my best travel story

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Best Short Travel Stories: 15+ Bloggers Share Their Favorite Travelling Story

Table of Contents:

Every tourist has at least a few interesting travel stories to share. The more you are exploring the world, the greater the chance that you have experienced something unique. We’ve asked our blogging friends to share their most memorable experiences. Check out these awesome short travel stories and get inspired!

Best Travel Stories Including Romance

Love at first lettuce.

by Juliette from Snorkels To Snow blog

4 years later the hunky builder became my husband.

Adventure With A Stranger In France

by Barbara from Jet Settera blog

After our short meeting, we kept on chatting for about a month on Facebook and then we decided to meet up in Florence in a hotel room and explore Tuscany together.

We agreed on the itinerary and he flew in from Vienna and I arrived from Milano. We rented a Fiat500 and we traveled all around Tuscany for a long weekend.

We visited some of the most romantic cities in Italy , such as Siena, Lucca, Pisa, and Cinque Terre. It was an amazing adventure together.

We had lots of fun on the trip and we went on more trips after that. The conclusion of the story was that sometimes it is good to come out of your comfort zone and take a chance on a stranger, maybe he will be an excellent travel partner.

Scary Travel Stories That Will Give You Chills!

Jumped by an adult puma in the bolivian jungle  .

by Aaron from The Dharma Trails blog

Cheap, Bolivian vodka . That’s what got me there. Isolated, deep in the Bolivian jungle, with an apex predator wrapped around my body (and hot breath on my face).  

Volunteering at a Bolivian animal sanctuary I saw all kinds of monkey bites and scratches. It was common for backpackers to show off their fresh wounds at the end of each day. But no one had a story like this…

The weekly volunteer party got out of hand (the night before). Those with the appropriate big-animal training didn’t wake up or sign in to the morning’s meeting. I was there. Hungover, but there.   So, I agreed to help out with the puma (even though it normally requires months of training and animal integration/familiarity).

After an hour of trekking through the jungle, one of the team members and I reached the puma’s enclosure. The huge cat growled at me with a distinct sense of dislike. But that didn’t stop us from continuing our task.   We entered the caged area, attached two ropes to the puma’s “collar” and begun to walk him through the jungle.   

The puma, completely unpleased with my intrusion, stepped forward hesitantly. After only a couple of minutes, he stopped, looked back at me, and growled directly into my eyes. I watched helplessly as the puma leaped 10ft into the air towards me. In a split-second, his powerful legs wrapped around my waist, arms wrapped around my throat and fangs pressed into my forehead.  

I heard my team member scream. But I couldn’t move. Completely still, I assumed the worst. Yet, somehow it felt completely natural. The circle of life. The scream faded as I began to lose consciousness. Then, all of a sudden, I was released.   The animal let me go and stepped backwards.  

After swearing profusely, my team member yelled “stick your palm out towards him”. For some reason, I did.   The huge cat stepped back towards me and licked it. And, that was it. He knew that I knew, who was king of the jungle. After that we were friends.  

Volunteering with animals is a great way to give back while you  eco travel . Just be sure to pick places with adequate training if you don’t want to have bad travel stories like mine!

Getting Arrested in Gansu, China

by Wendy from the Nomadic Vegan blog

My short story about my travel experience is from Asia. On our first trip to China , one of the destinations my husband and I were most looking forward to, was visiting the Labrang Monastery. Located in remote Gansu province in the west of China , Labrang is a holy site and a place of pilgrimage for Tibetan Buddhists. 

At that time, neither one of us spoke any Chinese, and we were finding it frustratingly difficult to get where we wanted to go. We didn’t understand why all the bus drivers were refusing to let us get on the buses heading towards the transport hub from where all onward transport to Labrang left.

When one of them finally did let us on, he then forced us to get out on the outskirts of town, well before we reached the bus station. Confused, and not knowing what else to do, we started walking in the direction we thought the station was in. We didn’t get far before two police cars skidded to a halt next to us, and we were suddenly surrounded by six cops wearing S.W.A.T. badges on their sleeves.

They brought us to the head of the prefecture, who luckily was a very friendly Tibetan man who spoke enough English to explain what was happening. Unbeknownst to us, the Chinese government had recently made that part of Gansu off-limits to foreign tourists in light of protests by ethnic Tibetans in the area.

After treating us to a tasty lunch of vegetarian Chinese food , the head of the prefecture drove us back across the prefecture border himself and made sure that we got on a bus back to where we had come from.

We never made it to the Labrang Monastery on that trip, but at that point, we were just happy not to be in a Chinese jail. As I write this, we are in Mongolia, planning to cross back into China in a couple of weeks. We have been told that Labrang has reopened for foreigners, so 10 years later we are going to give it another shot. Hopefully, we don’t get arrested this time and we will only have amazing travel stories to share!

Snake Attack In Vietnam

by Lina from Divergent Travelers blog

We were just about to take a final stretch of country road and head onto highway 1 for the next leg when we saw something in the road ahead of us.

It was up ahead of Jon and it was the kind of thing you couldn’t really tell what it was until you were right on top of it. In an instant, we saw Jon whip his legs up as a huge snake lunged at his leg when his scooter sailed next to it. I was mortified as I am very afraid of snakes. The last thing I wanted was to have this thing striking at me as we cruised by.

We pulled over, laughed, and discussed the size of it while noticing a local man running down the road with a long stick. He was hollering at us excitedly and pointing at the road. Apparently, snakes of that size are worth well over 1.2 million dong and the man was bursting with excitement about catching the venomous beast.

Asking where it went, he moved into the grass at the edge of the rice field in pursuit. The movement caused the snake to flee into the rice paddies and the local man immediately gave chase into what became a dance between him and the snake. Each challenged the other until the man lept to the opportunity and seized the snake by the head with his bare hands.

He smiled proudly as he came back to the road, showed off the snake then as swiftly as he appeared, left us standing there while he made his way down the road back to his house. Snake in hand. You don’t see that every day! It was definitely one of these fun travel stories that we will never forget.

Dangerous Night Trip In Peru

by Danielle from the Like Riding Bicycle blog

Not every travel story is fun. I have many scary travel stories to share, including the one from Peru. Many years ago, when I’d just started traveling , I took a bus going through parts of the Amazon… at night. Apparently, this wasn’t the best call. Around 3 am I was alarmed to wake up to the bus stopped, and a man in a black mask with a huge black gun pointed at us all. He yelled in Spanish and everyone’s hands went up into the air, so I flung mine up following suit. Before long the men were marched off the bus, leaving us women, hands still in the air, to wait for what would come next.

I had a moment in which I thought: “What are they about to do with the men? What are they about to do with the women? What are they about to do with me, the only foreigner on the bus?” I was far from rich, but they didn’t know that.

After some time another man came on the bus, this time with a small silver pistol which he pointed at each of us as he robbed us blind. No one was physically harmed, though I knew that people who weren’t as fortunate to be a Westerner like myself lost more than they could afford to replace, which was a hard thing to realize. I couldn’t help, only sit there with my arms in the air.

So go to Peru – it’s amazing! – just don’t take a night bus through the Amazon!

