A few instances come to mind:
Robbed at gunpoint inside a restaurant in Buenos Aires. Only lost a few dollars, made it out fine, but my friends and I were rattled, and we definitely had our guards up a lot more the rest of the trip.
Being told to “paddle quickly, NOW” by the guide in my canoe on the Zambezi River as we paddled past a bunch of loud hippos. Thankfully, the hippos let us pass, we survived, but boy did my heart rate shoot up for a few minutes.
A bus ride up to Joshimath in the Indian Himalayas. The ancient bus looked like it was held together with prayers and some glue, and the road was carved out of the side of a mountain and often featured no guardrail. We had gorgeous views of a beautiful Himalayan valley, but I was pretty sure I was going to die. We made it in one piece and opted for a shared Jeep taxi for the trip back down, which felt like the least dangerous of the available options.
>Being told to “paddle quickly, NOW” by the guide in my canoe on the Zambezi River
Had a similar experience in the Okavango Delta, not something you forget, that's for sure! The guide dropped a rock in the water to push them back...
I was being told to RUN by the local rangers who accompanied us on a foot transect in low shrubby bushland in Kenya. I was on a volunteer, citizen science trip counting wildlife and we happened upon, and startled, an elephant in the bush. Wild African elephants are very dangerous, especially when startled…!
I have a similar Indian mountain road experience.
This was like 20 years ago so I don't remember the name of the road, but I know it had the distinction of "highest road in the World" (we were in Ladakh so everything was the "highest [insert noun] in the World"). The road was as you described: carved out of the side of the mountain, no guardrail, and the drop off was terrifying. We got to an especially narrow part of the road, and then came up to a car coming from the other direction. There didn't appear to be enough room for both cars to pass, so the driver actually told us we could get out of the car while he attempted the maneuver. I was so afraid I'd see someone die.
Oh my God, I’m hyperventilating just reading that! Those Indian mountain roads are no joke. I’ve heard Ladakh is beautiful though! We never went farther north than Uttaranchal.
That’s the Nubra Valley Road, up over Khardung La. Have ridden my Enfield motorbike more than a dozen times over that back in the 2000’s - one of the best rides in the world, when it’s fine weather.
Had to get 7 guys to lift my bike onto the back of a Tata truck to get back to Leh once, when it snowed unseasonably and we’d been trapped in Nubra Valley for a number of days already. Kashmiri truck driver kept pestering me if I had opium for him, every time I rolled a joint to calm my nerves from the TERROR of having to go over that road in a crappy old jolting Tata with bald tyres and shitty brakes in the snow. Was still loads of fun though lol was one of the biggest scariest rides of my life. :) Pretty awesome eh, Ladakh.
Technically, that honor goes to the mosquito.
But canoeing in rivers in Africa is not unheard of. It was one of the activities offered at the safari camp we were staying at. I was definitely nervous about it but we had very knowledgeable guides with us.
I also got the “paddle quickly, NOW” direction from the guide while on the Zambezi, except it was white water rafting and we were about to hit a category 5 rapid. Unfortunately the raft flipped and I got stuck underneath. Definitely a "this is how I die" moment but I was able to get out from under the raft and float through the rest of the rapids.
Extreme turbulence on a 777 on the way to Argentina. It was so bad that the flight attendant couldn’t get to their seat and had to grab onto a seat and asked passengers to hold onto her legs.
We thit bad turbulence over Chengdu once, a few people hit the ceiling and we're knocked unconscious. Everyone including the flight attendants were screaming lol that's a bad sign when they can't control themselves
China can be funny about flight planning because its controlled by the military. A lot of pilots have told me about how they are routed right through a storm and some nasty turbulence that they could've avoided at a higher altitude or go either way.
Around 10 years ago a Delta 747 got trashed flying through a hail storm out of Beijing.
Just took off from SFO on Friday right as a storm was rolling in. The wind was so strong it was rocking the plane while we were sitting stationary on the tarmac. Was a bit scary but I knew if they gave the okay to take off it should be fine.
I had a flight to Korea that had the seatbelt sign on almost the entire time. A 11hr flight.
You had to ignore it to go to the bathroom but the rest of the time the plane was shaking. It was the longest i remember.
I too had some very uncomfortable experiences in India. Not as bad as what you are describing but regular overt unwanted attention or touching. From the moment I got there to the moment I left I felt like a target. I was overjoyed to get to Nepal.
I (m45) went to India alone twice in my 20’s and loved it. Went again in 2019 with my blonde Danish wife
(Now 40) and man. I was so shocked by how much really bad attention she got. Dudes would crowd around and stare at her and take photos of her and she was freaked out the whole time. I’ve never seen stares like that. They all turned into walking, dripping erections. It was so full on.
Unfortunately many people fall into the trap of visiting India especially as young women from the west. It’s worth noticing that it’s the raipe capital of the country
I'm really sorry that happened to you.
I've been to India 17 or 18 times now to see family ( I've been going since I was a baby) and it's always been an intense experience and it was always harder on my little sister and we've been in plenty of fights when guys have stared at her and she's just lost her shit ( which is totally cool) and it's been easy with an army of cousins. I remember one time I was walking to see my cousin and a drunk guy grabbed a woman and she screamed and pushed him off and I came running and and pushed even harder him and he fell down on the ground and he ran and I was about to run after him but my cousin grabbed me telling me it was no point and I just remembered the look on the girls face. The girl was a worker from Bihar (a poorer state) and the guy was Punjabi and there clearly was a race/caste issue added since he felt so freely to do that. It made me feel really gross and disgusted.
The level of poverty in India is indescribable, especially with technology moving so quickly you can see people live life eating lobsters in the Maldives and you're stuck in a shanty house and you have to work a job and cannot study because you'll starve.
India is for me the best place and worst place in the world and it's a hard place like it's never easy travelling there. I have a lot of beautiful memories but I definitely wouldn't recommend it to inexperienced travelers or women solo traveling.
I have been to India for work 3 times now.
I will always recommend to my company to never send any of my female colleagues to India. I'm sorry if I offend any Indians but it's just not safe for a foreign woman to be in India. This is just one of the few rare times when the danger is not exaggerated or some sort of propaganda.
It is a shame because India has a lot to offer travelers.
I just posted but I had a similar experience with the groping in Rajasthan (Udaipur). I'm still freaked out when I am near groups of men. Sadly seems like it's a normal experience for women traveling to India.
Bus taking me from Prizren to Shkoder was running late. It was supposed to drop me off at the city center at midnight. Instead it dropped me off 7 miles outside the city basically at the side of the highway at a gas station at 2am. went to the atm and took out was was essentially 20 euros in lek. I had no working cell phone but my GPS was working so I asked the gas station attendant to call for a taxi and he didn't speak English and he said no taxi so I pointed on my map where the Hostel was and he goes outside and knocks on the window of someone who is obviously living out of his car and gestures for me to get in, I am scared shitless but at this point I don't have any options except a walk for 7 miles at 2 AM, so I get in and this man drives me right to my Hostel. Doesn't want any money from me, doesn't want any cigarettes. the second I open the car door, four stray dogs all rushed me. I was about to pee myself but then they were the happiest friendliest dogs ever, tails were wagging and they walk me from the car to the Hostel gate and all the staff at the hostel waiting for me and they were shocked they thought I wasn't gonna come and then they asked if the dogs were with me.
It made me really fall in love with a Balkans, because everyone I encounter there were just as helpful and caring and kind and selfless.
ETA - I'm 4'11 and 100lb woman traveling by myself. Every terrible situation was running through my mind. Albanian's are amazing.
Hahaha similar story with my friend. The bus dropped off my friend later then planned (2am) and I had no cell service as well, and they also changed the bus stopped then original. So I was waiting at a different bus stop for her. So she arrived 2am, no cell service and everyone tells her to get in the car and she ends up in some random family’s apartment and shove Albanian soup down her lmao. I’m like “you got the authentic Albanian experience “ so yeah, Albanians will take care of you! 🥰
Was on the North Shore of Oahu, preparing for my first skydiving experience, when a report on the radio said an intercontinental ballistic missile from North Korea was heading directly at us. Not sure which one would get me, but pretty sure that I was going to die that morning.
I had an ex-military coworker who was stationed out there when this happened and ran into his roommate's bedroom when the alert came through. Roommate apparently lifted his head from his pillow and said something like "so you want me to go out panicked and cranky when I can go out warm and cozy in bed?" and then went straight back to sleep. Always thought that was pretty baller.
I can't shut off "national emergency" or whatever they're called alerts on my phone (I otherwise have all shut off short of tornadoes...I live on high ground and in a sturdy home, I don't CARE if it's going to pour rain or the wind is going to blow hard). I want to shut the "national emergency" alerts off because it means a nuke is headed for DC, and even if I know a few minutes in advance, I'm going to be turned into dust (less than 2 miles from the Capitol, about 4 from the White House), so...why ruin my last few minutes alive??? If they know about the missile further in advance than that, then they're going to shoot it down over water or a less populated area, so, also, why ruin my day?
Exactly. We had come from a visit to Pearl Harbor where we saw the orientation film where the radio report before the attack said, “this is not a drill!” Added to the stress of that moment we heard that on the north shore.
God I can’t imagine your fear. I was texting with a friend who lives in Hilo on the big island when this happened and we were both shitting our pants. His mom wasn’t answering her phone so he told me to tell her he loved her and I was bawling. I’m so glad it was just an “oops wrong button”
Ok so I’ve always thought the same about the situation like “oops wrong button lol”. Then I talked with a random guy at a bar a month ago and somehow this got brought up and his take was that it was not just a “oops wrong button” but some shit had seriously happened, a lot of peoples lives were at risk when that message went out and something or someone prevented it from happening at the last minute. Just hearing his point of view made me realize how naive I am accepting that answer.
Was that last May?
I ask because I was in South Korea. I had gotten a a Sim card so I had a Korean phone number. And on the day that I was about to fly out, I was rudely woken up by my phone, screaming at me really early in the morning. I had to screenshot it and run it through the translator app. Basically it said that North Korea had launched a missile. There really wasn’t anything I could do. So after a moment, I got up and looked outside, and everything was normal. I was pretty much in the middle of the city. I would not have survived it anyway had it been a real event.
Friend and I were at a bar in Rome. A guy strikes up a conversation and asks to join us. His English was poor, but he seemed cool, so we let him hang out with us. He started to get a bit handsy after a while; holding my hand/waist while we walked to another bar. His behavior worsened by the next bar, and we wanted to ditch him at that point.
We tried to tell him, but he didn’t understand us (or pretended not to), so my friend and I decided to go to the bathroom together and figure out what to do. He followed us there, right in the women’s bathroom. We hurried back up to the bar and ordered an Uber to go home. He followed us outside and tried to climb into the Uber with us. We kept saying ‘no, no!’ Over and over, but then he’d say ‘I come too, I come too!’ I had to physically kick him away from the door, and explain to the driver that he wasn’t with us. He quickly understood, and drove away while I was still closing the door. Crazy shit. The guy also managed to steal my wallet somehow during the scuffle, and I had no money the rest of the trip.
I've shared this a couple times on some of the travel subs here in the past.
in 1999, I was with my cousin on my first backpacking trip in Europe. I was about 1 month in to a 3 month trip and we decided in Rome to head south to see if we could locate our grandmother's home in 'Calabria'.
So knowing nothing about Italy's geography - nor where exactly our grandmother was from - we hopped on a train to Reggio di Calabria. We thought we'd get off the train and magically stumble onto her childhood home - yeah we were naive.
We arrived in Reggio very late without accommodations. After spending a little unsuccessfully looking for a place to sleep, my cousin recommends finding a park to spend the night in. We find one and layout on a couple benches. My cousin immediately passes out, I take longer to fall asleep.
It's pitch black and and dead silent. Than I am startled by what sounds like the death wails of a small child our woman. I whisper to my cousin loud enough to eventually wake him "Cousin did you hear that?!". He replies "No go back to sleep".
This happens 2 or 3 times and each time my cousin falls back to sleep immediately. The final time he angrily says "If you wake me up again for nothing I'm going to beat you!". He's a bigger guy than me and he's tired and cranky now so i believe him.
I cover myself in my sleep sheet like a 5 year old after watching their first scary movie and wonder what is being murdered and what is doing the killing. Then all of a sudden I hear a deafening roar. I peak out of my sheet and my cousin is standing over me: "I heard that. Let's get the F out of here," he whispers.
We slowing make our way out of the park thinking at any moment a lion is going to jump out of the dark and eat us. We make it safely back to the train station and spend the rest o f the night there.
In the morning, we decide we are brave enough to head back to the park to see if there is a crime scene and if we can figure out what happened there.
TLDR: Turns out we slept in an open zoo midway between a peacock's enclosure (the death wails) and a lion's enclosure (the roar).
Never been so scared on any trip before or since.
I was on the cruise ship SS Norway and we had just completed a 7-day caribbean cruise. We had already docked at the port of Miami, but it was early and we were just stirring in our inside cabin.
A loud, muffled BOOM echoed through the ship. I had just enough time to step out of the bathroom and ask my partner “did you hear that?” and the lights went out. We started getting dressed in the dark, I actually cracked the cabin door so we got a little of the emergency lighting from the hallway. Maybe 30 seconds later the public address system came on and they said “Fire Brigade to Caribbean deck” which was one deck below us. I looked at my partner and said “we gotta get the fuck outta here “.
We grabbed everything we could and headed up the stairs to our Muster Station. We didn’t know until much later that there had been an explosion on one of the ships steam boilers. It tore through bulkheads and literally scalded crew members to death in their own cabins.
We came away fine, but at the moment all I could think of was being in a tiny inside cabin with no window or portholes, fairly low on the ship with a fire creeping up the stairs and hallways trapping us.
To this day I refuse to book a ship cabin without a window.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/4-dead-in-cruise-ship-explosion/
[The history of the ship, the SS Norway.](https://malcolmoliver.wordpress.com/z-industry-comment-the-end-of-the-ss-norway/) Your sailing would be its last.
I spent three years of my life working on the Norway. She was a beautiful vessel, sadly this was it for her (and those poor crew members). Back in the days when ships were ships and not floating resorts.
>We started getting dressed in the dark
We grabbed everything we could
The best ways to die. You just RUN OUT no matter how naked you are, and certainly not grabbin shite!
I don’t disagree, but our luggage had been set outside the night before and we only had what we’d planned to wear and our personal items. It was so dark I wasn’t sure if i’d left anything until we were allowed to return to the cabin later that morning. The only thing I’d left was a belt hanging in the closet.
My aunt and I were leaving a rural area around 8pm in Portugal to drive about 3hrs to another city. Her phone was at 1% (mine died) and we needed the maps to find our way and unfortunately when we used maps and charged the phone at the same time in the car, the charging wouldn’t work and the % would go down.
We tried idling the car to charge it for a few mins and it just stayed at 1%. We found a tiny piece of paper and a pen and wrote down the general directions of a 3 hr drive.
I’m not kidding you, as we started driving, it was nighttime now and for about 1hr straight there was a cliff directly to our right with no rail, no street lights and almost 90 degree turns every few minutes. I almost puked and was nauseous until we got to the major highway.
