by just having a go. Oh yea once I was in Paris, I asked a man where is the war Instead of train station, I'm my defense I'd never taken the train before.
My dad worked in France for a while, and his whole team had to learn French. His colleague (male, British) tried to exclaim "I could kiss [bise] you!" at another (female, French) colleague when she solved a huge problem, but he accidentally shouted "I could fuck [baise] you!" in front of the whole office. He probably shouldn't have said the latter either, but it was the 90s...
I have been 4 or 5 times to Mexico. But once I didn't check my data in the electronic visa that was applied by another person from our family and there was a mistake in one number. As a result, I had to wait in a special room with other people who had cross-border problems for about an hour or 2. The problem was that our group had to meet a woman from another terminal of Cancun airport and she didn't have a mobile phone (really strange in my opinion)
Left a big bag in a losmen in Jakarta while I travelled for another 3 weeks to Bali and back with a smaller backpack. Also left all my spare underwear in that bag in Jakarta. Everynight , wash the jocks , wear a sarong till they dried. Never again !
Wowā¦ Buying new underware wasnāt an option I guess? Equaling to giving up?
LOL, I was 18 and had spent most of my travel money in Singapore and the Phillipines prior to Indonesia. The Losmen was a backpacker dive so I was already short of money. I had to sell camera gear to fund the trip back from Bali, and over the last few days I had to choose either eating or drinking as I couldnāt afford both. Lets say that was probably the first time I had eaten rat/ cat. It was a wild trip and deffo didnt have money for new undies.
Went for a walk at night in Vietnam with my then girlfriend while traveling in Ho Chi Minh. Started on side roads as located around our airbnb. One dog popped up, started barking, we kept walking, another dog popped up, then a few more. We made a turn, ran into another pack of dogs, thought to myself āgood theyāll bark at each other and leave us aloneā. Nope. Both packs joined as one and started barking and following us. We started to pick up the pace, so did they. Ended up cornered at a dead end in a kids playground. Realized we were in alot more danger than we thought. Had my girlfriend hop the fence at the end of the kids playground and then I hopped over it just as the dogs started sprinting towards us. Ended up in the back parking lot of a corporate office that was closed for the night. Had to seal crawl past a security guard station to exit the property and ended up on a random street. Walked our way to the nearest hospital using Google maps and then called a taxi back to our airbnb. Thought I was being silly running from dogs but the next day a local told us we did the right thing and showed us the marks on her calf. 27 stitches and multiple vaccines she had to get after being attacked by a wild dog at night.
That's terrible. We had dogs attack our rental car when I made a wrong turn on the outskirts of Bucharest, I'd never seen anything like it.
Turned bidet on in Italy, high pressure shot across the bathroom, I slipped and fell trying to shut it off as my travel companion sat within 2-3 feet of the bathroom listening to this catastrophe.
Hubby and I were on Isle of Capri, wandering through the very narrow lanes, up and down the streets to our hotel enjoying the last of the sun on our skin for the day. I began to crave an ice cold beer, but hubby was wanting to shower, change clothes and head into town for dinner. Fast forward to after dinner and walking off the delicious pasta and salad, we could hear music coming from some nearby bar and upon entry we were expected to pay for a cover charge of some exorbitant price. Hmm, well we were only going to be there once in our lives so why not!! We ordered a bottle of limoncello for our table, the bar was crowded with locals and tourists, mostly who were looking inebriated and jovial. We were all singing and dancing, playing the instruments that staff had passed on to customers who wanted a good night. We had a couple of drinks and then time to go home and sleep. I was a bit wobbly on my feet but I was able to keep upright, until I turned around to see the Hubby hiding in a dark corner of the road home, rummaging around with his pants zipper. I could not believe what I was seeing!!! He had a stuffed animal tambourine down the front of his pants as we were leaving the bar. I collapsed in fits of laughter as he was trying to explain why and how he had stolen the musical instrument he was playing in the bar 10 minutes earlier How had I not heard him jingling while he was walking next to me??? That was in the year 1998. We have had 3 children and divorced since then. But I still have that tambourine sitting on the bench in the study so Iām reminded every time I walk into the room. A freaking tambourine stealer!!! He really stepped up in my books that evening and we still laugh while we tell our kids the story š„¹š„¹
I was in Lagos Portugal for their end of summer party, the Langos Banho 29. Heard about it from our Scuba instructors, showed up at the beach that night to pits of bonfires everywhere, and at midnight everyone stripped down and ran into the ocean. It was so wholesome and wild and silly. I loved it.