Mutant Bugs Attack

by Nathan from Foodie Flashpacker blog

Although at the time it happened I wouldn’t have called it my best travelling story, now, looking back on it, it’s one of the best/funniest stories of my nearly three years of traveling. This all took place during my visit to Fez , Morocco in 2016.

The time I survived a direct attack to the face by killer mutant bugs from outer space. And then visited a vagina doctor with the world’s oldest x-ray machine to put my face back together again.

Long story short- one day I woke up with a face full of bug bites. The concerned guest house owner sent me to a pharmacist who then sent me to a doctor.

More specifically, I later learned, was that I had been sent to a gynecologist. We established that some large insects had attacked my face and I was in need of multiple medications. And, for reasons still unknown to me, an x-ray. At least I think he x-rayed me.

Being A Suspect In The Disappearance Of Girl In France

By James from The Portugal blog

One of the funny adventure stories that I have is from the time I found a 5-month housesit in the middle of the French countryside. It sounded idyllic, and perfect for me and my girlfriend at the time who had just started out as digital nomads. 

In reality, it wasn’t quite as idyllic as advertised. The biggest issue was the lack of internet; something which was supposed to have been installed by the time we arrived. But, we made do. We bought French sim cards with 3 GB of internet each (the max we could get at the time) and vowed never to look at YouTube or anything that might use lots of data for the entire 5 months.

It was all going perfectly until one day there was a knock at the door and two local French policemen were standing there. They began asking us what we were doing on the property and where the owners were. In the best French, I could manage, I explained the concept of house-sitting but I could see it wasn’t going over. 

Then, they showed us a picture of a girl who was missing. We hadn’t seen her and, in fact, didn’t know anyone in the town. We apologized that we couldn’t be of more help, thinking that was that. 

It wasn’t. One of the policemen then pulled out a printout of a forum conversation between the missing girl and someone who they believed was her biological father. Then in the forum conversation, they showed me a mobile number: my French mobile number. 

I didn’t know how to explain it apart from to say that it must be a typo, but that wasn’t good enough. They asked to see my computer and began looking through the search history. Then, obviously not buying my house sitting story, they asked where the owners were again.  

Unsatisfied, they told me to come into the station that afternoon for more questioning at 2 pm. I didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t enough time to find a lawyer or even a translator as they would probably have had to come from the nearest city. I opened Google Translate and tried to come up with as many useful sentences as I could, but it was hard to concentrate. 

At 2 pm on the dot I walked through the doors of the police station and when the policeman saw my worried face he burst out laughing. “Lucky for you, she showed up,” he said. And that, amazingly, was the end of that. I’ve never heard any more about this again. 

Lifechanging Short Travel Stories

Stepping out of a comfort zone in dubai.

by Michaela from Awe Inclusive blog

In 2014, I was scrolling through a Facebook group when I spotted a post claiming $200 roundtrip tickets to Duba (btw if you want to save on your next trip, check out this trip com coupon ). As is routine in that group, I confirmed the deal, checked my calendar, and booked tickets – no asking friends, no waiting for job approvals, and no overthinking. It would be my first trip alone.

I met Jibri during the layover. She got my attention and started chatting about travel deals and groups. During our small talk, I considered putting my earphones back in or making up a reason to excuse myself. Instead, I decided to embrace a new person and see where it could lead.

Not only did we exchange contact information to meet-up in Dubai, but we joined other travel group members who rented out a yacht for an afternoon cruise along the Persian Gulf.

It was totally outside of my comfort zone and totally what my comfort zone needed – to be stretched out of shape! I met amazing people and forged exciting friendships.

Dubai was life-changing. I learned to trust my abilities and instincts even when I had to improvise. I learned that strangers are just friends who haven’t met you. Most importantly, I learned that my suitcase was much lighter when I didn’t fill it with fear.

This year, I took a solo trip to Thailand and it was the absolute best. More solo trips are in my future as I continue to challenge myself to get uncomfortable and do more than I thought I could.

See also: Best travel stories from Thailand .

Beautiful Travel Friendship

by Viki from Chronic Wanderlust blog

I’ve been in Playa del Carmen, Mexico for a few weeks now for my divemaster training. I spent every day in the water with customers and my instructor. I loved it! We shared the boat with another dive shop and I started to notice that they were also training a divemaster to be.

She seamed to be my age and so I started talking to her. Janice is from Canada and also madly in love with the ocean and all things diving. We started to hang out more and more and even became very good friends then.

She left Mexico a few days before I left, but we managed to stay in touch. For almost two years now we talk several times a week, she helped me through many things as a stupid breakup.

Last year I told her I was going back to Mexico for a few weeks and if she wanted to meet me there. She told me that she couldn’t manage with work. I had wanted to see her so badly! And I knew she wanted to be in sunny Mexico with me as well.

I remember the 30th of December when she told me that she had just bought the ticket and will be in Mexico the next day! I was beyond happy, I was going to see my best friend again. I was going to see her for the second time in my life and yet she knows more about me than any other person that I see more often.

I love how friendships can last over distance and time zones. Meeting Janice is definitely one of the best solo travel stories that I have.

Best Adventure Travel Stories

Hawaii adventure.

by Carole from Berkeley and Beyond blog

Even though I have many short stories about traveling the world, I want to share the one from Hawaii. I’ll never forget the time I landed on the remote Hawaiian island of Molokai and was told, “We have a wedding and two funerals on the island, and so we have run out of cars.” It was at about the same time as a popular movie with a similar title was out, so the statement had a humorous overtone.

However, since this was hang-loose Hawaii , I was assured by a mellow employee that all would work out and so there was really nothing I could do but relax into it. The car agency arranged for (and paid for) a cab to deliver us to our condo so we could check-in, and told us that the next morning someone would pick us up and deliver us to the mule ride.

Done, though we did almost miss our morning ride due to confusion regarding the meeting spot, but the point is we didn’t  miss it, and we were told by that driver that our car would be waiting in the parking lot for us after our ride.

And there it was! Pure Molokai magic.

Visiting A Real Quechua Village

by Gabor from Surfing the Planet blog

Although Machu Picchu is simply indescribable, it turned out that a totally improvised adventure left a much stronger mark on us. When we were staying at a Couchsurfer’s place in Cusco, we asked him whether it would be possible to visit a real Quechua village.

He said we could try, although we would have to find it out ourselves since these Quechua communities live quite far in the Andes and there’s no public transport to get there.

In the end, we got very lucky, since looking for transport in Ollantaytambo, we found out that the local doctor and other social workers were going to visit some of these tribes and they let us join them.

We were really happy because we had the chance to stay in a Quechua community, learn about their traditions, see the colorful clothes they wear every day and take part in their daily routine for some time. We often had to use hand gestures to communicate, since most of these people don’t speak Spanish, only Quechua. This is one of our most interesting travel stories and a real heart-warming experience that we will never forget.

Funny Short Travel Stories

Mistaking a brothel for a massage spa in china.

by Talek from Travels With Talek blog

Ah… cultural confusion.  One weekend I was in a part of Beijing I was not familiar with and decided to get a massage.  I remembered what appeared to be a massage spa nearby. The location didn’t look exactly like a typical spa, but I went in anyway.

