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In response to this thread about the dangers of leaving your basement ( http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3764791 ), I figured a fun thread might be YOUR WORST TRAVEL EXPERIENCES. Have you been kidnapped by Khmer Rouge holdouts in the jungles of Cambodia? Been murdered by FARC in the Colombian-Ecuador border region? Came down with ebola in Liberia? I've travelled quite a bit and I think the worst thing that ever happened to me was getting ripped off by a taxi driver with a fake meter in Tunis, who charged me something like $5 instead of $2. I think that's actually the most angry I've been on foreign travel. I've never even gotten food poisoning, and I drink tap water almost everywhere and eat street food everywhere, including a number of fairly poor developing countries like Cameroon and Nicaragua. I've heard plenty of third-hand true nightmare situations stories, but most of those I think are bullshit or 100% know are bullshit ("I know someone who knows someone who got his kidney stolen in Brazil!!"). I've heard a couple secondhand stories that were legit, including one guy who got drugged and all his poo poo got stolen in Peru, two friends who got in an awful bus crash in Bolivia (one hospitalized & sent home, the other just a black eye and some stitches), and several people who came down with horrible illnesses and were hospitalized in India. Actually, I think about 90% of the terrible secondhand stories I've heard are from India, which now features alongside Syria and South Sudan in my 'places to visit' list. Even so, those India stories are mostly "someone shat on me" or "I shat myself" or "five Indian guys felt me up the entire 6 hour drive when we were in a 5-seater car that had 15 people in it". Also, I have heard a LOT of stories from people who have had petty theft in hostels, all over the world. So, what's YOUR worst travel experience?
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Feb 23, 2016 12:09
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Well, I've been whitewater kayaking around the world for the last 2 years, so had a few interesting experiences, to name but a few: Having the petrol stove break on the first day of a 10 day first descent and cover all the food in petrol for the rest of the trip, which was way in the Arctic circle so very little wood to make fires with. Luckily we had some dehydrated meals so those were palatable cold, but petrol soaked oats wasn't the most enjoyable way to start a day. Hiking over several mountains carrying 10 days of supplies and gear, on top of 30kgs of kayak & kit, makes for some extremely unpleasant times and some very sore shoulders. Accidentally (repeatedly) paddling into unpassable and (nearly) inescapable canyons. Running away from erupting volcanoes. Getting so many punctures on the car (15 in 6 months) that the jack broke and having to lift the car by hand. Borrowed someone else's car, crashed it into someone else, didn't speak the language and neither did they, or the police. Being in the middle of the worst built part of Kathmandu for a 7.8 earthquake (and in a office block tower for a 7.6) Getting a bus over a 5500m (18,000ft) pass with Giardia and Dysentery, having not eaten in a week and then starting a 300km class V river through one of the more remote parts of Jammu/Kashmir in one of the most inescapable canyons in India. Being blockaded from entering into Nepal, but with an expired Indian visa, so ending up in a little Perspex room in Delhi airport for a day as I couldn't go anywhere else. But I, too, was slightly overcharged by a taxi driver and it was the worst experience ever.
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Feb 24, 2016 19:15
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Got violently ill from eating something dodgy or drinking the water, stuck my head out of the window on a 3 hour bus ride to vomit twice. Not sure what I would have done if I couldn't open the window. Arrive in La Paz, accept a ride from a cabbie who walked up to me after I got off the bus. Ended up on a side road with a fake cop demanding that I show him my passport and cash and other valuables to check for "drugs". Got out without losing anything because I bawled the whole time and ran out of the cab when it got too ridiculous. Managed to get my big backpack back by banging on the trunk. Find a legit cab, get to my hostel where I had to run to the toilet every 20 minutes to expel fluids from both ends or so leading me to beg for a lower bunk after puking on the floor as I couldn't get to the bathroom fast enough. This was all in the same day. Nothing has came close to that, even when I was nearly denied entry to Bolivia or possibly thrown into a dodgy jail when the border agents thought my visa was fake.
