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Travel is messy. Things go wrong. From food poisoning to monkey bites to motorbike crashes. Travel fails happen. ALL travelers experience them. & I’m no exception. Even the best-laid plans sometimes go awry. Sometimes it’s beyond your control and sometimes it’s simply your poor decision making.
It’s mostly my poor decision making.
“Misadventure is always better than missed adventure”
Someone Wise.
I decided to share 5 years of travel mistakes, travel fails, & mildly entertaining stories so that you can have a good laugh over a cup of coffee. Also, so you can avoid making the same mistakes yourself.
& 2020 has been the year of failure. So, what better way to round out the year than talk about all the other times things have gone wrong. Right?
My Epic Travel Fails From 5 Years of Travel.
The world is an unpredictable place. & this is by no means an entire list of every sticky situation we have gotten ourselves into. But most of those risks panned out.
Like the time we spent the night in the Amazon Rainforest in a hammock after trusting a local we couldn’t communicate with to canoe us in.
But here are 50 times our poor decisions or the world left us hanging.
1. Getting Stranded in India During COVID.
& I’ll quote myself here…
Oh look, India’s closing its borders. Good thing we just made it. Now we’ll get to explore the country with fewer tourists.
A very Naive Geena.
Spoiler. That’s not what happened. We were put in lockdown India Style. You had 12-hours to leave the country & the flight prices were jacked up to $5,000. We stayed.
& for the next month, we were the only tourists in sight…. but we couldn’t leave our guesthouse. Like at all. We ate what they had available & played cards on the empty rooftop.
We ended up getting a government repatriation flight. You can read the entire crazy story here.
Lesson Learned: Pandemics are a bitch.
2. Buying a Conversion Van with a Faulty Transmission.
As you might know, we bought a used van & converted it into a campervan to travel the U.S. on a budget.
About 4 days after we spent $3,000 & 6 weeks building it, the transmission went out.
Lesson Learned: Mechanics don’t see everything. Maybe Sprinters are the way to go.
3. Bit by a Monkey. Twice.
I’ll preface this by saying I love primates. & If they want to climb on me I’m all for letting them. Unfortunately, on two separate occasions, they used this opportunity to sink their daggers into my arm.
Lesson Learned: Don’t feed the monkeys. Or just make sure you get your rabies shots ahead of time like me.
4. High-Speed Motorbike Crash in Vietnam.
Thankfully, the only casualty was my sandal.
Lesson Learned: Motorbikes pulling out have the right of way in Asia.
5. Food Poisoning in India. & Elsewhere.
I’ve only had food poisoning four times in my life.
The good ol’ USA. Colombia. Cambodia. India. Pretty surprising considering I subsist on mostly street meat & other unidentifiable street foods.
India was a real doozy though. I spent 3 days in a pretty rough hospital.
Lesson Learned: Take all the pills they give you the first time. Even if you don’t know what they are.
6. Nearly got Detained Crossing the Cambodian Border.
Over $10. Why am I so stubborn? I wrote a whole post on the experience & how prevalent border patrol scams in Cambodia are.
Lesson Learned: You’re not getting out of paying that bribe. Just cough it up & save yourself the time.
7. Paid a Police Bribe in Thailand for Driving Without a License.
Speaking of bribes…500 baht or about $16.50 gets you off the hook.
Lesson Learned: Still cheaper than actually getting my motorbike license.
8. Missed the Epic Sunrise View at Ankor Wat because of food poisoning…Twice.
Once was me & the other, Evan, two years later .
It’s such a pain in the ass you have to buy tickets the night before. How am I supposed to know I was going to wake up violently ill? I’m no fortune-teller.
Lesson Learned: Just don’t eat the day before Angkor Wat to be safe. Also, there’s almost no one at the temples if you wait to visit until 4pm.
9. Got Hookworm.
It’s not as bad as it sounds.
I’ll spare you all the itchy details but I had it for more than 7 months. Probably due to my love of street dogs and cuddling stray cats. Worth it.
Lesson Learned: Stop cuddling street dogs. Worms are easy to treat.
10. Credit Card Scammed by a Taxi in Colombia.
The first red flag was that he was driving a regular car. Not a bright yellow taxi.
Then he dropped us up the block from the hostel instead of out front.