The inside of the location had all the spa-like features which reassured me.  However, when the hostess approached me, she appeared apprehensive and asked me something in Chinese. I pantomimed a massage.  She disappeared into a dark room behind a beaded curtain. I could hear her and another woman speaking animatedly.

After some uncomfortable moments, the woman returned and lead me to a dimly lit, rectangular room with a massage table in the middle. I positioned myself as I normally would. A different woman came in and gave me a lackadaisical massage for about an hour. I paid and went back to my hotel.

The next day my colleagues and I discussed our weekend. I mentioned my massage at a location next to the Wanda department store. “Oh! That’s a high-end brothel” they said. They’re probably still laughing.

Crazy Travel Stories

Free helicopter ride.

by Kris From Nomad By Trade

My favorite travel story is from a business trip I took to a small town in Kentucky. One morning, my co-worker noticed that there was a helicopter parked out on the hotel’s lawn, which we thought was odd but pretty cool.

That week, we ended up befriending the helicopter’s pilot and his wife and talking to them at breakfast and the evening periods of light snacks.

He somehow offered to take us up for a free ride, so one morning before work, we each took a turn hopping in his helicopter and flying up and over town. He banked, dipped, and shot up to the sky like a rocket during our jaunt through the Kentucky skies.

I still find it funny that I wouldn’t get in a car with a stranger, but I had no qualms about hopping in a helicopter with one. I’ve been traveling on an almost weekly basis for work for six years and that’s still one of the coolest things that I’ve gotten to do on the road.

My Birthday In A Private Castle Near Prague

Crazy Flight With A Hyperactive Child

by Alexis from World Travel Adventurers blog

We’ve had our fair share of unforgettable and funny travel stories as parents traveling with a spirited 2-year-old and 4 years old, but this one still takes the cake. We think every parent who has ever flown with young children can relate.

We were on our way home from Salt Lake City to Baltimore, which is a 5-hour flight, so my husband had the brilliant (or so he thought) idea to sedate our energizer bunny son (whose nicknames include Taz, tornado, hurricane, wrecking ball, the destroyer) to make the long flight easier.

Having a wild toddler restricted to a seat for 5 hours is no fun for anyone, but a sleeping toddler sounded much more appealing.

We had given him Benadryl before when he was sick and it put him right to sleep like a charm, so we thought we were in the clear. It turns out, some kids have the opposite reaction to Benadryl and turn into hell on wheels.

Well, our son turned into that kid. I think everyone on the flight, especially the person sitting in front of him, wanted to kill him or at least put him in a straightjacket and a muzzle. The flight attendant, who used to be a nanny, could tell early on that something was up and had a hunch it was from Benadryl gone wrong.

In the midst of his craziness, I took him to the bathroom at the front of the plane to change his diaper. When we headed back to our seats, he took off running down the aisle full speed ahead. He was so fast and agile (being much smaller than me and able to maneuver through the narrow aisle like a star football player) that I couldn’t catch up to him until he had run the entire length of the plane.

My husband said he saw a flash go by his seat, and then saw me running after yelling my son’s name. He thought it was hilarious. I did not. We can both laugh about it today and will NEVER make that mistake again.

So to all my fellow parents of traveling youngsters, beware and never use Benadryl for a stress-free flight unless you’ve tested it a few times and are sure that your child will not turn into a Tasmanian devil. Unless you want to add something to your funny holiday stories collection, then go for it.

Meeting The President Of Ecuador

by Dane from Holiday From Where blog

My best travel story is from a time I was in a small city called Salinas on the south coast of Ecuador . I was just hanging with a local friend and surfing every day before I started to head north. I kept hearing about this wave that was really good and you couldn’t surf because you had to sneak through an air force base to get to.

One day my friend was telling me it was going to be really good, so, we decided to try and sneak in. In hindsight, it was really stupid. We were crawling on our hands and knees through some bushes on the bad side of a shooting range while they were actively shooting. We made it to the beach got changed and ran for the ocean.

We were in the water for all of 15 minutes when two large me with AK-47s appeared on the beach and started to yell and whistle. We got a few more waves and went in. The men were extremely un-impressed and very angry.

We knew we were doing the wrong thing but obviously played dumb. As we were about to get dragged off a man and his wife came over a small dune and just walked up to us. The man asked us how our day was and if we had a good surf we replied we did and he just smiled at us and walked off.

As he did my friend informed me that it was the President. Everything happened so fast and in no time we were in the back of a military vehicle being taken to a small building. I was out a short time later with a stern warning never to return. 

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Did you enjoy reading this post? Share your best travel story in the comments below!

72 Responses

Love it! Thanks for including our story. Traveling opens you up to so many incredible (sometimes hilarious) experiences so it’s great to hear about other memorable moments from fellow travel addicts!

It’s our pleasure, Alexis! Your story is great, thanks for sharing it :)

Pinoy TV is one of the few international channels that provide high-quality entertainment.

These stories are great. Thanks a lot for sharing.

Thanks for the inspiration Karolina! Traveling the world is something I’ve always wanted to do, but have found it hard to make the leap.

Hey Karolina,

Very inspiring travel stories! Makes me want to book a flight now and create an amazing travel story ever told! ;) There is nothing more gratifying than traveling, yes you spend but you learn more. Been to many places and every story is just different and amazing!

These stories are inspiring and it makes me want to travel more. Cheers!

Some amazing stories in there! It’s amazing what opportunities can present themselves when you are travelling abroad.

There’s some incredible stories in there. It’s amazing to see what opportunities can present themselves to you when you are travelling abroad. We’ve got a lot of great memories and stories from our time abroad, can’t wait to get even more!

Getting arrested in China must have been an exciting experience. Luckily, no jail. So happy end.

Thanks for the inspiration Karolina!……,! great story

Glad I enjoyed the post! Thanks for sharing this.

You’re welcome!

The only way to achieve happiness is to cherish what you have and forget what you don’t have

I really liked reading your post! Very high quality content and useful information. With such a valuable blog I believe you deserve to be ranking even higher in the search engines.

Thanks for your comment, Maria.

Wow, interesting crazy stories! good stuff!

Incredible stories. Frankly, I envy people who travel freely, I hope that I succeed.

Such a kind of knowledge give by this stories.

Much Appreciated! Get your travel and tourism guide of top tourist places, attractions about travelling and exploration of the world.

Hey really Incredible stories.Appreciated your blog.Such interesting travel story.The details are very informative.I also love to travel.This stories inspires me to travel to my dream place.Looking forward to see more from you.

Thanks for your comment!

I’ve got no idea what I’d do if a snake lunged at me while on a scooter! Hopefully, I’d have the commonsense to hit the accelerator and keep going. Even non-poisonous snakes can be dangerous. And I’m guessing that the snake ended up as someone’s dinner or that seems be have been implied :/.

I also love to travel the world. Your story inspires me a lot

Your travel stories are awesome. I love to travel to other countries and experience every culture.

Wow, interesting crazy stories! good .

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Hey, it’s amazing way for our time . Thanks for sharing.

These short travel stories always teach me something new.

Its really amazing post for me. Thanks for sharing

Excellent post with rich knowledge for travelers. Thanks for sharing

Amazing stories! Thank you so much for sharing them. As a traveler it is exciting to hear new stories. It certainly makes you want to go out and travel again.

