My Ten Worst Travel Experiences

One of the things I most enjoy about travel is the thrill of the unexpected: that tiny ristorante in a sleepy Italian village that just happens to serve the perfect lemon risotto when you turn up, exhausted after cycling those steep Tuscan hills. Or the church in Lisbon which hides the most extraordinary cloisters you’ve ever seen.

I’d be the first to say that travel can give you some of the most life enhancing, exhilarating and joyful experiences of all. But sometimes the unexpected isn’t a pleasure but a pain. There are times when travel can be frustrating, overwhelming and even frightening. Sometimes it all goes horribly wrong. Flights get cancelled, everyone is ill or the hotel that looked so perfect on the website turns out to be the hotel from hell.

But it’s often the unexpected and the things that go wrong that make for the best stories so here are ten of my worst travel experiences.

Being threatened with deportation from Hawaii

When I flew to Hawaii to interview the model, Marie Helvin, for the Telegraph newspaper, I was feeling very pleased with myself. I’d proudly ticked the box on the US immigration form to state that I was in Hawaii for work. I wasn’t feeling quite so pleased with myself when I got to passport control and was told that they wouldn’t allow me to enter the country without a valid work permit. They threatened to put me on the next flight back to the UK – another 18 hours of flying time.

I eventually persuaded them to call my newspaper editor who somehow managed to smooth over the whole incident and I was finally allowed in.

Rodents in the bedroom

I’ll quite happily go hunting for tarantulas at night in a Belize jungle. I made friends with the cockroach who’d come out of the woodwork while I was having a bath in my Paris flat – but I’m terrified of rodents.

When a massive rat ran out of the toilets while I was in a restaurant in Mumbai I reacted in horror. My Indian friend just laughed at me, saying, “it’s only a bandicoot!” There was a mouse in our room when we were staying in the Himalayas – for me, this was far worse than the time when a monkey climbed through our bedroom window and ran off with our fruit. Then there was the rat which scurried around in the open-air bathroom of our bedroom in St Lucia – I didn’t sleep all night.

I’d rather have a lion padding outside my tent at night than a rodent.

Being ‘stalked’ by a police officer in Rome

My wallet was stolen while I was on a crowded bus in Rome. When I went to the nearest police station to file a report I was really impressed with the charming and sympathetic police officer. When I arrived home in the UK to find a message from him on my answer phone updating me on the case I was even more impressed. It seemed a bit much when he called me at work the following day and I started to get nervous when he called me again at home and told me how much he’d like to take me to the Amalfi Coast that summer.

So when an Italian number showed up again on my telephone the next day at work I chickened out. One of my colleagues spoke fluent Italian. I’m not sure what he said to him but he never called again.

Being constantly ill in India

I backpacked around India for six months and hoped to avoid the ‘Delhi Belly’ everyone warned me about. It was six weeks before I got my first stomach bug. I had diarrhoea, chronic stomach cramps and was drenched in sweat for hours at a time, all made worse by the fact that we were staying in hostels that cost only 50 pence a night so there was only ever a hole in the ground for a toilet.

After that I’d get a tummy bug every couple of weeks and exist on a diet of plain rice and yoghurt for a few days until it was gone. It didn’t spoil my experience of India – it just became part of it. But I did get very thin. I looked like a half-starved hippy by the time I finally made it back to England.

Forgetting my yellow fever certificate in Tanzania

It wasn’t until we got to passport control at Dar es Salaam airport at the start of our African honeymoon that I realised I’d left my yellow fever vaccination certificate at home. This was a serious problem: they had a yellow fever certificate inspection point at the airport. We joined the back of the queue and I rummaged around in my bag to find the booklet with all my other vaccination stamps. In the middle was an empty page for yellow fever which I hadn’t needed because I’d got a separate certificate.

I grabbed a pen and tried to copy the scribbles from my husband’s certificate. My hands were shaking when we finally reached the front of the line and I handed it over to the inspector. To my relief, he waved us through.

