Readers recall the most dreadful time they had while traveling. If you have a particularly notable example of your own, please send it our way: hello@theatlantic.com.
In 1998 I drove from Austin to southern Illinois in my â89 Dodge Ramcharger truck. I started running into freezing rain outside of Dallas, going over Ray Hubbard Reservoir, and decided to keep going. Rather than getting better, it got worseâall the way through Texarkana and beyond. The interstates turned into a skating rink and still I kept going. The drive usually takes 15 hours, but by the time I made it 15 hours, I was only in central Arkansas.
Traffic was going by at a crawl when a commercial truck passed everyone in the left lane at 35-40 mph, left the highway, and went nose-firstâhardâinto the medianâs ravine. I stopped to check on the two guys in the truck, and one had hit his chest on the steering wheel and was not in good shape, shocky, and coughing blood.
Of course nobody had cell phones, and nobody else stopped to help but me. Via sign language, I was finally able to get someone to call the state police as they drove by. The temps were in the teens and the wind was blowing at 30 mph, so I got the two guys in my truck, blasted the heater, and kept the one guy talking so he wouldnât go unconscious.
State troopers showed up, I had to fill out a statement, and I immediately went looking for a motel before they all filled up with other refugees from I-40. I stayed in a motel that wasnât much more than a set of prefabs: a bed, a TV, a bathroom, a radio and some paneling. By that point, it was the best motel I had ever seen.
The next day, when I got going again, there was a big rig in the median about every five miles. Worst driving conditions I ever traveled in.
Have you ever confronted a terrible accident during your travels? Drop us a note and weâll post?
A reader had a night in the capital city heâll never forget:
Back in 2008, after completing college, I went on a backpacking trip through South America. Best time I ever had.
But it didnât end well. I was in Quito, Ecuador, and I returned late to my youth hostel after getting lost. Iâm a rather huge fellow, so I wasnât much nervous about it. While standing outside the place waiting for the receptionist to wake up, two ladies approached meâand wrapped themselves around me.
They did so not because of my immense allure, but rather to pickpocket me. After I felt my phone leave my pocket, I caught a hold of one of the seĂąoras demanding it back. She took out a can of pepper spray and gave me a long extended blast to my face.
So, I lost my phone. And my eyes were melting. I inhaled quite a bit of the spray, so my airway was burning. I was screaming.
It didnât end there. While stumbling around screaming and crying, I tripped over something and broke my ankle. And to cap it all, I had an allergic reaction and spent some time in a not-so-lovely hospital. As a result, I missed my flight home. And upon coming back, I discovered that my insurance claim was denied. My family still thought I was the one at fault.
I still love Ecuador though. Been there twice since.
Have you ever been mugged on vacation? Drop us a note and weâll post. Update from Chris, whose terrible travel experience ended up being the best thing ever:
I was traveling through Europe, with a plan to hang in Sevilla for a few years, or until the military junta in Burma collapsed under the strain of international sanctions and the Nobel Peach Prize that had just been awarded to Aung San Suu Kyi (this was 1991). I decided to stop in Barcelona for a few days en route to Sevilla, so I could get a sense of the city before moving on.
My first night there, I was sitting on a bench on las Ramblas, watching people go by, when a guy tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I knew where the statue of Columbus was. As it turned out, it was probably the only site Iâd seen, so I pointed out where it was. Of course, while doing this, his accomplice was making off with my bag, which contained my passport and a journal Iâd been keeping for several years while traveling. Shit.
Next day, I went to the consulate to apply for a new passport, which I was told would take about a week. Since Iâd be stuck in Barcelona for a week, I decided to call a guy whom Iâd met in the Copper Canyon of Mexico several years earlier. Weâd only hung out for an afternoon, but heâd given me his sisterâs phone number and told me to give her a ring if I was ever in Barcelona, as sheâd know where he was. I called and explained as best I could that I knew Marcos. She said, âHeâs right here, hold on.â
Long story short, Marcos took it upon himself to share all the best parts of Barcelona with me: his friends, his favorite spots, hikes in the Pyrenees. By the time my new passport arrived, someone had offered me a job, someone else rented me a room in his flat, and I had met a few women whom I definitely wanted to know better ...
Twenty-five years later, Iâm still based in Barcelona and am grateful to those thieves.
I was going back to Honduras after my honeymoon. I had a connecting flight in Miami. I went to get my bags to get through customs. They hadnât made it yet. I couldnât miss my flight, so off I went.