It was nice to be inspired by you, Karolina! Although I have always dreamed about traveling the world, I have struggled to make this step because it seems so risky.

Hey, I think it’s a great way to spend our time these days. That’s great that you shared that with us.

I love your all content keep share with us, keep shared with us.

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I have been wondering where to travel across Europe. And getting exposed to this amazing stories has energised my travelling plans and the countries to visit. Thanks so much for sharing such a wonder and useful stories. Looking forward for more stories.

I am really happy with the quality and presentation of the article. Thanks a lot for keeping great stuff.

Travelling is one of the best way to create memorable stories.

What a great idea for a post and a wonderful collection of stories!

Thank you for this great sharing!

Thank god! The housesitter did not have to go to a Chinese prison. The whole incident was quite amusing.

Thanks for this site i like it.

Article was very lovely and all stories are great

All stories are lovely and amazing.

There is no better way to create memorable stories than by traveling.

Traveling is one of the ways to create and be a part of stories. The travel stories in the blog are all interesting. I have also read stories on how travelers are set up by placing drugs in their luggage at airports.

Yeah however I am not sure if it’s true.

Thanks! i loved this site thanks for recommending.

Excellent post with rich knowledge for travelers.

Unforgettable

Such a great post thanks for sharing this with us and keep posting these are soo amazing.

There is no better way to create memorable stories than by traveling. :)

thank you so much

Thank you. you have explained almost everything.

Great post.Thanks for sharing. You have explained almost everything.

all the stories shared are good and well explained.

Thanks for sharing this article it was quite insightful.

Thanks for sharing such information. I appreciate your hard work

Great post, Thanks for the information provided! Your post is so awesome. Keep it work and share your amazing post with us. Thanks again!

Thanks a lot for sharing this post. Your travel story is so amazing.

Glad you enjoyed it, thanks!

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We are Karolina, Patryk, and Mia, the lazy traveling family. After spending 5 years as digital nomads, and living in many countries in the world, we decided to make Poland our base.

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Life-changing travel experience stories

There’s nothing like other travelers’ tales to get inspiration . When you are home longing to be on the road, or when you are on a journey wondering why you left the comfort of your house, submerge into these life-changing travel experience stories, beautiful tales of how a trip can alter the trajectory of your life .

I’m sure my regular readers are used to me talking about travel experiences . But for those who are discovering this little window to my soul called Experiencing the Globe , you can see that it all started with a bucket list of all the –surprise, surprise– travel experiences I want to have around the world.

The list is my goal in life, so I’m spending as much time as I can on the road. But when I’m home in between trips I seek inspiration in other travelers’ tales. I’ve read as many books about exciting journeys as I could put my hands on. And recently I got a hold of Lonely Planet’s Travel Goals: Inspiring Experiences to Transform Your Life .

It got me thinking of my own life-changing travel experiences . Like my transformation into a sustainable traveler after fully grasping what that meant for the planet and all the life in it. I have a trip to the Caribbean to thank for that. The first trip I took alone, when I was starting to test my boundaries, empowered me as a solo female traveler, and opened my eyes to a new world of possibilities! I’m so thankful I chose Italy , an amazing destination to explore on your own! I reaffirmed my faith in human kindness after spending a month in Iran , meeting the loveliest people I’ve ever encountered.  And the most literal life-changing travel experience, moving to Croatia after meeting the love of my life in this beautiful country that now I call home.

The book also encouraged me to ask other travelers if they had a story in their own travels that changed their lives in one way or another. I was overwhelmed with the beautiful tales… some of the best life-changing stories that’ll inspire you to travel!

Life-changing travel experience stories that’ll inspire you to travel

Collecting memories, not counting countries.

I want to start this series of tales with my own. As I told you, many aspects of my life have changed over the years due to a travel experience, but the one I want to elaborate on is the one that defined what my life would be. Traveling hasn’t changed me, it has made me. It’s who I am. Several trips to the south of Chile showed me where I was going. This is the story of how I became the person I am today:

My parents took me camping to the Chilean Lake District every summer while growing up. This was in the dark age, before the internet. Back then we had to rely on maps and guidebooks. So through the endless hours of our road trips, I kept myself entertained glancing at a map, reading about the small towns we passed, and convincing my folks to take a detour to visit some place that caught my attention.

During one trip I told them that I have decided I wanted to go everywhere in the world. After a few laughs, my dad told me about the Travelers’ Century Club (TCC), a group for people who have visited 100 or more of the world’s countries and territories. My eyes sparkled with the thought of being a member, and I made it my goal.

Obviously, I started asking to go to another country instead of the same National Park we always visited. They laughed again –conscious of the monster they have created– and offered a compromise: they’d take me to our neighbor Argentina, my first trip abroad, but I had to see more of my own country before I embarked on my adventure of visiting another hundred. I happily accepted.

See, what I immediately realized is that –as much as I wanted to be part of the TCC– the main reasons to travel should revolve around what I’ll get out of a trip –whether that’s meeting locals, tasting the typical cuisine, exploring nature, or adventuring into an activity– it shouldn’t be just to count countries . I know the “why you should travel” is super personal, but ticking countries off a list only because you put your feet there feels meaningless to me.

Why do people travel? Well, there are as many reasons as people traveling, but even if it is to get a tan while you’re permanently sipping from a cocktail, that trip will always be part of your story, so you should make the most of it.

After visiting every region in Chile, I started to go abroad. Nowadays, getting closer to 100 countries and territories of the TCC list properly visited, what I knew instinctively, transformed into lessons I learnt during my travels … What inspires me the most to hit the road is experiences, because they feed my adventurous soul –the TCC list (and my own bucket list) became the means to guide my journey, not an end themselves.

Spreading the word about the truth of traveling

Claudia’s life story is remarkably similar to my own. Being avid travelers changed the way we perceive a destination, and the story that should be told about it. We both left behind an academic career and repurposed our research abilities towards travel writing. Now we both blog from a distinct point of view. This is the story of how in a visit to Cuba she found her true calling:

“Cuba changed my life because it was nothing like I had expected it to be –quite the opposite, in fact. You see, being the avid traveler that I am, before my trip to Cuba I spent months reading just about anything I could put my hands on. If it talked about Cuba, I had to read it. Everything made it sound like traveling to Cuba would be easy, and locals would be generous and welcoming.

My time in Cuba was less than fabulous. Don’t get me wrong, it is a gorgeous country and now, a few years later, with much more traveling experience and understanding, I am ready to go again. But back then, it was awful. My 23 days there were a constant challenge to avoid scams –a challenge that a few times saw me succeed but that other times saw me fail miserably. It was frustrating. I felt I could not trust anybody. Where were the lovely Cubans everyone talked about in their blogs?

Cuba taught me that people lie, even (or especially) online. Because nobody really wants to say they have had a bad experience, and nobody is really interested in reading about others’ bad experiences –but is that really the case?

I decided there and then to be different. I decided that I had to warn others, tell them the truth, let them know what they should expect and what they should do to avoid scams. That’s why I opened my blog. It was just a pastime at the beginning.