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Feb 24, 2016 22:44
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I have a reputation amongst my friends for getting sick or having stupid things happen during vacation. My most ridiculous trip is def Turkey. My purse was robbed when I was sleeping on an overnight bus but they at least only took my cash and left me enough to get a taxi. One of the buses I was on was stopped by the Turkish army/police and they checked all the passengers documentation. After they looked at my passport they started asking me angry questions in Turkish but I don't understand Turkish so I kept saying sorry that I didn't understand and trying to make confused facial expressions and eventually they gave up trying to question me. Once I got back to Istanbul I wandered around and ended up in Galata and everything was vandalized! Turns out I was there for the Taksim Square protest in 2013 which was very confusing and a little scary as I had no clue why people were protesting. There was so much tear gas in the air that I would start crying when I was just walking around. Also people kept catcalling me and trying to cop feels on public transportation and that was pretty annoying! Other incidents include: New Orleans - Stomach virus during a road trip to New Orleans that started in Gainesville. Puked out of a moving car. Ended up in the ER during Mardi Gras for dehydration without even drinking anything! Costa Rica - I was hit by a taxi in San Jose. Walked it off. Vietnam - Slipped in a natural spring and chipped my front tooth 
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Feb 25, 2016 06:04
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I once had to take a two-week business trip to Arizona.
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Feb 26, 2016 00:09
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one time on a 14 segment trip in business class one of my long haul 777 with lay flat seats was replaced with a regional 777 with only moderate recline. those 3 hours and 55 minutes of daytime were hell.
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Feb 26, 2016 02:05
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I got food poisoning on a transatlantic flight and pooped myself to a state of such exhaustion that I fell asleep in the rear lav for like 30 minutes
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Feb 26, 2016 06:07
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Got food poisoning while living with a host family, spent about 5 hours on my hands and knees puking and pooping in an outhouse so filled with poo poo it was only a few inches below the sparse wooden boards I was on. Got my wallet stolen on a bus in a city, had to cancel all my credit cards and apply for a new residence card. Go hit with a vodka bottle by a member of the Mongolian National Socialist Party at a club because I was dancing with Mongol girls. Still have a scar from that one. Got choked by a guy I had never met before, no clue why. Got stuck in a freak blizzard for about 9 hours in a car in the middle of nowhere. Made it out around midnight, later found out several families had frozen to death in their cars right near me. Saw a bunch of dudes kicking the poo poo out of a girl, couldn't do anything about it. Had, what I'm still is almost certain, a group of 9-year olds vandalize and rob my home several different times. They kept stealing the food from my fridge .All in Mongolia.
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Feb 26, 2016 06:34
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sellouts posted:one time on a 14 segment trip in business class one of my long haul 777 with lay flat seats was replaced with a regional 777 with only moderate recline. those 3 hours and 55 minutes of daytime were hell.
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Feb 26, 2016 06:45
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My worst experience is actually going to West Lafyette Indiana. Everything there is just so weird. And the bouncers didn't accept my Canadian passport as ID because I didn't have a USA visa stamp. Middle America is just awful.
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Feb 26, 2016 06:47
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Not mine exactly but my husband found out his mom died two hours before we had to leave for the airport for a 15 hour flight to New Zealand. After which we were continuing on to Australia to go visit his mom...
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Feb 26, 2016 06:51
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The first time I got kidney stones was in the morning in Latrabjarg, Iceland Driving up to Isafjodur and going to the hospital there probably would have been a good idea, but I didn't know what it was, all I knew is that I felt like I had to pee a whole lot, and we were driving back to Reykjavik anyway that day. So my husband drove as the pain got progressively worse. Eventually, probably somewhere around Borgarnes, I can't remember exactly, the pain got so bad that while my husband filled up the car with gas I went into the bathroom and puked my guts out, entirely out of pain. I eventually left the bathroom and lay down on the concrete road for like 15 minutes wishing I was dead until I finally climbed back into the car and passed out most of the rest of the way to Reykjavik. When we got back to Reykjavik we went to the emergency room, the nurse gave me an injection of some miracle narcotic and I got to have a lie down for like 6 hours while they did blood work, gave me a CT scan, and then sent me back to the hotel with a prescription for codeine. edit: I also got super sick on the plane to Tokyo once and puked all over myself on the bus on the way to the hotel once we'd landed.