Flying into Tegucigalpa was frightening, to say the least. We were all over the sky. I later found out itâs one of the worst airports to fly into. We landed safely on the ground once the pilot figured out how to pull this off.
Once at the airport I came to the realization that my bags had been kept in Miami. Everything I bought on the honeymoon was lost.
Hereâs a bit more about Tegucigalpaâs Toncontin Airport, according to a Popular Mechanics list of the 10 most dangerous airports in the world:
Aircraft have to skirt around the mountains of the interior highlands to land in a valley 3,294 feet above sea level. On approach, airliners as big as Boeing 757s make a 45-degree bank to effectively reach the 7000-foot runway with well above average rates of descent. Winds require pilots to compensate while hustling their aircraft in a zig-zag path over the terrain. Departures require high rates of climb to clear the nearby peaks.
And the very worst airport to fly into? Conde Nast Travelersays itâs the one in Lukla, Nepal. That airport is featured several times in this long compilation of dicey landings:
Have you ever had a harrowing landing, or an emergency situation on a plane? Drop us a note and weâll post.
Update from Paul Blackburn, who sends a great photo flying above Guatemala:
Attached is a photo I took while on a medical transport in a Lear Jet Model 35, flown by REVA, an air ambulance/transport company based out of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and our branch base in Phoenix, Arizona. I was the physician on the flight, and we were banking onto final approach to the primary airport in Guatemala City, Guatemala. We were between a lower level of clouds and a higher scud layer of clouds. As we banked, I noted what I thought to be a mountain protruding through the clouds. On closer inspection, one can see that the âmountainâ I briefly saw was actually a volcano, actively emitting steam and/or ash (this is apparently its usual baseline status):
Reader Greg recalls a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad work trip:
Back in 1999 Iâm in Zurich trying to get to Brussels for an extremely important seminar that I, as a self-employed consultant, had arranged with a Fortune 500 client. Itâs my introduction to their senior management from all over Europe. A huge potential contract is in the balance. Gulp.
Itâs mid-August and Iâm delayed three hours in a sweltering airport then two hours on a sweltering plane waiting on the tarmac for air travel in Western Europe to get over afternoon thunderstorms. I eventually fly to Amsterdam, then Iâm driven to Brussels, in the heat and rain, in a full mid-size Mercedes, me middle front. Terrifying. No sleep possible.
I arrived in a Brussels hotel at 4:30am. No reservation in my name. No mention of the company I was there for. No normal rooms. I rented an extended-stay suite (very nice) for 90 minutesâenough time to shower, change, and stare at the wall, thinking WTF.
No one from the company is at breakfast. I donât have anyoneâs cell phone numbers. At 9am I finally contact a person in the Brussels office. âOh, two days ago we moved the meetings to a hotel by the airport. Didnât anyone tell you?"
It was supposed to start at 8am. I arrived just after 10am, introduced myself, and started my spiel. I had to finish by noon, but my head was spinning so fast and I kept wanting to faint, so I had to lose another 15 minutes for breaks.
Europe was not impressed. I was able to keep my existing work for them going, but I lost out on the huge contract.
A reader tries to recall his worst travel experience:
Letâs see, the 153AM out of Grand Central can be pretty lively, as can the first train in the morning on Sunday. Taking an overnight train in Vietnam was overrated, as it was dirty, uncomfortable, and sized for Vietnamese people. Iâve had my share of cancellations and so on, including get stuck in Denver overnight a few times, but thatâs nothing unusual.
My worst experience though, was flying from LA to Chicago when everyone on the plane got food poisoning, which incapacitated the pilots. It forced a fighter pilot turned taxi driver to conquer his fear of flying and save everyone on the plane.
Surely he canât be serious.
This reader gets real:
Itâs about two weeks after 9/11 and I had been saving up for a year to travel through SE Asia to visit a friend who was working for a NGO in [Burmaâs capital of] Yangon. Despite the security concerns over terrorism, I had already cleared off time at work, I was broke, and there was NO WAY I was canceling this trip. As expected, there are no âformalâ travel restrictions in place, but the airports/border control are making damn sure that itâs really, really hard to travel.