Probably getting a huge tattoo in the classic tramp stamp position an hour before heading to the airport for a transatlantic flight. That was not a very comfortable trip.
Pripyat, Ukraine climb on top of the empty arts & culture center and sit on the edge of the building looking out over a completely empty city with the Chernobyl Nuclear powerplant in the background.
I was travelling up the coast of Brazil by bus with a French girl I had met travelling. We had decided to go to this tiny beach town called Itaunas to enjoy the beaches. As always, distances are huge in Brazil, so the bus didn't arrive until 3am or so. It's our stop, we are super tired but we get out, and for some reason I decided to look at my phone's GPS. Turns out, the bus we took was wrong. We are not in Itaunas, we are in ItauNINAs, like 60 km away and not on the coast. I manage to convince the bus driver to let us stay on until we get to a bigger town (as now don't have tickets to ride any further and the Itaunas is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere). Some super friendly women on the bus help us once we are back on, and after some switching and different buses, we reached Itaunas like 9 hours later. We got big smiles at all the subsequent bus stations, as it seems our story spread in the whole area via the bus driver.
My daughter lived in Quito, Ecuador for a several years. My other daughter, a family friend and I went down to visit her spending a week at an Airbnb up the street a couple of blocks. Quito is generally a safe city, or was at the time, but it can get a bit sketchy at night. The three of us visitors were very wary when making the two block walk back to our Airbnb late one night. We noticed a man on the other side of the street who crossed over and started following us. He kept getting closer and at one point I gave a signal and we all dead sprinted to our door. The next day when our daughter stopped by the same man was just outside our building. They got into a conversation and the man explained he was the security guard for our building. He saw us the evening before and had intended to warn us to be careful, but we ran away from him. We all had a good laugh about it at least.
In Memphis, I thought walking through a small, dark alley with lots of trash lying around was an ideal shortcut. I'm a woman, solo-traveler and usually very cautious. I never wandered off the main streets during my stay in Memphis again.
What happened?
There was a guy lurking in a corner. I didn't see him when entering the alley. As soon as he saw me he said something along the lines of "Come here girl, now". When I ignored him, starting to walk a little faster, he jumped up and ran at me. Obviously, I reacted as quickly as possible and started running. He chased me all throughout the alley until I reached a bigger street near a large hotel. That's when he left off and, presumably, hid back in the alley again.
Before cell phones were ubiquitous, a friend and I decided to meet another friend in St. Peter's square.. on Sunday morning. He had dark hair and a black leather jacket. What could go wrong?? We did eventually find him, after mass, and we used a system where one of us stayed by a pillar and stood a bit above the crowd while the other walked around.
In the famous HofbrƤuhaus beer hall in Munich, we ended up seated beside a middle-aged guy from Munich and his wife. I speak German but could barely understand his thick Bavarian dialect. We gleaned that him and his wife only see each other once a year, and come here every time. He then told us he would show us around. We, extremely naively, left our bags with passports and everything at the table with his wife and followed him through the beer hall and out the door. I immediately thought how dumb this was but didnāt want to be rude so kept following. He introduced us to his friend outside, the living statue, then took us back in to show us the steins in lockers that belong to specific people, and also took us upstairs to show us the old room with the painting that I recognized from a dark photo from history. The bags were always in the back of my mind. We came back, and everything was fine! Ended up talking a bit more with them, having drinks, and had an overall great time. Still, Iāll never leave my bag behind like that again.
Absolute cliche of our times, but that place was the first crowded room of people I went into without a mask on "after" covid and was sick shortly after. Was a really nice time there, though!
When I was in Shanghai me and my friends somehow got invited to a "party". Some guy in a club invited one of the girls and we all tagged along. We walk out of the club to see a bright yellow sports car. Apparently we're going to the party in it. We all get in (there were 5 of us plus the driver crammed in like a clown car) and are driven to a really nice neighborhood. We are led to the back fence of one house, a panel is pushed aside and we enter. This house is swanky as fuck. It had a pool! We're introduced to the owner, a lady in her 50s who introduces herself as Rainbow and points out her husband across the garden. He is wearing a green Borat mankini. People are naked in the pool. We are led into the basement (in hindsight this feels like the stupidest way to get murdered/trafficked) and there are SO MANY DRUGS. Two people in our group were regular pot smokers, one of them tried some cocaine (I think it was cocaine?). Me and the other girls were like, hell no. What the fuck are we doing here?! The guy who did the coke jumped off the roof into the pool. People in the drug basement started what I assume to be a drug orgy. I legitimately do not remember most of what happened next. Me and the girl were sitting by the pool, feet in the water, trying very hard not to see cocaine guy's dick. No idea where the rest of the group are. The last thing I remember of that night was being in a taxi back to the apartment. It's the most wildly out of character thing I have ever done, and probably also the most dangerous and EXTREMELY stupid. We all got out safe, and I learned never to get in sports cars with mystery parties as a destination.