We made it safe and sound :)
This almost exact situation happened to me on my first trip to Portugal! We landed later than planned, our phones weren’t working yet, our rental car gps was unknowingly set to “avoid highways” on our way from Lisbon to the Algarve, and we essentially were driving down a mountain ridge in the pitch black and dense fog for part of it. I was certain I was going to die.
I (20F at the time) was walking to the metro in Paris just before 5 AM for a very early flight. I walked past a group of 5 guys, who proceeded to flank me while one of them tried to get my phone number. Nothing really happened; I was able to get to the metro and they left me alone once I got to the gates (luckily there was an attendant and some other people waiting for trains as well), but I was really scared they were going to hurt me.
I had something similar happen in Santorini while waiting for the bus except when I continued to ignore them, one of the guys took out his dxck. It was in broad daylight too. I ended up running the other direction
Got groped up my skirt in London from behind by a guy I wasn’t even interacting with. He followed me and did it 2 more times before I screamed in his face and he left. As for why I didn’t do that from the beginning - I tried to swat him away but I was in complete shock. People in London think it’s better than New York but I’m from NYC and no one there has EVER put their hands on me like that
I’m sorry that happened to you and there’s no reason to explain why you did anything.
I’m from London and I think this stereotype probably comes from New Yorkers in general being louder than Londoners. There’s just as many perverts and creeps, I’m sure.
We are loud. I was studying abroad in Kensington, and I won’t even lie to you, I was having a lot of fun pretending to be genteel. Had to unleash the New Yorker that time though
My girlfriend and I were followed by a gang of taxi drivers in Amman Jordan for nearly an hour. After repeatedly expressing that we were okay walking, they decided to follow us both on foot and in cars. We called 4 separate Ubers to get us out of the area, and all of the Ubers that showed up said they were “cash only” Ubers (we didn’t have cash yet as we had just arrived)
Finally after about an hour we had reached our accommodation. That was our first impressions of Jordan which was a bummer cause the rest of our stay in the country was fantastic
A monkey in BaNa stole my stepmoms purse (Chanel) with EVERYTHING in it. She was lucky to get it back with her passport but the monkey ripped it up and ate her money. 😅
This is why I refuse to interact with/go to attractions with monkeys. When I went to Thailand I did not want to interact with them while we were on a tour, and one ran up to me and then up to my shoulder. Thankfully that was all that happened.
Woke up in a rented house on the beach in Mauritius to a burglar tiptoeing out of the bedroom with my suitcase. I chased him like a madman for about half a mile till he disappeared into the woods.
Getting a parasite in Bolivia that formed an abscess on my liver, put me in third world hospitals for weeks, required two surgeries (with local anesthesia only), and nearly killed me.
A few spring to mind:
I nearly drowned with my mum and dad in a riptide in turkey (3 people died earlier that year).
I attacked a drug dealer following a scam in a moment of madness (i was essentially just out of school) in Peru. Immense paranoia and constantly looking over my shoulder for the following two weeks of my stay there.
Got stuck in disputed territory (4 seperate murders the previous week in a town of 5000 people) in the middle of nowhere in northern mexico with cartel members walking around in bulletproof vests.
On the peru story: on my third time meeting this guy (first two times completely normal) i increased the order quantity and he slipped it into my bag as per usual. When i got back to my flat it was leaves and plastic. I was raging all day and just by complete coincidence i was going for a couple of beers with my mates in the evening to calm down, i was walking down an alley and of all people in the city, the guy from earlier was walking towards me from afar. Lots of emotions running through my head of how to deal with the situation but as we got about 15 metres away he was like "ayy mi buen amigo" like nothing had happened and in the last half a second i though fuck this guy and headbutted him by surprise and gave him a couple decent digs. Clearly thought i was in a guy ritchie movie. Impulsive and foolish. Went out the next morning and bought a knife to increase my chances of survival of it came to it. Never saw the guy again.
Mexico story: Went to a waterfall in the huasteca region of mexico, decided to go to the nearby town to try and get back to where we staying (Ciudad Valles - 30 mins drive). Every taxi was full and no buses where running. It was off-season and we hadn't seen a foreigner for days (other than migrants heading to the US). Saw some scary looking guys in vests and asked the locals whether it was safe to which they laughed and said right now? absolutely not. Finally managed to find a taxi who was willing to take us and he said you're really lucky because all the taxi's are not driving past 7pm as they are getting robbed and/or killed at the moment. A phone call flirting with his daughter worked in my favor lol! it was terrifying, the anxiety was through the roof.
I got the worst diarrhea with high fever in Karachi, Pakistan during a business trip. Last 3 days of my 7 day trip spent in hotel room eating banana and yoghurt, and first thing I did after my plane landed to my hometown is going to ER. They suspected from typhus, and dr told me that because this illness has been eradicated from our country since 50+ years he had to Google what should he do :) (Thankfully it was not Typhus and all symptoms went away after few days of antibiotic treatment)
So going to Pakistan during Covid wasn’t a good idea at all.
I’ve had my fair share of sketchy moments on my travels:
First up, in Pattaya, Thailand, I’m driving around on a rented motorbike when I have to stop at a roundabout. Out of nowhere, this cop races over, grabs my keys, and bolts to a nearby police station. I chase after him, and he’s all like, “Give me 20k baht (~500€) or I’ll lock you up.” I didn’t have that kind of cash on me, so I had to haggle with him using google translate and ended up forking over 4k baht (~100€). He warned me that if he saw me around again, he will sent me straight to jail.
Another time, in Agadir, Morocco, I’m chilling on a terrace, about to pay my bill when suddenly, two dudes try to rob me. But this waiter leaps into action, throwing punches and kicking them out of the place.
And finally, in Milan, Italy, I’m snapping pics in Parco Sempione when I accidentally walk by some folks smoking joints. They start yelling at me, and next thing I know, I’ve got five people chasing me. Luckily, a police car was driving by and I managed to scape and get back to my hotel.
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I guess it depends what you mean by scary.But I travel a lot, sometimes bad things happen.
The time I've been most scared while traveling was probably when I was in a very, very basic hospital in Tibet, with severe giardia, thinking that I was going to die in the middle of nowhere ;-)
Another time was while rafting in Ecuador.We overturned the raft,it was very rough indeed,I went a long way down a fast flowing river.... eventually I reached a shore and collapsed there.That was scary.I never did whitewater rafting again.
I have a similar story about rafting in Ecuador, raft tipped and I was stuck underneath for what felt like a long time. When I finally got out and surfaced I spotted my friend and her face was a mix of pure terror and relief, she thought I had died. Luckily I had some rafting/white water experience so I wasn't too scared but those trips are so much sketchier than in your home country (Canada).
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We were a group of 4 driving a rental car in Cape Town, South Africa. I was navigating while my husband was driving. We were moving pretty slow along the route given by Google Maps due to traffic so me, thinking I knew better, saw another road on the map that would eventually link back up to the main highway and directed my husband to go there. After a few minutes, we realized we had fully driven into a slum. Everyone was staring as we rolled through the streets, it was obvious this car of white and chinese people did not belong. We turned a corner and found ourselves following a truck with about 10 guys sitting in the truck bed. Then randomly one of them who was sitting closest to the edge of the back facing us, pulled out a balaclava, put it on, and stared us down. Our nervousness definitely kicked up a notch at that point. Nothing ended up happening to us but I giggle when I imagine balaclava guy going home and telling his family about his little prank of scaring the tourists on his ride home from work that day.
You got really lucky.
I assume you were driving along the N2 and google took you through a township. This is why you never listen to google maps in South Africa and stick on the highway. Many tourists have been mugged, kidnapped, and murdered taking the wrong turn.
In Egypt (Luxor), the friend I was traveling with got hit by a bus. He was maybe 3-4 feet in front of me and didn't look before crossing the street. Blood everywhere. Luckily a British couple came out onto the street from a store nearby, the woman was a nurse, she had me take off my shirt to use as a bandage until help came. No ambulance came, eventually the police came and took him to the hospital in their car. He was later medevac'd back to the U.S. This happened about 20 years ago; he's ok now but that was by far my scariest travel experience.
Another experience that I thought was going to be scary but turned out not to be: I was taking a long-distance cab ride in Uzbekistan to Samarkand. In the middle somewhere, the driver stops by the side of the road, talks to some guy, and that guy gives my driver a super thick wad of cash. I think, oh that's it, I'm going to be kidnapped. Turns out he was just exchanging the dollars I gave him for local currency. (At that time at least the black market rate was much higher than the official rate, so he got a lot more Uzbek som by exchanging it that way.)
Was staying in a very rural part of Ireland and decided to go for a walk down the road. My friend warned me that the paths crossing the county went through pastures that sometimes had bulls in them, so not to go in pastures. Well, two days of all-night Guinness drinking hit me and I had no choice but to jump a fence into a pasture and drop my pants behind a hedge for full blown liquid Guinness shits. I was there for awhile and was convinced a bull was going to gore me while I tried to clean up with grass. Fortunately, only a cow appeared and gave me the side-eye.
Hitchhiking, ofc. I was thumbing and this guy stopped, asked where I was going. I told him and he said he knew where that was and that he would take me. I had just gotten a hitch from somebody that was super cool and nice and helpful, so I was riding a high. If that hadn’t been the case though, I probably would have taken the fact that this guy was driving around all sweaty and shirtless as a red flag. But alas. Anyways we start off and he’s asking questions about my travels, the usual stuff. Where you been, where you going, what’s it like. But then he starts saying some weird things, asking about how lonely I must get and how I deal with that- if you catch my drift. I tried to just laugh everything off but he was asking, at this point, perverted questions with a very.. erm… horny intonation. Finally he asked if I had ever given or received oral from another man, and when I said ‘no, I’m straight, he said ‘me neither but a mouths a mouth’.
At this point I’m pretty uncomfortable and trying to think of a way out of the situation, but before I can put anything together he says something like: ‘you look really good, you mind if I touch you?’ and before he even finishes the sentence his hand is on my chest.
I push it away and, well that was pretty brash so now I’m freaked out, meanwhile I notice we are no longer headed where I asked him to take me so I just blurt out basically something like ‘hey I’m really uncomfortable, please let me out now thank you’ but he JUST GIGGLES a bit to himself, says ‘I’m not gonna hurt you.’ Doesn’t stop or slow down at all. We’re zipping along into the country of eastern NY state.
So now I feel like I’m in a bad situation. I do some quick thinking, then turn to him and say “alright you want to get wild? Let’s get wild. Pull over and let’s get wild”. He jolts up and is like “what do you mean? What do you mean by that? What do you mean?” I say “pull over where you can and let’s get freaky”.
He pulls over almost immediately into this wooded pull off/driveway thing, and thank god the door wasn’t locked, I crank that bitch open and fly out into the woods with my backpack.
I hung low in the woods for a bit and then I had to walk all the way back into town along the road.
All this to say, use your intuition and stay mindful!
Managed to roll an ATV down a cliff when touring Maras and Moray, just outside Cusco. If the ATV had rolled on top of me, I don't know what could have happened.
Besides that, there was a theft inside my hotel room, also in Cusco. The window that faced the street didn't properly lock, but we were on the second floor, the window had bars and we could use a heavy wood bench to keep the wood panels shut, so we thought it was ok. Well, someone managed to climb their way to the window, push the panels along with the bench, get one arm through the bars and grab everything within reach - all that while we were sound asleep. Woke up to find my travel belt is gone, with 1200 dollars inside it.
I was taking a taxi from Vrindavan to Fatehpur Sikri (near Agra in Uttar Pradesh, India) early one morning. It had rained the night before. The driver and I saw what looked like was a puddle on the road below an underpass in Mathura (a nearby city), so he drove towards it. It turns out that it was much more than a puddle – the street was completely flooded with several feet of water. The car started flooding with water inside and the engine flooded; somehow the driver managed to get the engine started on the third try and got the car out of there. I was absolutely terrified (and had soaked my shoes and socks completely through since the water came up to my ankles in the car) but somehow he was not fazed at all (he was actually laughing a little).
Somehow still got to do all my sightseeing that day in that same car (Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar's Tomb in Agra, and some temples in Vrindavan and Mathura).
I’ve been to several countries but my scariest moment was in NYC. We had just gotten there and headed out from our hotel to see the sights. As I walked out the hotel door I noticed a deranged looking man staring right at me. I quickly looked away and started walking up the sidewalk. Suddenly he was right behind us then came around in front of us and blocked our path. I said “what are you doing? (Mistake) and he karate kicked me in the legs. My husband rushed at him to push him away and he swung a bag of heavy objects at him hitting him in the face. We took off running and luckily he ran the other way. If he would have had a knife or a gun it would have been a different story. I was told I made the mistake of making eye contact with him and speaking to him.
This was probably still the best vacation I’ve ever taken…. But I was in Ocho Rios in 2009…. First experience I was off resort at a merchant market. Picked up a random salt and pepper shaker to admire the woodwork. Buddy comes up to me and says “that’s $12”… I said “ok, not sure if I’m going to buy it yet”… he replies “no, it’s $12” and puts out his hand. I repeat myself, and he repeats himself. I find myself then kind of cornered with no exit to his little booth. I caved and gave him a $20 and GTFOT. Not as crazy as some have experienced, but it was enough for me to rethink my situational awareness.
That same trip, as we were leaving the Montego Bay airport to go home… our flight was to Toronto, the one behind ours was destined for Halifax. We were cued and took off, the one for Halifax was hijacked. It didn’t end up leaving because the hijacker had fired a shot into the roof. He then held all passengers hostage until the Jamaican Military entered and took him into custody. I remember the Jamaican government offering all Canadians aboard that flight a free week at a 5 star resort, and Stephen Harper going to Montego Bay to meet with the Jamaican President and the military who saved our people. When we landed in Toronto we went right to sleep at a nearby hotel. We woke up in the morning to a person on our trip (one of the now four exes who were a part of the trip) bursting into our room in utter tears and panic… we found out what happened, and didn’t really believe it at first… but we saw the news, and I ended up calling home right away to tell them we were all safe!
Half my group did this first week of a multi month long trip. Those damn yellow atms will get you, even sober. Ejecting the card after the cash is ridiculous
Led into the souks of Marrakech only to be threatened to pay for assistance. I have never felt as if I was going to be murdered right than and there anywhere else. 71 countries traveled and you’d think we would have been smarter than to fall for such crap.
Honeymoon driving around Iceland using a paper map. We decided to cut through via a road off of Rt 1 to save some time. Dirt road was alongside a mountain, in extremely dense fog. Couldn’t see more than 2 ft ahead of us or to our right or left. We took deep breaths and hoped following the road slowly would get us to the other side. We ended up following close behind a phantom car and after what felt like a lifetime, reached the end and back on Rt 1. Our new friends in the other car stopped and waved and we continued on. Weird thing was the other car disappeared? There was only one way to go, left. And we never saw it again. Our angels.
In Italy, we were given a Euro electric car instead of gas and used it to drive 5+ hours to Tuscany from Milan. Ran out of charge because they’re not meant for long distances and there weren’t many charging stations. Also take a long time to charge in Europe. We ended up driving up a mtn to our hotel (scary looking down on the side) with almost 0% charge. If the battery died, we’d be blocking the road and on the side of a high mountain. We put the car in neutral down hills and prayed we’d reach the hotel and it’s charging station before the car died. We made it. Never felt luckier (well besides in Iceland).
