Travellers' Tales

[Buce]

 

I was going to post this in the What's The Worst Smell... thread, but I love to hear people's travel anecdotes so I thought I'd start a new thread.

 

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Back in '75, I joined my brother and his mate on the hippy trail to Morocco in an old ambulance which they'd converted into a camper van. We did all the usual hippy sites, spending a couple of weeks in Fez and Marrakesh, then decided to head off into the Atlas mountains. We must have eaten something dodgy, because by the end of the day we were all feeling seriously unwell and before long the trots started. Our toilet facilities consisted of a Heath Robinson contraption which was a folding camping stool with a hole cut in it, beneath which was suspended a bag (similar to modern day refuse sacks). We were down to the last five sacks, so instead of changing the bag after each use we let them fill as much as possible, then tied the neck and dumped it under the van for disposal at a later date.

 

All that night and the following day we filled the bags with the most disgusting effluent that you could imagine. Eventually, after about 24 hrs, the thing had run its course and we finally felt able to sleep. We had a tent which we had intended to use because thieving was a way of life out there, and the intention was to shut all the camping gear in the van for the night, but we were all too weak and exhausted to bother, so we dumped everything outside and crashed in the van.

 

Well, typically, we had a visit in the night and by morning we woke to find everything gone - including the five toilet bags! It amuses me to this day to imagine the thief's face when they got the bags home and opened them.

[Guest MattP]

A few of you had read this before but from a couple of years ago......

 

Paris gone wrong, ended up absolutely out of it in a place called Harry's Bar, so bad had stole the mic from the guy in the live band and was wandering around getting everyone in there to sing with me, at least a bottle vodka in addition to ten pints and a few jaegerbombs.

 

Next 4-5 hours has just vanished and I've woke up on a bench somewhere in Paris, checked all my pockets, no wallet, no money, phone completely dead and absolutely no idea how to get back to the hotel.

 

It's about 6am now and I'm wandering around in the searing heat with shoes, trousers and a long sleeve shirt on still totally out of it, went for a walk and kept asking any bar that was still open if they had a Samsung phone charger, no chance anywhere and most seemed to be saying you'll have to buy something to even get a look in the box.

 

Absolutely no idea what to do and after wandering for what must have been an hour randomly ended up wandering past a fish market, load of boxes being jetwashed by the fella opening it up so I asked him if I could help. He laughed and I took the jet wash off him and started cleaning his fish trays for him, did about 15 on this crate. Took me about 20 mins then I said can I have 10 euros to get home? He laughed and said follow, took me into the back and he had about 50 trays stood there, and said 'this, 20 euros'

 

I said no worries, handed me the wash and I went to work, things were nasty as **** and I was sweating like a pig and absolutely stunk, must have taken me two hours to get all this shit off his trays and then he gave me 20 euros.

 

Hailed down a cab and told him to take me back to the Novotel, after 2 mins all his windows went down and his hand was over his nose, what the fcuk he must have thought I had been doing all night getting into a cab at 8.30am still in my shirt and trousers stinking of fish so badly he was going to need his car fumigated I'll never know.

 

Got back to the Hotel and the fair was about 23 Euros, I started gesturing that I only had 20 and he wasn't having it, couldn't speak a word of English so I started turning all my pockets out to show that I didn't have a cent more.

 

Turned out the back one and a 50 euro note falls out, all that walking, stinking, grafting and somehow I had missed this in my back pocket. Unreal.

[Strokes]

6 minutes ago, MattP said:

A few of you had read this before but from a couple of years ago......

 

Paris gone wrong, ended up absolutely out of it in a place called Harry's Bar, so bad had stole the mic from the guy in the live band and was wandering around getting everyone in there to sing with me, at least a bottle vodka in addition to ten pints and a few jaegerbombs.

 

Next 4-5 hours has just vanished and I've woke up on a bench somewhere in Paris, checked all my pockets, no wallet, no money, phone completely dead and absolutely no idea how to get back to the hotel.

 

It's about 6am now and I'm wandering around in the searing heat with shoes, trousers and a long sleeve shirt on still totally out of it, went for a walk and kept asking any bar that was still open if they had a Samsung phone charger, no chance anywhere and most seemed to be saying you'll have to buy something to even get a look in the box.