Fast-forward 2 years and I realized that I did want to make an effort to make it work out. After all, what did I have to lose? My contract as a research fellow at the university had expired and I had no real prospect if not a series of menial short-term teaching jobs I was less than interested in. So, I gave blogging my heart and soul. And it worked. I’m a much happier person now. I love what I am doing. I wake up in the morning to face a long list of to-do things and I read it with a smile on my face, which is priceless.

Cuba changed my life. And despite all the frustration I felt back when I was there, it changed it for the best.”

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Encountering wildlife to find yourself

Camilla was looking for something, but she wasn’t sure what it was. Her heart lead her to India , and after that trip her life would never be the same. Animals can have different impacts in our life, but for this former vegan chef, one particular big cat meant more than anything. This is her story:

“January 2017. That’s the date I first arrived in India. By that time, I used to work as a freelance vegan chef in the hustling city of Paris. Having attended a 4-weeks course on yoga and Ayurveda, I had planned to spend the following month exploring this amazing country.

Little did I know that a special encounter would change my life forever.

Always an animal lover, over the years I had developed a passion for the most majestic of big cats: the tiger. The striped animal had somehow summoned me. To what reason and to convey what message I do not know, but to such a call one can hardly resist.

India is home to more than 60% of the world’s remaining wild tigers. The critically endangered species is highly protected, and the country has given to many of its national parks the status of Tiger Reserve.

It was time for me to see my first one in the wild.

With zero safari experience and many hours of research, I booked 4 drives in Ranthambhore, one of India’s most famous Tiger Reserves .

I will always remember the excitement before that first drive in the jungle, and I will never forget the distress of realizing that finding the elusive cat is no easy task. 

But all of a sudden, there it was. Glorious in its fierce black striped orange coat, a killer look and an attitude to die for. My first wild tiger.

That fleeting moment was enough to make me want more. Today, I have moved to Central India, prime tiger landscape of the world, and I have seen 103 different individuals. But every time I see those eyes, I feel the same excitement that I felt as a total beginner that day in Ranthambhore.”

Finding love in an unexpected place

Traveling is full of surprises. A spontaneous detour can change your life forever. Don’t I know it! A quick, unplanned stop in Split after exploring Dubrovnik ended up seeing me move continents for love. A simple recommendation of a town in The Philippines had the same in store for Alya. This is the tale of the trip that lead her to her husband:

“Meeting my future husband was definitely one of the most life-changing travel experiences I’ve ever had. We met 6 years ago in the Philippines. I was traveling alone around Southeast Asia for a couple of months. After completing my dive course in Gili Air Island in Indonesia and didn’t know where to go next. I was looking for a good place to learn to surf. My dive instructor told me about a small town on Luzon Island in the Philippines. It sounded like the perfect place for me. I bought a plane ticket immediately and two days later arrived in San Fernando.

The hostel I stayed at had a big dormitory with many beds. I met many travelers including Campbell. In fact, we had neighboring beds in the dormitory. He traveled alone as well and we liked each other, so we started going together to the beach, surfing and going out at night. By chance we had very similar travel plans and decided to continue our trip together.

We both like doing the same things, like surfing, diving and hiking. We left San Fernando and traveled around the Philippines together for 2 months. From there we went to Singapore. Unfortunately, I had to go back home, my 4-month holiday was over. We arranged to meet up again two months later in Nepal since we both had trekking to Everest Base Camp on our bucket list. So we did, it was our first multi-day trek together.

We met up a couple of times on the road again in different countries. After 6 months of on and off I decided to quit my job and join Campbell on his around the world adventure. Three years later we got married and decided to start a travel blog . In the last 6 years we’ve done hundreds of hikes, spent a year hitchhiking through Latin America, drove thousands of kilometers across Africa and walked seven Camino de Santiago routes.

Now I can’t imagine how my life would look like if I hadn’t gone to that place in the Philippines and had never met my husband.”

Giving is better than having

A trip to South East Asia gave Corritta’s life a whole new meaning. Possessions are overrated, true happiness comes from giving. She and her family left a comfortable life in the United States behind to fill their souls while making the world a better place. This is the tale of their journey:

“My life changing experience prompted me to sell our house, car and possessions to take off on a journey to see the world. That may seem a little extreme but let me explain. My first international trip was to Bangkok in 2018. I thought this trip would be a great way to get away from the stress in my life. It turned out to be a life altering experience that made me realize I was existing, not living. 

While in Bangkok we took a day trip to Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand and it changed my life. We learned how cruel animal tourism is and how we, as tourists, are unwitting accomplices. We support illegal pouching and animal cruelty by taking part in animal tourism. This includes taking pictures with large cats or monkeys and riding elephants. When we do these things, we are not only hurting the animals, we are ensuring things will never get better. I must admit I was never an animal lover but being up close and personal with elephants changed something within me. It made me want to give back.  

So, two years later, with my partner and our one-year old baby boy, decided to take off for a  family gap year .  We sold everything and left San Diego to live a life of service. We will use this time to give back to those less fortunate. 

When I left Thailand my definition of happiness changed. It was no longer associated with material possessions, but by the quality of life I wanted to live. I realized what truly matters is the love of your family. The Thai people with their families were happier than most Americans. So I decided to take back one of the most invaluable things in the world, time. Never forget, all the money in the world can’t buy you more time.” 

Small changes can make the world a better place

A trip to Australia developed plastic-issue awareness in Simona. Seeing how the tides brought tons of plastic to the shores made her change her approach to traveling. From carrying her own grocery bags and water bottle, little adjustments made her a much more responsible traveler. This is how her journey towards sustainability started:

“The first time ever I realized that plastic was a serious matter for our planet was during a road trip in Western Australia, almost 12 years ago.

We stopped at a supermarket along the Coral Bay coast to buy some groceries and the lady at the counter told us they didn’t sell any shopping bags to prevent plastic in the ocean and to help preserving the endangered turtles living in that area. After a first reaction of surprise, we gathered all our shopping in our arms and left, reflecting on what we had been told.

This was just one of the many experiences I’ve lived that made me more conscious about my impact and pushed me to adopt various habits to live and travel more sustainably. For example, after that trip, I am always carrying a cotton bag when I go shopping.

Our eco-honeymoon to Borneo was another life-changing experience that has strengthened my resolution to turn to a zero-waste lifestyle. I selected three ecotourism projects to visit. In Asia finding safe drinkable water is always a challenge, but we traveled with our water bottle, and we chose the right service providers engaged in sustainable travel so, with a little effort, we managed to avoid almost entirely the use of plastic during our trip.

However, we were seriously struck by our stay on Libaran Island, where a sustainable and turtle conservation project was launched 10 years ago. Despite the big efforts carried out by the project and the community in cleaning up the beaches and creatively re-use plastic, the shore is washed daily with tons of plastic coming from the tides. Walking on a carpet of plastic that almost prevented us from seeing the beach underneath was quite shocking.

Facing this global issue in person, raised in me a contrasting feeling of sadness and anger that soon turned into determination: to do as much as possible to reduce plastic in our life. Sometimes we may feel helpless in front of big problems, but we should be aware that small changes can actually make a difference!”