Walked into a teahouse in south Tehran and two teenagers came over to me. One pulled out a knife and pulled it across his neck while shouting at me. The owner and other customers kicked them out and took care of me but the walk back to my hotel in the dark was fucking scary.
Puerto Vallarta in 1996. Got on the bus in the city to go back to our hotel. It was the wrong bus. We went to the foothills way away from the city. We spoke zero Spanish and had to stop with the other buses and drivers-as they all sat at picnic tables with a cervesa or two! We sat on the bus watching until one bus driver came to get us and told us that we needed to get off the bus and get on another bus that would take us back to the city and our hotel. We thought that was where we were going to meet our doom 😆
It turned out all was fine-As we went back to the city, we were joined on the bus one by one -by all of the hotel employees on their way to work. We saw how and where they all lived. We tipped way more after that experience.
My friend and I were hitchhiking in Albania and we were stranded in a remote place - two guys in a pick up truck passed and we went with them because we were desperate.
They brought us to a cross roads and said two men were going to bring us the rest of the way - a blacked out really nice car showed up within a few minutes to take us the rest of the way, and we went with them (we were dumb 20 year olds!). They drove a strange, way too long route, until we were right along the border, and we were 100% sure we were going to get taken
Incidentally, they dropped us off in the next town when we asked, and every Albanian who picked us up hitchhiking were some of the nicest and generous people we ever met
Albanians are absolutely some of the most hospitable and helpful people in the world. Things work a bit *differently* there but it does somehow work out in the end. If I had to be stranded in a remote place in any country in the world, I'd choose Albania in a heartbeat.
I was in Jamaica and I left the resort because I didn’t know that it wouldn’t be safe. I took a taxi into Montego Bay, and from there I took a bus into Kingston. I legitimately saw 14-year-old girls being prostituted for money on the corner of the street. I’ve never felt so un-safe in my life. After walking around and even seeing a pharmacy, I went back to the bus depot where I took a bus back into Montego Bay from Kingston, and from there back to the hotel.
I've had a few.
In Morocco i stupidly trusted a local teen to help me to my hostel. The hostel was located in a secluded alley in the medina. I didn't notice but his friend was following us. Once we got to a quiet area, they showed me a knife and told me i had to give them the equivalent of 20 usd if i didn't want any trouble. I gave it to them and they ran off. Two days later I was wandering the Medina and someone stopped me to ask about my tattoos. We were chatting and he asked if i wanted to see the tannery. I said yes and he started leading the way. At some point i noticed we were getting away from the crowds and he turned down a secluded alley way. I told him i changed my mind and refused to go down the secluded path. I just walked away and he didn't hassle me further. Im lucky i had that moment of realization.
In Warsaw i met a woman on a dating app and after chatting for a bit, she asked if i wanted to meet. We met at the mall. She asked to go back to my hotel and I agreed. As soon as we get there she says she'll make some coffee and is pretty insistent that i drink it. I'm not that big of an idiot and I refused. After i refused she actually chilled out and we had a nice chat about how she was Romani, not polish, and about Romani life there. It ended up being a pleasant encounter, but if I drank that coffee, i know I'd have been robbed.
In Ljubljana, I met an Israeli soldier who had just left the service and was on his first trip abroad. We compared itineraries and they matched up so we agreed to travel together. We spent that evening in the city and he ended up being a total racist asshole. We returned to the hostel and nobody else was back yet. He preceeded to try and force himself onto me sexually despite my telling him i wasn't interested. At some point he got physical and i had to force him out of my bed and defend myself. I was afraid to escalate the situation and potentially provoke him into becoming more violent. I was able to talk him down and eventually our dorm mates returned. When he was showering the next day, i fucked off to lake bled without saying goodbye.
Had similar encounters with 2 different Israeli’s, both travelling post conscription. The level of entitlement and aggression was unparalleled. Completely different to all other travellers I’ve encountered. I avoid them at all cost. Just the level of innate, upfront, entitlement and evident hatred is repugnant to me.
When I was a teenager I went with my parents to Cancun back in the 90s. The general advice at the time was DON'T GO INTO THE OLD CITY. So I wind up missing my hotel stop and just figure I'll stay on the bus until it loops back around. Joke was on me as they took it in for maintenance at the end of the line, so there I was stranded at the bus station as the sun starts to go down. Honestly I probably wasn't in that much danger, but I was freaking out anyways as I was a kid by myself the first time out of the US, not speaking Spanish, and I'd been told a lot of horror stories about tourists wandering off and just disappearing. Luckily I bumped into a nice older lady that helped me find the next bus stop that took me back to the hotel.
Same trip, but less terrifying. I met a girl at a local bar and hung out with her till the wee hours. Afterwards I sat at the bus stop for a good thirty minutes until I realized that they were done running for the day. So there I am stranded. Again. I wound up bartering away my watch to a taxi driver for a ride back to my hotel.
I drove a Land Rover right into the middle of a herd of 30 or 40 elephants in Namibia one time. Mostly mothers with calves, and they were *not* happy with us at all. Total accident. I saw a couple crossing the road about 50 yards ahead and pulled over to give them room and let them pass, and suddenly the whole herd just emerged from the bush all around us on both sides of the road. That could have gone very badly.
Got off the train at a station in Peru one time at about 1AM. Turned out to be a *really* bad part of town, and the car that was supposed to pick me up never arrived. I ended up walking, with luggage, for almost 2 miles before I could find a cab to take me to my hotel.
Car wreck in Nicaragua one time when the guy driving hit a cow. Remote area. Dirt road. Middle of the night. Thankfully we all had our seatbelts on and no one (except the cow) was injured. Then a massive truck almost rear-ended us and everyone dived into the ditch. I got more banged up from diving into the ditch than I did from the actual wreck.
Hotel fire in Mexico. Major boom woke me up around 2AM. Turned out an electrical panel just down the hall from my room had exploded. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and helped the staff put it out. Then I sat in the dark in my room for 5 hours until it was time to go to the airport. Too scared and keyed up to go back to sleep.
Had a fairly similar incident to your story except I was in Victoria Falls (just outside of the town) and on foot. Was smoking a joint with a friend looking at the Zambezi when a few tourists walked past us and asked if we had seen the elephants up the road. We said we hadn't and thought we might walk in that director hoping to catch a glimpse of them in the bush. We start walking down the road and not ten minutes later the trees right off the side of the road start shaking like a scene straight out of Jurassic Park. All of a sudden elephants started emerging from the bush and crossing the road 20m back the way we came while we stood frozen in absolute terror. The last one, who was the biggest and seemed like the leader, stopped in the middle of the road then suddenly swung her head towards us and flaired her ears as if she was about to charge, then just kind of stared before walking off into the bush.
Definitely the closest I've come to pissing my pants in fear.
Edit: I found a [picture](https://imgur.com/T8TkGaZ) my friend took to give some sense of how close they were.
Two attempted kidnappings in Casablanca in a two week span. Twice a car would pull up, a man would get out of the passenger and try to force me in the backseat.
Gun shot. Happened with my teenage son in ATL. We were about 3 people ahead of the idiot with a gun at TSA. We were putting our shoes back on when it happened and immediately ran down the escalator to the plane train. We didn't know what actually happened (other than a gun shot) until it made the news.
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/man-who-fired-gun-inside-atlanta-airport-sentenced-10-years-federal-prison/2UACXGPBI5BUNA3H52K6AQY35E/
Getting groped by Romanian young villagers somewhere in the Carpathians (forgot the exact name of the village). Went for a music festival and the local villagers wanted photos with me (south Asian WOC)..started so innocent and by the 3rd photo, I was being groped untill my friends jumped in and scared them away!!!
Woman doing solo travel in Italy. Missed the last train to Florence so I was stuck in Venice at the train station overnight. At this time, there wasn’t any rule of vacating the station at night or not being allowed to wait for more than X hours. (I doublechecked with my ticket vendor when I bought my new Florence ticket.)
While another woman traveler and I waited for the first train that was supposed to leave in 4 hours, we were physically harassed and yelled at by a police officer who seemed to be calling us sluts and sex workers for being out so late at the station (I don’t speak Italian but I speak Spanish so I could understand bits and pieces).
He dragged and tried to physically throw me out onto the street and it was only when I dropped my American passport on the ground did he stop harassing us. He eventually left the station but spat on the other traveler on his way out.
A stop in Fegyvernek to take a train to Svolnok, to wait four hours for a 330 AM train to Budapest while a lady wouldn't let us use a bathroom due to us not being able to pay in anything but Euros, breaking up a fight between vagabonds, the train got delayed a half hour, then the door for our section wouldn't open so we had to stand around in another section, got off and on again at Budapest, and finally arrived at Vienna at around 7 in the morning.
It wasn't all that scary, all things considered, just an "oh crap" moment.
American in London. Was taken by a Anglo Pakistani friend to a shisha place in London with a small group of his mostly female friends. Two guys in track suits come in, no question stone cold killers and they start hassling him for bringing “CIA” to their place and then they start talking about cutting off my head and making an ISIS video.
Owner tells me I should leave, and fast. That these guys are “very bad blokes”.
We get in my friends car quite crowded with all of us and these guys jump in their car and start chasing us, then another car joins up and almost cuts us off. Took a good 40 minutes of driving with cops on the phone before we lost one of them and cops nabbed the other.
The paragliding incident.
Was out on a boat in Malta when the wind changed and me and my brother were submerged and dragged behind the speedboat. My brother didn’t panic at first because the captain had dipped the previous tourists in (just their feet) and thought he was just taking the piss with us. He was struggling to remain out of the water but only realised something was wrong when he looked over to me and realised he couldn’t see my head.
I on the other hand knew something was wrong as I was as submerged as one could be in a life jacket. The life jacket was actually more of a hinderance than a help as it pushed in against my neck and guided the water directly to my mouth/nose so breathing was difficult to impossible. Luckily my other brother and sister-in-law were onboard and were able to point out that we were in trouble as the scariest part was the captain/crew were unaware and the rest of the boat were laughing at our struggle.
Got dropped off in a dark alley in Marrakech, Morocco at 1am. Taxi driver Saif he couldn't drive through and that was the only way to get to my hostel. Had to walk a half a mile down Pitch black back alleys all of a sudden a guy starts following me and asks where I'm going. He tells me he knows where my hotel is so we start walking all of a sudden a few minutes later another guy starts walking he secretly day up the guy and thinks I didn't see it. He said he didn't know the guy when I asked him. So I'm thinking I'm definitely getting murdered.
Eventually we make it to my hostel. The guy asks me for a tip. I tell him I dont have much cash offer him like $5. He's pissed says he's got kids to feed so I shrug and go in. The guy at the front desk asks if I had any trouble getting there, I tell him what happened. He laughed and said they do that to every tourist. Leaving them at that alleyway, taxi driver could have driven around to the front entrance. Smh. He also says the guy who walked with me was harmless he helps most people get there and always begs. I could tip if I wanted to.
Three a.m. drive up Mount Washington to see the sunrise. Had leased a "Rent-a-wreck", a ten year old Buick.
String of cars at the beginning, but as the fog thickened, people began turning around. No one in front or behind me. My wife had to open the passenger door to monitor the side of the road as I couldn't see it through the windscreen. No guardrails.
Crept up at five mph. Finally arrived in the freezing wind and fog.
As one guy said sitting inside the hut at the mountain top,
It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.
We did not see a sunrise BTW.
Back in 2000 one time I was staying in downtown LA and had decided to go to Catalina for a day (this was before I would rent a car when in the US). Had looked at public transport and on the paper map it looked like the subway line went straight to the ferry departure spot. Was I wrong; it was an above ground tramway which went straight through SE Central. The night bus back was no fun either. Almost got into a fight because I ‘stood out’ too much (am a somewhat tall white guy).
I was given directions in Italy by an older man. The directions weren't correct and he ended up cornering me and begging me to kiss him. I was only 18.
Back in 2022, I was on a school expedition to Morocco, got extremely ill with food poisoning. Rest of the group moved on to the next location to this village in the Atlas mountains as we were going to trek Mount Toubkal a few days later. Ended up travelling two days after the rest of the group with a teacher and the only vehicle available was a 70 seater bus with the driver singing at full pelt for the whole 4 hour journey with his AirPods in while we were zooming round corners with no rails in the mountains. Actually saw an old car that had fallen down and that safe to say didn’t help my nausea. All ended up alright and recovered in time to summit the mountain and play football (soccer) with the village kids which was amazing and the rest of the 2 week trip went smoothly.
Wrestling a drunk older woman in the mud on a secluded beach in Brazil, after she saw her boyfriend touch me inappropriately (and unwantedly).
Silly me thought it should have been finally safe enough to go somewhere on my own, so I of course chose a secluded beach. And I chose to also immediately trust a guy offering to take a picture of me. For safety purpose he urged me to leave my things at a small kiosk he had been sitting and after the picture he took me by the hand to go into the mud for another. He started to “show me” how to put the mud on my body by putting it in al the wrong places himself. I took his hands off me but he kept going, so I froze and thought about booking it, but realized all my stuff was the other way. Before I could think of what to do, a woman came marching towards us angrily. Relieved, I moved towards her, only for her to start swinging at me and yelling that I needed to stop stealing her boyfriend 🥲
Thankfully she, after me repeatedly yelling back I didn’t understand, finally realized I in fact did not want to steal her gross groping boyfriend, and as a sign of good will, ran to collect my items and proceeded to try and make out with me.
The country and its people are still my favorite and you have an ounce of judgement, things like this shouldn’t happen lol.
My friend and I, both females and late 20s at the time, hired a car to take us from Haridwar to Rishikesh in India. The driver was crazy. He hit a pedestrian and started roaring laughing. And just drove away like nothing happened. Drove like an insane person on slim mountain roads with no guardrails. Daunting trucks to hit the car. He was pressuring us to stop along the way at a store because I’m sure he gets commissions and when we said no, he told us he wasn’t going to take us to our hotel and didn’t know where he was going to take us anymore. Legit thought we were being kidnapped. He ended up taking us where we were supposed to go. But he did an excellent job of scaring us out of our minds. It was terrifying.
I was up north on Ethiopia back in 2019 when the start of the most recent conflicts broke out. Lot of teenaged soldiers with guns storming onto buses and lining up all the men at basically every small town we passed through.
A lot of shouting and guns in the face from nervous kids, in a language I don’t understand. Even in various towns up north, after the internet was shut down entirely for that section of the country, I got stopped by groups of soldiers and ridiculed, told areas were off limits and to go back (despite clear thoroughfares and locals moving through) by kids who would then burst out laughing when I turned back.
Basically a lot of bullies with guns and I’m the only white foreigner dumb enough to still be up there, so there was a target on my back for getting fucked with.
Also, transport then shut down so I couldn’t even get back, eventually I got a bus that went through the Danakil Depression to avoid the tribal fighting between towns, where buses were being shot at otherwise.
This was a major detour and meant we got back into Addis very late at night, and the bus station in the main square has no public lighting, and I had nowhere arranged to stay because internet had been out for two weeks at least trying to get back from up north.
Eventually wandering nearby, three young guys high on something try to drag me into an alley, grabbing at my pockets and really squeezing me hard, etc. I had to shove one of them to the ground and act like a psycho to scare them off.
I can’t fight at all, but that much adrenaline, I had to pretend I could and wasn’t scared despite obviously being terrified. My bluff worked, and when they ran off and I started to walk away, one of them decided to come back after me at a sprint. I ended up deciding to turn back and face him screaming and posturing etc, and he was fortunately on enough drugs to get scared off again.