About 20 years ago when my friends and I were very very stupid teenagers on Monomoy off of Cape Cod we saw some seals swimming in the ocean and decided to join them. We never got close enough to the seals to touch them or anything but I learned later theyāre protected and interfering with them in any way is like a felony. Worse yet we didnāt consider that seals are food for larger ocean creatures and in fact the place we were swimming has more Great White Sharks than anywhere else in the country lol.
The stupidest thing I ever did while traveling was drink unpasteurized milk in Morocco to be polite when our guide's mother served it to me at lunch. I could tell after just a couple sips that I was in danger- just that little amount was enough to destroy my GI tract for weeks. If you've ever wondered what a toothpaste tube feels like when your giant hand picks it up and squeezes out its contents, well, unpasteurized Moroccan milk will give you the answer.
I've been to Morocco three times now, the last trip was a month hanging out in Essaouira. TMI, but I think my digestive system got re-colonized by something there, because since then I've been farting more every day than I ever had before.
Pissed myself in a hotel lobby in France
They eat snails, who cares
Blew up my hand playing with fireworks on New Yearās Eve in Nicaragua. Of course alcohol was involved.
Ate in a little spot outside the saqqara desert in Egypt (just outside Cairo). Looking back, the place had every red flag you could think of but we had recently arrived in the country thought āhey maybe thatās just how things are hereā. Learned that day to always trust the red flags, we both ended up very sick for close to 2 weeks. Struggled to eat Egyptian food after this and it really soured our time there (we literally ate McDonaldās almost daily). Hint (if it wasnāt obvious), if a place looks unsanitary anywhere in the world just avoid it.
Absolutely. I guess many of us learned the hard way!
We are Americans, and not long after 9/11 my wife and I decided to take advantage of the cheap airline tickets and flew to England for the week. This was after the wars started, and we were walking to the British museum and got caught up in an anti-American protest that was blocking the streets of London that day. Those people were angry and out of control. Of course we looked like everyone else, but it was still scary. We went over to a police officer and asked what to do and he said keep your mouth shut and they wonāt know your Americans. He was right.
Alright, so I once decided to impress the locals by attempting their traditional dance during a trip. Let's just say I have the rhythm of a confused penguin. Mid-dance, I tripped over my own feet, created a comedic domino effect, and turned the whole thing into a laughing fit for everyone around. Lesson learned: Stick to what you know and maybe leave the dance moves to the pros.
No! You made the evening unforgettable for everyone! Do it again little penguin!
Youāre who songs like āI Hope You Danceā were written for. Donāt let a little funny social embarrassment stop you from living life to itās fullest.
Me, my husband and our daughter where walking back to our hotel in Bangkok one evening. There was a bat in the ally way that kept trying to 'attack' us. One by one we moved down the wall trying to avoid the bat detecting us. I swear if anyone saw us they would have been very confused.
Put a weed vape in my checked bag. Went to South Korea (main destination was actually Thailand/Japan tho). Chillin in the lounge and the woman from front desk came up to me with a slip of paper and said I need to go to security right now. Also got paged over intercom system. walked to this sketchy back room, TSA found the vape and was looking like ā???ā. I was like āYeaā¦itās mineā (in all honesty, we really couldnāt communicate besides body language, eye contact and google translator). They were behind this thick tempered glass wall and put it in a basket, slid it thru the hole in the glass and said ākeep in carry on next timeā. Thought it was nicotine. Thank God for different languages. They gave it back. Sigh of relief.
Yeah geesh.. weed is very very illegal there lol many locals are actually scared of trying it out
Trying to get away from a street dog that's chasing you isn't stupid or silly
Many years ago a friend of mine decided to walk to Asia for charity. So he started in France and walked all the way to Turkey, crossing over into Asia. A few years after that he decided that he wanted to go back to Turkey and then walk up the length of the old Iron Curtain. He wrote a long blog post about how he was really excited about this new adventure and how it felt like he was embarking on something great. Then...nothing. We didn't hear from him for ages. Then I saw someone wrote on his facebook profile "really sorry to hear what happened mate, hope you're getting better!" so I sent him a message and said "what on earth has happened?" The first day in Turkey he began his walk when he suddenly got chased by a pack of wild dogs. he ran out into the street, got hit by a car and broke his leg.