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Feb 26, 2016 07:00
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Tequila Sunrise posted:All in Mongolia. Well, at least they didn't take over your country and murder all of your friends, family, and everyone you ever knew this time.
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Feb 26, 2016 10:15
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I flew with Jetstar multiple times. I accidentally kicked a sea urchin and got spines in my toe when snorkelling. The situation could have been much worse, to be honest, a wave was pushing me into a rock covered in them that was right below the surface in water with practically no visibility, I managed to turn away at the last second and thankfully only my foot hit the rock. I get really nauseous from hunger sometimes and once it happened on a saltwater croc feeding tour near Darwin. We were on a small boat and the guide was getting the crocs to jump out of the water to bite meat on a stick. I didn't eat enough for breakfast and started getting hungry, then the nausea kicked in. No one on board had snacks of any kind, so I told the guide "I think I'm going to throw up" and he instructed me to lean over the edge of the boat but not on this side or I'll get my head bitten off. Ran to the other side and hurled what little breakfast I had into the river. I learned to make sure I always have at least a granola bar on me at all times just in case. A bus I was on going through the Mexican countryside ran over a full-grown male iguana. You could feel the bump There was some sort of freak winter storm in New Zealand when I was there and none of the buses were willing to drive for a couple days and I ended up having to cancel a ton of plans and ended up stuck in Queenstown for the last 10 days of my trip. I could have tried to reschedule but at that point I had been moving from place to place almost daily for 2 months in 5 countries and I was tired so I just accepted my fate. Last year I got a pretty nasty case of Montezuma's Revenge that put me out of commission for a week. And this happened last Saturday.  We knew the whale was there and was about to come up for a breach. This other boat cut in front of ours at the worst moment. I've gone whale watching in Mexico at least 12 times now and this was the first time I'd encountered such an active breacher. Realistically though, I have yet to have any real travel horrors happen. I've been very lucky, and I'm grateful for that.
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Feb 27, 2016 01:01
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Sick on my flight from Beijing to LA, bed ridden for two days. Sick on my first night of the Inca trail, hike the rest of the trail making GBS threads every 90 minutes at 13,000 ft Sick on my last day in Cape Town. I take a regional jet to Jo'burg and somehow keep it all together. taxi driver tries to charge me $40 for a 10 KM drive to Lion Park. I try to eat a slice of pizza and nearly pass out while waiting for my tent to be prepared. Sleep in my tent for 16 hours soaked in sweat and purging every couple hours, then I'm fine. Take my first trip abroad with an SO, we find out that we travel so differently that I end up begrudging her for not being more accepting of inconvenient flight times with international travel and she begrudges me for not being more accommodating that she can't comfortably fly in the early morning. We break up within a month. Get Champion's League tickets to Real Madrid, row 6. Ronaldo pulls a hamstring in a bullshit domestic match 5 days before my match, does not play in the CL match. Meet an old high school friend in London. He gets super homophobic around cool guy we had just met, which means we can't hang out with new cool guy and his 3 hot female friends after bar. Instead my friend insists on trying to find another open bar, so we get scammed by tuk tuk and bicycle cab drivers as they take us to strip club after strip club. NO STRIP CLUB. Eventually I have to sleep on his hotel room couch because it's too late/far to get to my hotel, and I pass out half-drunk where that's actually a good thing because I would've been kept awake by his cpap machine. Went to India once. Enough said.
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Feb 27, 2016 10:06
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I got food poisoning in Ho Chi Minh City. I'm assuming it was from some bahn mi at a night market stall since that was the only place where I ate that my wife didn't. After half a day of violent puking and making GBS threads I was able to get out for a couple of hours to see the Opera House and Post Office so at least I didn't miss out on anything I wanted to see and didn't have to be stuck on a bus or plane. The real tragedy was that it made me kinda apprehensive about getting street food once we got to Bangkok. Before we left for that trip, my wife took all of our hotel information out of my bag to check something and didn't put it back in the bag. Once we got to the airport I couldn't find our hotel stuff. We had just enough time to get a $70 round trip taxi back home to get it. We got to our gate just as the flight was boarding. I got separated from my wife in Shibuya Station in Tokyo. Being short and Asian, my wife doesn't really stick out in Asia like she does back home. Luckily being a tall white guy makes me easy to find in a crowd of Japanese people.
