When you follow me on social media you might think that my travel was all delicious food, great beer, and amazing vistas.
You’d be wrong.
Those things do happen (quite a lot actually), but there are moments in between when things go just a touch sideways.
Those are the moments that you’ll remember forever.
Heather joins me today to talk about two of our worst travel mishaps; you’ve heard bits and pieces of the stories these past 73 episodes and it’s finally time to tell the whole story.
You’re sure to have a laugh, as we recount our time stuck in Singapore and getting our “Thailand tattoos”.
Make sure to leave your travel mishaps in the comments below, we shared ours, now it’s your turn!
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In This Episode:
- Some of the worst places we’ve ever stayed.
- A story of how far determination can get you sometimes.
- The mysterious dot-matrix printed paper that got us on our flight.
- The proof that I was right after all.
- A laptop that was never meant to be.
- Right-hand turn catastrophes.
- Heather’s horrendous scooter accident.
- What we take away from our travel mishaps.
and much more!
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I think your story, Travis, is the craziest travel debacle I have ever heard! My most embarrassing travel mishap was when I was coming back to my base of St. Petersburg from a weekend trip to Tallinn. We drove, and to cross the border you have to reserve a slot. We didn’t realize the slots fills up weeks in advance sometimes (this was August- peak holiday season), so we panicked because we were supposed to leave on a Sunday and the next open reservation slot wasn’t until Wednesday or Thursday! So we put our names on this other list, when the reservations for one hour go faster, they let in people on the other list as they’ve signed up, so there is an estimated wait time but it’s quite erratic. Our original time estimate was 6 pm, so we planned a full day of events in Tartu on the way back, but at 8am, we got a text from the reservation agency saying we needed to be at the border in 3 hours! Since we were 2 hours away, we cancelled our plans and rushed to the border…where we waited for THIRTEEN hours in what became, basically a refugee camp. By the time we got back to our apartment in SpB, we were so exhausted we slept through most of the next day!
There was also the time I got stuck sleeping on the floor of a random room in the freezing cold at a strangely deserted mountain resort in Sheki, Az…but that’s another long story haha
@Samantha- I’d say your border crossing story is right up there with my debacles, for sure. Crazy how you rushed to get there…only to wait!
We also had another debacle where we had to sneak across the Bosnian-Croatian border that I’m sure will come out in a podcast sometime. That was pretty cool, actually.
I want to hear more about the deserted mountain resort…how’d that happen??
Thanks for sharing, mishap stories are the best!
Loved Krakow, Poland, and decided to stay for a few months. I rented an apartment and decked it out a bit. Went out drinking, invited friendly people back for more. Woke up with headache, and everything from apartment removed, including all money, passport, electronics, and last bottle of wine. That was a hangover.
@Christian Nommesen- Whoops! Yeah, that’s quite a crappy situation at the moment, but hey, those are the ones you remember. Thanks for sharing so we don’t think we are the only ones doing dumb things!
We took the night train from KL to Singapore and had booked the only remaining seats: bottom class, regular seats. All the sleepers were full. While we were in KL they opened up seats for a few 1st class sleeper cars with their own rooms so we jumped on it. $80- for both of us to get our own room plus two meals was a steal. They’d been refurbishing the 1st class sleepers, that’s why none were available. Well, they ended up adding non-refurbished sleepers to the train and they were AWFUL. No TV, just a bunch of wires everywhere. The floor was damp, and everything was semi-sticky. And to top it all off we were next to the closet with all the silverware, plates, glasses, etc. And nothing was strapped down, so everything banged into our wall the entire night. Out of 12 hours I got 0 hours sleep. ZERO. I even took a video of the banging. Luckily when we finally made it to our hotel in Singapore they let us check in at 9am and I slept for a few hours. The room was amazing too, floor to ceiling windows, giant bathroom with separate shower and tub. The biggest room on the floor. We really lucked out on that one.
Oh, and if you’re connecting through Chengdu in China make sure you take a stewardess with you because the immigration officers don’t know how to deal with connections, they still insisted we needed visas. The Chengdu airport immigration control is pretty third world compared to everywhere else we went.
@Ken- Wow, sounds like a pretty awful night…but hey, in the end, it all works out, right? Can’t believe how you felt that night though. Wow. Good advice on Chengdu. Haven’t been there before, but definitely don’t want to run in to an issue with immigration again!
Thanks for sharing!