Traveling can be a huge hassle. That’s why people try their best to plan ahead and take extra precautions to make sure their trip goes as planned, however sometimes it’s inevitable. These travelers share their terrible traveling experiences. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
School Trip Gone Wrong
“I was 16 and I was heading to England, France, and Spain for 10 days on a school trip. During these 10 days, we had multiple ridiculous things happen to us. Our first hotel we checked into in England was a complete garbage can, and after our first day of sightseeing, we were taking the train home when the conductor announced we wouldn’t be stopping at our stop due to a large fire.
We all made jokes about like, ‘Our trashy hotel burnt down.’
Shortly we found out our hotel actually was on fire and that many of our things had water damage.
Next, we moved onto France and in Carcassonne, France our tour bus got robbed. A man actually broke into our parked tour bus and rummaged through all our stuff stealing many people’s valuables, even one girls passport. Our tour bus driver caught him in the act and ended up getting beat up by this man.
Last was Spain, and in Spain we got into an accident with another tour bus. No one was hurt luckily. And on top of that, me and the girls I was sharing a room with got harassed in the middle of the night by a bunch of Spanish men who creepily listened to our conversations, learned our names, and kept calling our room at three am.”
Fire Alarm
“I was flying from Florida to Rhode Island. I was flying home to take my ex on a date; we broke up when I moved across the country for work, but I still wanted to make it work with her. She asked me to take her on a date so I planned a trip home, booked a hotel room and reservations at a nice restaurant, and was very excited to go. It was planned out for about two months and three days before I flew home she told me she didn’t care about me anymore and didn’t want to see me. Now I had no desire to go home but my family knew I was coming back and they were all excited to see me. I decided to just take the trip and make the best of it.
I was flying out of Fort Lauderdale but I lived about an hour and a half south, so I had an early flight out, because I wasn’t sure how traffic would be. I could see the airport and was about two hours early for my flight. I was sitting at the only red light between me and the airport when a train came across the tracks. It came to a complete stop on the tracks in front of me and didn’t move for an hour. I was just stuck there with other cars behind me blocking me in. When the train finally moved, I sped down the street looking for the parking lot, which was obviously under construction and had moved. Signs to get to the new parking lot were terrible.
About 20 minutes later, I finally find it, parked my car, grabbed my bags, and started running to the shuttle. I was running down the middle of the street as the shuttle left without me. At this point, I felt like I was in a bad movie. I waited for the next shuttle. He told me he had to wait 15 minutes before leaving, but after telling him how my morning had been going and that I would give him $20 to just leave and get me to the airport, he agreed.
I got inside and asked someone to help me, told them I had about 25 minutes before my flight, but they didn’t care.They told me it was too late and to get in line to reschedule my ticket.
Two hours later, I got to the front of the line and the lady told me she would be so kind as to wave the rebooking fee and that all I had to do was pay the difference between the flight I had and the flight she was switching me too.
I said, ‘Fine. When and how much is the next flight?’
Twelve hours and $200 later, I spent the rest of the day drinking and reading at Chilis in the airport.
At 8:30 pm, I was finally boarding my flight home which had a stop in North Carlina to pick up other passengers. I was told we didn’t have to get off the flight; some people would get off, others would get on and we were off again. However, when we landed there, it just so happened to be a fire alarm going off inside the airport. The captain told us we had to evacuate the plane. Everyone got off and was sitting around inside the airport and for about 30 minutes everyone was told to leave the building but no one wanted to. Finally, about half the people started to leave so I decided to get up and go with them. I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and it was about 30 degrees outside. All my warm clothes were in my checked bag.
Thirty minutes later, they let us enter the airport again but said we had to go through security again since we exited the building. We waited for two hours when someone finally came over and told us they sent the people who refused to evacuate, along with all our luggage to Rhode Island. And we could not get on the plane without going through security but TSA had all gone home during the fire alarm because there were no flights left.
So here I was stuck in North Carolina with just the clothes on my back. I bought a phone charger in the airport and was told the only available food was a vending machine across the street that closed in 10 minutes. I got M&Ms and Doritos for dinner. When I came back to figure out what was going on, I was told they would put us on the next flight out at no charge. But the next flight was not until 10:30 pm the next day.