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Feb 27, 2016 18:57
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In Dhaka on business I went with my co-worker to some bar, seemed like a respectable place and not some dive bar. My co-worker orders drinks and I go to the bathroom. I come out and he's feeling really weird, so we decide to go back to the hotel, him struggling the whole time to stay awake. I get him to his room and he just passes out for the night, like a complete blackout. We're pretty drat sure that our drinks were drugged and god knows what would have happened if I had drunken something or we didn't get out of there right away. Terrifying to think about.
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Feb 28, 2016 02:13
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I was in Shanghai for a conference and went to karaoke with some clients - real classy place with shag carpeting and girls you could pick out of a lineup with mama-san shouting at them. I (possibly we) got totally wasted. I came to at some point that night in a pitch black, cold, tiled room with a nasty lump on my head. A quick check told me I was missing my wallet, phone and hotel keys as well as my shirt and shoes. Recalling the evenings events, I figured I had not been able to pay and/or insulted some Chinese pimps who had obviously beat me and locked me in some dirty toilet to later torture me and or send ransom requests to my employer and family. Resigned to my fate, I went back to sleep. When I awoke - had hours or days passed in this cold, black hell? - I crawled carefully around the edge of the room. Suddenly the light sprung on and things became clearer - I was in my fancy hotel bathroom and the motion-sensor had triggered the light. My missing clothes lay in various states of undress and my phone, wallet and keys on the countertop. So I had come home (no idea how) and wanted to shower but slipped and knocked myself out. Player One fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Feb 29, 2016 |
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Feb 29, 2016 18:08
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Actually that reminds me, I did have a worse experience than getting slightly ripped off by a taxi driver. I went to Oktoberfest a few years ago with a couple friends, one of whom lived in Munich and somehow had extra tickets to a table right next to the tapping of the keg on the very first day (amazing) which started at noon. Sat there with like 8 Germans in the Young Communists party or some similar political thing, did not speak with any of them. Proceeded to get hammered with my two friends. Thought "man, these Germans are pussies, we're finishing our second liter and they're still on their first". Around 5pm things start to become a blur, probably 6 or 7 liters in and didn't eat anything except a comically-oversized pretzel. Woke up at 2am in a hotel room with someone banging on the door. Which was odd because I was staying in my friend's apartment. Open the door, and it's the room's actual occupant (a 50-something German guy) and the hotel manager. Apparently, hammered, I must have checked myself into his room--they had keys behind the counter -- probably I just randomly said a number and the clerk handed me the key. While at the reception, I realize I forgot my sweater in this guy's room. I ask him if he can grab it for me, and he comes back and it's totally ripped to shreds. The hotel clerks ask me where I'm -actually- staying. I say "I don't know... I think Lowenbraustrasse". Lowenbrau is the name of a major German beer company. There is no street named Lowenbraustrasse. The hotel clerk shrugs and I say "I remember how to get to my apartment from the bahnhof". I walk off and I actually do remember, but I don't remember which apartment it is. I sit in the doorway for about half an hour. Oddly, at around 3am at this time, a German guy in his mid twenties comes out in nothing but briefs and opens the door. I have no idea why; I did not ring or knock, and no one could have seen me. It turns out this is the flatmate of the girl I'm staying with—I had not met him before. Amazing. I was positive I was going to have to sleep in the apartment's doorway. I crash in the bed. Everyone wakes up the next morning and wonders how the gently caress I got there, and what happened to me last night. My friend had a camera with him and compulsively took photographs, so it's almost exactly like the ending credits to The Hangover. The last photo of me is around 7pm, with my head through the armhole of my sweater (no wonder it was torn to poo poo), wearing it across myself like a toga. The photo stirs a memory -- apparently I had said to my friends "I'm going that way". They waited 10-20 minutes and I never came back; I guess I had already checked myself into a stolen hotel room. The next day, we proceeded to get drunk as poo poo, but I made it home that time. So actually it wasn't all that bad of an experience. If I wasn't a clean-cut white guy though, I bet I would've been arrested at the hotel.