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Discovering happiness in simplicity

When her career and personal relations were failing, Soujanya decided to retreat to the mountains. The Himalayas were the perfect setting to get away from everything and regain perspective. In a small village she discovered that technology is overrated, and that what counts are real connections. This is how a trip to India changed her take on life:

“Back in mid-2019 I wasn’t in a good place in life. I was getting out of a serious relationship, I was burn out at my job, I had problems within my family, and the ever-increasing sense of loneliness had thrown me into a pit of depression. During that time, I turned to the only positive thing I had going on for myself, which was travel and blogging.

After some contemplation, I decided to quit my job to travel. I had saved up enough money that would last me 8-10 months so I didn’t give it much thought because I knew it was the only thing that would keep me from tipping over the edge.

The first thing I did after leaving my job was to head to the Himalayas in India. I spent a month in the Kinnaur and Spiti valleys in the state of Himachal Pradesh. The Kinnaur district was a breath of fresh air. The snow-clad mountain range in the distance, the lush green vegetation all around, the sparse population and the friendly people spoke to my soul.

There was one village called Chitkul , which lies on the Indo-Tibet border and has no cell connectivity, that helped heal me the most. A remote village with a population of less than a thousand people and only a handful of tourists, with nothing around it for many miles.

I spent my days sitting by the river, hiking to the nearby hills and walking through meadows. Just being there surrounded by the Himalayas, without any social media due to lack of connectivity, and making real connections with other travelers and the villagers had some sort of magical effect on me. Not only I have the best travel experience of my life, but the place also healed my mind. I came back happier than ever, with a renewed spirit, ready to enjoy everything that life had to offer.”

Uncovering a braver version of yourself

We all have that one thing we’d love to do but we’re too scared to try. A trip to Thailand taught Allison that life is what we made of it. Pushing her boundaries not only allowed her to have a ton of fun, but also gave her a new path, one in which she gets to do what she loves. This is her story, an encouragement for you to get out of you comfort zone too:

“Shortly after I graduated from college, I moved to a new state to start a full-time job. One day at work, I found myself wanting to go traveling. As I didn’t have any friends there, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to go on my first ever solo trip. So I quickly started doing research on where I’d like to go.

I had never traveled alone before, especially overseas, so I decided to sign up for a guided group that was going rock climbing in Thailand . This gave me a sense of security, being new to solo traveling. It felt like a great way to dip my toes into being alone and meeting strangers, but also doing something that sounded really fun and engaging for 2 weeks.

The entire Thailand trip forced me out of so many comfort zones that ended up being one of the big turning points of my life. The time I spent in Thailand navigating airports and taxis alone, meeting a group of complete strangers, and spending 2 weeks climbing with them in often remote parts of the country, ended up being one of the greatest experiences of my life. Up until this point I had always considered myself a ‘shy’ and ‘cautious’ kind of person, but this travel experience lit me up to become different. It showed me a brave, strong, and self-sufficient side of myself that went on to influence my life in dramatic ways when I returned home.

When I got back, I pretty much dedicated my life to spending as much time as possible outdoors whether that be climbing, hiking, or backpacking… essentially doing things that I once thought I wasn’t ‘capable of’ or was ‘too scared of’. Today, roughly 6 years later, I’m an outdoor empowerment coach and backpacking educator.

My trip to Thailand was the spark that I needed to make that change. It showed me what was possible. I don’t know if it was the people I met, the experiences I had, or the beauty of traveling in Thailand – likely a bit of all of it– but whatever it was, it changed the trajectory of my life, and I’ll forever hold Thailand (and all the people I met) in a special place in my heart.”

A leap of faith towards a new life

Getting to visit a new place after a business trip is nothing out of the ordinary. For most people. For Derek and Mike it was literally life-changing. After a quick trip to Copenhagen , they packed up and started a new chapter of their lives as expats in a different continent. This is the tale of their journey:

“In November 2016 we had a life-changing travel experience in Copenhagen, Denmark. My partner Mike was asked to make an unexpected business trip to the city to help with a project. His company had recently acquired another company in Denmark, and he was asked to help with the integration. He flew there from our hometown, Philadelphia, with only a few days’ notice, and on his first day in the office they asked if he would stay a few weeks longer. He agreed but asked for time off during the American Thanksgiving so that I could fly to Denmark and take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy a cheap trip to Europe with no-cost lodging and some meals expensed.

We loved getting to check out a city that we didn’t have on our travel bucket list before this opportunity came about. We did a few tours, visited the Christmas markets and dined out. At one restaurant we got to try the Christmas traditional Danish meal . I enjoyed Copenhagen for 5 days and Mike remained there for work until the end of November.

On his last night in Denmark, he had dinner at his boss’ home. They shared a meal with a lot of wine and then Mike called me when he got back to his hotel. I could hear the excitement in his voice. He asked if I liked Copenhagen, which seemed odd because he knew I enjoyed myself when I was there. Then he asked if I liked it enough to move there, because on that final night, his boss asked if we would take an expat assignment in Denmark.

We didn’t hesitate to accept and our life abroad began almost right away. That trip to Copenhagen was certainly life-changing!”

Learning to fully appreciate what’s in front you

No matter how much you have traveled, there are places that will bring up the best of you. No matter how much there is still to see, some places will take your breath away and will forever stay in your heart. A trip to Antarctica transformed Wendy into a student. She acquired as much information as she could to fully absorb the beauty that she was about to witness. And now she is longing to go back. This is her story:

“Before my cruise from Ushuaia to Antarctica , I was already quite well-traveled. I had visited about 75 countries and seen plenty of natural beauty before. But all of that paled in comparison to the White Continent. The Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina had mesmerized me just days earlier, but now I was seeing dozens, even hundreds, of sparkling white glaciers practically everywhere I looked. These landscapes were so different from anything I’d ever seen that it felt like I’d traveled to another planet.

On the times when the weather was bad, and on the long days of crossing the Drake Passage between Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica, I soaked up every bit of knowledge that I could about this snow-and-ice-covered land. Our ship, the MV Ushuaia, was manned by a full staff of scientists and lecturers who were experts in a number of relevant topics, from geology to ornithology. When we were out on the high seas with nothing to do, these experts held lectures on the flora, fauna, history and geology of Antarctica, and I attended every single one.

When we stopped at the British base at Port Lockroy on Goudier Island, I grilled the staff there with questions about how I too could go live and work on the island. And while that dream never materialized, my memories of Antarctica are still sharp in my mind 11 years later, and I still dream of returning one day.

Such an expensive voyage would normally be the trip of a lifetime, not a return destination. But if you’re willing to try your luck, sharply discounted last-minute deals can be found at the port in Ushuaia a day or two before departure. In recent years, these huge discounts have become few and far between, as most ships fill up months in advance. But still I’m thinking of a return trip to Antarctica for some more adventure!”

No matter where you go, every single place in the world has the potential to change your life! Tell me in the comments if you’ve had any life-changing travel experiences!