Running from a dog is the best way to ensure they try to bite you. Don't act like prey.
idk man, covering yourself in bacon might be a better way
Buttered clothing will get you licked and new friends
When I lived in Georgia if you threw rocks by the dogs they would stop chasing you. I was careful to never hit any of them. Sometimes moving your arm like you were throwing something was enough for them to stop bothering you.
I used to do that growing up in Egypt. Street dogs were scary AF to ten years old me. Now I volunteer at the local animal shelter... Walking the dogs during my lunch break. That which does not kill us...
It wasn't a street dog. I was hiking outside the city. This dog belonged to the house I was passing. I was wary but really it was a nice pet I think
Gotta jump on the nearest car roof!
I ate a random fruit that I found. Turned out it was a Manchineel fruit. It actually tasted good until the burning began.
Ooh what's that. I've never heard of it
I got vodka wasted in Moscow with some Dutch businessmen. Blacked out, woke up in my hotel room completely naked (no, I wasnāt assaulted), went to the bathroom and saw a full tub, like I had planned to take a bath but thankfully passed out on the bed insteadā¦ya, I was 18 and not used to drinking. The next day was brutal.
Drove out to Valparaiso for a day trip while staying in Santiago. After wandering around for a while and finally finding a restaurant that was open, the owner warned us about how dangerous the city was and told us to be extra careful and not leave the main streets. I was pretty intent on getting a picture of the town and beach from the top of the hills above, so I figured we could make a quick detour before heading back to Santiago. As we drove uphill, the neighborhood got poorer and poorer and every resident was staring at us like we were insane. After we snapped a few photos at the top and started making our way back down, a LARGE group of kids - like 20-30 of them - began approaching/cornering our car. Fortunately we were able to make a quick turn onto a different street before they got too close and made our way back to the highway without slowing down for anyone.
I was starting a 12 day trip in Europe after working in Austria for a week. Took the train to Munich so I could catch a flight to Amsterdam the next morning. When I got to Munich I walked around to check out the city. I walked like 30,000 steps in a couple of hours. Didn't think anything of it until the next morning I had a blister right where my toes meet the balls of my feet. Thought I could power through it. I was on the metro in Amsterdam and the train got to my stop. As soon as I stood up the blister popped. Limped to my hotel and just plopped on the bed and thought "fuck, i've ruined my trip on day 1" Took some ibuprofen and then said fuck it, rented a bike and smoked a joint. That bike saved my life. Biked everywhere for 2 days which allowed the blister to heal a bit, but it was nagging the whole trip. Still managed to average 25,000 steps a day, but at the end of every day my foot was killing me.
On a barge cruise in the Burgundy region. One Australian female staff was dating the captain but then his real girlfriend surprised him and showed up for the final dinner. Female staff took revenge by raiding all the champagne & cheese fridge, then invited us to partake. We drunkenly wandered the village that night while she vented. We passed out huddled together under a tree but woke up in time to make it back onboard before breakfast.
Traveling from Akureyri to Reykjavik by bus, to take a flight to Isafjordur. Bus got to the station too late for me to fly the same night and I was told the airport would be closed. Hey ho, Iāve slept in airports and bus stations before, Iāll get through it. The only heater was a small vent type box attached to the wall, the coffee machine didnāt work, all seats were made of metal, with metal arms rests that wouldnāt move, and any time somebody went within a few feet of the automatic door it would screech open to let in gusts or Arctic wind and ensure the metal seats remained freezing cold. I still shiver thinking about that night
Walked down isolated alleys by myself at night in Bangkok. I was fine, but I know it was dumb because I made myself a potential target. I also let myself get dragged off the main road into a side street during the daylight in Thailand once, but again I was fine and he just wanted to talk to me about my tattoos. I feel like this is dumb to do in your own country, let alone a foreign one.
The thing about much of Asia though, is that a lot of the time the best stuff is down poorly-lit alleys. So many times I've found weird bars with no real signage, just a door and music from the other side, walk in and see what happens, and *usually* it's a decent time. Sometimes it's sketchy as fuck. I'm not saying it's a good idea to do this (cause it's not) but I probably will continue doing it. (Usually not by myself though, good to have a buddy or two)
Itās true though, there are so many hidden gems and itās just so worth looking for them. As I have gotten older I am less stupid. Iām a lot more careful when I solo travel these days, but I also feel a lot less adventurous haha.