Then he pulled out a card reader. & wouldn’t accept cash. For reference, EVERYTHING is cash in Colombia. No one has card readers. When I finally agreed to use my card, I already knew something was up.
The card declined twice. & then he agreed to take cash. The moment we got to the hostel I canceled my card & started googling. Sure enough, it’s a super popular scam in Colombia & his card reader actually cloned my credit card.
Lesson Learned: Always trust your gut instincts. & you never want the taxi that hails you. Be sure to research scams before you go.
11. Paid $40 (FORTY) for a Driver in Bali to Take me on an Instagram Tour of the Island.
Fuck Instagram. First of all, $40 is expensive for Southeast Asia. Second of all, thanks to the ‘digital nomads’ & bullshit influencers locals think all you want is cheesy photo ops.
I paid $40 for a driver to take me to Ulun Danu Beratan Temple & drop us in Lovina after a full day of stopping at sights around the island.
What I got instead was an Instagram tour. The temple was a madhouse filled with disrespectful influencers parading around. Every other stop was a “selfie waterfall” (literally that’s what it was named), Instagram Swing, and don’t get me started on the Gates of Heaven.
Lesson Learned: Always rent a motorbike.
12. Puked in Every Garbage Can From Vinales to Havana, Cuba.
This one is all Evan. We had a driver all set to take us on a lovely tour of the countryside in one of those really neat classic cars Cuba is famous for & Evan came down with some food poisoning.
And it was a doozy.
Over the course of 6 hours, he puked at every scenic stop while I admired the view.
Lesson Learned: Maybe booking things ahead of time doesn’t work out well for us.
13. Brakes Went Out in Our Classic Cuban Car Stranding us for a Few Hours.
Those old cars are not the most reliable. Fortunately, everyone in Cuba is a mechanic.
Lesson Learned: Maybe there is a reason we don’t have a whole lot of them around in the US anymore.
14. Got Lost Looking for Our Guesthouse in the Sweltering Sri Lanka Sun.
& when we found it…no power.
We had a rough idea where the guesthouse was located & the name thanks to a wildly unhelpful screenshot. & since the home was in a remote jungly area we wandered in 90-degree heat with our bags for over an hour before finding it.
The guesthouse owners were lovely & even without power it ended up being one of our favorite guesthouses we stayed in.
Lesson Learned: ALWAYS save the address to your accommodation before you hit the road.
15. Electrocuted & Food Poisoned in the Same Night.
Evan sure had a hell of a Halloween.
He got his head electrocuted leaning against a Nestle cooler during dinner & then spent the whole night ill from lunch.
Lesson Learned: Idk. Evan has awful luck.
16. Got Caught in a Tropic Storm & Nearly Drowned Kayaking Between Thai Islands.
I’ll paint a picture for you.
It was a lovely warm morning on Koh Lipe & we decided to rent a kayak. We could see a lush forested neighboring island that we heard had a scenic viewpoint. So, despite the dark clouds looming in the distance promising rain, we set out.
It was much further away than we thought.
It took over an hour to get there & that was with the ocean current. By the time we made it to the viewpoint, the clouds were nearly overhead. & they looked menacing. We ran back down the mountain and drug our kayak off the sand. Briefly weighing our options…wait out the storm on this deserted island or book it & try to beat the storm.
& we went for it. It was a very wet, very silent, & slightly panicked kayak ride. The waves were large & we both got blisters from paddling so hard. I could have kissed the ground when we finally pulled to shore.
Lesson Learned: Don’t sea kayak when you know a storm is coming in. Duh.
17. Mugged by a Monkey in the Jungle.
& let me be clear I don’t mean the monkey stole my snacks. The fuckin’ monkey stole my passport. Both our passports actually.
So there we were, two sopping wet foreigners swinging big sticks at a group of Macaques desperately trying to get our bag back. We ended up snatching the bag & booking it down the trail.
Bonus Failure: This entire jungle to beach hike was a torrential downpour. I was soaked to the bone. & to make matters worse we had to ride the bus back to Georgetown dripping wet.
Lesson Learned: Don’t take anything you’re not prepared to lose into the jungle.
18. Altitude Sickness in Mexico City.
7,382 feet. Thats how high up Mexico City is. Considering Bogota’s elevation of near 9,000ft I expected it to be a piece of cake.