I ask if there was any way they could put me on a flight back to Florida. They said no, so I asked if they would put me on a flight with a different airline and I would pay the difference in the ticket. Again, they said no. I tried to rent a car but it was closed for the night, and the only bus station was two hours away. So I gave up and spent the entire night and all the next day in the airport.
My original flight was supposed to land at 11:15 am on Monday. I got off the plane at 12:30 am on Wednesday. All this to not see the girl who was the entire reason for my trip. I emailed and wrote a letter to the airline asking to at least have the money for my second flight returned to me. They responded by saying that it was my own fault for leaving the airport and the best they would do is a $25 credit toward my next flight with them.”
Crooked Cops
“My wife and I flew from NYC to Hanoi, Vietnam. Twenty-two hours total travel time and I hadn’t slept in 35ish. We got off the plane and met our driver to take us to our hotel. I noticed were getting the stink eye from two airport police officers. We got into the car and began to pull away.
I thought, Let the vacation begin!
The cops stopped our car and started speaking to the driver in Vietnamese. I looked to my wife and told her not to worry. It was 11pm local time. They exchanged barbs, and all of a sudden were moving to an extremely dark part of the terminal. The police officer was now in our car talking to the diver and I had no idea what was going on. I was assuming I would have to bribe the guy (very common) and we would be on our way.
It was now 11:30 and our driver spoke ZERO English, so he called our hotel and the hotel front desk explained the situation.
Theyey said, ‘Basically the cops wants 500,000 Vietnamese Dong (which is $25). The driver doesn’t have any, so give the driver the money and he’ll pay the cop. And we will pay you back when you get to the hotel. I smelled a scam, but it was now 11:45pm and I had been awake for 35.5 hours and just wanted to get to the hotel.
I said, ‘No problem.’ Then handed the driver the money.
He then began to talk to the police, they nodded and smiled. The cop was outside of car smoking a cig, finished, then got back into our car.
Oh no, now what? He then pointed to the exit and we drove away. My wife was freaking out as I was just trying to stay calm. The bribe was paid, why was this cop still with us?!
We got to the exit of the airport and there was a big blue traffic sign, ‘Hanoi turn right’. We instead went left. It was now getting close to midnight and we were now traveling down this dark road in a part of town that still looked bombed out from the war.
I was watching the driver’s odometer in the car and whispered to my wife, ‘.5 miles from airport… .75 miles from airport…. one mile from airport.’
We were about 1.25 miles from the airport down 1 road, we never turned. Then we turned into the shadiest looking police station I had ever seen. Think a double wide trailer with an office and two skinny Vietnamese police officers chain smoking cigs. We got out and I told my wife not to leave my side for anything. We approached the guy who looked in charge and started asking what was going on. Again, no English (at least pretended, because almost everyone we met spoke a little English).
The dude started screaming at me, ‘YOU WEST! YOU WEST!’
Driver said very timidly, ‘Wait. Go wait.’
Then he waked us outside and pointed to the car.
He said, ‘Wait.’
Thirty minutes went by and we started to get nervous. My mind started to envision what could be going on. I handed my wife my travel pack with our passports and cash and reminded her the airport was 1.25 miles back that way.
I said, ‘Prepare yourself to run back to the airport for help.’
She was sitting in the car ready to beat feet as I was now outside of the car with a small piece of concrete I found outside of the car. I was getting my head right to fight these three cops and possibly the driver. Not that I had a chance, but at least I could slow them down enough to give my wife a head start back to the airport.
It was now 12:30am and been awake for almost two days with no sleep.
The driver came out from around the corner of the police station smiling saying, ‘Ok we go.’
I looked at my wife like what the heck was that. We got into the car and drove away towards the airport. I tried to ask the driver what happened and he shrugged his shoulders and just said, ‘Sorry… Vietnam.’
We got to the hotel around one am, and our adrenaline was still pumping. The hotel apologized 100 times and ended up moving us to a nicer hotel the next day and upgraded us to a suite. I drank all the drinks in the room and passed out, however my wife couldn’t sleep.”
Be Careful Of What You Eat On Airplanes
“I was flying back from India after spending a couple of months there this summer. I want to note that on the six-hour drive to the airport, I’d felt some motion and altitude sickness, and maybe some dehydration, but nothing much had happened.