 

Absolutely no idea what to do and after wandering for what must have been an hour randomly ended up wandering past a fish market, load of boxes being jetwashed by the fella opening it up so I asked him if I could help. He laughed and I took the jet wash off him and started cleaning his fish trays for him, did about 15 on this crate. Took me about 20 mins then I said can I have 10 euros to get home? He laughed and said follow, took me into the back and he had about 50 trays stood there, and said 'this, 20 euros'

 

I said no worries, handed me the wash and I went to work, things were nasty as **** and I was sweating like a pig and absolutely stunk, must have taken me two hours to get all this shit off his trays and then he gave me 20 euros.

 

Hailed down a cab and told him to take me back to the Novotel, after 2 mins all his windows went down and his hand was over his nose, what the fcuk he must have thought I had been doing all night getting into a cab at 8.30am still in my shirt and trousers stinking of fish so badly he was going to need his car fumigated I'll never know.

 

Got back to the Hotel and the fair was about 23 Euros, I started gesturing that I only had 20 and he wasn't having it, couldn't speak a word of English so I started turning all my pockets out to show that I didn't have a cent more.

 

Turned out the back one and a 50 euro note falls out, all that walking, stinking, grafting and somehow I had missed this in my back pocket. Unreal.

If you didnt pay tax on that €20, toddy will have you.

[Simi]

This thread needs @Ric Flair

[Buce]

 

A few years later, I wound up in Israel to work as a kibbutz volunteer. It was a really good craic, and with cheap alcohol and quality Lebanese hash readily available, every night was party night. Anyway, on this particular occasion a fancy dress party had been arranged to welcome a new batch of volunteers. I was in two minds about going - too many unfamiliar people at once doesn't work for me - but one of the new girls had caught my eye, so after spending the day getting soundly trashed, I made a last minute decision to go. Obviously, the fancy dress thing was going to be a problem at such short notice, but in a moment of great inspiration I realised that if I threw a bed sheet on over my clothes, and put a towel on my head, it would easily transform me into a passable Bedouin.

 

Well, it all went better than I'd even hoped; the girl I fancied had had her eye on me too, and pretty soon we were getting on like a house on fire, and looking for a bit of privacy. We were both living in shared huts, so we decided to sneak away to one of the air raid shelters (I say sneak because strictly it was against the rules, though it was commonplace). We'd been there about ten minutes or so, and things were getting pretty steamy, when all of a sudden the mood was shattered by what we assumed was an air raid siren (Israel was at war in Lebanon at the time, relations with the Arabs nations were not good, and we were close to the border with Jordan). Realising we had a matter of moments before people started pouring into the shelter, we desperately scrabbled for our clothes and rushed to get dressed, throwing the bed sheet we'd been laying on into the corner. Five minutes passed and still the sirens were wailing, yet nobody had come, so we decided to leave the shelter and see what was happening.

 

To our surprise, instead of the darkness we'd expected, the entire kibbutz was completely floodlit, with armed soldiers running around. A patrol spotted us almost immediately and came running over. They told us there was a security alert, that an intruder had been spotted and they needed to escort us back to our huts; the entire kibbutz was in lockdown.

 

I had a couple of good mates in the military, so the following morning I sought them out to try and get the full story. Apparently, an elderly lady had spotted an Arab sneaking past the end of her garden and had raised the alert. She knew he was an Arab because of his Bedouin robes and headdress...

[Tielemans63]

Had a moment on a flight to Washington when I was 19. Bear in mind that I very much fall in to the category of 'nervous flyer'. 

 

Taking off from Heathrow I was then going to get a connecting flight to North Carolina. Simple.

 

The plane took off without killing us all during take off (so far, so good) and I get talking to the American guy next to me. He asks me what I do for a living and at the time I was a student - crucially I didn't ask him straightaway what he did for a living.

 

Anyway we start talking about this being my first trip to the States. I'm nervous as shit so I'm garbling to try and stay occupied and mention that my only experience of the States was through the films of Michael Moore (yeah, I know, I'm older and wiser now).

 

Anyways, to try and impress this guy with my knowledge of America I go off on a rant about the illegality of the Iraq war, the fact Blair and Bush should have been tried for war crimes, the fact that the war was only about oil and I made it really clear that I felt very sorry for those poor bastards who signed up for the military. I may also have implied that said individuals who sign up for the military may have lacked the intelligence to know what they were letting themselves in for.