Except, I had a shot of tequila & wandered around the city looking for food for over an hour. As a reward, I got to spend all dinner with my head in the restaurants toilet.
Lesson Learned: To avoid altitude sickness, drink water & eat food.
19. Suffered 2nd Degree Sunburns in Cuba.
I’ve had a lot of sunburns… but this one was something else.
We spent the entire day on a shadeless beach reapplying reef-safe sunscreen that apparently didn’t work.
Lesson: Buy better reef-safe sunscreen. Like this one.
20. The Time I Got Over 100 Sand Flea Bites at the Nude Beach.
I loved Florida. & the Florida bugs loved me.
I had never encountered sand fleas before. Not this many anyways. I was itchy & miserable for days.
Lesson Learned: After a heavy rain, sand fleas are everywhere. Also, Tea Tree Oil is the only thing that can stop the itch. I wrote a whole guide on Florida van life tips after this accident.
21. Stuck in a Chinese Airport for 20 Hours.
& not one of the massive Beijing or Shainghai Airports either.
This one was small & had no bar. The flight was delayed because of engine problems. & when we finally got a new plane only the 9 English-speaking people got on it. So, I got to spend a 14-hour flight with a row to myself.
I’m assuming everyone who spoke Mandarin arranged to get on an alternate flight much earlier. Avoiding the 20-hour wait.
Lesson Learned: There’s always a silver lining.
22. Drove Through a Blizzard in Iceland.
This was the view out our rental car window.
Our plane landed in a blizzard. So, we didn’t really have a choice. It was a complete white-out & few other cars were on the roadways. Our rental kept flashing collision sensors with each gust of 70 MPH wind.
Bonus Failure: We had to sleep in our freezing car during these hurricane-force winds because we arrived in Reykjavik well before check-in time at our hostel. Welcome to Iceland.
Lesson Learned: Always get rental car insurance. & a GPS.
23. Paid $200 Because I Didn’t Know How to Use the Rental Car.
This might be the most painful thing for me on this list.
We thought the Iceland rental needed a jump because it wouldn’t start. In reality, you just needed to hold the brake while you pressed start.
Lesson Learned: No one in Iceland has jumper cables.
24. Forgot Our Laptop at Airport Security. & Didn’t Realize Until We Were in Another Country.
Fortunately, it was only a $40 round trip flight between Malaysia & Indonesia. But Evan did have to go back & retrieve it.
Lesson Learned: Be sure to check your electronics bag twice.
25. Forgot to Book a Return Flight From Sumatra. & Then Had No Internet on the Island.
In case you haven’t noticed a theme, we like to do things on a whim. Not a whole lot of planning going on here. & the jungles of Sumatra have Orangutans, but no WiFi.
Lesson Learned: Start booking flights in advance. Or be prepared to wait awhile.
26. Got to Ride a Train Standing for 6 Hours in Sri Lanka.
Because apparently having a ticket is not the same as having a seat. & of course, we had picked a Sri Lanka holiday to travel on.
Lesson Learned: Avoid trains on full moons in Sri Lanka. It’s a national religious holiday.
27. Illegally Rented a Motorbike in Myanmar That Turned Out to be a Death Trap.
I didn’t know we weren’t allowed to rent motorbikes in Myanmar. It’s something you should know before you go.
The handle was hanging limply, it wouldn’t drive uphill, & the seat was very slippery. Needless to say, I fell off & we didn’t get where we intended to go.
Lesson Learned: Inspect the motorbike & make sure it’s fit for the road before you drive off.
28. Got Our Van Stuck in an Underground Parking Garage in Chicago.
Our van needs a clearance of about 7ft 6inch.
We took her into a parking garage labeled 6ft 6inch. This resulted in our roof touching their very low ceiling & getting so wedged in we couldn’t go forward without hitting a low hanging pipe and couldn’t back up because it would rip off our ceiling vent.
We blocked traffic into the downtown Chicago garage for 45 minutes trying to figure out what to do.
The solution: Deflate your tires & roll your van back out to safety. Then never go into a parking garage again.
29. Showed up to Lombok Unprepared for Both the Monsoon Season & Ramadan.
Looking back now it’s such a cringe-worthy cultural faux pas. Arriving on a Muslim island during one of the largest Muslim holidays with a bag packed full of shorts and tank tops.