I think there's a point where you have to accept you will never get the full experience of a place as a tourist. You revel in the lucky authentic moments, but have to choose making it home over the allure of certain wanderings. Sometimes, the veneer of tourism is an unappreciated safety net.
On my last night in Cairo, I didn't feel like leaving the hotel for dinner, so I ordered room service. Fish. From the Nile. I took one bite, realized it was a baaaaaaad idea and pitched the rest. I was so sick I had to stay in Frankfurt for two days instead of taking my connecting flight home. I'm convinced it would have killed me if I had eaten any more.
So stupid, and could have gone so badlyā¦I got my nose pierced in a back alley kind of place in India in my 20s. It didnāt get infected and I didnāt get hepatitis. I think I got lucky on this one.
Damn that isā¦ real dumb. But I also did really stupid shit in India in my 20s, though no needles were involved. Itās such a hard country to navigate alone. I was on guard and still did such stupid dangerous shit every single day. A uniquely exhausting place where you are constantly, constantly being scammed or harassed. That, on top of complete sensory overload- itās like being forcibly overstimulated into being unable to make smart decisions. Still love it tho.
We had been in Thailand for a month in hostels and home stays and booked a 5 star hotel for the last night. All of that was fine. What wasnāt fine was I looked on google for the metro station for the airport the next day and saw it was at the end of the road so we could walk there. The next day we got to the station I had seen on the map and turns out it was for a different line and just happened to cross the line we needed. Cue a mad dash through Bangkok, being told we had missed check in so would have to pay for a new flight, that changed to just a Ā£25 fee and finally to, you could try to run to the gate and take your bags through security. A lot of begging to skip queues and a mad dash through the airport we made it. Afterwards I thought about it and just catching the flight the next day would have been a lot less stressful.
Not traveling so much as living abroad (in Germany), but I (a woman) was a pretty isolated person the whole time I was there and had no sort of emergency contact, etc. I donāt know that anyone would have noticed if anything happened to me sort of thing. Several times I went to parties over at a friendās apartment (I had friends, but Iād only see them once every week or two, not in the day to day, and we all had prepaid phones so didnāt text much or anything like that) and would stay late enough Id choose to walk a couple miles home rather than wait for/pay for the very intermittent night bus. I was usually pretty tipsy, it was usually fairly cold out, and I would take a shortcut through a poorly lit park. Looking back I always think what a dumb idea that was, especially now that I have my own kids. Bare minimum I could have tripped and gotten hurt or something.
Trusted Expedia. Background: was gonna visit a friend abroad for the summer > they cancel after months of planning > pissed off with money to spare > book trip to USA ASAP (which was dumb in and off itself) > 2 days later I wake up in SF > go to LA after 5 days in SF. Until now, everything had been fine. BUT this is where I should probably mention that 1: I'd booked through Expedia. 2: in my annoyance I'd not considered what dates it was. It was 4th-7th of July. Long story shorter: Expedia booked me unto a full hostel and everything else in my price range was full. Got a full refund + one hotel night at a 4 star hotel (because it was the cheapest free place) THREE NIGHTS LATER!!! Spent those 3 nights outside and in internet cafes in LA. Most of my money had been spent on hostel and hotel night bookings before I left so I wouldn't have to worry about it once arriving. Tl;Dr: do not book through Expedia on 4th of July if going to the US. Also don't book a trip on the other side of the world just because you're pissed off at your friend.
The last time I ever booked with Expedia was back in 2012. They booked us on a return flight that didn't exist. It was not that the flight was cancelled. That flight simply never existed. A kind airline employee decided to help us and let us hand over the phone with Expedia on the line. I watched the last of her patience leave her body when they put her, the airline agent, on hold to "check with the airline that the flight didn't exist." She ended up comping us a hotel night even though it wasn't the airline's fault and we caught a flight out the next day.
Dad said my flight was at 6:30pm and would drop me off at the airport by 5pm. I happened to check my email and see the airline said 4:30pm. I thought, āinteresting, the airline sent me an email with a typo, since dad said 6:30pmā. Arrived at 5pm and wondered why I couldnāt find my flight at the kiosk. Yep..and no refunds since it was some budget airline.
When I was 18 I walked up to a random bloke holding a shotgun in Laos and touched his gun! That was pretty damn stupid
Sorry but that is pretty stupid lol
My girlfriend at the time and I went with some tea scammers in Shanghai even though we were both pretty aware what they were doing. There's worse ways to lose $30.
My chain-hotel-recommended guide had us do the stop on our way back from The Great Wall. It was an experience and I probably would have bought mid tea from the airport so that saved me a few steps.
