The steward saw I was in distress (I was lying on the floor by then) and announced in business class that there was a sick person in coach who needed more room and asked for a volunteer to trade seats. Miracle! A kind person swapped his/her large, comfortable, expensive seat for my tiny one. I don’t know how I would have survived the 12-hour flight to London if I hadn’t been able to stretch out. I was too out of it to ask who the person was, but I am eternally grateful for his/her compassion.

I had an 18-hour layover in London, where the bedrest revived me enough to make it to Chicago and finally home to Portland, where I was diagnosed with typhoid fever.  

Courtney had a helluva time meeting new family:

In 2007 I was studying in Europe for graduate school. I had about a month off around Christmas to do whatever I please. My mom is from Germany originally and I, at 26, had never met my grandpa, aunts, and uncles. So when I randomly called my grandpa asking if I could visit for Christmas, I got more than an enthusiastic yes.

As I was leaving Amsterdam to head to Munich, a snowstorm invaded and I missed my connecting flight in Copenhagen. But I was quickly booked on the next flight out to Munich, although my luggage didn’t make it.

About an hour before landing the pilot made an announcement that the wheels were frozen in the aircraft and we were unable to land. We were descending and you could visibly feel the wheels try to force themselves out. The pilot, however, insisted we would make the landing in the second attempt.

WOMP!—that's the sound the landing gear made as it sadly failed at trying to come out the second time. Whoosh!—the plane takes off again midair while I notice the mother to my right reading the emergency evacuation to her children.

Then the pilot informs us it’s just too cold and we’re going to have to land in Stuttgart. We do. But then the whole plane has to board a bus and trek to Munich for four hours. I can’t call my grandpa—who, remind you, I am meeting for the first time—so I borrow a random phone to let him know what’s going on.

In the end, I make it to Munich at 5am to a more-than-happy-to-meet-me grandpa. Talk about making a great first impression! But my luggage didn’t for another three days.

Not as awkward as this first visit to meet German relatives:

Here’s one last reader, Nicole, who ends on an uplifting note:

I left town on a whim. No planning, no expectations—and most importantly, as always—no traveling companion. Just me, my thoughts, my desires, and my money.

On Thursday afternoon during my lunch hour, I booked a room downtown in Montreal, just off Saint Catherine. On Friday after work, I headed north out of Vermont. Immediately upon my arrival, I noticed a wild party in the center square, Place Émilie-Gamelin. House music, flashing lights, half-dressed men in leather—Holy stroke of luck! Fierté Montréal! Gay Pride weekend! Just need to drop off my bags! A block to the hotel, and …

The front desk attendant spoke only French. We flung incomprehensible words at each other until we landed on one we both understood: “Reservation?”

“Yes! Yes, I have a reservation!” I replied.

“Nom de famille?” she asked.

I showed her my credit card to display my name. She looked at me and shook her head. “Un moment,” she said as she picked up the telephone.

She spoke a few sentences in French to the person on the other line, and then handed me the phone. “Hello?”

“Nicola?” said the masculine voice on the other line.

“Yes?”

“Sorry. We did not think you were coming. We cancel your reservation.”

“What? Cancelled? WHY?”

“Check-in is 3.”

“So it’s MANDATORY check in at 3.”

“Sorry, cancelled. If you would like to rebook, it’s $390.”

“$390? My original reservation was for $265.”

“Yes, but now this is late booking. Price increased.”

I was decidedly irritated. But honestly, what could I do? I was in another country, it was Pride weekend, and I had no internet or cell phone. “Fine. $390.”

“And you need to pay cash.”

“Cash? I don’t HAVE cash. I only have a credit card on me. I barely just arrived in the country.”

“You can use the cash machine to take money,” he said. “If you want to use credit card, there is an additional 10%, so it will be $429.”

“Ok, no. Cash it is. I just need to find an ATM.”

I walked a block away, found an ATM, withdrew $500, and returned to the hotel.

“$395.”

“$395? You just told me $390.”

“$5 charge for the room key.”

“I am alone, I don’t need an extra room key.”