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Feb 29, 2016 22:20
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Player One posted:I was in Shanghai for a conference and went to karaoke with some clients - real classy place with shag carpeting and girls you could pick out of a lineup with mama-san shouting at them. I (possibly we) got totally wasted. This is my favorite so far
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Mar 1, 2016 03:27
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Got dysentery or similar in Egypt. Threw up in the bathroom at the Egyptian Museum. The bathroom attendant apparently told my mom "Don't worry, I have five babies!" and then my mom was screaming at me for being pregnant (I was not pregnant.) Got back to the hotel and proceeded to simultaneously projectile vomit and shoot diarrhea like a fire hose so that I hit the window and the wall on the opposite sides of the room and splashed my younger brother with both. Crawled through a mire of my own poo poo and vomit to the shower, where I alternately slept and shat and puked. Actually shat in my sleep because I was so exhausted. Woke up and 8 Mile was on TV; I still can't hear that "you only get one shot, one opportunity" Eminem song without having to poop. After three days, they threw me on a tour bus. I hadn't eaten, but still managed to puke constantly. I threw up at the Temple of Edfu. I went to Giza and a tout shoved a camel's lead in my hand so he could force me to pay baksheesh; I looked at the poo poo-covered rope and puked and scared the camel. I threw up on a bus. The whole time, men are yelling pervy poo poo at me on the street and offering my dad camels for my lovely hand in marriage. At this point, I believe my father would happily have surrendered me for any number of camels. Then they threw me on a boat. I begged for chicken broth- I was a vegetarian- and to go home. I lay on a twin bed in the Nile and watched a live-action version of The Wind In the Willows starring at least half of Monty Python. I wasn't sure I hadn't hallucinated it. They brought me crackers and I puked and poo poo and have you ever had explosive diarrhea on a boat? We had to change rooms. The air conditioner blew smoke all over us; we were covered in dust and dirt. I threw up over the side. Then my stomach issues abated. Hooray! I immediately got a sinus infection. My eyes were constantly pouring water and I was coughing so hard, I started developing abs. My brother started sleeping on the deck of the boat. Meanwhile, every time I blew my nose, it came out in black streamers from all the poo poo in the air. We met up with distant family; I introduced myself and then went to sleep in the car. Lasted about an hour before a man started banging on the window and hollering at me to pay baksheesh for sleeping in a car in a public parking lot? Maybe? I don't even know, because I burst into such hysterical scream-tears that he ran away. I finally started feeling somewhat better. Hooray! BTW we're all going home a week early because Grandma died. gently caress Egypt. Oh, and I worked in Korea for two years. That also sucked.
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Mar 2, 2016 08:41
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caberham posted:My worst experience is actually going to West Lafyette Indiana. Everything there is just so weird. West Lafayette is actually the greatest place on earth.
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Mar 2, 2016 17:00
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While in Shanghai on work in 2009, I was invited to Beijing by an older single Chinese business woman whom I had met through a mutual business friend. We did get to eat in the Great Hall of the People with the head of China's trade unions and she squired me about the city like her young lover. She couldn't speak English, and my Mandarin is horrible. She had a young assistant named Jonny who was completely clueless and our translator. His English was about as bad as my Mandarin, and on my arrival he was asked to take me to the hotel for check in. He took me to a branch of Bank of China and attempted to check us in at the teller window. We also roomed together one night, and he jerked off 3 or 4 times in the room with me. gently caress him.
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Mar 3, 2016 15:56
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Sounds like you actually didn't.
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Mar 4, 2016 08:07
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Wasn't really that bad but it fits the theme. We were on a work camping trip a couple years ago in January. The temperature was dropping to close to -60 at night with windchill factored in. The water/chemical in the portapotty froze so all the poo poo was piling up, and almost made it to the rim by the time the week was over.
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Mar 6, 2016 14:20
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On the plus side, poo poo and piss won't smell bad if it's -40. On the minus side, I can't imagine taking a poo poo in an unheated portapotty in -40 or whatever the non-windchill temperature was.
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Mar 6, 2016 15:07
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Hmm.. got so sunburned that I nearly fainted in Havana. Almost lost my phone there as well (luckily, the taxi was able to bring it to the airport before my plane left). A few cases of being overcharged. Dealing with locals in some countries, with Nepal, India and Ethiopia being near the top of the list (just generally unpleasant).