After boarding, I watched a Bollywood movie, it was pretty good. So I ate some of the airplane food, and let me tell you, United does not know how to make Indian food. It was completely unpalatable. But it was also the first of only two meals I’d get over 20 hours of flying, so I ate it.
Mistake.
I took a nap and woke up in the middle of the ‘night’, meaning that pretty much everyone on the plane was asleep, too. And I had to use the restroom. I mean, I had to go really. Really. Bad.
So, clenching my butt tighter than a vice grip, I climbed over the two people in between me and the aisle, slipped on one of them, and planted myself face-first into the armrest of one of the chairs in the central seats. I then made my way to the bathroom, trying to play it off, like how cats do when they try to jump onto the counter and misjudge the height.
I got in the restroom, panted down, sat on the toilet, and unleashed the holiest of holies. It sounded like machine weapon fire and artillery shellings, but the war was only just begun. I felt something coming up my esophagus. I could feel it rising up, like some sort of chunky snake slithering its way up my throat. I opened my mouth and burped, but then the air stopped in my throat. There was something there.
I don’t know how many of you have spent a lot of time in this situation, but an airplane bathroom isn’t structured right for what I was going through right then. I needed to barf in the sink, but I was still putting out the unholy hellfire of half-processed Indian food.
So I did what anyone else would do, and stood up.
I didn’t vomit, but that’s when the nosebleed started. I instinctively reached for the paper towels, which meant my butt sprayed at the wall, but then I vomited again. It was all over my hands. I was worried that the inside of my nose would get infected with the vomit. So I started trying to hock it up, you know, like, how you can vibrate your soft palate and kinda suck it back down? And then I tried blowing it out, which meant there was now blood, vomit, and feces covering everything.
And then it all stopped. With a whimpering squeak, all was quiet on my southern front.
I plugged my nose with some tissues and spent the next half-hour cleaning the restroom. Then I went to sleep again.
Don’t fly United.”
Unwanted Visitors
“My girlfriend took me away to the beach for a long weekend. The weather didn’t cooperate, it was cold and rainy, but we decided to make the best of it. We checked into a little bed and breakfast, went to our room, unpacked and then went to dinner. Before leaving for dinner, I opened the window because the room was a bit stuffy.
After dinner, we came back and did what couples do, especially when on vacation. Then we fell asleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, I was awaken to my girlfriend tossing and turning; violently thrashing in the bed. She usually didn’t move much while sleeping so this was odd. I asked her what was wrong.
‘I’m going to kill you! You let mosquitoes in when you opened the window,’ she said.
‘No I didn’t,’ I replied. ‘There’s a screen. I checked before opening it.’
We turned on the lights and BAM! Bedbugs. Now, this was before bedbugs made a comeback in the United States and we had NO idea what they were. We just knew these little things were biting my girlfriend. We crushed as many as we could while the rest scurried out of sight.
I went down to the front desk, but being three am at a bed and breakfast, no one was there. I rang the little bell but no one came. I went back upstairs to our room where my girlfriend and I proceeded to spend the rest of the night reading and occasionally lifting the covers to squash more bugs.
In the morning, I brought one of the carcasses with me to the front desk. The owner insisted this was the first time he had seen any of these things and apologized.
Another guest was there and he said, ‘I know what those things are. That’s a bedbug.’
This was the first I’d ever heard of bedbugs with the exception of ‘Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.’ I had no idea they were a real thing.
So the owner moved us into another room. It was actually quite a nice room with its own separate entrance. This was the crown-jewel of the bed and breakfast. We took a nap, a much needed nap since we woke up at 2:30 in the morning. We had been asleep for no more than 15 minutes when there was a knock on the door. We opened it to find the owner standing there.
‘Hi, I’m so sorry. I have to move you again. Someone else has this room reserved and they are checking in.’
‘What? Huh?’ I said still in my sleepy haze.
‘You have to move to another room. We have another place for you,’ he said.
In hindsight, I wish I had refused then and there, but we cooperated. We got dressed and brought our bags to the reception area. The owner took us outside and along side of the building to an outside staircase. Just like the nice room we were just in, this room had its own separate entrance. But that was where the similarities ended.