Being followed home in Paris

I was walking home one night in Paris when I became aware of someone walking behind me. I wasn’t particularly concerned until he turned into the same narrow street in which I lived. The whole way down the street I was conscious of his footsteps behind me, always at the same pace as my own. When I speeded up, so did he. By the time I reached the door of our building I was running. There was no lock so he just followed me in, running up the stairs behind me.

Just outside the door to my flat he grabbed my arm. I was so scared I couldn’t even scream but the strange gurgling sound I made alerted my flatmate and she opened the door. The man ran back downstairs. It felt like a lucky escape.

Falling over everywhere I travel

I am very clumsy. I’m the girl who had to have plasters applied to her knees before she went out to play because the teachers thought it would protect them from the inevitable tumble in the playground. Even now, I’m constantly tripping over. Every summer I arrive on holiday ready to bare my legs – they’re smooth, toned and exfoliated – and within the first couple of days I am guaranteed to fall over and have a nasty cut on my leg for the rest of the trip.

My boys’ abiding memory of the Acropolis is not of the extraordinary historic site but of their mother tripping over her flip-flops and having to be patched up in an ambulance parked nearby.

Having my passport and camera stolen in Calcutta

I’ll never forget the panic I felt when my train pulled into Calcutta railway station and I couldn’t find the bag in which I’d packed my passport and camera. I’d been cramped onto the top bunk of a tiny carriage for the last 12 hours, with my bag lying next to me, and I still can’t work out how it was stolen. To make it worse, the monsoon had started and I managed to fall into a pothole (see above) while I was wading through the water in the rain-drenched streets.

Turning up at the hotel from hell in Marrakesh

When we arrived at the riad we’d booked in Morocco we were all exhausted – we’d been up since 4am to catch our flight from the UK. The hotel, which had looked so promising in the photos, was in a terrible state. There had clearly been a party the night before and there was rubbish everywhere. Half an hour after our arrival we were still sat at a table with our luggage, being ignored by the few staff who were clearing up. Our boys, aged 5 and 7, were hungry and upset.

By the time the manager finally arrived we’d called other hotels to see if they had a room available. He started shouting at us when we explained we no longer wished to stay. We finally agreed to pay for one night. It wasn’t until he had taken our bank card that we realised he’d keyed the total amount for the week into the card machine rather than the night we’d agreed on. We refused to complete payment and he refused to give us our card back.

We eventually walked out, leaving him with the bank card and wheeling our suitcases and children behind us. We hailed a taxi and cancelled the card on our way to another hotel.

My suitcase not turning up in Turkey

I’d packed all my favourite summer dresses for our trip to Turkey last summer so I was less than impressed when two of our three suitcases failed to turn up on the baggage carousel after our flight. The one suitcase that did arrive was the one with all my husband’s clothes. The boys and I had to wait two days before our luggage arrived. We did manage to buy some bits and pieces so we weren’t walking around in the cold-weather clothes we were wearing on the plane but I hated being without all the clothes and books I’d packed. Read the story of my lost luggage in A Suitcase full of Stories.

So these are mine, what are some of your worst travel experiences?

I’m linking this post with this month’s Travel Link Up with Emma from Adventures of a London Kiwi, Jessi of Two Feet One World, Angie at SilverSpoon London and Carolann from  Finding Ithaka

All photos except two are courtesy of Pixabay.

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A Suitcase full of Stories

Two of our three suitcases didn’t turn up when we landed at Bodrum Airport for our holiday in Turkey. As we waited beside the baggage carousel I had that sinking feeling as all the other passengers picked up their luggage and left.

I was so sure it would never happen to me. I’ve been on hundreds of flights all over the world and my luggage has always been there. But not this time. I’d like to tell you that I was calm and philosophical but I wasn’t. I ranted and raved. How could this happen? How could our holiday start if we didn’t even have our luggage?

The one suitcase that turned up was the one with all my husband’s clothes in. The one person out of the four of us who really couldn’t care what he wears. The one person who could have really done with being forced to buy a few new items of clothing.