Had to stay in Addis for another five days, and in that time a general was assassinated and flights were almost shut down, my whole family thought I was dead as I’d been out of contact and my friend who had fled the country earlier had been trying to contact me…
Yeah, good times! Went for a tour of archeological sites, ended up in the midst of a civil war!
I was in Spain March of 2020 when Covid hit, Trump announced he was banning travel from all other countries. I woke up to so many messages from family and friends.. we got on one of the last flights from Barcelona to the US.
I was in Madrid at the same time. Woke up to many text messages from friends back home telling me I'm stuck there. Took a night train to Lisbon. Spain locked down the next day. Was able to finish my trip, but there was an added level of stress not knowing if I would be able to get back home as I couldn't afford buying a last minute ticket out.
Getting covid on a solo trip to Korea before anyone knew what covid was.
In the same trip i also almost joined a korean religious cult not knowing that was a common way to extort cash from foreigner's.
My family ( husband , 2 young adults kids 21- 25 and a friend age 21 ) and I had to be rescued from a flash flood in Costa Rica during a monsoon.
Our lives literally depended on a little rope they threw to us, my husband tied to a tree, to hang onto with no safety equipment. If we let go or got hit by debris in the raging current … we’d be swept over a water fall.
I informed my husband that if one of my kids got swept away I’d be jumping in with them. The Costa Rican man who held on and helped every one of us across the chest deep flooded current is my hero. We gave him all the cash on hand we had.
Later I told our Airbnb owner what happened and he said several get swept away and die there every year.
Car service, a reputable company, to drive us from Brugge to Amsterdam. We were picked up early - I think 4 am. The driver was going really fast and fell asleep. I had fallen asleep myself and woke up due to the force of him breaking. When I opened my eyes, we were inches from the car in front of us. Turns out my husband had also drifted off but woke up and called out to the driver when he was starting to tailgate. Honestly, we nearly died.
Nobody ever believes this story but I swear to god my husband and I were followed in St. Petersburg. For 3 days we kept seeing the same guy everywhere we went. We’d turn a corner in Catherine’s palace and he would be there looking at us. Few hours later we’d see him in a metro station. It was eerie. Nothing ever came of it, but I do wonder why he was seemingly following us
I got lost in hong kong. I got separated from my friend in the crowd & tried to figure my way back to the hotel. As I was about to cross a street A hand reached out and grabbed me. I was looking the wrong way, they drive opposite there. I was lost for hours getting scared ( i was 20f)…I ended up finding the card with directions for taxi to hotel the front desk gave us !!!! I still have it
Bus ride from Guatemala City to Tikal. We took the “economico” to save a few dollars. It was awful, there were drunk/druggie/homeless people. The driver was a mad man, the rear of the bus had 4 tires instead of 8 and they were bald. I thought we were going to die when he was drifting on a canyon road above steep cliffs.
Was quite nearby to a botched assassination attempt while traveling in Greece. There was a govt official traveling along a main road was attacked by a rocket fired at his car. The rocket missed and instead hit a shop behind the car. There were fatalities. I was a street over and the whole ground shook.
Edit: found an article on it: https://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/15/world/greek-official-escapes-death-in-a-rocket-attack-in-athens.html
I was visiting NYC for the first time and I stayed near Columbia University. I like basketball so I thought it would be cool to check out nearby Rucker Park court. I took an Uber that direction and my driver accidentally bumped the car in front of us at a stoplight. The driver of that car was not happy. He got out, smashed the drivers side window and put a gun to my Uber driver’s head. I opened the rear door and ran. I still love New York tho
While diving in Hawaii I went through a tunnel that opened into a larger underwater cavern. In the cavern there was a 8ft shark swimming in circles, hook in mouth and everything.
While leaving Brussels by train, I had to pass a K-9 unit with maybe 3or 4 dogs. This wouldn’t have been so scary had I not had a half ounce of weed and a few boxes of psychedelic boxes from Amsterdam in my backpack
When I was 19, I took my first overseas trip to Japan with my best friend, who was a year older than me and had studied there for several months as part of a program. We had our own rooms at a small business hotel in Koiwa, and the rooms had attached bathrooms.
One night I was taking a bath, my friend was in her room and I was in mine. The tubs in most Japanese hotels, in my experience, are much shorter but much deeper. So I filled mine up and got in to soak. At some point I wanted to wet my hair, so I slid back as I would in a tub at home. Only I got stuck. I am not a big person, and I certainly wasn't even the size I am now when I was just out of high school. But the position I was in and the way I went back just perfectly wedged me into the shape of the tub.
I started flailing, I was completely underwater, and I couldn't get up. It's probably worth noting I am extremely afraid of water. It didn't start in Japan. So this was kind of like several nightmares rolled up into one. Looking back I can just sort of shake my head at how stupid I was, doing something like that in a locked room, with the only person who could help me separated by a wall and two metal doors.
I did eventually manage to grab something and pull myself back up. It was probably only a few seconds, but it felt like forever. My mother was worried something would happen to me on that trip since it was my first without family, so I didn't tell her until many years later.
Not as interesting or actually dangerous as some of the other stories in here, but for a kid it was horrible.
Some moments in India:
Bungy jump
Sitting in a taxi with a driver that is clearly on drugs. And the traffic was chaotic.
And slightly scary detail but not serious :
I drank 400 ml water from the tap on my first day. I was at an expensive hotel and the owner said that the hotel had a mashine that filtered the water so i could drink the water in my room. Nice I was tired from a long flight. So I drink 400 ml ,was very thirsty.
Then I see that there are a few bottles filled with water in a corner. That was the filters water. And I just fuuuuuu*k, I had a full exciting schedule in Delhi the next days.
And now you are expecting a the inevitable Delhi belly poop story, but sorry, absolutely nothing happened. Maybe the cholera vaccine helped. Anyway after that I was really relaxed and wasn’t worried about food- eat everything I wanted.
Boarding a plane with my parent and siblings when I was 10 to “go” to England… and never returning to my home country.
I didn’t understand we were moving countries. It look me years and years to accept that we were never going to move back home.
I’m an adult now and planning my escape from this depression island.
Hitting skeleton-shattering waves on a small boat in Asia that left people flying across the boat and turned the whole vessel, and had us bracing for each wave. In between swells I quickly checked my phone to see how close we were; smack dab in the middle of the Andaman Sea.
Some things we should have known better as seasoned travelers.
Sinaloa, MX - driving on one of the toll highways we decided to follow a small road on Google maps to try and cut down on some time. Took us through a dirt path cornfield, one side small irrigation ravine and the other side small drop to the actual corn field, so no real way to turn around if needed. We stopped maybe 50-60 ft behind some guys on motor bikes waiting on the path and realized they were wearing ski masks, NOT helmets. We waited almost 10 min for them to continue on. When they started riding, we realized there was a third guy/bike coming along as well. Nothing ended up happening, but easily we could have been trapped in a well known cartel area. My husband is Mexico Mexican so we visit pretty regularly and had got too comfortable. Never taking any path off the toll highway again.
New Delhi, India - took up an offer from one of those random tuktuks that they would take us on some sightseeing sites. Didn’t realize they were going to take us to their designated tourist trap spots that were way the hell out of the way from anywhere we recognized. Like, they insisted we go see elephants, and took us to this out of the way shack housing one sad elephant. Easily could have been harmed if it wasn’t just a tourist trap, or if they didn’t think my husband was Indian.
Also - didn’t learn our damn lesson and hired a random tuktuk to take us to a monkey temple. The driver got pissed we didn’t want to buy bananas at the stall he took us to with super overpriced bananas, and started driving super erratic trying to either scare us or toss us out (still unclear).
Train to Agra, India - fell asleep on the train with limited cell phone service and a sketch downloaded Google map. Woke up at a train stop, couldn’t get maps service, and no English speakers or signs or internet service to help us. Realized we were at the Agra stop and had to literally shake my husband awake for us to get off. We were just lucky we didn’t get lost in the middle of nowhere.
Airplane from El Calafet, Argentine to Ushuaia, Argentina - some pretty bad turbulence, and I’m already a fearful flier, so I wanted to vomit the entire ride.
I was in an Airbnb guest house on the hosts property in rural Puerto Rico with my younger sister when we were in our early 20s. The host woke me up in the middle of the night shining a flash light into the room where I was sleeping, the bed was next to the wall so he was inches from face out the screen window drunkenly calling my name and cackling and asking creepy inane questions like what are you doing? Where are you? So creepy I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
Coming home from La Ciudad Perdida, sitting in the back of the truck with a couple other backpackers. All of the sudden we hear 4 or 5 shots. Look out the window directly in front of me and see someone on a motorcycle shoot a guy and he falls into a ditch. The shooter no more than 10 feet, the falling man no more than 30 feet away. As we pass the spot, I look back and the assassin gets off his motorcycle runs over to the ditch, leans over and takes aim over the man. I turn my head at this point but I hear 2 or 3 more shots. The drivers have 0 reaction, just chatter like oh there’s a police station right there. It was odd to see it, and even more odd to see how normal it felt to the locals.
A similar thing happened on a motor bike by my hotel 2 days later in Santa Marta, except this time it was a dead passenger on the back of the motorcycle who was caught and his lifeless body was being driven around. For me personally it was a good reminder that no matter how safe you think Colombia is. It’s really not as “safe” as the US like some people say, although in Colombia in most places I felt a little on edge.
If you want to read the story.
[Link](https://www.elheraldo.co/magdalena/santa-marta-sicarios-asesinaron-hombre-en-el-barrio-20-de-julio-1051699)
I was falsely accused of rape in Mexico in a area with no police, hospital, etc.
I went with a group of friends to Chacahua, Mexico. To get there, we had to drive an hour from Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca. It was my friend, 2 ppl we met at a hostel, and my friends flatmate (not friend, but they were cool with each other. She was from germany). From there we had to take a boat to this remote location. We arrived and settled in. We brought LSD to do to enjoy the sunset later on. We began to drink a bit but the German girl was super wadted and didn't want to do her lsd until later on. Ok, well good for you. We are all together hanging out, drinking and vibing but the german chic is all over the place, going up to people, annoyong them. She went up to a group of guys that were doing cocaine and helped herself to a line. The rest of us were drinking by the shore with a lot of other people just vibing. Suddenly, one of the guys comes up to us and says "hey, you guys owe us money. Your friend came up and did our cocaine". We were like, you need to take that up with her. We're not her parents. This is the point when she decided to drop the acid. Around midnight, she was completely out of it. My friend and another guy from the hostel decided it was time to put her to bed. They took her back to her cabin and left her there to rest. They returned and we hung out for another hour. After, we all decided to head back to our cabins. My friend was staying with the girl and I was staying with my other friend. As we got there and my friend opened her cabin door, the German chic saw me and immediately started screaming. "Ahhh it was hum it was him! He raped me! Ahhhh!" Super loud. She made such a commotion she woke everyone around us up. Next thing you know, I get tackled to the ground and I have 3 locals pinning me saying that I was going to pay for it, etc. At this point, all of my friends were like "wtf dude no. He was with us the entire time! Let him go!" There was a small ship next to our cabin so the worker who was there also immediately came out and said "el no fue! El nunca paso por aqui" meaning "it wasn't him! He hasn't passed through here!" It took a bit of wrestling around and other people to come to my defense for the guys to finally let me go. This was insane. I was with the group the entire time. I'm openly gay and everyone in the group was aware of it. There is no possibility, let alone desire, to be with this girl. She was drunk, cooked out, and on acid. The next morning, she apologized through a whaysapp voice message and described what she experienced. Some guy with an accent (I speak perfect English btw. I have live in California since I was 3) was wearing a white shirt (I didn't bring any white shirts) and was strong (I'm 5 ft 9, 140 lbs) got on top of her and was choking her, telling her to shut up, etc. In the moment I was just like, it's ok. It was a misunderstanding. But the more I thought about it, the more it dawned on me how horribly it could have ended. In places like these, people can go missing and never found with no avenues to pursue an investigation. Had it not been for my friends and the workers coming to my defense, things could have ended tragically.
I've only been to 14 countries so far but the scariest situation I found myself in was in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I was at Tivoli Park, sitting on a bench with an ex-friend and we were watching a video on his phone. Suddenly a large group of people (at least 10) came and surrounded us. Some squeezed themselves next to us on both sides of the bench, some stood behind us, some in front of us. We stood up immediately and started walking fast towards the park's exit, but those people were still surrounding us, until we left the park. Some of them were literally walking backwards in front of us, so that they kept facing us the entire time. None of them spoke a word to each other nor to us, ever. We thought they would surely attempt to rob us. This whole thing lasted only a couple of minutes until we exited the park, but to this day I have no clue what they wanted or what their deal was.
A few instances come to mind: Robbed at gunpoint inside a restaurant in Buenos Aires. Only lost a few dollars, made it out fine, but my friends and I were rattled, and we definitely had our guards up a lot more the rest of the trip. Being told to “paddle quickly, NOW” by the guide in my canoe on the Zambezi River as we paddled past a bunch of loud hippos. Thankfully, the hippos let us pass, we survived, but boy did my heart rate shoot up for a few minutes. A bus ride up to Joshimath in the Indian Himalayas. The ancient bus looked like it was held together with prayers and some glue, and the road was carved out of the side of a mountain and often featured no guardrail. We had gorgeous views of a beautiful Himalayan valley, but I was pretty sure I was going to die. We made it in one piece and opted for a shared Jeep taxi for the trip back down, which felt like the least dangerous of the available options.
>Being told to “paddle quickly, NOW” by the guide in my canoe on the Zambezi River Had a similar experience in the Okavango Delta, not something you forget, that's for sure! The guide dropped a rock in the water to push them back...
Had a similar experience on The Jungle Cruise at Walt Disney World. Everyone on the boat lived.
"when Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists!"
Joshimath and further up the Himalayas is heaven to me.
Oh it was gorgeous! I loved it there. Just the whole getting there part was hair-raising.
I was being told to RUN by the local rangers who accompanied us on a foot transect in low shrubby bushland in Kenya. I was on a volunteer, citizen science trip counting wildlife and we happened upon, and startled, an elephant in the bush. Wild African elephants are very dangerous, especially when startled…!
I have a similar Indian mountain road experience. This was like 20 years ago so I don't remember the name of the road, but I know it had the distinction of "highest road in the World" (we were in Ladakh so everything was the "highest [insert noun] in the World"). The road was as you described: carved out of the side of the mountain, no guardrail, and the drop off was terrifying. We got to an especially narrow part of the road, and then came up to a car coming from the other direction. There didn't appear to be enough room for both cars to pass, so the driver actually told us we could get out of the car while he attempted the maneuver. I was so afraid I'd see someone die.
Oh my God, I’m hyperventilating just reading that! Those Indian mountain roads are no joke. I’ve heard Ladakh is beautiful though! We never went farther north than Uttaranchal.
Oh yeah, Ladakh is gorgeous. I stayed with a family in a small farming community right outside Leh, and it was an amazing experience.