Essentially, itâs just a complete cluster and Iâm already regretting my decision to save a little cash by flying out of Vancouver, BC instead of Seattle. Not only do I have trouble at the [Canadian border crossing in Blaine, Washington,] because the crappy Sanford & Son bus that picked us up from the sketchy part of downtown was over four hours late, but the (usually affable) Canadian agents are not happy with the quality of passengers on our bus.
Many, many hours later (and a forfeited hotel room I secured for the previous evening), I made my way to the airport because it was too late to try to get a few hours of sleep. Surprisingly, Iâm on a great flight to Hong Kong with no issues!
Then I hopped a connection to Bangkok, where I would have to wait until the following morning for my flight to Yangon. Bangkok has a shiny new airport now, but in 2001, Don Mueang really wasnât somewhere one would choose to spend time on purpose. Thereâs an on-site âhotelâ so I figured Iâd just stay there. Between the fighting/screaming from the couple in the next room (paper-thin walls), the random men who kept trying to ram their way into my room (the door barely locked), and the non-functioning lights (only light bulb in the room, about 20 watts), I may as well have just chained my bag to a chair and slept on the airport floor because I didnât sleep a wink.
I had a great time while I was in Burma (a scary-as-hell flight on Yangon Airways notwithstanding), but on the way home I reversed my route and spent some time in Bangkok at a friend-of-a-friendâs apartment while she was out of the country (nice!), and finished my trip back in Hong Kong. My NGO friend knew people in HK and one guy took me to dinner at the restaurant on top of Victoria Peak (touristy, but a great view).
We decided to splurge and get some oysters because I was heading home soon, in four days. Do you know that feeling when you eat something and you knowâright then and thereâthat it's bad? Well, that happened just as I was swallowing one of the oysters ... and it was too late.
I figured Iâd been building an iron constitution with all of the street cart food Iâd been eating for the last couple weeks, so I wasnât that worried. I went back to my hotel and right on cue: vomiting, chills, fever, that weird âI have food poisoning buzzing feeling,â and um ... spending some time in the bathroom. I took turns sweating out the sheets in the two single beds that were in my room, while each morning (like clockwork), a woman would bang on my door and yell:
Day 1
Housekeeping: âMRS (firstname)!!! PEOPLE SAY YOU VERY SICK!! WE COME CLEAN ROOM??"
Me: NO.
Day 2
Housekeeping: "MRS (firstname)!!! PEOPLE SAY YOU VERY SICK!! WE COME CLEAN ROOM??"
Me: NO. Please go away, thank you.
Day 3
Housekeeping: "MRS (firstname)!!! PEOPLE SAY YOU VERY SICK!! WE COME CLEAN ROOM??"
Me: NO. But do you have more toilet paper?
Day 4
Housekeeping: âMRS (firstname)!!! PEOPLE SAY YOU VERY SICK!! WE COME CLEAN ROOM??"
Me: ......
On Day 4, I had no choice but to drag my sorry butt out of the room and clamber on to a shuttle bus to the airport because my flight was leaving (for Vancouver, natch). The trip back to my apartment in Seattle was the most miserable multi-day journey Iâve ever taken. I donât think Iâve ever cried so hard.
Oysters are still the only food I wonât eat.
If you also have a horror story from hors dâoeuvres, shoot us a note. In the meantime, bon appĂŠtit:
I was in Barbados in a rural bar, hungry. I asked for food and they said they had one thing. And thatâs how I had pickled chicken feet for dinner. It was sloshed out of a big bin.
Update from Jacob, an â11th grader and avid fan of The Atlanticâ:
As a high school student, I havenât had too many bad travel experiences, but this oneâs a doozy, and when I saw your callout I immediately knew I had to submit.
A few weeks ago, I traveled to South Korea for 10 days to present a collaborative science project with my Korean partners. My troubles started at around 5 o'clock the day before final presentations. We had just finished reviewing critique of our rehearsal when I suddenly began to feel sick to my stomach. Wanting to go back to my room, I went to notify Jeong-Minh, the director of the program, and was in the midst of a conversation with her in the hallway when a roiling wave of nausea hit me. I sprinted to the trash can, doubled over, and projectile vomited not one, not two, but three whole times in a spray of half-digested Korean food.
Jeong-Minh just barely had the presence of mind to leap backward out of the splash zone. Hoping against hope this was just a one-and-done vomiting session, I fled back to my dormitory, only to spend the next day vomiting violently into a pink Hello-Kitty trash can with the worst case of food poisoning since the Borgias.