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16 thoughts on “Life-changing travel experience stories”

Wow this is really amazing,I pray that I will be opportuned to travel around the world one day

Sometimes we think it’s a far away dream because it’s dangerous, or expensive, or because we can’t take time from work. I’m aware that for some people it’s actually quite impossible due to their passport or the political situation in their country. For others, their responsibilities are far too great to leave behind. But for most of us, it’s just a matter of priorities. Don’t wait until you have all the money you think you need, or all the time you’d like to spend on the road. Just go! Even if it’s a weekend trip to your neighboring city, or to the countryside close to your place. You got to start somewhere, and every trip has the potential to be life-changing! Let me know how it goes! 🙂

I was looking for inspiration, and inspiration I found. I can’t travel at the moment, but I’m already thinking of how to be more sustainable on my next trip. Thank you all for sharing!

That’s amazing to hear, Dani! Welcome to the sustainable traveler’s team! 🌱

I googled inspiring travel stories to see if my day could be picked up, and I’m so glad this popped up! Lovely stories, super inspiring! I can’t wait for the pandemic to be over to create some travel stories of my own ❤️

Awww! I’m so happy to read your comment, Monty! Hopefully the pandemic will be under control soon and you’ll get to have some travel stories too. Make sure you tell me about them!

Beautiful tales! I can’t wait to start traveling again. Travel already has changed my life, but I’d be happy living through any of the wonderful experiences described here!

When you get to travel again, keep an open mind and an open heart… amazing experiences will happen! ❤️

Very inspiring stories! Thank you for sharing them!

It was a blast to write this, and collect other wonderful tales!

Love all these stories! Love how travel has shaped everyone!

In one way or another, every trip makes us a bit different. It was great to get these wonderful travelers to share their stories -now I’m sure it’s not only me who is deeply changed by travel!

These are all such inspiring stories! Really goes to show you how much travel can impact your life. Thanks for sharing!

It’s crazy how much travel can change us, and how much we can learn from it, no matter where we go!

I loved reading this! All of the stories are such an inspiration! I can’t wait to get back on the road 😍

In times of armchair travel, nothing like beautiful stories to keep the wanderlust up, right? ❤️

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Our favourite travel stories of all time

By Melinda Stevens

Our team of writers and photographers have travelled all over the world for Condé Nast Traveller . We've gone to the frozen edges of the earth and into the most chaotic cities, journeyed across expansive deserts and sought out the most peaceful countryside. Here, we ask our team for the one piece that has stuck with them over the years – the story that transports them straight to the streets of Kolkata or the backwaters of Papua New Guinea. These are the stories we keep going back to, to inspire your armchair travel.

This is our directory of escapism: our favourite travel stories.

A solo road trip through the Atacama Desert

CHOSEN BY MATT BUCK, PHOTOGRAPHIC DIRECTOR

‘I often think about this trip while I’m on the normally horrendously overcrowded tube journey into work because it is the polar opposite to that experience. No people for miles and miles, just empty space and some of the most beautifully arresting scenery on the planet. Like a mental first-aid kit.’

Read the story: The Atacama Desert: take the long way from Argentina to Chile

Exploring the faded splendour of Kolkata

CHOSEN BY MELINDA STEVENS, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

‘Steve King's piece is so beautiful. But it also marked a turning point for the magazine. In it, he consciously doesn't seek out the new, young or hip – he goes absolutely into the heart of the old city of Kolkata with all its brilliant bluster. It reminds us that travel is about other – and difference – and not about the world becoming a carbon copy of itself.’

Read the story: a travel guide to Kolkata, India

St Petersburg: Russia's regal city

CHOSEN BY ISSY VON SIMSON, EDITOR

‘There is a kind of symbiotic magic between Jonathan’s words and Alistair Taylor- Young’s pastel dreamscape photographs. Here is the city distilled into its purest essences: music, art and culture. Jonathan takes us deep into it, to the apartment of one of the greatest poets, to encapsulate what St Petersburg means in the tiny trinkets, ashtrays and relics of a time gone by. It’s a usefully directional piece – do this, go here – neatly spun into a delicious story.’

Read the story: St Petersburg, Russia – a guide

Trip out in Salta

CHOSEN BY PETE WINTERBOTTOM, CREATIVE DIRECTOR

'Jonathan Bastable's piece on Salta, Argentina's far north-west, is what Traveller does best. Transporting the reader to some of the most remote areas on the earth. Alistair's opening image of the Cono De Arita Volcano is just mesmerising, standing at a 150 metres high, it looks like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean.'

Read the story: Salta and the puna desert, Bolivia '

Japan's spiritual heartland: the Kii Peninsula

CHOSEN BY SARAH JAMES, ONLINE ASSOCIATE

‘I remember reading this on one of my first days at Condé Nast Traveller and being completely transported by Jenny Zarins’ dreamlike photographs to a part of Japan I’d never really heard anything about. I’d always been drawn to the country’s mega-cities, but Charles Spreckley’s story of his journey into this mountainous region of storytelling and tradition after living in Tokyo for 15 years put Japan firmly at the top of my save-up-for travel wishlist.

Read the story: Kii Peninsula, Japan – the top things to do '

Prince Edward County: Canada's coolest island hideout

CHOSEN BY TABITHA JOYCE, DEPUTY DIGITAL EDITOR

‘This piece instantly made me want to pack my bags and get on a flight to Canada , having had no previous urge to do so at all. I'd never even heard of Prince Edward County before. But that's the whole point of travel writing – to eek out cute corners of the world for others to discover. What could be nicer than a place where everyone is able to leave their front doors unlocked and their car keys in the ignition?’

Read the story: Prince Edward County on the edge of Lake Ontario, Ontario, Canada

Go off-grid on safari in Namibia

CHOSEN BY PAULA ELLIS, ART DIRECTOR

' Alistair Taylor-Young’s photographs have such majesty and beauty, the landscapes feel so textural and epic. I'm reminded of a trip I made to this extraordinary country in 2000. This story is my go-to for a dose of wild off-grid adventure.’

Read the story: Safari holidays in Namibia

Osaka, Tokyo's feisty little sister

CHOSEN BY KATHARINE SOHN, ASSISTANT TO THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

‘This piece from Japan’s fun-loving city has a sense of wonderment and excitement. There is something so mesmerising about the bright urban lights of Japan and the odd dichotomy of endless movement yet complete tranquillity of the people. And the food is enough of a reason to visit this street-food capital.’

Read the story: Download the March 2020 issue from the App Store

CNT Editors

CNT Editors , CN Traveller

An Insider's Travel Guide To New Orleans

CHOSEN BY GRAINNE MCBRIDE, CHIEF SUB-EDITOR

‘I love reading pieces about places I've yet to visit – both for inspiration and escapism. Yet my favourite story is about somewhere I have already been. Timothy immediately embeds us in the crazy, free-wheeling, live-for-the-minute clamour of NOLA, a city of beaded houses, blaring brass and the coolest creatives you'll ever meet.’

Read the story: An Insider's Travel Guide To New Orleans

The Arctic islands of Svalbard

CHOSEN BY ROSALYN WIKELEY, CREATIVE CONTENT EDITOR

‘Sorry to dash tropical expectations but I’ve always been drawn to cold, cruel and hauntingly pretty landscapes – the further north or south (and more silent), the better. I love how Michelle Jana Chan's evocative piece on Svalbard explores the psyche of its people – chipped, battered yet fortified by howling winds, unforgiving temperatures and shifting light. “You come here for the remoteness; for the silence; to feel the air whooshing into your lungs… and above all, to remember your unimportance” It’s that depth of humility found in the clutches of nature’s wrath that I find so pure and thrilling and this piece captures it beautifully.'