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Mar 6, 2016 15:11
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Saladman posted:On the plus side, poo poo and piss won't smell bad if it's -40. On the minus side, I can't imagine taking a poo poo in an unheated portapotty in -40 or whatever the non-windchill temperature was.
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Mar 6, 2016 15:17
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Hmm.. got so sunburned that I nearly fainted in Havana. Almost lost my phone there as well (luckily, the taxi was able to bring it to the airport before my plane left). A few cases of being overcharged. Dealing with locals in some countries, with Nepal, India and Ethiopia being near the top of the list (just generally unpleasant). Really bad sunburns are the worst. One year my husband and I both burned our backs really bad we looked purple, and we ended up soaking towels in cold water and just draping them over ourselves in an attempt to draw out the heat that was causing excruciating pain. We hardly slept at all that week.
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Mar 7, 2016 06:43
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Feeling the start of a stomach bug somewhere over the mid-Atlantic on an overnight SFO-LHR flight, holding it almost until the plane landed, only to have the wave of puke unleashed by the plane needing to circle over Heathrow. Filled all the sick bags on my row...
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Mar 7, 2016 10:46
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I was in San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico with my girlfriend, we'd booked this really cool sounding tour to see some of the indigenous culture and local area with a guy who was well respected and knew everyone - we were really looking forward to it. Went for some pizza the night before and I woke up needing the toilet a few times, and couldn't manage breakfast in the morning but felt OK. On the drive into the hills I felt a bit weird but it passed - it happened again so I got out to be sick. Ended up fainting behind the car, banged the trunk as I fell over, and collapsed on the side of the road. A local dude saw me and him and the tour guide carried me back to the car, and the guide proceeded to race back into town to a private clinic, hitting a stray dog on the way. Once in the clinic they tried to give me fluids but my veins closed up and they spent the most painful 20 mins of my life trying to get an IV line into my arm. They gave up after 3 separate needles bent. While sipping rehydration drinks and feeling slightly better my girlfriend started to get ill, so it was my turn to look after her. I think we got it from our dinner, it ruined pizza for me for about 3 months.
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Mar 8, 2016 02:04
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I shat myself in a very public way. Kuta Beach, before noon. Staying at a bungalow just of Poppies I, near the beach. I'm an early riser, and had been surfing for a couple of hours. Coming in, I stopped at a 7-11 to check my email (this was 2003). After a few minutes, I got the loose feeling in my gut, which soon began to clench. I stepped out to walk back to my bungalow, but not in time. On Poppies I, in broad daylight, wearing board shorts and sandals, I had explosive anal leakage. I heard "Whoa-ho-ho" in an Australian, female, accent. Utterly befouled, I slunk back to the bungalow, where my girlfriend said "Why'd you poo poo yourself?" upon seeing my state. I've also poo poo myself in Marrakech, Beirut, and Montevideo. The Bali making GBS threads was the most ignominious.
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Mar 8, 2016 04:55
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--While on study abroad in college, my college girlfriend (also studying abroad) and I went on a central Europe train tour over Christmas break. Rome was one of our stops, and on our last day there we were cutting it close to our departure to Milan so I ran ahead to our hostel to get our stuff and told her to meet me on the train platform. I get to the platform, no sign of her, I wait around thinking she had gotten lost and the train takes off. "No big deal" I think, we have passes so we can just get the next relevant train. I start looking for her, and two hours later I'm having a full-on panny because not only have I not found her, I realize she had my train pass and my passport on her. Also no one in Rome speaks anything besides Italian. Eventually I find someone who can speak Italian and a language I know (German, at least at the time) and she starts helping me sort things out when my GF calls, having gotten on the train without me, then having gotten off halfway somewhere, dipped in to an internet cafe, and called my German cell # which, bless her heart, she had memorized. Two hours later she's back, we jump on a train together and collapse when we finally make it to Milan. --I spent an hour or so making GBS threads my guts out on a little boat off the coast of Pattaya while visiting my girlfriend's (same one) family in Thailand. Really choppy waters that day too, or at least it felt like it.