 

So at this point Mr American hasn't said anything in a while, presumably because I've been blabbing on and Americans are super polite. So I ask him what he does for a living.

 

Turns out he's a soldier and not only is he a soldier but he's just heading home having done 6 months in Iraq. I notice now that he's also visibly livid.

 

We sit in absolute silence for the next 2 hours. I'm too embarrassed to utter an apology.

 

However the embarrassment has only just begun. Remember when I said I'm a nervous flyer? Well, as we fly over the Atlantic, the pilot makes an announcement.

 

"Ladies and Gentlemen, as you may know the East coast has recently been experiencing some severe weather fronts. We will shortly be flying through a tropical storm. Please make sure you remain seated with your seatbelt fastened at all times."

 

Now I ****ing hate flying so I'm sitting there and sweating buckets before we've even hit the storm. However I'm sat next to a war hero so I can't show weakness and for some reason I don't want him to think I'm even more pathetic than I've just proven I am.

 

So we hit the tropical storm and it's ****ing horrendous. It's not just me being a pussy either, people are screaming and shouting and it's like being on a roller coaster except you can't see when the crazy dips are. The whole time GI Joe next to me is completely stoney-faced, totally non-plussed - this is a walk in the park.

 

So I'm sat there, screaming on the inside but sat quietly, outwardly calm(ish). Just two tough hombres riding through the storm.

 

Then there's a dip, a drop in altitude the likes of which I've only ever seen in films......and it makes me puke instantly.

 

I can't control it. Not even enough time to grab a bag. To be fair, I mostly vomit all over myself but....not quite. There's what you might call a bit of cross fire.

 

GI Joe is really not happy now. He swears a bit. I apologise profusely, genuinely wondering if he's just going to flip out and snap my neck. He asks the cabin crew to move him seats. Plane is at capacity so he has to stay in his pukey position. They did give him some wipes though.

 

I apologise again and he just glares at me and so we sit in silence. Handily the shenanigans have seen us through the turbulence which was nice.

 

That was pretty humiliating but the humiliation is not quite complete. You see, on my ticket it definitely says WASHINGTON. There's nothing on that ticket that informs the uninformed traveller that Washington airport's full title is Washington Dulles Airport, commonly referred to as just 'Dulles'.

 

Now, to the uninitiated, 'Dulles', said in an American accent, sounds an awful lot like 'Dallas'....which of course, is quite some distance from Washington.

 

So Mr Pilot, who hasn't said anything since announcing that we were close to that tropical storm, pipes up to tell us that we're about 90 minutes away from what I heard as Dallas.

 

I'm already a bit stressed, I'm not thinking straight since puke-gate and the news that I'm heading to the wrong side of America kind of tips me over the edge.

 

I'm confused. How could the officials at Heathrow have put me on the wrong flight? How could no-one have noticed that I'm was going to be hundreds of miles away from where I should have been? How do I get another flight? Can I afford another flight? Where even is Dallas?

 

I summon a flight attendant. "Excuse me miss but I thought the pilot just said that we'd be landing in Dallas. That can't be right."

 

Flight attendant (very confused): "Errr that's right Sir. We'll be landing in Dulles in around an hour and a half."

 

This is too much. I go white. The anxiety is genuinely overwhelming. I teach for the bag and make it this time (avoiding GI Joe). I puke violently while Miss Flight Attendant and GI Joe stare at me like I'm an actual mad bloke. 

 

I maybe shouldn't admit this on a football forum but I actually started to cry...a little bit. "Are you okay Sir? What's wrong?"

 

"I thought this was a flight to Washington. I've never been to the US and I'm going to end up the other side of the country. I don't even know where Dallas is."

 

Miss Flight Attendant starts laughing. GI Joe finally cracks:

 

"Dude, are you an actual retard? It's Washington Dulles. Dulles is the name of the airport you ****ing idiot. You're going to Washington. My God you're dumb."

 

Pretty sure all 5000 people on the flight have heard this and I can hear the other passengers absolutely pissing themselves.

 

I sat in silence for the final hour of the journey with my hood over my face. When we landed in 'Dallas' I sat on the plane, face shrouded until I know everyone else has got off the plane.

 

This seemed like a good idea until I wander in to 'Dallas' airport only to realise that due to the bad weather and my decision to remain on the plane I've missed my connecting flight by 4 minutes.

 

I really ****ing hate flying now.