Did I mention is was also the rainy season?
Lesson Learned: Try to understand a little bit of the culture before arrival.
30. Didn’t Realize Komodo Island Boats Needed Booking Days in Advance.
Bonus Fail: Or that you should book hotels on Flores ahead of time. We walked over an hour in the rain from hotel to hotel searching for one with availability. Why does it only rain when you’re looking for accommodation?
Komodo Island is a full-day sail from Flores. Not a quick trip. We hadn’t realized this when we booked a weekend trip from Bali at the last minute.
We only had time to take the three-hour boat to Rinca Island on the edge of Komodo National Park instead. On the plus side, we only shared the boat with two other travelers & got to stop for snorkeling whenever we wanted.
Lesson Learned: There’s that silver lining thing again. I also learned you can be picky or unprepared. You can’t be both.
31. Swam into a Jelly Cloud & Got Stung by Hundreds of Little Jellyfish.
Lesson Learned: Jellyfish are exactly as terrifying as I thought.
32. Visited an Isolated Idyllic Island in Cambodia…On Chinese New Year. So the Little Island Was Packed to the Gills.
Nothing like a serene white-sand beach…packed with people.
Lesson Learned: Keep track of holidays.
33. Got $200 Stolen From My Bungalow in Thailand.
I’m not 100% sure if I left it unlocked or someone managed to jimmy the door but $200 was missing all the same.
This was the one and only party hostel we stayed at in Thailand. & that’s exactly what we get.
Reminder: Party Hostels are good for nothing unless you’re 20 years old.
34. Electrocuted in India.
You probably weren’t expecting electrocution to come up this much. Well, this one was completely my fault. & the hotel outlet got me good.
Lesson Learned: Don’t touch the metal prongs. I swear I’m not this accident prone when I’m home.
35. Forgot the KM to Miles Conversion & Accidentally Went on a 10-Mile Hike with One Water Bottle.
I thought it was about 2.5 KM to every 1 Mile. Spoiler: It’s not.
It was however 94-degrees in Singapore & muggy. Luckily the one water bottle we did bring was our Lifestraw. It can filter river water or any other grimy water into clean drinking water.
Lesson Learned: It’s actually only 1.6KM to 1 Mile. & LifeStraw was a good investment.
36. Unsuccessfully Tried to Smuggle My Tripod In My Carry-on & Had to Pay the Cost of My Plane Ticket to Check-it.
This was just a mildly dissappointing travel fail.
In Indonesia, you have to check your tripods for international flights. Which I did not know when I booked us two tickets to Malaysia without checked bags.
The cost of a checked bag was $30. Equal to my ticket for the flight.
37. Climbed Mt. Ijen 100% Unprepared. & My Eyes Paid the Price.
Mt. Ijen is incredible. A smoldering volcano spitting blue-fire into the night on the island of Java, Indonesia. I knew it was going to be a sunrise hike to remember. I did not know that along with the gas-masks I was provided I should also have worn heavy layers and sunglasses to protect my eyes from the billowing clouds of ash.
I’ll admit it was hard to enjoy the hike while water streamed from my ash filled eyes and I tried to keep warm in the cold wind.
Lesson Learned: Bring protective eyewear & warm clothes to midnight volcano hikes.
38. Got a Beetle Stuck in My Ear. (Okay, I THOUGHT I Had a Beetle in My Ear).
For about a week, I was positive there was a beetle in my ear.
One night while sleeping in my beach shack on the top bunk of our bed, a beetle fell out of the thatched ceiling directly into my ear. I woke up in a panic to get it out. I never found it.
In all likelyhood it bounced out right away. But for the next week every little tickle I was positive it was still in there.
39. Hostel Owner Bug-Bombed Our Room WHILE I slept in It.
Ever woken up to a cloud of bug bomb chemicals swirling around your room?? No? Good.
Apparently, the neighboring room had found bedbugs and the owner decided to premptively bomb our room as well. While we all slept. I got a bloody nose, woke up the others, & aired out the room so no one died in their sleep.
40. Got Into an Unmarked Taxi in Bangkok & the Driver Took the Long Way to, According to Him, “Avoid Police”.
You shouldn’t ever get into a unmarked taxi. It’s a bad idea to begin with.