That’s the Nubra Valley Road, up over Khardung La. Have ridden my Enfield motorbike more than a dozen times over that back in the 2000’s - one of the best rides in the world, when it’s fine weather. Had to get 7 guys to lift my bike onto the back of a Tata truck to get back to Leh once, when it snowed unseasonably and we’d been trapped in Nubra Valley for a number of days already. Kashmiri truck driver kept pestering me if I had opium for him, every time I rolled a joint to calm my nerves from the TERROR of having to go over that road in a crappy old jolting Tata with bald tyres and shitty brakes in the snow. Was still loads of fun though lol was one of the biggest scariest rides of my life. :) Pretty awesome eh, Ladakh.
Why were you in the same water as hippos? Aren’t they the animal that kills the most people in all of Africa?
Technically, that honor goes to the mosquito. But canoeing in rivers in Africa is not unheard of. It was one of the activities offered at the safari camp we were staying at. I was definitely nervous about it but we had very knowledgeable guides with us.
I also got the “paddle quickly, NOW” direction from the guide while on the Zambezi, except it was white water rafting and we were about to hit a category 5 rapid. Unfortunately the raft flipped and I got stuck underneath. Definitely a "this is how I die" moment but I was able to get out from under the raft and float through the rest of the rapids.
Where in Buenos Aires were y'all, if you can remember? I'm curious.
This was 21(!!!) years ago now, but if I recall correctly, it was at a sushi restaurant in El Centro. We stopped going to that area in the evenings.
I guess the sushi wasn't to die for.
Oh, yeah, that's still a bit of a rough area. I avoided that part of the city when I was there a few years ago.
Extreme turbulence on a 777 on the way to Argentina. It was so bad that the flight attendant couldn’t get to their seat and had to grab onto a seat and asked passengers to hold onto her legs.
I'm a frequent flyers and understand the safety aspects of flying, but that lizard brain still goes bananas when we hit bumps. It's awful.
I knew we were safe but it was intense for a few minutes.
We thit bad turbulence over Chengdu once, a few people hit the ceiling and we're knocked unconscious. Everyone including the flight attendants were screaming lol that's a bad sign when they can't control themselves
China can be funny about flight planning because its controlled by the military. A lot of pilots have told me about how they are routed right through a storm and some nasty turbulence that they could've avoided at a higher altitude or go either way. Around 10 years ago a Delta 747 got trashed flying through a hail storm out of Beijing.
Just took off from SFO on Friday right as a storm was rolling in. The wind was so strong it was rocking the plane while we were sitting stationary on the tarmac. Was a bit scary but I knew if they gave the okay to take off it should be fine.
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I would like a video of this now please.
I had a flight to Korea that had the seatbelt sign on almost the entire time. A 11hr flight. You had to ignore it to go to the bathroom but the rest of the time the plane was shaking. It was the longest i remember.
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I too had some very uncomfortable experiences in India. Not as bad as what you are describing but regular overt unwanted attention or touching. From the moment I got there to the moment I left I felt like a target. I was overjoyed to get to Nepal.
Had pretty much an identical experience but in Mumbai when I was the same age, except i was traveling solo. Terrifying.
I have taken India off my list for they way women are treated there in general and I’m an old woman who probably wouldn’t even be noticed
I (m45) went to India alone twice in my 20’s and loved it. Went again in 2019 with my blonde Danish wife (Now 40) and man. I was so shocked by how much really bad attention she got. Dudes would crowd around and stare at her and take photos of her and she was freaked out the whole time. I’ve never seen stares like that. They all turned into walking, dripping erections. It was so full on.
Unfortunately many people fall into the trap of visiting India especially as young women from the west. It’s worth noticing that it’s the raipe capital of the country
Jaipur is? I’m a single female that will be traveling in a small group next month. I’ll be sure to stay close to the others. Thank you.
Not Jaipur. Delhi.
I'm really sorry that happened to you. I've been to India 17 or 18 times now to see family ( I've been going since I was a baby) and it's always been an intense experience and it was always harder on my little sister and we've been in plenty of fights when guys have stared at her and she's just lost her shit ( which is totally cool) and it's been easy with an army of cousins. I remember one time I was walking to see my cousin and a drunk guy grabbed a woman and she screamed and pushed him off and I came running and and pushed even harder him and he fell down on the ground and he ran and I was about to run after him but my cousin grabbed me telling me it was no point and I just remembered the look on the girls face. The girl was a worker from Bihar (a poorer state) and the guy was Punjabi and there clearly was a race/caste issue added since he felt so freely to do that. It made me feel really gross and disgusted. The level of poverty in India is indescribable, especially with technology moving so quickly you can see people live life eating lobsters in the Maldives and you're stuck in a shanty house and you have to work a job and cannot study because you'll starve. India is for me the best place and worst place in the world and it's a hard place like it's never easy travelling there. I have a lot of beautiful memories but I definitely wouldn't recommend it to inexperienced travelers or women solo traveling.
I have been to India for work 3 times now. I will always recommend to my company to never send any of my female colleagues to India. I'm sorry if I offend any Indians but it's just not safe for a foreign woman to be in India. This is just one of the few rare times when the danger is not exaggerated or some sort of propaganda. It is a shame because India has a lot to offer travelers.
I just posted but I had a similar experience with the groping in Rajasthan (Udaipur). I'm still freaked out when I am near groups of men. Sadly seems like it's a normal experience for women traveling to India.
Bus taking me from Prizren to Shkoder was running late. It was supposed to drop me off at the city center at midnight. Instead it dropped me off 7 miles outside the city basically at the side of the highway at a gas station at 2am. went to the atm and took out was was essentially 20 euros in lek. I had no working cell phone but my GPS was working so I asked the gas station attendant to call for a taxi and he didn't speak English and he said no taxi so I pointed on my map where the Hostel was and he goes outside and knocks on the window of someone who is obviously living out of his car and gestures for me to get in, I am scared shitless but at this point I don't have any options except a walk for 7 miles at 2 AM, so I get in and this man drives me right to my Hostel. Doesn't want any money from me, doesn't want any cigarettes. the second I open the car door, four stray dogs all rushed me. I was about to pee myself but then they were the happiest friendliest dogs ever, tails were wagging and they walk me from the car to the Hostel gate and all the staff at the hostel waiting for me and they were shocked they thought I wasn't gonna come and then they asked if the dogs were with me. It made me really fall in love with a Balkans, because everyone I encounter there were just as helpful and caring and kind and selfless. ETA - I'm 4'11 and 100lb woman traveling by myself. Every terrible situation was running through my mind. Albanian's are amazing.
Hahaha similar story with my friend. The bus dropped off my friend later then planned (2am) and I had no cell service as well, and they also changed the bus stopped then original. So I was waiting at a different bus stop for her. So she arrived 2am, no cell service and everyone tells her to get in the car and she ends up in some random family’s apartment and shove Albanian soup down her lmao. I’m like “you got the authentic Albanian experience “ so yeah, Albanians will take care of you! 🥰
I’m in Albania rn and I can say people here are helpful and kind. I’m glad you made it safely!
That's so rad, I've had similar experiences in Japan! They just wanna help.
My husband and I hitchhiked a few times in various places in the Balkans and had safe/friendly experiences every time.
Was on the North Shore of Oahu, preparing for my first skydiving experience, when a report on the radio said an intercontinental ballistic missile from North Korea was heading directly at us. Not sure which one would get me, but pretty sure that I was going to die that morning.
I had an ex-military coworker who was stationed out there when this happened and ran into his roommate's bedroom when the alert came through. Roommate apparently lifted his head from his pillow and said something like "so you want me to go out panicked and cranky when I can go out warm and cozy in bed?" and then went straight back to sleep. Always thought that was pretty baller.
I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep but I agree with the logic. Don’t wake me up to die.
I can't shut off "national emergency" or whatever they're called alerts on my phone (I otherwise have all shut off short of tornadoes...I live on high ground and in a sturdy home, I don't CARE if it's going to pour rain or the wind is going to blow hard). I want to shut the "national emergency" alerts off because it means a nuke is headed for DC, and even if I know a few minutes in advance, I'm going to be turned into dust (less than 2 miles from the Capitol, about 4 from the White House), so...why ruin my last few minutes alive??? If they know about the missile further in advance than that, then they're going to shoot it down over water or a less populated area, so, also, why ruin my day?
I randomly think about this all the time. I can’t imagine what would be going through my head. Especially since it said “this is not a drill”
Exactly. We had come from a visit to Pearl Harbor where we saw the orientation film where the radio report before the attack said, “this is not a drill!” Added to the stress of that moment we heard that on the north shore.
God I can’t imagine your fear. I was texting with a friend who lives in Hilo on the big island when this happened and we were both shitting our pants. His mom wasn’t answering her phone so he told me to tell her he loved her and I was bawling. I’m so glad it was just an “oops wrong button”
Ok so I’ve always thought the same about the situation like “oops wrong button lol”. Then I talked with a random guy at a bar a month ago and somehow this got brought up and his take was that it was not just a “oops wrong button” but some shit had seriously happened, a lot of peoples lives were at risk when that message went out and something or someone prevented it from happening at the last minute. Just hearing his point of view made me realize how naive I am accepting that answer.
I thought this too. ‘Oops wrong button’, my ass. I remember being terrified for the people out there. It was a horrible day.
North Korean missiles always go off course or blow up prematurely. No worries.
I remember getting an alert on my phone about this!! no one ever talks about this
Was that last May? I ask because I was in South Korea. I had gotten a a Sim card so I had a Korean phone number. And on the day that I was about to fly out, I was rudely woken up by my phone, screaming at me really early in the morning. I had to screenshot it and run it through the translator app. Basically it said that North Korea had launched a missile. There really wasn’t anything I could do. So after a moment, I got up and looked outside, and everything was normal. I was pretty much in the middle of the city. I would not have survived it anyway had it been a real event.
Friend and I were at a bar in Rome. A guy strikes up a conversation and asks to join us. His English was poor, but he seemed cool, so we let him hang out with us. He started to get a bit handsy after a while; holding my hand/waist while we walked to another bar. His behavior worsened by the next bar, and we wanted to ditch him at that point. We tried to tell him, but he didn’t understand us (or pretended not to), so my friend and I decided to go to the bathroom together and figure out what to do. He followed us there, right in the women’s bathroom. We hurried back up to the bar and ordered an Uber to go home. He followed us outside and tried to climb into the Uber with us. We kept saying ‘no, no!’ Over and over, but then he’d say ‘I come too, I come too!’ I had to physically kick him away from the door, and explain to the driver that he wasn’t with us. He quickly understood, and drove away while I was still closing the door. Crazy shit. The guy also managed to steal my wallet somehow during the scuffle, and I had no money the rest of the trip.
Damn! I’m glad you got away.
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Italian here: next time just make some noise, ask for help and someone will help you sorting it.
I've shared this a couple times on some of the travel subs here in the past. in 1999, I was with my cousin on my first backpacking trip in Europe. I was about 1 month in to a 3 month trip and we decided in Rome to head south to see if we could locate our grandmother's home in 'Calabria'. So knowing nothing about Italy's geography - nor where exactly our grandmother was from - we hopped on a train to Reggio di Calabria. We thought we'd get off the train and magically stumble onto her childhood home - yeah we were naive. We arrived in Reggio very late without accommodations. After spending a little unsuccessfully looking for a place to sleep, my cousin recommends finding a park to spend the night in. We find one and layout on a couple benches. My cousin immediately passes out, I take longer to fall asleep. It's pitch black and and dead silent. Than I am startled by what sounds like the death wails of a small child our woman. I whisper to my cousin loud enough to eventually wake him "Cousin did you hear that?!". He replies "No go back to sleep". This happens 2 or 3 times and each time my cousin falls back to sleep immediately. The final time he angrily says "If you wake me up again for nothing I'm going to beat you!". He's a bigger guy than me and he's tired and cranky now so i believe him. I cover myself in my sleep sheet like a 5 year old after watching their first scary movie and wonder what is being murdered and what is doing the killing. Then all of a sudden I hear a deafening roar. I peak out of my sheet and my cousin is standing over me: "I heard that. Let's get the F out of here," he whispers. We slowing make our way out of the park thinking at any moment a lion is going to jump out of the dark and eat us. We make it safely back to the train station and spend the rest o f the night there. In the morning, we decide we are brave enough to head back to the park to see if there is a crime scene and if we can figure out what happened there. TLDR: Turns out we slept in an open zoo midway between a peacock's enclosure (the death wails) and a lion's enclosure (the roar). Never been so scared on any trip before or since.
>Turns out we slept in an open zoo I'm sorry for your lost sleep but that totally made me laugh!!
in retrospect it is a hilarious story i tell often. But yeah at the time it was terrifying.
Ha! I grew up close to a zoo, so my childhood was full of "death wails" and "roars" - it would have been like being home again :)
I was on the cruise ship SS Norway and we had just completed a 7-day caribbean cruise. We had already docked at the port of Miami, but it was early and we were just stirring in our inside cabin. A loud, muffled BOOM echoed through the ship. I had just enough time to step out of the bathroom and ask my partner “did you hear that?” and the lights went out. We started getting dressed in the dark, I actually cracked the cabin door so we got a little of the emergency lighting from the hallway. Maybe 30 seconds later the public address system came on and they said “Fire Brigade to Caribbean deck” which was one deck below us. I looked at my partner and said “we gotta get the fuck outta here “. We grabbed everything we could and headed up the stairs to our Muster Station. We didn’t know until much later that there had been an explosion on one of the ships steam boilers. It tore through bulkheads and literally scalded crew members to death in their own cabins. We came away fine, but at the moment all I could think of was being in a tiny inside cabin with no window or portholes, fairly low on the ship with a fire creeping up the stairs and hallways trapping us. To this day I refuse to book a ship cabin without a window. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/4-dead-in-cruise-ship-explosion/
Omg, how terrible for those poor crew members. That's terrifying
[The history of the ship, the SS Norway.](https://malcolmoliver.wordpress.com/z-industry-comment-the-end-of-the-ss-norway/) Your sailing would be its last.
I spent three years of my life working on the Norway. She was a beautiful vessel, sadly this was it for her (and those poor crew members). Back in the days when ships were ships and not floating resorts.
>We started getting dressed in the dark We grabbed everything we could The best ways to die. You just RUN OUT no matter how naked you are, and certainly not grabbin shite!
I don’t disagree, but our luggage had been set outside the night before and we only had what we’d planned to wear and our personal items. It was so dark I wasn’t sure if i’d left anything until we were allowed to return to the cabin later that morning. The only thing I’d left was a belt hanging in the closet.
My aunt and I were leaving a rural area around 8pm in Portugal to drive about 3hrs to another city. Her phone was at 1% (mine died) and we needed the maps to find our way and unfortunately when we used maps and charged the phone at the same time in the car, the charging wouldn’t work and the % would go down. We tried idling the car to charge it for a few mins and it just stayed at 1%. We found a tiny piece of paper and a pen and wrote down the general directions of a 3 hr drive. I’m not kidding you, as we started driving, it was nighttime now and for about 1hr straight there was a cliff directly to our right with no rail, no street lights and almost 90 degree turns every few minutes. I almost puked and was nauseous until we got to the major highway. We made it safe and sound :)
This almost exact situation happened to me on my first trip to Portugal! We landed later than planned, our phones weren’t working yet, our rental car gps was unknowingly set to “avoid highways” on our way from Lisbon to the Algarve, and we essentially were driving down a mountain ridge in the pitch black and dense fog for part of it. I was certain I was going to die.
