It’s now 14 months into my trip and I’ve been travelling for longer than most of the people I meet now. The longer term travellers or gap year people are usually well versed but I’m seeing a lot of people on holiday for 2-3 weeks that get caught by all the classic scams.
I regularly get asked about the bad stuff that has happened to me. So I thought I’d write a list of the 7 worst things that have happened to me while travelling. None of these involved being scammed as that hasn’t yet happened, unless you count paying $20 for a beer in Singapore…
#7 – Booked a flight for the wrong month
In Japan, I had a flight from Tokyo to Osaka booked for July instead of August. Luckily, a few weeks before, I spotted this and managed to have my mum change the flights at no cost. Not a very bad one, but it was a lot of administrative hassle to get it changed.
#6 – Spent $100 in a night in Cambodia
Spending $100 on a night out with 3 friends isn’t a huge deal normally. In fact, in many cities in the world this would be very good value. However, in Cambodia a beer costs 50 cents! To be fair, I moved onto the Jack Daniels after a while. But I bought a lot of people a lot of drinks!
#5 – Missed my flight from Sydney to Melbourne
My friend Kit and I were flying to Melbourne and stupidly decided it would be a good idea to go out the night before until 4am. After 2 hours of sleep, we go up and went to the airport. Only it took us longer to get ready than we anticipated. Our other friend called us from the airport and said “Are you here yet?”. Kit’s response was: “If by here, you mean outside my apartment waiting to get a taxi then Yes, we have arrived!”. That statement alone was worth missing the flight for. It worked out for the best as we had enough time at the airport to have a mighty good Australian breakfast and the change of ticket only cost AU$50.
#4 – Cut my knee on some coral
When I was helping teach an Open Water Scuba Diving course, one student’s tank became loose. I went to go tighten up the harness but the student panicked – evidently thinking I was a Giant Squid come to gobble him up. He shook me into the coral and I cut my knee. It wasn’t a deep cut, but it had a large area. I couldn’t dive for a few days but after that, every time I went diving the cleaner fish would bite the scab off. It took about 6 weeks to heal under these conditions.
#3 – Missed my flight from Tokyo to London
This actually happened on my first ever backpacking trip. I met a Kiwi guy at the hostel in Tokyo and we went out drinking as it was my last night (you see where this is going already….). The bar was supposed to close at 1am, but stayed open to accommodate us till 5am. There were some local Japanese businessmen buying us drinks all night. We get back to the hostel at 5am, proceed to drink some Jack Daniels and I go to bed at 5.30am. This, perhaps, was not the smartest idea since I had to be up at 6am to catch my flight.
At 10.15am, I get woken up saying that it’s time to check out. I’ve now missed my flight home, ouch! I try to call Virgin Atlantic, but their offices are shut as its a public holiday in Japan. I can’t get through to the airport number either. So I buy an international phone card and call their offices around the world until I find one that is open. A pleasant guy in Hong Kong lets me change my flight for £20 to the next available one – 3 days later. I get by on about £100 which is good going for 3 days in Tokyo. The next 3 days were really good fun so what was a disaster turned out to be pretty good.
#2 – Cut my back at the Full Moon Party
Most people injure themselves at the Full Moon Party in Thailand by being drunk, taking illegal drugs or getting into fights. I like to do things a little differently. I came back from the party and went to sleep. The next morning (well afternoon really) I woke up and went to the bathroom. Only I slipped on the wet floor and fell backwards against the toilet. The toilet seat lit was up and kind of jagged in the middle which caused two big cuts right down my back.
This was very very sore, and administering first aid to your own back is not the easiest of tasks. This happened 5 months ago and I still have the scars to prove it. I’m not sure if they will ever heal but it does make for an interesting story. I must also have been the only person in history to injure themselves so badly at the Full Moon Party while sober!
#1 – Waited at a bus stop in Thailand
Missing a flight or physically injuring yourself might seem worse to most people. However, my worst ever experience while travelling was when I had to wait at a bus stop in Thailand for 3 and a half hours. Normally this isn’t a huge deal, but this time it was!
I bought a joint bus/ferry ticket from Bangkok to Koh Tao. The bus left at 6pm and dropped us off at 2am (it was supposed to be 5am) in the middle of nowhere. A driver was supposed to take us to the ferry port but he didn’t show until 5.30am. The bust stop was two wooden benches, but one had a homeless man asleep on it. It started raining so we couldn’t go anywhere and the only reason I had any idea where we were was because I had GPS on my phone. Add the fact I was very tired and it was raining to this and you’ll see why this tops my list.
There was no cool scar, no great story and no new experiences to be had by this incident. This is why it tops my list. I guess the others aren’t really bad things, but this was genuinely terrible. But if I rethink this for a second, the worst thing that happened to me was that I had to wait around for a while! Travel is not nearly as dangerous as many people might otherwise assume. Maybe I’ll make a follow up post to this in July 2011 and see how the list looks then.