“Each key is $5.”

“So the room comes with ZERO room keys? How would I get into the room I paid for without the key?”

She shrugged her shoulders, “Sorry. No English.”

Frustrated, I paid the $395, took the key and headed to my room.

I put my bags down. The room was, not unsurprisingly, unkempt.

Ok. Scam or not, I have no recourse for action. I have two choices here, and justice AIN’T one of them: So I can either let this ruin my trip, OR I can shake it off and just roll with it.

“I choose the latter,” I thought.

Many people would have argued persistently. Maybe they’d have won the room at the lower charge. Maybe not. Maybe they’d have told the front desk to get lost and tried to find another hotel. Maybe they’d have ended up spending even more money. Maybe they’d have just driven right back home. But the frustration and anger would settle on them and envelope them.

And in that moment, I realized how lucky I actually am to be a person who CAN choose to shake things off. I CAN choose to be happy. And even in unjustified defeat, ultimately the ability to choose happiness is the greater reward in life.

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 I’d 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 I’d 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 I’d be stuck in Barcelona for a week, I decided to call a guy whom I’d met in the Copper Canyon of Mexico several years earlier. We’d only hung out for an afternoon, but he’d given me his sister’s phone number and told me to give her a ring if I was ever in Barcelona, as she’d know where he was. I called and explained as best I could that I knew Marcos. She said, “He’s right here, hold on.”

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, I’m still based in Barcelona and am grateful to those thieves.

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 “mountain” I briefly saw was actually a volcano, actively emitting steam and/or ash (this is apparently its usual baseline status):

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 wasn’t somewhere one would choose to spend time on purpose. There’s an on-site “hotel” so I figured I’d 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 didn’t 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-friend’s 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 know—right then and there—that it's bad? Well, that happened just as I was swallowing one of the oysters ... and it was too late.

I figured I’d been building an iron constitution with all of the street cart food I’d been eating for the last couple weeks, so I wasn’t that worried. I went back to my hotel and right on cue: vomiting, chills, fever, that weird “I have food poisoning buzzing feeling,” 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: “MRS (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: “MRS (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 I’ve ever taken. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard.

Oysters are still the only food I won’t eat.

If you also have a horror story from hors d’oeuvres, shoot us a note. In the meantime, bon appétit:

I was in Barbados in a rural bar, hungry. I asked for food and they said they had one thing. And that’s how I had pickled chicken feet for dinner. It was sloshed out of a big bin.

Update from Jacob, an “11th grader and avid fan of The Atlantic”:

As a high school student, I haven’t had too many bad travel experiences, but this one’s 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.

I’m 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 I’ve 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.

I’m not sure why the universe saw fit to punish me that way. I have a sneaking suspicion that my weak little white stomach couldn’t handle the platters of traditional Korean food I'd been tucking away the entire trip. It must have been those “specialty” highland mushrooms.

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 6'4”) and declared that he would “get his gun and come back to shoot us.” 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: “Me Turk. No problem.” 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.  

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:

I’m 19 years old on train from Lviv to Kiev. It’s an overnighter and I’m booked in a 2nd class sleeper car which has four bunks on each side. I’m scared out of my mind when I realize I’m the only woman in the compartment. The men see that I’m freaking out and find a translator to explain (actual words): “We want to reassure you that your body is safe and we will not rape you as you sleep.” Thanks?  

1) I started a flight with a guy interrupting me while I was reading just so he could tell me that he “might grab my knee” because he’s “afraid of flying.” I replied, “the fuck you will.” Then he proceeded to vape for the entire flight. When I pointed out that it’s 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 “climb over my lap, baby.”

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 didn’t move his eyes off me. I don’t 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 ‘90s:

I’m 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 I’m 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 it’s 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, I’m 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 I’m the only person on board who isn’t 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 I’ve just been trying very hard to focus on the Robert Anton Wilson book I’m 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 I’m 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 I’m okay. After we’re all sure I’m fine, the guy says, “It’s too bad he ran off. I was going to hold him so you could kick his ass.”