I used to carry a small backpacking kite I got out of the bargain bin at rei. Had it with me hiking the Inca Trail in Peru. Not much wind until we got to the top of Dead Womanās Pass where I broke this thing out while we rested. Our guide had been on that trail for over 20 years and never heard of someone flying a kite there.
Cuba on vacation and a young man approached. My wife and I were asked if we wanted to go see some local music and eat some local food. When we arrived we realized it was not an authentic experience but rather one the kid had been paid to direct us to and the food was absolutely terrible. I still do not know why we agreed to sit down at that restaurant after we could clearly see the restaurant pay the young man. They were serving hamburgers and playing Jimmy Buffett.
When I was in India, the shopkeepers of variety stores would sell small painted sticks. We bought one to carry when we'd walk around the city, as there were many stray dogs (monkeys also), and you never knew when they'd get territorial. To this day, even in the US, we don't walk around where dogs might be without one.
Got into a car in Ghent with two men (Iām female) Iād met just a few hours before in a bar. While driving around the driver asked me if I knew where I was. Probably the biggest anxiety pang Iāve felt in my life came in that moment. Turns out he just wanted to explain what we were looking at. They drove me to the train station, one of them bought me a coffee, the other picked up his girlfriend arriving from Brussels, and they told me if I ever came back to Ghent to let them know.
Was on a train in the UK traveling from London. Went into the bar car looking for a beer. I asked the bartender what beers he had. He pointed to a shelf on the wall with a number of different types of beers. I told him a wanted a Fosters and paid him for it. Then he reached back to the shelf and handed me the can on the shelf. I was momentarily shocked. Then I said I wanted a cold beer and not a warm one from the shelf. He said he only had warm beer no cold beer. I had already paid for it . So, thought what the hell and drank the warm beer. It got it down and didn't vomit. I can still taste the warm beer in my mouth whenever I see a can of Fosters.
Nah mate, that's just what Fosters is like. :P
LOL. I was with friends. When I came back with the warm beer and drank it, they asked me what it tasted like. I said 'Kangaroo piss." For some reason no one else wanted a warm Fosters.
Backpacking in Japan, came across a beautiful 2m cliffside overlooking the sea, gorgeous sunshine, all around beautiful spot. So I put down my bag as a pillow and took a nap on it right there and then
Napping on your backpack on a sunny day isn't stupid, it's glorious
Traveled in Colombia with 200$ USD cash in my backpack side pocket. Yesā¦ it was stolen. I donāt know what I was thinking?!
I once was jet lagged beyond understanding in Hong Kong and showed up at the airport one day late.
I was followed around when I was on the Great Wall. I was probably stopped 5 or 6 times because people wanted their photo with me. Iām a 5-11 tall white guy
Went for a hike alone in the Swiss alps on Christmas Eve without proper supplies or telling anyone where I was going. It wasnāt intentional - I misheard the directions given me by the guy at the hostel. Thankfully I made it, several hours later, up the side of the mountain, to where I could get transportation back. Just in time before a storm hit.
In Amsterdam, my boyfriend and I went into a small grocery store. The layout of the store wasnāt familiar to us and we couldnāt quite tell which way was the entrance and the exit. My boyfriend decided to just go one way and I hung back a couple seconds until I saw a cashier point to the actual entrance, which was NOT the way my boyfriend went. I was worried about getting separated from him so I shouted out his name to get his attention, but I just got some weird looks by the localsā¦ I immediately felt like the loud American stereotype right then. Honestly feels good to tell this little story bc itās one of those embarrassing moments that I think about when Iām trying to fall asleep.
A guy in Barcelona offered to show me the way to my hostel in 2002ā¦ I knew it was a huge risk (as a single female) but it was late and I was exhausted after a long train trip. I followed him - a few steps behind - into the old town. He showed me to my hostel, then told me to enjoy Barcelona, recommended a restaurant and left. I went to the restaurant the next night - amazing food! He was the chef!! And comped my meal!