This room, our third room at the this bed and breakfast, was incredibly rundown. It had old carpet; old, water-stained dropped-ceiling, a ratty couch, and a kitchenette. It was less like a bed and breakfast and more like a trashy furnished studio apartment that an unemployed and recently divorced single dad would move into.
Since this was a long weekend, the bed and breakfast had a three night minimum. The first night was the bedbug night. The second night was in this divorced-dad-studio. The third night did not exist. The next morning, we left and went home.
We decided, ‘Forget the cost of the third night. We can’t stay here.’
Ultimately, the bed and breakfast did not charge her for the third night and refunded her for one of the two nights we spent there. If this had happened after the bedbug resurgence in the US, we probably would have gotten a full refund.”
“I Decided To Have Some Fun”
“I was going to China to visit my father who works overseas and at the time I was big into acid and had a 15-hour red-eye flight. Now his company paid for business class seats, so I had a comfortable ride ahead of me. Not having to worry about being elbow to elbow with someone for 15 hours, I decided to have some fun. Packed my laptop, loaded up with movies and music, and dropped three tabs of Hoffman Bicycle acid.
Getting it through airport security was a cakewalk, slipped it in the pages of a novel, no big deal. As I waited in the terminal for my priority boarding, I gingerly placed all three tabs on my tongue.
As the first flight (an hour to Toronto to connect to Beijing) took off, the acid started to kick in. Slowly at first, but from the increasing waves of hallucinations I was getting, it was picking up rapidly.
The first vivid hallucination I remember was the seatback in front of me reaching out and engulfing me. I don’t know if I actually physically placed my face up against the weathered cotton, but I must have because the fibers felt so real on my forehead it was like I was swimming in an ocean of textiles. By the time the flight landed in Toronto, I was tripping face. And as I tried to decipher my boarding pass, I realized I had 20 minutes to connect with the flight to Beijing. In a panicked rush I sprint off the plane, only to find myself in an arrivals terminal I didn’t know the layout of. I shoulda figured this out before being high, in hindsight, but it is what it is.
Turns out the gate for my departure was on the complete opposite end of the airport. So here I was, flat-out sprinting, carry-on luggage bouncing behind me. I think I might have clipped a toddler on the way past. It was possible. I don’t remember.
I heard my flight called out on the intercom as final boarding, and I was FREAKING OUT. I finally arrived at the gate, showed my boarding pass, and got ushered onto the flight.
Being in business class (on Air Canada Business class is the same as First class, so the seats are in the front), I had a wonderful reclining chair, and as I settled into it for the long haul, a flight attendant approached me. For the first time, I glanced around the cabin, ‘important-y’ businesspeople sat on all sides, and alone 20-year-old stoner occupied the center row.
As the flight attendant opened her mouth, she spoke simple words, ‘Globe and Mail, or National Post, sir?’
I tried to process what she was saying but couldn’t. Her stern face slowly elongated towards me, accordion-like, until it sat mere centimeters from my own. The hair on her cheek mole tickled me. It seemed as though my entire field of vision was occupied by a giant, larger-than-life face. Her demonic maw opened again and more horrifying sounds came out, but what she said was, ‘Sir? Post or Globe?’
I was terrified. I stammered out, ‘P-n–at-post’, which she handed me. I didn’t read it.
Takeoff was the most frightening thing ever. In fact, I vividly hallucinated a ball of flame engulfing the 777 as it disintegrated on the runway, but actually, the feeling of 220,000 pounds of thrust is amazing when you’re on the moon.
As we reached cruising altitude, so also did my trip. I stood up and opted for a quick stroll through the cabin. I passed through the dividing curtain between first class and coach, and I was greeted with 300 staring faces. That might have been the most terrifying moment of the whole ordeal. Every single face was identical. They all had thick, furrowed eyebrows, a low hairline, and the most intimidating scowl. I saw someone clench their fist and I whimpered and turned back.
The aircraft was breathing, or so it seemed. The walls simultaneously pulled closer and moved further. At times I felt as though I was sitting in a warehouse-sized space, and I was the size of a speck of dust. But at others, I felt like the walls were pressing in from all sides.
Airplanes are weird, man. Don’t do acid on them.”
“I Hate Disney World”
“When I was young, my parents were in the process of splitting up when my dad proposed a trip to Disney World with us, his kids. That seemed cool. Then, the morning of, he picked us up with this woman we had never seen before and her infant child. Turns out that was our new half-brother and my dad’s mistress.
