What's the biggest travel mistake or mishap you've experienced?

BCoetzer

BCoetzer

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I once booked a hotel through a reputable website, and when I arrived, the hotel didn't exist, despite having a booking confirmation number, photos of the hotel, and even finding it on Google Maps, etc.

What's the biggest travel mistake or mishap you've experienced?

Lost luggage, passport drama, missed flights, tried a local delicacy and immediately regretted it?
 
BCoetzer said:
I once booked a hotel through a reputable website, and when I arrived, the hotel didn't exist, despite having a booking confirmation number, photos of the hotel, and even finding it on Google Maps, etc.

What's the biggest travel mistake or mishap you've experienced?

Lost luggage, passport drama, missed flights, tried a local delicacy and immediately regretted it?
Click to expand...
What was the end result of this?
 
- online flight booking aggregators will let you book a connection through Schipol airport with only 30min between your arrival and next departure times ... despite needing to go through customs in-between ... did that once, I miraculously made the next flight, my checked baggage did not

- the other mistake I knew was most likely going to be a mistake as I made it, but foreign country, tired after long flight, desperation etc etc etc ... got into a taxi at Moscow airport, got charged stupidly high rates as every 2nd taxi it seems is just a scam ... got my own back with a chargeback in the end, although they also cloned the card and tried to buy stuff with it
 
Woke up in strange country after a 8 hour flight.
Was one hell of a stag party.
At least me mates were kind enough to make sure that when I woke up the air hostess gave my passport to me.
No credit cards, the days before cell phones, no cash, nothing except me clothes I was in.
Begging outside an International Airport for some change to phone a friend.
I made it back in time for the wedding.
Bastids.
 
Thought we were being clever, on route to Sydney we decided to connect via Singapore. Just R50 each extra for a whole extra continent.

Horrible experience (but interesting).
Weren't allowed to leave customs there, so had to bargain our way for a long time with officials to get on to a short tour.
We were young so had their cops eyeing us suspiciously, they execute youngsters with drugs. No, we didn't have drugs on us, but still made us krap ourselves.
We ended up awake for about 24 hours, and had to do similar on the return flights.
You can't really breathe properly there, it's insane temperatures and humidity.
Never stopped raining.
 
Been in and out of Cape Town by air at least 100 times.
When I get back, I display the Permanent Resident Permit along with my British passport to Immigration
Returning from Botswana on 10th April, HA chappie asked for my ID book
I explained that I had lost it when my car was stolen in 2023. I had applied several times at HA in Wynberg and Barrack Street for a replacement green ID book, but they are not issuing it. This fellow did not want to hear that and said he was entitled to deny me entry to SA. I asked for his supervisor, which seemed to make him more annoyed.
I was put in a 5m x 5m room with single steel airport chair for 45 mins. During that time I tried to call HA in Pretoria, but the phone was not answered. At length the door opened and a HA lady came in and wanted to know why I was there. I started to explain, she interrupted and asked if I was a PR. When I said I was, she said I must leave now as they were going off duty
I walked out, no-one was at Customs and my driver was still standing there
 
Checked in to my room, settled for an hour and was summarily chased out by the Thai prime minister's bodyguards and intelligence goons. They insisted they take the enire floor despite only needing 5 rooms. I'd hardly had time to get up from my bed and they were in the room checking behind every picture and under everything for bugs.
 
Worked in Accra, Ghana in 1995 and found on arrival that their communications infrastructure left a lot to be desired. I needed to notify my wife of my safe arrival and trying to call her just drove my blood pressure up the ying yang! I finally sent a fax to her and received a completed message and thought all was good. It turned out that the fax is still in the ether and my wife assumed that all was good due to no news being good news.
 
Not sure I would call them mishaps, mostly just annoying stuff.

Actual mishap was that good old rule they have of “make sure you pack your own bag”. Travelled with my family for a funeral and unbeknownst to me my father had slipped my bathroom bag into the box I was carrying on with me, whereas it was meant to be in my checked-in luggage as I had packed it. What I forgot about was the rather large knife in said bathroom bag and now I’m being interrogated after it was scanned fighting and arguing with security because there’s nothing like that in there. After opening it up (super sealed with sellotape) I immediately knew what they were talking about and it looked dodgy as hell of course and had to relinquish it to them right there as there was no time to make a plan.

