[Misc] Holiday dramas

[Live by the sea]

In my late teens/early 20s I had a girlfriend with absolutely no sense of danger. A typical conversation would be me saying I didn't like the look of something, her going ahead away, and me deciding whether or not I wanted to tell her parents I'd abandoned her to her fate. We did a lot of backpacking together and drama was a regular feature to the extent that I ended up with a reputation for high-risk and when I got married (not to her) some of what happened to us was a thread through the best man's speech. I got seriously ill in Mexico, hospitalised and with a blood transfusion after she'd insisted I'd be ok for a long train journey and just needed to "sleep it off". Spent too long in the murder capital of Mexico too despite the warnings to go, and in another town after the police had told her (not me, I was in the loo) we should leave we stayed another night before she told me. There was a mass killing shortly after we were there. Got kidnapped in India, high-jinks on our escape and the long route back to the British Embassy in Delhi for help. Only time in my life I've ever had a proper panic attack, stuck in a small village waiting overnight for the next bus and waiting to be found by people who'd tried to harm us. After seeing a fatality on a bus in Morocco I suggested we stay put and get our heads back together, not least because the bus was several hours late leaving and it was a shocking thing to have seen. We ended up staying on the bus, arriving somewhere very remote and unnerving at 3.30am without a clue where we were and both of us trying not to go into delayed shock. Got lost exploring in La Paz, Bolivia and chased by a man with a knife. Stuck in a small dip in the Pyrenees for 36 hours in dense cloud...everyone else coming down the mountain while we were heading up was a clue not to keep climbing really. A lot of good times too, but I sometimes look back and wonder how I survived her relentless confidence that everything would be OK regardless of every sign pointing to the opposite. She went on to do a PhD and last I heard was making breakthroughs in cancer research. Amazing.

South America is dangerous !

 

[knocky1]

Had a few myself. In 1983 jumped the wall of campsite to save 800m walk home. Security chased me, beat shit out of me with bike chains and threw me outside the campsite. At 3am came to my senses at Cannes Marina. Hospitalised for a week with broken jaw and mouth wired together for a month.
1995 pillion on mate's bike on empty MOTORWAY IN South West France after a big do at a rental mansion. Suddenly realised he was asleep. Terrifying seconds waking him up at 70mph bike following the camber of the curve.
2005 crossed a glacier between Gokyo and Khumbu Valley in Nepal. Had lost the path and had to hope there were no snow covered crevasses beneath any of our feet.

Sailing the Atlantic being sick and dehydrated for the first 10 days was worrying for my health. When recovered volunteered to swim under yacht and cut free a fishing net stuck in the propellor. Hyperventilating, shaking, holding my breath and I suddenly realised that the net could grab me as it freed. The whale surfacing 20m from us a few days later before going underneath the boat was nowhere near as scary.

Wife has pipped in tying the water ski rope round her thumb to not lose the rope ended up with a broken dislocated thumb treated in Palma Hospital.

Skiing in Italy on the black slopes she came into the lunch area and fell on the nursery slope. Broken tibia, fibia and one I can't remember. Mate and I drove her to Turin hospital, told 3 months in traction in Italy and best plan was to fly home with pain killers. Eventful Ryan Air flight home.

Had a lot of good times too.

 

[Driver8]

I planned to take my wife to New York for a surprise trip for her 50th. I had everything booked including theatre and restaurants etc and had paid for things like Empire State Building etc.

We got to check in at Manchester and handed over our passports. The check in clerk gave me a funny look and said “have you got your passport as this appears to be your sons?”

We live about an hour from Manchester airport so I didn’t have time to go home and I could see all my plans having been for nothing. As a last resort we called a neighbour to see if she could help, and luckily she was able to use our spare key to get in and raced to the airport arriving just as the gate was about to close. The airport staff were brilliant and escorted us straight through security, past the gate queue, and straight on to the plane where the cabin crew gave us a glass of champagne!

I am now very careful to make sure I have the correct passport before leaving.

 

[NooBHA]

I once went to a Football match in Paris with my Liverpudlian mate and was horrified to find that the Police wouldn't let us into the ground with our fake tickets.

Disclaimer to fend off the wrath

,............................

 

[Fignon's Ponytail]

Used to camp in the South of France every year with family friends, and one year my brother drove down with a mate and spent 2 weeks in a tent on a pitch next to us. When leaving, they were taking down the tent and a huge water spout shot about 30ft in the air. Turns out they had put a tent peg straight through a water pipe - and once the "plug" & water pressure was released, the whole area around them was instantly flooded and a huge hole appeared where the water had been seeping for days through the ground where their tent had been.