But that’s the way it was. Fortunately, the boys’ swimwear and shorts (but no tops) were in that case so they weren’t too badly off, but I had packed every single item of my clothing in one big suitcase and it was stuck at Gatwick Airport. For two days. You know things are desperate when you’re grateful to borrow your husband’s used underwear…

I was in a state of panic because besides the obvious irritation of having no clean underwear and nothing to wear other than the uncomfortably hot long-sleeved top and trousers I wore on the flight, I realised that my whole life was in that suitcase. It’s a suitcase full of stories. My stories.

The clothes I’d packed aren’t just a pile of summer dresses, tops and skirts. My fail-safe holiday wardrobe is made out of clothes I wear very little in the UK where it’s so rarely warm enough to wear anything vaguely summery. Some of the clothes I packed in my suitcase have been with me for nearly 20 years. They have a history and significance that is completely irreplaceable.

There’s the red silk Paul Smith dress that I bought at great expense from a tiny boutique in St-Tropez 15 years ago. The elegant shop assistant assured me that the most wonderful thing about the dress was its versatility: the fact that you could just as easily wear it as a sundress on the beach as to go out in the evening.

I loved that the average French woman would think nothing of wearing a dry-clean-only silk dress to the beach and in honour of that ‘devil-may-care as long as I’m dressed well’ philosophy, I’ve packed it for every beach holiday I’ve ever been on since.

The truth is that I only wear it in the evenings. Wear my silk dress to the beach? Are you joking? I’d get sand and sun cream all over it. I’ve worn it to at least two weddings though.

Then there’s the slinky long cotton sundress from Kookai. It’s covered in tiny daisies and is so tight that I can only take pigeon steps in it. If you need to take a proper stride (almost always the case for someone who is constantly running late), you have to hoist it up to your knees in as ladylike a fashion as you can muster.

I still love the way it looks though. I wore it on my first date with my husband. To me, it smells of Lancôme’s Pôeme perfume and reminds me of Clapham Common. I even wore it on my hen night.

There’s the bright orange dress I bought for my honeymoon. I can’t wear it without being reminded of strolling through the streets of Zanzibar, the smells of sandalwood and cinnamon in the air. It looks so good and so thrown-on-but-stylish that it was the only thing in my wardrobe that I could think of wearing when I had to have a business lunch with a supermodel and didn’t want to look completely inadequate.

Then there’s the 1950s-style sundress with the geometric pattern that I fell in love with on a Top Shop mannequin and bought for my first holiday with a baby. It always looks crisp, never gets creased in the suitcase and is the perfect dress for a cocktail while watching the sunset.

There are the three pairs of Havaianas flip-flops I bought on a market stall in Brazil for about £2 each, long before you could pick them up anywhere for £20 apiece.

The truth is that not having my luggage is a stark reminder of the difference between the clothes I wear at home and the way I dress on holiday. At home, particularly if I’m doing the school run, I’ll just throw something on before I dash out the door. But when I’m on holiday, I delight in choice and variation. That perfect casual, strappy dress for breakfast; something to throw on over my bikini at the pool; and a longer, slinkier dress for the evening.

I’ve packed strappy high-heeled wedges I can barely walk in for the sheer pleasure of how good they look and how good they make me feel. And I’ve packed a box full of accessories: glass rings, hair clips, a bracelet from Bali and another from Greece, a red bone bracelet I picked up in a gem shop on the island of Syros; and a silver and lilac bracelet made out of safety pins that a French woman bought for me in St-Tropez.

I suppose I was lucky to be without my luggage in Turkey of all places. Turkey is one of the world’s leading nations for clothing manufacturing and so, even in the relatively small town of Yalikavak where we were staying, there were lots of shops where you could pick up decent clothes for a fraction of the price you’d pay in the UK.

We buy Ralph Lauren polo shirts for the boys for £6 each and I get a Desigual dress for £12.50 and a bright blue shirt dress for £27. They’re quite different from the clothes in my suitcase but I like them nonetheless and can see myself wearing them at home too. The Desigual dress is a bit big for me so I’ve added a belt to make it look less like I’m wearing a sack.

Who knows what stories these dresses will tell in a few years time?