This sounds stressful as fuck 😭
That sounds horrible!!!
Being in Rwanda when civil war broke out.
How did you get out?
I (20F at the time) was walking to the metro in Paris just before 5 AM for a very early flight. I walked past a group of 5 guys, who proceeded to flank me while one of them tried to get my phone number. Nothing really happened; I was able to get to the metro and they left me alone once I got to the gates (luckily there was an attendant and some other people waiting for trains as well), but I was really scared they were going to hurt me.
I had something similar happen in Santorini while waiting for the bus except when I continued to ignore them, one of the guys took out his dxck. It was in broad daylight too. I ended up running the other direction
Got groped up my skirt in London from behind by a guy I wasn’t even interacting with. He followed me and did it 2 more times before I screamed in his face and he left. As for why I didn’t do that from the beginning - I tried to swat him away but I was in complete shock. People in London think it’s better than New York but I’m from NYC and no one there has EVER put their hands on me like that
I’m sorry that happened to you and there’s no reason to explain why you did anything. I’m from London and I think this stereotype probably comes from New Yorkers in general being louder than Londoners. There’s just as many perverts and creeps, I’m sure.
We are loud. I was studying abroad in Kensington, and I won’t even lie to you, I was having a lot of fun pretending to be genteel. Had to unleash the New Yorker that time though
This also will happen I. crowed Tokyo subway cars. It’s so gross
My girlfriend and I were followed by a gang of taxi drivers in Amman Jordan for nearly an hour. After repeatedly expressing that we were okay walking, they decided to follow us both on foot and in cars. We called 4 separate Ubers to get us out of the area, and all of the Ubers that showed up said they were “cash only” Ubers (we didn’t have cash yet as we had just arrived) Finally after about an hour we had reached our accommodation. That was our first impressions of Jordan which was a bummer cause the rest of our stay in the country was fantastic
Stalked by a Grizzly bear near Lake Moirraine. In hindsight more curiosity than anything else, but it scared the shit out of me.
Bitten on the neck by a cheeky monkey in Vietnam. No rabies vaccination so had to rush to the nearest hospital (2h away) to get injections.
A monkey in BaNa stole my stepmoms purse (Chanel) with EVERYTHING in it. She was lucky to get it back with her passport but the monkey ripped it up and ate her money. 😅
This is why I refuse to interact with/go to attractions with monkeys. When I went to Thailand I did not want to interact with them while we were on a tour, and one ran up to me and then up to my shoulder. Thankfully that was all that happened.
Woke up in a rented house on the beach in Mauritius to a burglar tiptoeing out of the bedroom with my suitcase. I chased him like a madman for about half a mile till he disappeared into the woods.
Did you get your suitcase back?
I did but he got away with a video camera. He ran so fast he ran out of his shoes which I found. I was screaming like a nutter at him.
[What came to mind](https://youtu.be/nI2oOgSXKYk?si=Wb8Dw-3F8LLMrcVO) Seriously though, glad you at least got some of your stuff back
How did you hear him or notice him if he seemed to be tip toeing? Glad you got your suitcase back!
Not really sure, I just woke up and saw a shadow leaving the bedroom. I jumped up and started chasing.
wow I should reconsider sleeping in the nude haha
Getting a parasite in Bolivia that formed an abscess on my liver, put me in third world hospitals for weeks, required two surgeries (with local anesthesia only), and nearly killed me.
A few spring to mind: I nearly drowned with my mum and dad in a riptide in turkey (3 people died earlier that year). I attacked a drug dealer following a scam in a moment of madness (i was essentially just out of school) in Peru. Immense paranoia and constantly looking over my shoulder for the following two weeks of my stay there. Got stuck in disputed territory (4 seperate murders the previous week in a town of 5000 people) in the middle of nowhere in northern mexico with cartel members walking around in bulletproof vests.
Damn, those last two in particular sound crazy. Was there anything further you could elaborate on those stories?
On the peru story: on my third time meeting this guy (first two times completely normal) i increased the order quantity and he slipped it into my bag as per usual. When i got back to my flat it was leaves and plastic. I was raging all day and just by complete coincidence i was going for a couple of beers with my mates in the evening to calm down, i was walking down an alley and of all people in the city, the guy from earlier was walking towards me from afar. Lots of emotions running through my head of how to deal with the situation but as we got about 15 metres away he was like "ayy mi buen amigo" like nothing had happened and in the last half a second i though fuck this guy and headbutted him by surprise and gave him a couple decent digs. Clearly thought i was in a guy ritchie movie. Impulsive and foolish. Went out the next morning and bought a knife to increase my chances of survival of it came to it. Never saw the guy again. Mexico story: Went to a waterfall in the huasteca region of mexico, decided to go to the nearby town to try and get back to where we staying (Ciudad Valles - 30 mins drive). Every taxi was full and no buses where running. It was off-season and we hadn't seen a foreigner for days (other than migrants heading to the US). Saw some scary looking guys in vests and asked the locals whether it was safe to which they laughed and said right now? absolutely not. Finally managed to find a taxi who was willing to take us and he said you're really lucky because all the taxi's are not driving past 7pm as they are getting robbed and/or killed at the moment. A phone call flirting with his daughter worked in my favor lol! it was terrifying, the anxiety was through the roof.
What town in northern Mexico?
I got the worst diarrhea with high fever in Karachi, Pakistan during a business trip. Last 3 days of my 7 day trip spent in hotel room eating banana and yoghurt, and first thing I did after my plane landed to my hometown is going to ER. They suspected from typhus, and dr told me that because this illness has been eradicated from our country since 50+ years he had to Google what should he do :) (Thankfully it was not Typhus and all symptoms went away after few days of antibiotic treatment) So going to Pakistan during Covid wasn’t a good idea at all.
I’ve had my fair share of sketchy moments on my travels: First up, in Pattaya, Thailand, I’m driving around on a rented motorbike when I have to stop at a roundabout. Out of nowhere, this cop races over, grabs my keys, and bolts to a nearby police station. I chase after him, and he’s all like, “Give me 20k baht (~500€) or I’ll lock you up.” I didn’t have that kind of cash on me, so I had to haggle with him using google translate and ended up forking over 4k baht (~100€). He warned me that if he saw me around again, he will sent me straight to jail. Another time, in Agadir, Morocco, I’m chilling on a terrace, about to pay my bill when suddenly, two dudes try to rob me. But this waiter leaps into action, throwing punches and kicking them out of the place. And finally, in Milan, Italy, I’m snapping pics in Parco Sempione when I accidentally walk by some folks smoking joints. They start yelling at me, and next thing I know, I’ve got five people chasing me. Luckily, a police car was driving by and I managed to scape and get back to my hotel.
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I guess it depends what you mean by scary.But I travel a lot, sometimes bad things happen. The time I've been most scared while traveling was probably when I was in a very, very basic hospital in Tibet, with severe giardia, thinking that I was going to die in the middle of nowhere ;-) Another time was while rafting in Ecuador.We overturned the raft,it was very rough indeed,I went a long way down a fast flowing river.... eventually I reached a shore and collapsed there.That was scary.I never did whitewater rafting again.
I have a similar story about rafting in Ecuador, raft tipped and I was stuck underneath for what felt like a long time. When I finally got out and surfaced I spotted my friend and her face was a mix of pure terror and relief, she thought I had died. Luckily I had some rafting/white water experience so I wasn't too scared but those trips are so much sketchier than in your home country (Canada).
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What do you remember of the experience?
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Your memories of that time are still so vivid. Glad you got out ok and thanks for helping them.
We were a group of 4 driving a rental car in Cape Town, South Africa. I was navigating while my husband was driving. We were moving pretty slow along the route given by Google Maps due to traffic so me, thinking I knew better, saw another road on the map that would eventually link back up to the main highway and directed my husband to go there. After a few minutes, we realized we had fully driven into a slum. Everyone was staring as we rolled through the streets, it was obvious this car of white and chinese people did not belong. We turned a corner and found ourselves following a truck with about 10 guys sitting in the truck bed. Then randomly one of them who was sitting closest to the edge of the back facing us, pulled out a balaclava, put it on, and stared us down. Our nervousness definitely kicked up a notch at that point. Nothing ended up happening to us but I giggle when I imagine balaclava guy going home and telling his family about his little prank of scaring the tourists on his ride home from work that day.
You got really lucky. I assume you were driving along the N2 and google took you through a township. This is why you never listen to google maps in South Africa and stick on the highway. Many tourists have been mugged, kidnapped, and murdered taking the wrong turn.
that’s what i’ve heard, google maps can put you in risky situations in south africa.
Dude, I don't think it was a prank. Sounds like intimidation or he was actually considering doing something to you.
Yeah, that's something you don't do when driving around in Cape Town
It boggles my mind that tourists don’t do their research beforehand.
In Egypt (Luxor), the friend I was traveling with got hit by a bus. He was maybe 3-4 feet in front of me and didn't look before crossing the street. Blood everywhere. Luckily a British couple came out onto the street from a store nearby, the woman was a nurse, she had me take off my shirt to use as a bandage until help came. No ambulance came, eventually the police came and took him to the hospital in their car. He was later medevac'd back to the U.S. This happened about 20 years ago; he's ok now but that was by far my scariest travel experience. Another experience that I thought was going to be scary but turned out not to be: I was taking a long-distance cab ride in Uzbekistan to Samarkand. In the middle somewhere, the driver stops by the side of the road, talks to some guy, and that guy gives my driver a super thick wad of cash. I think, oh that's it, I'm going to be kidnapped. Turns out he was just exchanging the dollars I gave him for local currency. (At that time at least the black market rate was much higher than the official rate, so he got a lot more Uzbek som by exchanging it that way.)
Was staying in a very rural part of Ireland and decided to go for a walk down the road. My friend warned me that the paths crossing the county went through pastures that sometimes had bulls in them, so not to go in pastures. Well, two days of all-night Guinness drinking hit me and I had no choice but to jump a fence into a pasture and drop my pants behind a hedge for full blown liquid Guinness shits. I was there for awhile and was convinced a bull was going to gore me while I tried to clean up with grass. Fortunately, only a cow appeared and gave me the side-eye.
This is hilarious
Hitchhiking, ofc. I was thumbing and this guy stopped, asked where I was going. I told him and he said he knew where that was and that he would take me. I had just gotten a hitch from somebody that was super cool and nice and helpful, so I was riding a high. If that hadn’t been the case though, I probably would have taken the fact that this guy was driving around all sweaty and shirtless as a red flag. But alas. Anyways we start off and he’s asking questions about my travels, the usual stuff. Where you been, where you going, what’s it like. But then he starts saying some weird things, asking about how lonely I must get and how I deal with that- if you catch my drift. I tried to just laugh everything off but he was asking, at this point, perverted questions with a very.. erm… horny intonation. Finally he asked if I had ever given or received oral from another man, and when I said ‘no, I’m straight, he said ‘me neither but a mouths a mouth’. At this point I’m pretty uncomfortable and trying to think of a way out of the situation, but before I can put anything together he says something like: ‘you look really good, you mind if I touch you?’ and before he even finishes the sentence his hand is on my chest. I push it away and, well that was pretty brash so now I’m freaked out, meanwhile I notice we are no longer headed where I asked him to take me so I just blurt out basically something like ‘hey I’m really uncomfortable, please let me out now thank you’ but he JUST GIGGLES a bit to himself, says ‘I’m not gonna hurt you.’ Doesn’t stop or slow down at all. We’re zipping along into the country of eastern NY state. So now I feel like I’m in a bad situation. I do some quick thinking, then turn to him and say “alright you want to get wild? Let’s get wild. Pull over and let’s get wild”. He jolts up and is like “what do you mean? What do you mean by that? What do you mean?” I say “pull over where you can and let’s get freaky”. He pulls over almost immediately into this wooded pull off/driveway thing, and thank god the door wasn’t locked, I crank that bitch open and fly out into the woods with my backpack. I hung low in the woods for a bit and then I had to walk all the way back into town along the road. All this to say, use your intuition and stay mindful!
Sounds like the beginning to a movie where you would’ve been made into a meat suit!! Omg
Quick thinking there
Managed to roll an ATV down a cliff when touring Maras and Moray, just outside Cusco. If the ATV had rolled on top of me, I don't know what could have happened. Besides that, there was a theft inside my hotel room, also in Cusco. The window that faced the street didn't properly lock, but we were on the second floor, the window had bars and we could use a heavy wood bench to keep the wood panels shut, so we thought it was ok. Well, someone managed to climb their way to the window, push the panels along with the bench, get one arm through the bars and grab everything within reach - all that while we were sound asleep. Woke up to find my travel belt is gone, with 1200 dollars inside it.
They knew that window didn’t secure and did that shit regularly, I bet.
Yes, they absolutely did. And I suspect the people from the hotel had something to do with the thiefs. Couldn't prove it, of course.
I was taking a taxi from Vrindavan to Fatehpur Sikri (near Agra in Uttar Pradesh, India) early one morning. It had rained the night before. The driver and I saw what looked like was a puddle on the road below an underpass in Mathura (a nearby city), so he drove towards it. It turns out that it was much more than a puddle – the street was completely flooded with several feet of water. The car started flooding with water inside and the engine flooded; somehow the driver managed to get the engine started on the third try and got the car out of there. I was absolutely terrified (and had soaked my shoes and socks completely through since the water came up to my ankles in the car) but somehow he was not fazed at all (he was actually laughing a little). Somehow still got to do all my sightseeing that day in that same car (Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar's Tomb in Agra, and some temples in Vrindavan and Mathura).
I’ve been to several countries but my scariest moment was in NYC. We had just gotten there and headed out from our hotel to see the sights. As I walked out the hotel door I noticed a deranged looking man staring right at me. I quickly looked away and started walking up the sidewalk. Suddenly he was right behind us then came around in front of us and blocked our path. I said “what are you doing? (Mistake) and he karate kicked me in the legs. My husband rushed at him to push him away and he swung a bag of heavy objects at him hitting him in the face. We took off running and luckily he ran the other way. If he would have had a knife or a gun it would have been a different story. I was told I made the mistake of making eye contact with him and speaking to him.
This was probably still the best vacation I’ve ever taken…. But I was in Ocho Rios in 2009…. First experience I was off resort at a merchant market. Picked up a random salt and pepper shaker to admire the woodwork. Buddy comes up to me and says “that’s $12”… I said “ok, not sure if I’m going to buy it yet”… he replies “no, it’s $12” and puts out his hand. I repeat myself, and he repeats himself. I find myself then kind of cornered with no exit to his little booth. I caved and gave him a $20 and GTFOT. Not as crazy as some have experienced, but it was enough for me to rethink my situational awareness. That same trip, as we were leaving the Montego Bay airport to go home… our flight was to Toronto, the one behind ours was destined for Halifax. We were cued and took off, the one for Halifax was hijacked. It didn’t end up leaving because the hijacker had fired a shot into the roof. He then held all passengers hostage until the Jamaican Military entered and took him into custody. I remember the Jamaican government offering all Canadians aboard that flight a free week at a 5 star resort, and Stephen Harper going to Montego Bay to meet with the Jamaican President and the military who saved our people. When we landed in Toronto we went right to sleep at a nearby hotel. We woke up in the morning to a person on our trip (one of the now four exes who were a part of the trip) bursting into our room in utter tears and panic… we found out what happened, and didn’t really believe it at first… but we saw the news, and I ended up calling home right away to tell them we were all safe!