We were then trapped in the car with this woman we hated and forced to go to Disney World with her. We would fight over who had to sit next to her on rides and get yelled at. We would squirm away from her in pictures.
We were dragged to Disney World many times after that with this ‘new family.’ Every trip was horrible. I hate Disney World. I cannot think of any place in the entire world I would dislike vacationing to more than Disney World.”
Taxi Driver Or Scam Artist?
“I spent some time backpacking across parts of East Africa with a small group of friends last summer, and we managed to get ourselves into a couple of absolutely ridiculous situations. One of the main portions of the trip was a couple months of volunteer work in northern Tanzania where we worked as English teachers in orphanages in the town of Arusha.
After a week or so, we figured it was time to check out the local nightlife, as there were a couple bars in town. So we started drinking at the house and the couple drinks we planned on having before we left turned into about six or seven. We were staying well within walking distance to the town square, where we figured we would easily be able to grab a taxi to take us to the bar. When we finally stumbled over to hire one, we were met by a man who claimed to be a cab driver. Mind you, none of the taxis are marked in any way, the only way to tell if a cab is officially registered is the colour of the license place. We never bothered to look as most of the people in town working as cab drivers never bothered to actually register anyway.
So we began to negotiate price. We quickly agreed to pay 10,000 schillings total, or about six dollars. That’s a pretty fair price in the region for a ride that short. So we hopped in, and we were on our way.
After about a minute or so, the driver leaned back and said, ‘My friends, 70,000 schillings.’
My stomach sank. Between the few of us, we barely had that much. We only brought enough to have a couple drinks and hire a cab back to the house, as we were already pretty wasted. I wasn’t sure we would have enough to cover a cab ride back if we paid him what he wanted.
Now, in most parts I’ve been to in Africa, everything is up for negotiation. The seller will start high and you come in low, and eventually you both work out a price. It takes some getting used to but at this point, I had been doing it for a while. But this was the first time I had someone change the price after we agreed. At this point, I was a little scared.
After a few minutes of arguing back and forth, I realised we weren’t going where we needed to be. I looked out the window and saw he was starting to drive in circles, he wasn’t going to take us where we needed to be until we paid what he was asking.
Instead of being held hostage in his car, I told him to stop. I really didn’t think we had much of a choice if we had given him what he was asking; we might not have had enough to get back to the house again. He told us to get out.
So we did. Standing at the side of the road, I did my best to come to a price that would allow us to at least get a ride home again. Without warning, he just sped off. He left us on the side of the road. Then I looked around. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I realised he had dumped us off in the bad end of town. Being wasted and white in a small group in the middle of an African slum at night is a bad idea. A very bad idea.
We also had no way of getting home. There wasn’t another car on the road. He had taken us farther out from the town centre than I thought. We quickly drew a crowd. Several people immediately approached us, and a couple guys were yelling at us in Swahili. A couple people spoke decent English, and asked what we were doing here.
One man jokingly said, ‘You’re brave people, being here.’
I noticed another man picked up a cell phone, and said a couple sentences in Swahili. Somehow I just knew he was telling someone about us being there.
Another group of men started yelling at us, ‘Come with us! Get away from those people!’
The man who told me I was ‘brave’ piped up and told me not to go with those men, they were trying to lure me away so they could rob us. He told me he was going to protect us from the ‘bad people.’
I didn’t know what to do. Neither did my friends. I began to notice the group began to not only surround us, but now there were people getting in between us. I might have been wasted, but my instincts began to scream to not let these guys separate us.
I tried to get back toward the others, but one of the men put his hands on my shoulders and told me, ‘It’s ok.’
I just yelled out for my friend.
He yelled back, ‘I can’t get to you!’
Right then, I just about had a heart attack. This was turning really bad, really fast.
One of the only cars on the road must of seen the commotion, and thankfully pulled over right in front of us. The man that had me by the shoulders let go of me, and a few of them walked over to the car. The men and the driver began yelling back and forth, and the driver told us to get in. I didn’t know what to do. For all I knew, this might have been the guy the man on the cell phone had called earlier. It might have been part of the plan. The man on the phone just happened to be one of the men yelling at the driver, so that put my mind at ease.