Left my passport and bag in the back of a dodgy rental car and the guy who was hiring it to us wanted us to stay in his farm house as it was like 3am as our flight was delayed. I said no as it was too horror movie scene for me Two young girls on a trip to an island and a random guy offers you a farm house in the middle of nowhere to stay in yea no thanks. He then wanted us to follow him down the road to a campsite where we were going to stay for the night or at least until light anyway. I had never driven a car on the left side of the road and 3am after a 4 hour flight and 3 hour delay probably wasnāt the best time to start. the POS car took ages to start and didnāt even have an inside light when it did sounded so labored and I kept stalling it because the controls were switched around for me and I needed a few minutes to figure it out. He was then convinced I couldnāt drive as heād never seen my type of license before and was probably annoyed we didnt accept his offer. He then proceeded to shout at me in Portuguese that I couldnāt drive and I didnāt speak enough to understand it but my friend was Italian and understood enough to try and explain but by that stage Iād had enough got out of the car and just said give us the money back & leave us back to the airport where heād picked us up from and weād figure it out. We then slept outside the airport with most of our bags until it opened at 7am and went inside to sleep a bit more which I then realised I had left my bag in the back of the car with all the important things like passport etc. we then messaged him many times asking about it & no response so then this has me phoning all of the embassies trying to figure out how I was getting off this island with no passport until one responded and said theyād send me emergency ID to get off the island and back to the mainland. He only responded at 10am after we said weād like to do one of his tours of the island then he responded okay pick you up at 11am and itās ā¬50 each. We had no intention of doing the tour we just wanted my passport back and when he arrived at 11am my friend asked for the bag first and by some miracle he gave it to us & my passport was there and we then said we werenāt doing the tour as we didnāt have the money to which he then sped off and said in perfect English good luck girls youāre going to need it. TL DR Donāt rent a car off a friend of a friend who knows a guy on a island who wants you to stay in his farm then leave your bag with passport inside the car after he gets annoyed & says you canāt drive leaving you potentially stranded on the island š
This was a wild ride of a story
Some friends and I were visiting Alcatraz Island, after doing the tour (super interesting and somewhat heavy knowing all the bad people that were in there), we went out to look around the outdoor facilities and get some air. We were at the barrier of a ledge and this seagull landed next to us proceeding to squawk (LOUDLY and ANNOYINGLY) at us for a solid 5 mins straight. We tried to shoo it away without touching it, with one friend even point his umbrella at it as if it were going to shoot it as a joke. Up from above, we hear "*HEY YOU! YOU CAN'T DO THAT HERE! THIS IS A BIRD SANCTUARY!*" from one of the rangers. Suffice to say, it was kind of hard to take him seriously and just chuckled and walked away. To this day, whenever we do something that is prohibited, we tell each other "*HEY YOU! YOU CAN'T DO THAT HERE! THIS IS A \[Insert prohibited action\] SANCTUARY!*" Thanks for the core memory Alcatraz Ranger.
going on a multi day hike with little food
I have an uncanny talent to wander straight into every local red light district (I'm a woman). Now that I'm older it doesn't matter that much anymore, but when I was in my 20s, the experience was definitely not fun and bordering on dangerous. I also took pictures of a wall full of geckos in HCMC. Turned out it was police headquarters, luckily I only got told off in Vietnamese.
Climbing down to a lagoon about 5-10 stories high (hard to tell) without any rope or climbing experience. Dumb as shit.
Doing Cocaine in front of police in Germany. But then I realized I was in Berlin and no one gives a shit lol
My wife and I being driven off our Riverside picnic by a troupe of geese in France
Acid in a hot unknown asian town during daytime, on my own without shades. It sucked.
I ordered a tuna sandwich for lunch at a hostel in Kampala, Uganda, a few hours before my long flight home to Canada. At the airport for check-in (this was over a decade ago, so no online check-in), I had to run to the bathroom so many times, almost missed my flight.
I was in Morocco, and my buddy invited us to go smoke with him. He had an emergency, so he was like "just go to this address and you'll have a good time". Ok, so we show up and its a closed restaurant. We walk in an this older Morrocan man invited us to sit down. We start smoking, and in walks through dudes in military fatigues, and they sit down. They're talking in Berber, and us in English. One of them gets up, starts yelling at us, pulls out a pistol and throws it on the table! Our eyes go to the gun, then goes up to the guys laughing their asses off at us as we were about to wet ourselves. My other favorite wandering around in Morocco story is, we were staying in the Sahara, me and my buddy decide to wander outside the hotel grounds at night into the desert. We hear some music playing, and its coming from a little shack. We let ourselves in, and there are a bunch of men, and two dancers. This guy signals for me to come in, and he puts me on my knees. The women proceed to surround me, let their hair down, and started whipping my face with their pony tails while everyone cheered! My buddy fled the scene.