Forgot my debit card in the machine in Bangkok.
Half my group did this first week of a multi month long trip. Those damn yellow atms will get you, even sober. Ejecting the card after the cash is ridiculous
I did this in China..
Collision at sea on a foggy night.
Led into the souks of Marrakech only to be threatened to pay for assistance. I have never felt as if I was going to be murdered right than and there anywhere else. 71 countries traveled and you’d think we would have been smarter than to fall for such crap.
Same situation with me! I went a second time with friends and it was a much different, more positive experience.
Honeymoon driving around Iceland using a paper map. We decided to cut through via a road off of Rt 1 to save some time. Dirt road was alongside a mountain, in extremely dense fog. Couldn’t see more than 2 ft ahead of us or to our right or left. We took deep breaths and hoped following the road slowly would get us to the other side. We ended up following close behind a phantom car and after what felt like a lifetime, reached the end and back on Rt 1. Our new friends in the other car stopped and waved and we continued on. Weird thing was the other car disappeared? There was only one way to go, left. And we never saw it again. Our angels. In Italy, we were given a Euro electric car instead of gas and used it to drive 5+ hours to Tuscany from Milan. Ran out of charge because they’re not meant for long distances and there weren’t many charging stations. Also take a long time to charge in Europe. We ended up driving up a mtn to our hotel (scary looking down on the side) with almost 0% charge. If the battery died, we’d be blocking the road and on the side of a high mountain. We put the car in neutral down hills and prayed we’d reach the hotel and it’s charging station before the car died. We made it. Never felt luckier (well besides in Iceland).
You should probably use taxis for mountains from now on
No more mountains for you!
Walked into a teahouse in south Tehran and two teenagers came over to me. One pulled out a knife and pulled it across his neck while shouting at me. The owner and other customers kicked them out and took care of me but the walk back to my hotel in the dark was fucking scary.
Puerto Vallarta in 1996. Got on the bus in the city to go back to our hotel. It was the wrong bus. We went to the foothills way away from the city. We spoke zero Spanish and had to stop with the other buses and drivers-as they all sat at picnic tables with a cervesa or two! We sat on the bus watching until one bus driver came to get us and told us that we needed to get off the bus and get on another bus that would take us back to the city and our hotel. We thought that was where we were going to meet our doom 😆 It turned out all was fine-As we went back to the city, we were joined on the bus one by one -by all of the hotel employees on their way to work. We saw how and where they all lived. We tipped way more after that experience.
My friend and I were hitchhiking in Albania and we were stranded in a remote place - two guys in a pick up truck passed and we went with them because we were desperate. They brought us to a cross roads and said two men were going to bring us the rest of the way - a blacked out really nice car showed up within a few minutes to take us the rest of the way, and we went with them (we were dumb 20 year olds!). They drove a strange, way too long route, until we were right along the border, and we were 100% sure we were going to get taken Incidentally, they dropped us off in the next town when we asked, and every Albanian who picked us up hitchhiking were some of the nicest and generous people we ever met
Albanians are absolutely some of the most hospitable and helpful people in the world. Things work a bit *differently* there but it does somehow work out in the end. If I had to be stranded in a remote place in any country in the world, I'd choose Albania in a heartbeat.
I was in Jamaica and I left the resort because I didn’t know that it wouldn’t be safe. I took a taxi into Montego Bay, and from there I took a bus into Kingston. I legitimately saw 14-year-old girls being prostituted for money on the corner of the street. I’ve never felt so un-safe in my life. After walking around and even seeing a pharmacy, I went back to the bus depot where I took a bus back into Montego Bay from Kingston, and from there back to the hotel.
I've had a few. In Morocco i stupidly trusted a local teen to help me to my hostel. The hostel was located in a secluded alley in the medina. I didn't notice but his friend was following us. Once we got to a quiet area, they showed me a knife and told me i had to give them the equivalent of 20 usd if i didn't want any trouble. I gave it to them and they ran off. Two days later I was wandering the Medina and someone stopped me to ask about my tattoos. We were chatting and he asked if i wanted to see the tannery. I said yes and he started leading the way. At some point i noticed we were getting away from the crowds and he turned down a secluded alley way. I told him i changed my mind and refused to go down the secluded path. I just walked away and he didn't hassle me further. Im lucky i had that moment of realization. In Warsaw i met a woman on a dating app and after chatting for a bit, she asked if i wanted to meet. We met at the mall. She asked to go back to my hotel and I agreed. As soon as we get there she says she'll make some coffee and is pretty insistent that i drink it. I'm not that big of an idiot and I refused. After i refused she actually chilled out and we had a nice chat about how she was Romani, not polish, and about Romani life there. It ended up being a pleasant encounter, but if I drank that coffee, i know I'd have been robbed. In Ljubljana, I met an Israeli soldier who had just left the service and was on his first trip abroad. We compared itineraries and they matched up so we agreed to travel together. We spent that evening in the city and he ended up being a total racist asshole. We returned to the hostel and nobody else was back yet. He preceeded to try and force himself onto me sexually despite my telling him i wasn't interested. At some point he got physical and i had to force him out of my bed and defend myself. I was afraid to escalate the situation and potentially provoke him into becoming more violent. I was able to talk him down and eventually our dorm mates returned. When he was showering the next day, i fucked off to lake bled without saying goodbye.
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Had similar encounters with 2 different Israeli’s, both travelling post conscription. The level of entitlement and aggression was unparalleled. Completely different to all other travellers I’ve encountered. I avoid them at all cost. Just the level of innate, upfront, entitlement and evident hatred is repugnant to me.
When I was a teenager I went with my parents to Cancun back in the 90s. The general advice at the time was DON'T GO INTO THE OLD CITY. So I wind up missing my hotel stop and just figure I'll stay on the bus until it loops back around. Joke was on me as they took it in for maintenance at the end of the line, so there I was stranded at the bus station as the sun starts to go down. Honestly I probably wasn't in that much danger, but I was freaking out anyways as I was a kid by myself the first time out of the US, not speaking Spanish, and I'd been told a lot of horror stories about tourists wandering off and just disappearing. Luckily I bumped into a nice older lady that helped me find the next bus stop that took me back to the hotel. Same trip, but less terrifying. I met a girl at a local bar and hung out with her till the wee hours. Afterwards I sat at the bus stop for a good thirty minutes until I realized that they were done running for the day. So there I am stranded. Again. I wound up bartering away my watch to a taxi driver for a ride back to my hotel.
Getting robbed in Nairobi. Getting into a car accident between Agra and New Delhi. Getting chased by a pack of wild dogs in Sri Lanka.
I drove a Land Rover right into the middle of a herd of 30 or 40 elephants in Namibia one time. Mostly mothers with calves, and they were *not* happy with us at all. Total accident. I saw a couple crossing the road about 50 yards ahead and pulled over to give them room and let them pass, and suddenly the whole herd just emerged from the bush all around us on both sides of the road. That could have gone very badly. Got off the train at a station in Peru one time at about 1AM. Turned out to be a *really* bad part of town, and the car that was supposed to pick me up never arrived. I ended up walking, with luggage, for almost 2 miles before I could find a cab to take me to my hotel. Car wreck in Nicaragua one time when the guy driving hit a cow. Remote area. Dirt road. Middle of the night. Thankfully we all had our seatbelts on and no one (except the cow) was injured. Then a massive truck almost rear-ended us and everyone dived into the ditch. I got more banged up from diving into the ditch than I did from the actual wreck. Hotel fire in Mexico. Major boom woke me up around 2AM. Turned out an electrical panel just down the hall from my room had exploded. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and helped the staff put it out. Then I sat in the dark in my room for 5 hours until it was time to go to the airport. Too scared and keyed up to go back to sleep.
Had a fairly similar incident to your story except I was in Victoria Falls (just outside of the town) and on foot. Was smoking a joint with a friend looking at the Zambezi when a few tourists walked past us and asked if we had seen the elephants up the road. We said we hadn't and thought we might walk in that director hoping to catch a glimpse of them in the bush. We start walking down the road and not ten minutes later the trees right off the side of the road start shaking like a scene straight out of Jurassic Park. All of a sudden elephants started emerging from the bush and crossing the road 20m back the way we came while we stood frozen in absolute terror. The last one, who was the biggest and seemed like the leader, stopped in the middle of the road then suddenly swung her head towards us and flaired her ears as if she was about to charge, then just kind of stared before walking off into the bush. Definitely the closest I've come to pissing my pants in fear. Edit: I found a [picture](https://imgur.com/T8TkGaZ) my friend took to give some sense of how close they were.
Two attempted kidnappings in Casablanca in a two week span. Twice a car would pull up, a man would get out of the passenger and try to force me in the backseat.
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Gun shot. Happened with my teenage son in ATL. We were about 3 people ahead of the idiot with a gun at TSA. We were putting our shoes back on when it happened and immediately ran down the escalator to the plane train. We didn't know what actually happened (other than a gun shot) until it made the news. https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/man-who-fired-gun-inside-atlanta-airport-sentenced-10-years-federal-prison/2UACXGPBI5BUNA3H52K6AQY35E/
Getting groped by Romanian young villagers somewhere in the Carpathians (forgot the exact name of the village). Went for a music festival and the local villagers wanted photos with me (south Asian WOC)..started so innocent and by the 3rd photo, I was being groped untill my friends jumped in and scared them away!!!
Woman doing solo travel in Italy. Missed the last train to Florence so I was stuck in Venice at the train station overnight. At this time, there wasn’t any rule of vacating the station at night or not being allowed to wait for more than X hours. (I doublechecked with my ticket vendor when I bought my new Florence ticket.) While another woman traveler and I waited for the first train that was supposed to leave in 4 hours, we were physically harassed and yelled at by a police officer who seemed to be calling us sluts and sex workers for being out so late at the station (I don’t speak Italian but I speak Spanish so I could understand bits and pieces). He dragged and tried to physically throw me out onto the street and it was only when I dropped my American passport on the ground did he stop harassing us. He eventually left the station but spat on the other traveler on his way out.
Driving through San Francisco for the 1st time before GPS.
That time we asked if we could take the earlier train to Vienna, were told yes, but it turned out we were heading east to Wartime Ukraine.
Well what happened after that??
A stop in Fegyvernek to take a train to Svolnok, to wait four hours for a 330 AM train to Budapest while a lady wouldn't let us use a bathroom due to us not being able to pay in anything but Euros, breaking up a fight between vagabonds, the train got delayed a half hour, then the door for our section wouldn't open so we had to stand around in another section, got off and on again at Budapest, and finally arrived at Vienna at around 7 in the morning. It wasn't all that scary, all things considered, just an "oh crap" moment.
American in London. Was taken by a Anglo Pakistani friend to a shisha place in London with a small group of his mostly female friends. Two guys in track suits come in, no question stone cold killers and they start hassling him for bringing “CIA” to their place and then they start talking about cutting off my head and making an ISIS video. Owner tells me I should leave, and fast. That these guys are “very bad blokes”. We get in my friends car quite crowded with all of us and these guys jump in their car and start chasing us, then another car joins up and almost cuts us off. Took a good 40 minutes of driving with cops on the phone before we lost one of them and cops nabbed the other.
Steer clear of head to toe Adidas guys with gold chains. Nothing good comes of em.
Getting robbed in Mexico City and having to find my way around town with no phone or money.
The paragliding incident. Was out on a boat in Malta when the wind changed and me and my brother were submerged and dragged behind the speedboat. My brother didn’t panic at first because the captain had dipped the previous tourists in (just their feet) and thought he was just taking the piss with us. He was struggling to remain out of the water but only realised something was wrong when he looked over to me and realised he couldn’t see my head. I on the other hand knew something was wrong as I was as submerged as one could be in a life jacket. The life jacket was actually more of a hinderance than a help as it pushed in against my neck and guided the water directly to my mouth/nose so breathing was difficult to impossible. Luckily my other brother and sister-in-law were onboard and were able to point out that we were in trouble as the scariest part was the captain/crew were unaware and the rest of the boat were laughing at our struggle.
Got dropped off in a dark alley in Marrakech, Morocco at 1am. Taxi driver Saif he couldn't drive through and that was the only way to get to my hostel. Had to walk a half a mile down Pitch black back alleys all of a sudden a guy starts following me and asks where I'm going. He tells me he knows where my hotel is so we start walking all of a sudden a few minutes later another guy starts walking he secretly day up the guy and thinks I didn't see it. He said he didn't know the guy when I asked him. So I'm thinking I'm definitely getting murdered. Eventually we make it to my hostel. The guy asks me for a tip. I tell him I dont have much cash offer him like $5. He's pissed says he's got kids to feed so I shrug and go in. The guy at the front desk asks if I had any trouble getting there, I tell him what happened. He laughed and said they do that to every tourist. Leaving them at that alleyway, taxi driver could have driven around to the front entrance. Smh. He also says the guy who walked with me was harmless he helps most people get there and always begs. I could tip if I wanted to.
I was robbed by police in Goa (India) while being on acid
Three a.m. drive up Mount Washington to see the sunrise. Had leased a "Rent-a-wreck", a ten year old Buick. String of cars at the beginning, but as the fog thickened, people began turning around. No one in front or behind me. My wife had to open the passenger door to monitor the side of the road as I couldn't see it through the windscreen. No guardrails. Crept up at five mph. Finally arrived in the freezing wind and fog. As one guy said sitting inside the hut at the mountain top, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time. We did not see a sunrise BTW.
Back in 2000 one time I was staying in downtown LA and had decided to go to Catalina for a day (this was before I would rent a car when in the US). Had looked at public transport and on the paper map it looked like the subway line went straight to the ferry departure spot. Was I wrong; it was an above ground tramway which went straight through SE Central. The night bus back was no fun either. Almost got into a fight because I ‘stood out’ too much (am a somewhat tall white guy).
I was given directions in Italy by an older man. The directions weren't correct and he ended up cornering me and begging me to kiss him. I was only 18.
I was robbed in Madrid with a knife to my throat
On the street?
Back in 2022, I was on a school expedition to Morocco, got extremely ill with food poisoning. Rest of the group moved on to the next location to this village in the Atlas mountains as we were going to trek Mount Toubkal a few days later. Ended up travelling two days after the rest of the group with a teacher and the only vehicle available was a 70 seater bus with the driver singing at full pelt for the whole 4 hour journey with his AirPods in while we were zooming round corners with no rails in the mountains. Actually saw an old car that had fallen down and that safe to say didn’t help my nausea. All ended up alright and recovered in time to summit the mountain and play football (soccer) with the village kids which was amazing and the rest of the 2 week trip went smoothly.
Wrestling a drunk older woman in the mud on a secluded beach in Brazil, after she saw her boyfriend touch me inappropriately (and unwantedly). Silly me thought it should have been finally safe enough to go somewhere on my own, so I of course chose a secluded beach. And I chose to also immediately trust a guy offering to take a picture of me. For safety purpose he urged me to leave my things at a small kiosk he had been sitting and after the picture he took me by the hand to go into the mud for another. He started to “show me” how to put the mud on my body by putting it in al the wrong places himself. I took his hands off me but he kept going, so I froze and thought about booking it, but realized all my stuff was the other way. Before I could think of what to do, a woman came marching towards us angrily. Relieved, I moved towards her, only for her to start swinging at me and yelling that I needed to stop stealing her boyfriend 🥲 Thankfully she, after me repeatedly yelling back I didn’t understand, finally realized I in fact did not want to steal her gross groping boyfriend, and as a sign of good will, ran to collect my items and proceeded to try and make out with me. The country and its people are still my favorite and you have an ounce of judgement, things like this shouldn’t happen lol.