41. Evan Taking Me on a 105 Degree Birthday Hike in the Sonoran Desert.
Lesson Learned: September is not the best time of year for desert hiking.
42. Had to Ride for 14 Hours on the 3rd Class Benches on the Night Train to Chaing Mai.
The third class cars are open-air, lined with delapidated benches, & crammed with people. Not to mention it was the Friday before the lantern festival in Chiang Mai, so the train was extra busy.
I actually recommend these train cars typically, but not at night when there is no view.
43. Rode the Basic Buses (Instead of VIP) in Myanmar Sitting in Hard Seats for 16 hours all to Save $5.
Lesson Learned: “Splurge” on the VIP bus once in awhile. At least on those long journeys.
44. Taxi Scams.
I’ve been scammed by taxi drivers loads of times.
On one of my first trips to Thailand a taxi driver convinced me to go the floating market an hour outside Bangkok. When I got there a woman demanded $100 for a boat ride through the market. & he insisted it was the only way to visit (it’s not). He drove me the hour back to town after I declined & to “cheer me up” took me to an elephant camp along the way that broke my heart.
They’ve haggled prices with me just to drop me around the block at the metro saying I can reach my destination from there. They don’t have a record of being super helpful.
45. Took Shots of Opium Whiskey in Laos. Surprise.
When you’re offered a free shot from a shirtless man wearing a pig tooth necklace you don’t immediately assume it’s laced with opium.
But like he said “it’ll make you very strong”.
Lesson Learned: Opium whiskey…not that different from regular whiskey.
46. Had to Cut our Cuba Trip in Half When the Airports Shut Down.
In 2018, about 2 weeks before our trip, a plane went down just outside Havana. All local flights were cancelled for the forseeable future.
We had been due to spend about 2 weeks on the remote Eastern side of Cuba & found out at the Havana airport on the day of departure that wasn’t going to happen. So, we got real flexible and planned a whole new trip without internet.
It let us really dive into the Western half of Cuba & allowed us to really take our time. Sometimes bummers end up being for the best.
47. Got Lost on A Deserted Island in Thailand.
Somehow we lost the trail. Next thing we knew we were crawling through the undergrowth & scraping our shoulders on downed branches.
Fortunately, we managed to backtrack before it turned into an episode of Alone, but we never did find the trail that we were supposed to be on.
Lesson Learned: Use Maps.me for offline maps.
48. Left Cuba With Exactly $0.
Here’s the deal with traveling to Cuba as an American. You’ll have no internet. You must stay in Casa Particulares (guest houses). You can only bring cash & there is no way to get more.. so budget accordingly.
We left Cuba with $0. We paid our taxi driver to the airport our very last dollar. A risky move cutting it that close but fortunately everything worked out.
Lesson Learned: Always bring back-up cash.
49. Went on a Multi-Day trek Through Sapa Vietnam… in Sandals.
Sometimes my own unpreparedness surprises me. I managed to buy some aquasocks (closest thing to tennis shoes I could find) from a vendor before the trek began.
Lesson Learned: Now I always have a good pair of hiking boots with me while I travel.
50. Missed Flights. There’s Been a Few.
Somehow we made it onto a flight in Chennai, India even though we were two hours late.
But we’ve definitely missed a few flights (mostly in America) along the way.
Lesson Learned: It’s always better to be a little early than the one running through the terminal to the gate.
Near Miss: Got Stopped at Drug Check Point in Thailand. The Day After We Smoked Our Joints.
It probably would have just resulted in paying another hefty bribe.
Near Miss: Ran Over a Pope’s Viper With my Bicycle in Laos.
I’m not sure what I was looking at but it definitely wasn’t the road. Somehow I managed to run directly over a big bright green venomous snake in the trail & fortunately didnt get myself bit in the process.
Bonus Fail: Later I rode that same bicycle into a ditch in the dark. Maybe the lesson is I shouldn’t ride bikes.
Writing this list I couldn’t help but reminisce over the ridiculous situations we always find ourselves in. Motorbiking over half-broken bridges, the lizard poop on our pillows, swarming bugs on nighttime walks. & all the places we have found ourselves lost. But travel fails & mistakes just become funny stories to tell later. It’s all part of the experience.
Hopefully you can learn from our travel fails and won’t be cursed to make the same mistakes on your next trip abroad.
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