Iâm never going to be able to look at that damn cat again without a degree of horror. I would upchuck into the can, manage to fall back into a light sleep in that refractory period of relief just after a bout of vomiting, then wake up 30 minutes later to bend myself back over Hello Kitty and loose another wave. Eventually I was just dry heaving little trickles of bile.
It was the sickest Iâve ever been in my life. I stopped vomiting after 24 hours, but my stomach was an achy mess for the rest of the trip, and I was holed up against my will in the dormitory for most of it, taking Buzzfeed quizzes to distract myself from the fact that it still felt like Kim Jong was conducting a nuclear weapons test in my intestines.
Iâm not sure why the universe saw fit to punish me that way. I have a sneaking suspicion that my weak little white stomach couldnât handle the platters of traditional Korean food I'd been tucking away the entire trip. It must have been those âspecialtyâ highland mushrooms.
A readerâs memory of a hellish trip to Istanbul still sounds fresh:
In the early â90s, my young husband and I thrived on traveling as frugally as possible. We were traveling from Scandinavia and our goal was to make it to Istanbul. On a train from Poland to Romania, we were warned by a fellow tourist not to change money on the black market, because the undercover police âmay arrest you.â
Armed with that information, we arrived at the train station on a Sunday, eager to purchase our tickets to Istanbul and leave Romania as quickly as possible. The âOfficial Money Station" was manned when we approached to change our currency. âNo money,â he shrugged and waved us away. With no Romanian currency, we had no money for food, lodging, or train tickets.
A friendly young Romanian man approached offering to help us change money on the black market. He promised he was not a police officer.
He told us he knew of a bus station that would take us from Bucharest to Istanbul. He led us out of the station and around a corner to a small bus ticket station, and, while he practiced English with my husband, I hand-signaled with an older woman enough for her to accept my $20 USD for our ride out.
When we informed our friendly translator/guide that we no longer required his services, he kicked my husband in the shin (my husband was a towering 6'4â) and declared that he would âget his gun and come back to shoot us.â We were completely terror-stricken.
The locals, who spoke no English, just looked at us and smiled while we ran to duck behind the ticket counter. The proprietor followed us back and said: âMe Turk. No problem.â Then he opened his top drawer to reveal a machete.
We were relieved and willing when the un-air-conditioned, broken-down bus arrived to take us away, shuttling us to a standard-looking coach bus filled with Italian tourists. Everyone smoked cigarettes. Music blared. Not a word of English was spoken. There was no toilet on the bus.
We made it as far as the border of Bulgaria. The bus stopped and turned off the engine in a long trail of cars and buses. Apparently everyone who was supposed to be working the border was preoccupied watching the World Cup Soccer Championship matches. Â
For nine hours, all traffic was halted while the games played. We exited the bus and wandered across streams of garbage and gypsy children playing on train tracks.
Hours later on the bus, mosquitos buzzing, my husband finally fell asleep, but I was desperate to pee. The driver escorted me off the bus and watched me urinate. Then he put his arm around me and attempted to invite me to join him somewhere else. I elbowed him with all of my might and jumped back on the bus. I shook my husband out of his slumber and did not allow him to sleep after that.
The border crossing finally reopened. They collected our passports and handed each passenger two cartons of cigarettes and eight bottles of alcohol to carry as contraband mules across the border. They stocked the back of the bus, and our passports were returned.
Twenty-five hours later, I saw the minarets and knew we had arrived. I developed a migraine and threw up. But at least we made it to Istanbul.
Bonus anecdote from another reader, in Ukraine:
Iâm 19 years old on train from Lviv to Kiev. Itâs an overnighter and Iâm booked in a 2nd class sleeper car which has four bunks on each side. Iâm scared out of my mind when I realize Iâm the only woman in the compartment. The men see that Iâm freaking out and find a translator to explain (actual words): âWe want to reassure you that your body is safe and we will not rape you as you sleep.â Thanks? Â
A bunch of Atlantic readers in this discussion group are exchanging their travel horror stories. (If youâd like to sharing your own, please send us a note: hello@theatlantic.com.) A short anecdote from the group:
I caught bronchitis when I was in Germany for a business trip. Spent the plane ride home sitting next to a strange drunk man who kept talking at me. Intolerable Cruelty starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones was the in-flight movie. I wanted to die.