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Mar 10, 2016 05:24
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I've had various cases of the shits and the pukes but nothing as serious as I've had while in my own house just recently - 48 hours of out of this world gastro. I've also managed not to injure myself or fall victim to a scam (that I know of) or robbery (that I know of) or be subject to any violence or whatever. I haven't missed a plane or anything, either. The worst experience would probably be spending four nights in hospital (I was released on Christmas Eve) in 2012 on Koh Samui in Thailand with dengue fever. Dengue can eat a bag of dicks. Bangkok Hospital Samui, however, was awesome. A great place to be sick, and my travel insurance handled everything.
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Mar 10, 2016 05:44
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Well, it seems like everyone has a food poisoning story, so... I don't know whether I got food poisoning technically speaking, or just really brutal Mexican food from this place in Ft. Lauderdale. What I do know is that everything ended really badly, and gently caress Montreal airport for not having a bathroom before customs. I was feet away, dammit! So close, and yet so very far...
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Mar 10, 2016 06:36
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Montreal is the only airport I've been that did not have people staffing security scanning overnight. I had to wait outside customs with at least 100 other people one morning between 4 and 5 because no one was staffed to scan people through security. That reminds me of a funny one: I flew from Calgary to Vancouver and the plane ended up at the wrong gate. There was no one in that entire wing of the airport and all the lights were off but apparently that's where we were directed to go. My sister was in the airport waiting for me, and managed to call me on my cell asking if I had landed. I totally had, but we were literally locked out, just sitting and waiting, hoping someone would show up. The pilot had admitted over the intercom that he had no idea how this screw up occurred but all we could do was sit and wait until we were let inside. It took nearly an hour for us to deplane because they had to rush a bunch of staff over to this part of the airport we ended up at.
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Mar 10, 2016 09:18
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Last summer I was involved in some metal testing of a historic logging camp up near the Canadian border. At some point I got into something that really upset my nose. It ran constantly for hours. Because we came in on a boat there wasn't much I could do but walk around on the rocky beach to get some relief from whatever it was. I brought Zyrtec with which usually gets me through whatever I encounter but that didn't do much. I got an expired Sudafed from my teacher which also didn't help. That night we drove over to a resteraunt/store and I bought some generic benadryl which finally calmed things down. Similarly I got off a flight once and my nose started running and wouldn't stop. We still had a 3 hour van ride to get home so once I'd used up all the kleenex in the van I had to take a sock out of my luggage and hold that to my nose for the rest of the trip. That was pretty pathetic feeling.
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Mar 12, 2016 02:50
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Caught Norwalk virus on a cruise ship back in 1997. Didn't hit me in earnest until walking around San Juan PR. I think I had explosive diarrhea in 20 different Puerto Rican bathrooms. Just decimated them shitters. Traveled on a lot of icy treacherous mountain roads, will never forget some of them.
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Mar 12, 2016 14:03
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bringmyfishback posted:The whole time, men are yelling pervy poo poo at me on the street and offering my dad camels for my lovely hand in marriage. At this point, I believe my father would happily have surrendered me for any number of camels. Ditto. I was 12 and my mom was offered "100 camels" and "as many camels as you want" for me. Much scarier in Egypt: Taking a photo of a random guard/police guy on top of a roof from the tour bus and him subsequently drawing his large gun at us. That's a fun photo. Oh, leaving Egypt, we all boarded the plane, but just sat on the tarmac as scary looking dudes with walkie talkies ran up and down the aisles for 2 hours. Moved off the plane into a tiny room in the airport. Sat for a few hours until a new plane came. That is not a fun airport to sit in, especially shoved into a little room with 150 other people. Missed our connecting flight in NYC, got put up in a lovely hotel and when we pulled the bedspread off the bed, it had a giant blood stain on it. Like, murdered or gave birth on it or something. It was 3am so we used towels to cover up. I got mono in London once too, I was in high school. Fell asleep during Les Mis, then couldn't leave the hotel for the rest of the trip with the worst sore throat ever. Mom got me major antibiotics (without having to see a doctor!) and pumped me full of them thinking it was strep. The last night, I went on some dinner cruise on the Thames, and ended up crying for 30 minutes in the bathroom for no real reason. Went straight from the dock to St. Joseph's hospital. Sat around in triage for a couple hours with homeless people. Saw a doctor, she exclaimed "it's green in there!" when she looked in my throat. Determined I was ok to fly home the next day. Missed going to Stonehendge on Easter Sunday which would have been funny. Once I got home, I got a raging yeast infection from those massive amounts of pointless antibiotics! Thanks mom. Got food poisoning on a cruise, but that's kind of normal for cruises One time in college I flew to Des Moines and didn't realize it was Iowa caucuses time. My return flight just happened to be the same same time every single media person wanted to leave too. Missed my flight, spent 8 hours in the airport. meh.