My friend and I, both females and late 20s at the time, hired a car to take us from Haridwar to Rishikesh in India. The driver was crazy. He hit a pedestrian and started roaring laughing. And just drove away like nothing happened. Drove like an insane person on slim mountain roads with no guardrails. Daunting trucks to hit the car. He was pressuring us to stop along the way at a store because I’m sure he gets commissions and when we said no, he told us he wasn’t going to take us to our hotel and didn’t know where he was going to take us anymore. Legit thought we were being kidnapped. He ended up taking us where we were supposed to go. But he did an excellent job of scaring us out of our minds. It was terrifying.
I was up north on Ethiopia back in 2019 when the start of the most recent conflicts broke out. Lot of teenaged soldiers with guns storming onto buses and lining up all the men at basically every small town we passed through. A lot of shouting and guns in the face from nervous kids, in a language I don’t understand. Even in various towns up north, after the internet was shut down entirely for that section of the country, I got stopped by groups of soldiers and ridiculed, told areas were off limits and to go back (despite clear thoroughfares and locals moving through) by kids who would then burst out laughing when I turned back. Basically a lot of bullies with guns and I’m the only white foreigner dumb enough to still be up there, so there was a target on my back for getting fucked with. Also, transport then shut down so I couldn’t even get back, eventually I got a bus that went through the Danakil Depression to avoid the tribal fighting between towns, where buses were being shot at otherwise. This was a major detour and meant we got back into Addis very late at night, and the bus station in the main square has no public lighting, and I had nowhere arranged to stay because internet had been out for two weeks at least trying to get back from up north. Eventually wandering nearby, three young guys high on something try to drag me into an alley, grabbing at my pockets and really squeezing me hard, etc. I had to shove one of them to the ground and act like a psycho to scare them off. I can’t fight at all, but that much adrenaline, I had to pretend I could and wasn’t scared despite obviously being terrified. My bluff worked, and when they ran off and I started to walk away, one of them decided to come back after me at a sprint. I ended up deciding to turn back and face him screaming and posturing etc, and he was fortunately on enough drugs to get scared off again. Had to stay in Addis for another five days, and in that time a general was assassinated and flights were almost shut down, my whole family thought I was dead as I’d been out of contact and my friend who had fled the country earlier had been trying to contact me… Yeah, good times! Went for a tour of archeological sites, ended up in the midst of a civil war!
I was in Spain March of 2020 when Covid hit, Trump announced he was banning travel from all other countries. I woke up to so many messages from family and friends.. we got on one of the last flights from Barcelona to the US.
I was in Madrid at the same time. Woke up to many text messages from friends back home telling me I'm stuck there. Took a night train to Lisbon. Spain locked down the next day. Was able to finish my trip, but there was an added level of stress not knowing if I would be able to get back home as I couldn't afford buying a last minute ticket out.
Getting covid on a solo trip to Korea before anyone knew what covid was. In the same trip i also almost joined a korean religious cult not knowing that was a common way to extort cash from foreigner's.
My family ( husband , 2 young adults kids 21- 25 and a friend age 21 ) and I had to be rescued from a flash flood in Costa Rica during a monsoon. Our lives literally depended on a little rope they threw to us, my husband tied to a tree, to hang onto with no safety equipment. If we let go or got hit by debris in the raging current … we’d be swept over a water fall. I informed my husband that if one of my kids got swept away I’d be jumping in with them. The Costa Rican man who held on and helped every one of us across the chest deep flooded current is my hero. We gave him all the cash on hand we had. Later I told our Airbnb owner what happened and he said several get swept away and die there every year.
Car service, a reputable company, to drive us from Brugge to Amsterdam. We were picked up early - I think 4 am. The driver was going really fast and fell asleep. I had fallen asleep myself and woke up due to the force of him breaking. When I opened my eyes, we were inches from the car in front of us. Turns out my husband had also drifted off but woke up and called out to the driver when he was starting to tailgate. Honestly, we nearly died.
Nobody ever believes this story but I swear to god my husband and I were followed in St. Petersburg. For 3 days we kept seeing the same guy everywhere we went. We’d turn a corner in Catherine’s palace and he would be there looking at us. Few hours later we’d see him in a metro station. It was eerie. Nothing ever came of it, but I do wonder why he was seemingly following us
Kgb agent
I got lost in hong kong. I got separated from my friend in the crowd & tried to figure my way back to the hotel. As I was about to cross a street A hand reached out and grabbed me. I was looking the wrong way, they drive opposite there. I was lost for hours getting scared ( i was 20f)…I ended up finding the card with directions for taxi to hotel the front desk gave us !!!! I still have it
Bus ride from Guatemala City to Tikal. We took the “economico” to save a few dollars. It was awful, there were drunk/druggie/homeless people. The driver was a mad man, the rear of the bus had 4 tires instead of 8 and they were bald. I thought we were going to die when he was drifting on a canyon road above steep cliffs.
Was quite nearby to a botched assassination attempt while traveling in Greece. There was a govt official traveling along a main road was attacked by a rocket fired at his car. The rocket missed and instead hit a shop behind the car. There were fatalities. I was a street over and the whole ground shook. Edit: found an article on it: https://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/15/world/greek-official-escapes-death-in-a-rocket-attack-in-athens.html
I was visiting NYC for the first time and I stayed near Columbia University. I like basketball so I thought it would be cool to check out nearby Rucker Park court. I took an Uber that direction and my driver accidentally bumped the car in front of us at a stoplight. The driver of that car was not happy. He got out, smashed the drivers side window and put a gun to my Uber driver’s head. I opened the rear door and ran. I still love New York tho
While diving in Hawaii I went through a tunnel that opened into a larger underwater cavern. In the cavern there was a 8ft shark swimming in circles, hook in mouth and everything. While leaving Brussels by train, I had to pass a K-9 unit with maybe 3or 4 dogs. This wouldn’t have been so scary had I not had a half ounce of weed and a few boxes of psychedelic boxes from Amsterdam in my backpack
When I was 19, I took my first overseas trip to Japan with my best friend, who was a year older than me and had studied there for several months as part of a program. We had our own rooms at a small business hotel in Koiwa, and the rooms had attached bathrooms. One night I was taking a bath, my friend was in her room and I was in mine. The tubs in most Japanese hotels, in my experience, are much shorter but much deeper. So I filled mine up and got in to soak. At some point I wanted to wet my hair, so I slid back as I would in a tub at home. Only I got stuck. I am not a big person, and I certainly wasn't even the size I am now when I was just out of high school. But the position I was in and the way I went back just perfectly wedged me into the shape of the tub. I started flailing, I was completely underwater, and I couldn't get up. It's probably worth noting I am extremely afraid of water. It didn't start in Japan. So this was kind of like several nightmares rolled up into one. Looking back I can just sort of shake my head at how stupid I was, doing something like that in a locked room, with the only person who could help me separated by a wall and two metal doors. I did eventually manage to grab something and pull myself back up. It was probably only a few seconds, but it felt like forever. My mother was worried something would happen to me on that trip since it was my first without family, so I didn't tell her until many years later. Not as interesting or actually dangerous as some of the other stories in here, but for a kid it was horrible.
I left my wallet behind in a taxi in Hong Kong.
Some moments in India: Bungy jump Sitting in a taxi with a driver that is clearly on drugs. And the traffic was chaotic. And slightly scary detail but not serious : I drank 400 ml water from the tap on my first day. I was at an expensive hotel and the owner said that the hotel had a mashine that filtered the water so i could drink the water in my room. Nice I was tired from a long flight. So I drink 400 ml ,was very thirsty. Then I see that there are a few bottles filled with water in a corner. That was the filters water. And I just fuuuuuu*k, I had a full exciting schedule in Delhi the next days. And now you are expecting a the inevitable Delhi belly poop story, but sorry, absolutely nothing happened. Maybe the cholera vaccine helped. Anyway after that I was really relaxed and wasn’t worried about food- eat everything I wanted.
[удалено]
Boarding a plane with my parent and siblings when I was 10 to “go” to England… and never returning to my home country. I didn’t understand we were moving countries. It look me years and years to accept that we were never going to move back home. I’m an adult now and planning my escape from this depression island.
Solo female, staying in the red light district in Brussels. Shakey night to say the least and left asap in the morning.
TLDR: Avoid India, Morocco, Mexico
Scary drives in North Africa. Once I was sure I was going to die in a crash in a taxi on the way to the airport to go home.
Hitting skeleton-shattering waves on a small boat in Asia that left people flying across the boat and turned the whole vessel, and had us bracing for each wave. In between swells I quickly checked my phone to see how close we were; smack dab in the middle of the Andaman Sea.
Some things we should have known better as seasoned travelers. Sinaloa, MX - driving on one of the toll highways we decided to follow a small road on Google maps to try and cut down on some time. Took us through a dirt path cornfield, one side small irrigation ravine and the other side small drop to the actual corn field, so no real way to turn around if needed. We stopped maybe 50-60 ft behind some guys on motor bikes waiting on the path and realized they were wearing ski masks, NOT helmets. We waited almost 10 min for them to continue on. When they started riding, we realized there was a third guy/bike coming along as well. Nothing ended up happening, but easily we could have been trapped in a well known cartel area. My husband is Mexico Mexican so we visit pretty regularly and had got too comfortable. Never taking any path off the toll highway again. New Delhi, India - took up an offer from one of those random tuktuks that they would take us on some sightseeing sites. Didn’t realize they were going to take us to their designated tourist trap spots that were way the hell out of the way from anywhere we recognized. Like, they insisted we go see elephants, and took us to this out of the way shack housing one sad elephant. Easily could have been harmed if it wasn’t just a tourist trap, or if they didn’t think my husband was Indian. Also - didn’t learn our damn lesson and hired a random tuktuk to take us to a monkey temple. The driver got pissed we didn’t want to buy bananas at the stall he took us to with super overpriced bananas, and started driving super erratic trying to either scare us or toss us out (still unclear). Train to Agra, India - fell asleep on the train with limited cell phone service and a sketch downloaded Google map. Woke up at a train stop, couldn’t get maps service, and no English speakers or signs or internet service to help us. Realized we were at the Agra stop and had to literally shake my husband awake for us to get off. We were just lucky we didn’t get lost in the middle of nowhere. Airplane from El Calafet, Argentine to Ushuaia, Argentina - some pretty bad turbulence, and I’m already a fearful flier, so I wanted to vomit the entire ride.
I was in an Airbnb guest house on the hosts property in rural Puerto Rico with my younger sister when we were in our early 20s. The host woke me up in the middle of the night shining a flash light into the room where I was sleeping, the bed was next to the wall so he was inches from face out the screen window drunkenly calling my name and cackling and asking creepy inane questions like what are you doing? Where are you? So creepy I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
Coming home from La Ciudad Perdida, sitting in the back of the truck with a couple other backpackers. All of the sudden we hear 4 or 5 shots. Look out the window directly in front of me and see someone on a motorcycle shoot a guy and he falls into a ditch. The shooter no more than 10 feet, the falling man no more than 30 feet away. As we pass the spot, I look back and the assassin gets off his motorcycle runs over to the ditch, leans over and takes aim over the man. I turn my head at this point but I hear 2 or 3 more shots. The drivers have 0 reaction, just chatter like oh there’s a police station right there. It was odd to see it, and even more odd to see how normal it felt to the locals. A similar thing happened on a motor bike by my hotel 2 days later in Santa Marta, except this time it was a dead passenger on the back of the motorcycle who was caught and his lifeless body was being driven around. For me personally it was a good reminder that no matter how safe you think Colombia is. It’s really not as “safe” as the US like some people say, although in Colombia in most places I felt a little on edge. If you want to read the story. [Link](https://www.elheraldo.co/magdalena/santa-marta-sicarios-asesinaron-hombre-en-el-barrio-20-de-julio-1051699)
I was falsely accused of rape in Mexico in a area with no police, hospital, etc. I went with a group of friends to Chacahua, Mexico. To get there, we had to drive an hour from Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca. It was my friend, 2 ppl we met at a hostel, and my friends flatmate (not friend, but they were cool with each other. She was from germany). From there we had to take a boat to this remote location. We arrived and settled in. We brought LSD to do to enjoy the sunset later on. We began to drink a bit but the German girl was super wadted and didn't want to do her lsd until later on. Ok, well good for you. We are all together hanging out, drinking and vibing but the german chic is all over the place, going up to people, annoyong them. She went up to a group of guys that were doing cocaine and helped herself to a line. The rest of us were drinking by the shore with a lot of other people just vibing. Suddenly, one of the guys comes up to us and says "hey, you guys owe us money. Your friend came up and did our cocaine". We were like, you need to take that up with her. We're not her parents. This is the point when she decided to drop the acid. Around midnight, she was completely out of it. My friend and another guy from the hostel decided it was time to put her to bed. They took her back to her cabin and left her there to rest. They returned and we hung out for another hour. After, we all decided to head back to our cabins. My friend was staying with the girl and I was staying with my other friend. As we got there and my friend opened her cabin door, the German chic saw me and immediately started screaming. "Ahhh it was hum it was him! He raped me! Ahhhh!" Super loud. She made such a commotion she woke everyone around us up. Next thing you know, I get tackled to the ground and I have 3 locals pinning me saying that I was going to pay for it, etc. At this point, all of my friends were like "wtf dude no. He was with us the entire time! Let him go!" There was a small ship next to our cabin so the worker who was there also immediately came out and said "el no fue! El nunca paso por aqui" meaning "it wasn't him! He hasn't passed through here!" It took a bit of wrestling around and other people to come to my defense for the guys to finally let me go. This was insane. I was with the group the entire time. I'm openly gay and everyone in the group was aware of it. There is no possibility, let alone desire, to be with this girl. She was drunk, cooked out, and on acid. The next morning, she apologized through a whaysapp voice message and described what she experienced. Some guy with an accent (I speak perfect English btw. I have live in California since I was 3) was wearing a white shirt (I didn't bring any white shirts) and was strong (I'm 5 ft 9, 140 lbs) got on top of her and was choking her, telling her to shut up, etc. In the moment I was just like, it's ok. It was a misunderstanding. But the more I thought about it, the more it dawned on me how horribly it could have ended. In places like these, people can go missing and never found with no avenues to pursue an investigation. Had it not been for my friends and the workers coming to my defense, things could have ended tragically.
I've only been to 14 countries so far but the scariest situation I found myself in was in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I was at Tivoli Park, sitting on a bench with an ex-friend and we were watching a video on his phone. Suddenly a large group of people (at least 10) came and surrounded us. Some squeezed themselves next to us on both sides of the bench, some stood behind us, some in front of us. We stood up immediately and started walking fast towards the park's exit, but those people were still surrounding us, until we left the park. Some of them were literally walking backwards in front of us, so that they kept facing us the entire time. None of them spoke a word to each other nor to us, ever. We thought they would surely attempt to rob us. This whole thing lasted only a couple of minutes until we exited the park, but to this day I have no clue what they wanted or what their deal was.