Another reader shares that sentiment:
I was stuck in the snowbound Omaha airport with a three year old, a chihuahua, and a small carryon bag, for TWO DAYS. That was the ninth circle of hell. I wanted to die.
This next reader nearly did, for real:
Peace Corps: On a bus in Guatemala. A group of three teens in MS-13 [a notorious gang] decide to rob our bus. Being the only American on the bus and having just gone to the bank, I took all the money I had hidden in my bra and put it in my pocket ready to be robbed. People would get shot if they tried to run, so I prepared to give everything and pulled my passport out of its hiding spot in my bag so I made sure they knew they were getting it.
Then some dude decided to John Wayne and open fire on these robbers, which resulted in a firefight on a very crowded bus. I had actually been the next passenger to be robbed, so the perp standing next to me was actively shooting. I dove under the seat and stayed there until literally everyone else had gotten off the bus.
Bonus trip: I got a lightly armored security escort back to the embassy.
This readerâs experience is much more relatable:
I travel for work, so I have A LOT of these stories. I have two that beat out all of the other minor upsets though:
1) I started a flight with a guy interrupting me while I was reading just so he could tell me that he âmight grab my kneeâ because heâs âafraid of flying.â I replied, âthe fuck you will.â Then he proceeded to vape for the entire flight. When I pointed out that itâs a federal crime to do that, he said he had really bad cravings. AND THEN, as he was deplaning, he hit his lady-friend square on her read end ... it was the cherry on top of a disturbing trip.
2) THE WORST was when I was flying from Chicago to Manchester last October. The man sitting next to me spread all over my seat, took off his shoes, AND unbuttoned his pants. And when I asked to get out to use the restroom, he suggested that I just âclimb over my lap, baby.â
Another reader, Nick, also had a creepy encounter:
On a six-hour train ride in China, a man stared at me the entire fucking time. Like literally he didnât move his eyes off me. I donât know if that was worse than the time I was really sick on a transatlantic flight, but it was definitely the weirdest.
This next reader thinks back to Memorial Day weekend in the late â90s:
Iâm living on Long Island and using what precious little vacation and holiday time I have to visit my LDR girlfriend in Rochester. I have my friend drop me off at JFK in the late afternoon with maybe an hour to spare before boarding (plenty of time, as this is pre-TSA).
As Iâm waiting, the delays start piling up on the info screen because of some freak storm over half of the country, though the local weather is fine. My flight gets delayed, of course. Over the next few hours, the delay gets pushed further and further back. Finally, it gets cancelled.
But by then itâs way too late to call any of my friends to pick me up. So I can either spend the night in pre-renovated JFK, or take a two-hour train ride home so I can sleep in my own bed for a few hours before trying again in the morning. Both options suck, but I figure some sleep is better than none and head out to the train.
Now we come to the actual bad part. I have to take a rail shuttle from the airport to the station, then take two different subway rides into Penn Station, where I can catch a LIRR train to take me home. The first ride is uneventful. On the second one, however, Iâm joined by a couple of young women a few seats in front of me, a younger man who goes to the back, and another younger man who does not take a seat but quickly sets to trying to impress the two women. Also worth noting is that Iâm the only person on board who isnât black.
The young hotshot starts sort-of-rapping about how tough and badass he is. The women seem unimpressed as far as I can tell, but really this whole time Iâve just been trying very hard to focus on the Robert Anton Wilson book Iâm reading. Hotshot changes tactics and tries to impress them by provoking me into a fight. He gets in my face and taunts me for being in the wrong place or something, but I just shake my head and keep my eyes on my book.
The train slows and starts to pull up to the next platform. He disappears behind me, and a few seconds later something hard hits me in the back of my head.
At this point Iâm exhausted, frustrated, and already very angry about the flight situation. I was running on fumes and adrenaline. So when I got hit, something in me just snapped. I remember folding the book and putting it down. Thoughts about my physical abilities versus his and the possibility that he may have a weapon immediately popped up. The angry animal part of my brain was in charge, though, so I disregarded them just as quickly. I stood up and turned around to face whatever this guy thought he was going to do to me.
The doors are open and he is gone. At my feet is the small, depleted corn cob from a discarded KFC meal box. I wipe some bits of kernel from the back of my head and neck. The women and guy from the back all rush over to me to make sure Iâm okay. After weâre all sure Iâm fine, the guy says, âItâs too bad he ran off. I was going to hold him so you could kick his ass.â