Then a very weird oopsie was travelling for work with a colleague who had his ankle re-broken a few days before so he is space booted and in a wheelchair, and on arrival at Heathrow we get a chaperone and we get guided around back alleys and weird walk ways being handed over from one staff member to another. Somehow in all this we entirely skip customs and realise but hang on if we don’t get stamped how are we going to get back out of the UK when we need to leave in a week’s time and then a massive pain in the ass to reverse the way had come and explain to each person in the chain what happened and we need to get back in the normal loop to go through customs and get our luggage. If I had 5kg of cocaine on me this would have been great, but this was not the case. Ironically upon leaving the UK it was super strict and we had endless **** with them checking his wheelchair and body searching us both and triple checking our luggage and all that.

Another cockup another time was a flight to Kenya and I didn’t realise they had somehow misspelt my surname on the boarding pass. This ended up causing them not to want to let me on the plane due to their ****up and in trying to fix it I missed the flight. The irony is hours later for the next flight there’s load shedding at OR Thambo and they end up running off work my passport for half an hour and then I get a HAND WRITTEN boarding pass making me question deeply how much of an issue the one letter of my surname really was in the first place as this one was almost illegible.

Other shenanigans was every time I flew back from Sri Lanka the Uber taking me to the airport would try to con me and make me pay for the tolls even though it’s included in the fare. I always pay my hotels with the last cash I have so I don’t struggle with currency and so I would just say sorry buddy I have no money and it’s included in your Uber fee. Each time the ****ers would drop me off and then circle around the airport afterwards to try rack up the trip miles and every time I’d log a dispute there and then and get the entire thing refunded because the evidence is so clear they are abusing the system.

Other mishaps are just the usual like almost missing flights because I fell asleep in the lounge or got somehow distracted but never managed to actually do it.

I had one very exciting run through Dubai because I got put on the wrong bus getting off the plane and ended up on the wrong side of the airport entirely and needed to make it all the way to the other side in 20min.
 
Hung my laptop on the side of a luggage trolley but forgot it was there so I boarded the plane without it. Someone scored a nice free laptop :cautious:

It was early morning and I was still half asleep, ok?
 
lkswan747 said:
Worked in Accra, Ghana in 1995 and found on arrival that their communications infrastructure left a lot to be desired. I needed to notify my wife of my safe arrival and trying to call her just drove my blood pressure up the ying yang! I finally sent a fax to her and received a completed message and thought all was good. It turned out that the fax is still in the ether and my wife assumed that all was good due to no news being good news.
Click to expand...

Ha ha ha, this reminds me of landing in Nairobi for some reason.

You land at Nairobi International and it feels very first world and fancy much like Cape Town international or OR Thambo.

Then you take maybe a 200m walk across to the Domestic side of things which is a different building and airport entirely on the same premises and all of a sudden you are in third world Africa. No air conditioners, building rubble in front of the windows and not much in the way of seating so hundreds of people are sloshing around everywhere.

To my great amusement were the Americans coming to find their “African” roots and very quickly realising this isn’t what they signed up for. More so had a good laugh at their passports not rolling out the red carpet for them like they are used to and had to queue while the rest of us real Africans basically just walked through.

Saw them again briefly in Mombasa and by now they were truly shitting their pants. 🤣
 
wbot said:
Hung my laptop on the side of a luggage trolley but forgot it was there so I boarded the plane without it. Someone scored a nice free laptop :cautious:

It was early morning and I was still half asleep, ok?
Click to expand...

Oh **** you just reminded me of a ****up I made the first time I went to Sri Lanka.

Landed and did customs and everything and quickly went to pick up a local SIM card so I could get online and order an Uber.

Only problem was as I was about to get in the Uber the driver asked if I didn’t have any luggage…I had simply left it under the counter where I had gotten the SIM card and walked away with literally all my **** in there.

Fortunately they had held on to it and I quickly collected and was on my way, but just imagine the ****up if that was stolen.
 
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