On another occasion, our friends car broke down en route, and we spent 3 days in our caravans on a lorry park waiting for it to be fixed. One night I rolled off the top bunk and fell out the window which had been left ajar because of the heat. My dad heard a bang, came outside, and found me still fast asleep in my sleeping bag, on the tarmac

 

[BBassic]

Reading some of these stories makes me eternally grateful to be an introvert who doesn't like travelling.

 

[Questions]

Got taken off my flight by armed police (he tapped his holster against me to let me know) when landing in Budapest once….. Bit of a furore and then subsequently fined over there in my absence.

Also stopped in my car in a country lane to talk to a couple of girls looking for directions to Cricket St Thomas down in the West Country……A 30 strong head of cattle came marauding down the road and panicked and went straight over the girls car absolutely totalling it. We gave our phone numbers to the girls for insurance purposes….. they were hot as well.

 

[One Love]

accidentally going over a jump whilst learning to water ski in Malta.

That's hilarious

 

[Psychobilly freakout]

My first holiday alone was in Corralejo on Fuerteventura. First thing I did when I arrived was to find some shady Moroccans that could sell me some weed.

That's your problem right there.
Really that is the first thing you do on holiday.

 

[Bry Nylon]

My first holiday alone was in Corralejo on Fuerteventura. First thing I did when I arrived was to find some shady Moroccans that could sell me some weed.

Item No:4 in our new series, Judith Chalmers Links That Didn't Make The Final Edit

 

[sydney]

That's hilarious

i actually managed to pull if off but stacked spectacularly immediately after landing , was walking funny for a few days , stuck to snorkelling after that.

 

[pasty]

No real holiday dramas for us, however I would advise not going anywhere we have recently come home from.

2016: We went to the Christmas markets in Berlin a week before a terrorist drove a truck into one of the markets we visited

2018: We were on this beach in Zakynthos a week before this happened



Heads up, we're going to Antalya in Turkey early September this year, so best avoided in late September

 

[Icy Gull]

Some, no most of you, are fecking loose canons on holiday

I knew this thread would not disappoint!

 

[Arthur]

Can't compete with half the stories on here but it seems an appropriate place to say thank you to the woman in question should she be reading....

Euro 2000, it's Friday and England are playing Germany the following day in Charleroi. I finish work and have the next two weeks off work to head out to Brussels.

Had the usual are you coming for a beer after work, as I was now in full on holiday mode I said I'd go for a quick one as I had to be up early for an early Eurostar. You can join the dots yourself. I have no idea what time I got in but I woke up at 7:30 on the Saturday morning which meant I had already missed my train. Quickly threw some bits in a bag and jumped on the tube to Waterloo. Got to the ticket window expecting it was going to cost me a fortune to get a new train ticket. The lovely lady behind the jump saw my Brighton pin badge and told me she was an Albion fan and she'd see what she could do. She managed to get me on the next train without charge.

If you are or you know who that woman is please pass on my gratitude. 22 years on I'm still extremely grateful.

 

[Reagulls]

about 20 years ago I was into my surfing and booked a holiday to California, hadn't really made any plans other than to fly into LAX spend the night in a local motel and hire a people carrier (big enough to fit my longboard inside) the following morning.
The next morning we headed off to a book signing that a friend had made us aware of, had a coffee there, bought a book and headed off to our next destination.

Somewhere along the route there was a diversion which I took and suddenly noticed the houses and the cars all starting to look a bit shabby, I turned round and headed back the way I came and then up another street,
this street was a dead end that ended in a rough looking yard with about 8 blokes all stood there, they all stopped talking and started checking us and our hire car out, I thought better than to ask for directions so turned round quickly and got out of there!
next junction was a near miss as a black van ran across the front of us with me slamming on the brakes, this was followed by police sirens behind us as we got pulled over.

Policeman came to the window " licence and registration sir" - just like in the movies!
"erm , yes, certainly" I replied
"you're not from round here are you sir"?
"no, we're from England"
"do you realise you just ran a stop sign" he said
"I'm really sorry officer, we're a bit lost" (I had no idea where we were, we were just trying to get to the pacific coast highway)
"I need to inform you that you are in high drug and narcotics area and I would advise you to leave the area for your own safety, in fact we will escort you out of the area"

unbeknown to us we had just driven into the roughest part of Compton! found out afterwards that one of the Williams (Tennis) sisters had been shot dead 2 streets away from where we were in broad daylight 2 weeks prior to our visit

the cop escorted us out to a main road and I was very happy to finally get on the Pacific coast highway
we spent the next 10 days driving down to San Diego and all the way back up to Santa Barbara, surfing loads of spots all the way.