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Mar 18, 2016 04:50
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I'm very fortunate that my sickness on the road has never been food poisoning or anything related; it's mostly been a cold or blowing out black snot plus coughing fits from weird weather or dust storms. Everything that happened within the first hour that I got into Vietnam is the most common answer I give lately: 1. I sat on a bunch with gum. 2. When paying for my visa, one of my bills had a small dot from a sharpie and the customs official wouldn't accept it. She was about I'd have to go to the back of the line that was 100+ deep at that point, but when she noticed I had some Thai baht in my wallet, she offered to let me pay in that currency. Except the converted rate she threw at me also meant she kept about $10 to herself, and that's when I learned not to just take the first price someone throws at me in SEA, even if they have a uniform on. 3. Got baited/switched when I picked up my prepaid sim. Once I got a chance to get some rest, I was on way better guard and the rest of Vietnam was awesome. I have another story that felt like the end of the world at the time, but it's become one of my favorite lovely travel experience stories: The time that caberham saved my rear end in HK. He'd never even met me in person and I'm never gonna forget the gesture. Long story short, a few fuckups within my control ends up snowballing into panic, so have your poo poo together before you travel as best as possible. The plan was to fly from JFK to Hong Kong, then connect to Kuala Lumpur. The idea was to get to my hotel in KL and promptly pass the gently caress out after a ton of travel. Except none of that happened. My flight out of JFK ended up getting delayed 4+ hours, so there's no doubt I'll miss the connection. The flight was originally supposed to leave around 11 PM, so leaving the airport meant spending more time on a train rather than doing anything interesting in the city. That was the first time I slept in an airport terminal. I got a tiny bit of credit due to noshowing my flight to KL, and since it was on a separate ticket, I had to buy a new one. Unfortunately, every flight was sold out until the next morning and after getting that sorted, next thing to do was find last minute accommodation. Swing by an ATM, then the screen has an error message in Chinese, and it spits out a slip saying "card not accepted". I hop on the wifi to call my bank, and the relief to hear that my account hadn't been compromised quickly turned into full on hyperventilating panic as the lady on the other end said, "However sir, your card expired yesterday." I nearly had a total nervous breakdown in an airport terminal, so I sit down to collect myself and talk through the situation with friends back home. I recall exchanging pm's with caberham here and on CS, so I fire him a message to get him caught up. He gives me additional contact info and tells me a place to meet him in the city. I figure with everything that's happened, gently caress it, what do I have to lose? Pick up a sim card, drop off my backpack in left luggage, hop on the airport express train, and when I meet up with him, turns out he's already out with the HK goons. They took me right in and all of the bad poo poo that happened felt like nothing. Hopped to a few bars, ended up going to karaoke, and after all that, I'm thinking it's about time for me to head back to the airport despite being in a near-delirious state. One goon offered, "I heard about what's going on, you're welcome to take a shower and rest for a few hours at least" and of course I took him up on that! Took a power nap, cleaned up, then back to the airport and flew to KL. In general, learned a lot from that trip and it really wasn't so bad having to survive KL and Penang with about the $70 I had in my pocket. Spent my birthday in Taipei and was staying with a friend, so I was able to get cash by sending him money over Paypal and he'd go to the ATM. I didn't actually plan on spending time in HK until the end of the trip, and that group of goons got together again for sushi. It felt real loving awesome buying dinner for the guy who offered me a place to quickly rest and we had another fun night out in HK. On my way back home, I was shocked to see my boarding pass show business class. Turns out a frequent flyer friend from back home used a systemwide upgrade on me as a birthday gift.
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Mar 29, 2016 22:54
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