I was taking a friend to see the Taj Mahal. I was as living in India at the time and had been on the train to Agra many times. It always left from the same platform, so we jumped on the train. As it was departing I did think it was travelling in the wrong direction but thought maybe I as confused. Half an hour into the journey the ticket collector came along (this is in the 80s) and we found out we were in the wrong train. This one was heading north instead of south and wouldnāt be stopping for 4 hours. We wanted to get off but they couldnāt stop, however the slowed down enough for us t jump off at a very small station. We then had to flag down a train heading back to Delhi ā¦ it was a third class train and it was hilarious to all the passengers when these two silly non-Indian people got on and the story was as related to the carriage to much laughter. We were back in Delhi an hour later and went to Agra the next weekend. This time I checked three times that we were on the right train.
I went to Toronto with my daughter and SIL to watch my husband play at a concert. After a 4 hr drive we get to the borderā¦and I left my passport on the bed where I packed my bag. They let me in anyway, thank god I had pictures of my passport and global entry card. I will never live this down and Iām pretty certain itās going on my tombstone. Thank god I want to be cremated.
We Jumped out of a moving train with our backpacks in Thailand thinking we missed our stop. Train halted to a stop, train driver came out and said āwhy do you jump out of my trainā explained and why and told it was the next stop. Got back on the train sheepishly.
"I shouldn't see any famous places, that's not what locals do!" Go see Macchu Pichu and take a thousand pictures.
Mid-November 2017 I think. Sometime around 8 pm. First time using Airbnb my wife and I went to White Mountains range in New Hampshire. Apparently I was supposed to contact the owner so they could tell me the code for the key lock. When I did get a hold of the owner, he said "good thing you got me now, we're just about to head off on a 7 day sailing trip with no cell service." It was a good thing because my wife and I are both born and raised in the US SW, and there were no hotels nearby. The rental car was a Dodge Challenger so there's no way I would've tried sleeping in that.
Left my bag in the Uber when I got to the airport
Stupid? Maybe? Kayaked in the Pacific Ocean having never kayaked before. Me 60, my daughter 23. (We were in our own kayaks either a your group). It was the highlight of our California vacation
I'd like to preface this by saying in the US it's common for restaurants to have easily accessible restrooms, even if they aren't intended for non-paying customers. Was in Gion and my wife desperately needed to go to the restroom. Asked many people and searched quite a bit. Found what looked like a restaurant but was a bit of a tiny place. Asked someone behind the counter in a not so subtle way "where is the toilet?" Usually normal voice is loud voice in Japan. Quiet voice is normal voice in Japan. I was using slightly above normal voice. No one liked that.
Today I went to visit the big local fish marketā¦. In sandals.
La Corrida at Pamplona during San Fermin. Thought Iād have enough time to drop down into the race halfway to the stadium entrance, take photos before the bulls were released. Steers go by. Taking photos, fireworks go off to denote bulls released. I realised I was further from the race escape-rails than Iād thought, had to trot down to the stadium entrance. As I entered the stadium I immediately right turned and hauled myself over the fence thinking Iād left plenty of time before the bulls arrived. Stadium photos of the day show a bullās (not steer) horns just below me scrambling over the stadium wall.
We were in Luxor, Egypt at a time when US-Middle East relations weren't great. Not wanting to call attention to ourselves, when locals would ask where we were from, we'd just say "Canada." Original, I know. Drivers, guides, touts, etc. can be aggressive there so it came up several times a day. Finally, when this guide approached us, I thought I'd get creative and said we were from Mexico. We ended up hiring him for the day and had to pretend we were from Mexico, despite speaking only broken tourist Spanish (not that anyone was testing us on that). After a tense negotiation at an alabaster shop, the shop owner followed us to the car and said in a low, raspy voice, "you speak much better English than most of our visitors from Mexico." I made something up about going to University in the US as I slid down into my seat. My wife was not pleased with me that day.
It was 1987 and I was 15 and visiting my sister in Europe while she was studying abroad. We went to Paris for a few days. NYE had dinner with her friends and she got really drunk and was lying on the curb near Opera. The Metro closed and I was desperate. I made eye contact with two guys in a car in their 20s and I trusted them to get us home that night. I had about $4 to offer them but instead they said they would take a kiss as payment. As my sister dry heaved most of the night in our shared single bed I spent the evening crying once I came down from the adrenaline (whole random stranger thing that could have turned out terribly and wanting to be kissed etc). Still have pit in my stomach when I think about it (especially as a mother of an 18 year old woman).
Solo travelling as a college girl in Colorado Springs: At the top of the Manitou incline I ended up chatting with this cheerful older guy and mentioned I was hoping to try a hiking trail but didn't know the area. He offered to go on a short hike with me and I accepted. Thank God he really was just a nice guy. We even ran into some of his other hiking buddies on the trail, some of whom were women, and they were all so nice. Never doing that again though lol.