The man in the car kept yelling with increasing haste, ‘Get in! Now!’
So we did. We piled in, not knowing if this guy actually was trying to get us out of there or not. I felt a little better when he began to yell at us as we pulled away in really good English for being idiots. He asked us how we could ever get ourselves in a situation like that, and asked us where home was.
He took us home. Thank God. When we got there, we offered him money for saving us, but he refused to take it. He just told us never to go into that area again. I ended up throwing a good chunk of the money I had on me at the time into the car as a thank you. He tried to give it back to me, but I wouldn’t take it back.
He left, and I never even got his name. We all just said ‘thank you’ over and over again.
I still love Africa. Everywhere I’ve been, I loved. The people, the culture. I’d go back in a heartbeat.”
Major Delays
“I travel for work 95 percent of the time. I had been doing this for the last three years. I’ve had missed connections, canceled flights, etc. But none of those compare to one adventure we’ll call it. This happened a few months ago.
I live in South Florida and I was flying back and forth to Vancouver, British Columbia for a month. I had been onsite in Vancouver for 11 days and had a red-eye flight booked for Friday night. This would have me home all day Saturday and most of the day Sunday. Then I would leave to return to Vancouver at five pm Sunday. I knew when I booked this it would be tough on me, but hey, I hadn’t seen my girlfriend in 11 days. And when you travel as I do, you make it a priority to get home to see your loved ones.
I got a call at dinner Friday night that my red-eye flight was canceled. Unfortunately, my phone was at two percent battery and promptly died after getting the call.
I thought, ‘Alright, well I’ll just charge my phone back at the hotel when I finish dinner and get on the other red-eye that night.’
No dice. When I called the airline back, the earliest flight they could get me on would be Saturday at 10 am.
So I got on my flight the next morning and promptly fell asleep. I was expecting to wake up in Denver, my connecting city, but instead woke up to the plane having it own mosh-pit party in the air. Seriously, in the three years, I have traveled, I have never experienced turbulence like this. People were gasping and throwing up.
The pilot came over the PA system and very calmly stated that we have been diverted to Pueblo, Colorado.
The pilot also informed us the Denver airport was shut down to all incoming and outgoing air traffic due to the violent thunderstorms.
Five minutes later, the pilot announced, ‘Good news everyone! We can actually land in Colorado Springs!’
So we went and landed in Colorado Springs. The pilot told us there were no gates to pull in to because the tarmac was so full, so we would chill on the tarmac until we got cleared for takeoff again. My phone was still dead since I had no way of charging it. So I figured I might as well take another nap.
I woke up and asked the guy next to me how long we have been sitting on the tarmac.
‘Two hours,’ he replied.
‘Dang,’ I said.
The pilot informed us Colorado Springs was now shut down for the rest of the day, and we would be pulling into the gate. I turned to the guy next to me and ask if he wanted to rent a car and drive to Denver. So we went to see about one-way car rentals and they wanted to charge us $250. I immediately turned around to the people in line behind me and started asking people to carpool. Hertz lady did not like this.
But then, a man piped up and said, ‘Hey! we’ve got a big car, you two want to ride with us?’
We said, ‘Absolutely! We’ll each give you $25 for the trouble.’
So it was me, this stranger I met on the plane, a family of four, plus a stranger they met on the plane. Seven in all, tucked into a Ford Explorer driving up to Denver.
I still had no way of knowing what was going on with my flights because my phone and computer were dead. But since we were dropping the other two strangers off at the airport, I would go there first and catch a cab to the nearest hotel. We drove the two hours up to the airport, and when we arrived, we thanked them for their hospitality, and went about our separate ways.
On a whim, I walked up to the ticket agent and asked the status of my flight, ‘Sir, that flight leaves in 30 minutes. You can make it if you hurry.’
It was about 11:30 at night there, and I booked it through security and ran as fast as I could to my gate. I made it just in time to board with the first group.
I charged my phone on this flight, and when we landed in Fort Lauderdale at 3:00am, I received about 10 texts from my girlfriend who was worried sick. I texted her, letting her know that I was okay, but that I would text her in the morning. She asked if I made it home, but I was trying to surprise her. So I told her to get some rest and I would text her in the morning. I got home at 3:30am, slid up to my girl in bed, and cuddled her so hard.”