Read the story: Holiday in Norway's Arctic Svalbard islands

An adventurous safari along Zimbabwe's back roads

CHOSEN BY OLIVIA MORELLI, DIGITAL ASSISTANT

‘I loved Peter Brown’s Zimbabwe piece in the 2020 Gold List Issue. I was completely captivated from start to finish. The story spans anecdotes from his childhood spent in the country to evocative descriptions of sun-dappled landscapes, dramatic valleys and granite hills still riddled with bullet scars and vestiges of the Rhodesian Bush War.’

Read the story: What it's like to safari in Zimbabwe: wildlife spotting and ruin hopping

The world's most influential chefs share their favourite foodie finds

CHOSEN BY LAUREN BURVILL, ACTING AUDIENCE GROWTH MANAGER

‘I'm always fascinated by what the best chefs in the world eat, so this article stands out to me. It's not just a list of the same restaurants either, but the actual nitty-gritty meals and even ingredients the chefs love, from where Yotam Ottolenghi orders a flat white in London to the native honey from The Kimberley in Australia that Jock Zonfrillo likes to use in his paperbark ice cream.’

Read the story: Top chefs tell us their favourite ingredients

Papua New Guinea: Land of Mysteries

CHOSEN BY SOPHIE KNIGHT, DIGITAL PICTURE EDITOR

‘This is one of my favourite pieces – particularly because of the pictures by Philip Lee Harvey. He's managed to photograph the tribes without being too invasive, yet still capturing authentic moments and allowing us to see the way of life in a part of the world we can only imagine.’

Read the story: Papua New Guinea holidays

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9 Powerful Transformative Travel Stories That Inspire Share Tweet Pin Share

By Tonya Fitzpatrick, Esq. | December 3, 2022 The World Transformative

Listen below. Click “globe” for more languages.

The greatest gift that travel affords us is the power to transform our lives. Travel is like an elixir for the soul. A single trip can change your life by giving you the space to embark on an inner journey towards personal growth and self-reflection. 

Traveling removes us from the daily distractions that keep us stuck. It gives us room to hit the reset button and to examine how we view ourselves and whether our self-talk is supportive or destructive.

When we travel we are given the ability to appreciate the humanity in others. By traveling we learn to recognize and honor the similarities we share with others from different cultures.

While we’re not able to travel as we did before COVID-19, we can still experience travel through the stories of others and relive our own magical memories. 

We compiled nine powerful transformational travel stories that promise to inspire you and offer a reminder about the gift of travel. Enjoy!

“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” Seneca

Volunteering in Paraguay

In the summer of 2003, I left the US at age 16 to spend eight weeks volunteering in rural Paraguay. This transformative experience confirmed my suspicions that the world held treasures much more captivating and enriching than the glossy American lifestyle that I, in my infinite teenage wisdom, despised. 

Spanish, a language I had never used outside the classroom, became a constant source of joy, frustration, connection and fascination. I began to dream in Spanish and delighted in the frequent opportunities to learn new words and new ways of looking at the world. Guaraní, another language spoken in Paraguay, was impossible to master, but also offered some fun insights. For example, it has two different words for “we”, one that includes the person you’re talking to and one that doesn’t. 

You might think that living far from paved roads or the internet would be boring, but I found the opposite to be true. Although there was often nothing to do, I was surprised by the complete absence of boredom. I learned to live in the moment, to enjoy what was, to not worry about time or the future. It could be frustrating, like when we were waiting for the saplings for a tree-planting project. When are they coming? Later. But when later? Today? This week? Later. But eventually, you learn to let go. 

I returned to the US, finished high school, went to college, majored in Spanish, studied abroad in Spain and… never went back. I’ve lived in Madrid for over 10 years now. I’m not sure I would have made it here if it hadn’t been for that summer in Costa Peña.

Va nessa Johnson , Content Specialist, ByeVisa

Exchange Student Experiences

I was an exchange student in both high school and college. I lived with a family in France during my junior year of high school and on-campus in Florence, Italy my junior year in college. These experiences started my lifelong love affair with both France and Italy. I am still in contact with the family I lived with and returned for several of my sisters’ weddings and have visited friends in both countries many times over the years since. When my husband and I were dating we took a trip to France and Italy because I knew I could not be serious with someone long term if he did not want to travel there with me and in fact he passed the test with flying colors. My friends and family in Europe agreed he was a keeper. I speak both French and Italian and try to keep up my language skills as much as possible.

Living in a foreign country during your teens and 20s shows that there are far more similarities than differences. If everyone in the world were free to travel and was encouraged to explore other cultures/ways of life there would be no more war in this world. It is hard to fight with people once you see their families love them as much as yours does you. They may eat different foods, listen to strange music, celebrate holidays you have never heard of and have customs you do not recognize but they also have parents, siblings, children, and grandparents they care about deeply just like you do.  

Paige Arnof-Fenn , Founder & CEO, Mavens & Moguls

Photographing in Kenya

Spending a month travelling with camel herders in Northern Kenya taught me a lot about taking pleasure in the simple things in life.

I was photographing the innovative work of an NGO using camels to deliver HIV drugs to patients living in isolated nomadic communities. 

As the camels were loaded up with solar-powered fridges to keep the medication cool, we had to travel lightly, carrying with us just the bare essentials. As a result, for almost the entire month we ate the same meal of maize porridge and beans every day, and then the cold leftovers for breakfast the following morning. Grim times indeed. 

On those few days, we were fortunate to come across a small shop and could buy luxuries like flour, milk and sugar, the breakfast pancakes we devoured were the single most delicious things I have had in my entire life. 

Later in the trip, I was also given a crash course into the fragility of life in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. The region was hit with unseasonable thunderstorms and the dry river beds we had been using as our makeshift roads were transformed into terrifying torrents of water with standing waves as tall as a man. 

Not a single Kenyan member of our team could swim but they still bravely waded across chest-deep rivers to complete the trip. Luckily no one was injured but across the area, a number of lives were lost to the floods.

Whilst only a month in duration this trip has had a profound impact on my outlook and appreciation for the mundane things, such as the simple luxury of being able to walk to the convenience story and buy a pint of milk. 

Andy Barker , U.K. photographer based in Vietnam, Andy With A Camera

Solo in Indonesia

Spring, 2015. I’d quit my job as an agency copywriter, bound for 3 months in Indonesia – the first solo trip I’d ever taken, the longest I’d been alone. I was leaving my family, friends, boyfriend… and I was doing it completely bald.

I had alopecia areata: a condition I used to hide under wigs and headbands, never feeling like my “true self”. Then the day before my flight, I shaved my remaining hair off. I wanted a fresh start…and seeing as no one would know me in Bali, it seemed like a good opportunity!

At first, I was terrified. But at an ashram in Candidasa, yoga and meditation helped me relax and feel good in my body for the first time in years. Then a healer in Ubud (which I later found out, was Wayan from Eat, Pray, Love!) helped my hair grow back, a few months later! (It fell out again, unfortunately. But I’m ok with that. 🙂

Because what I learned most from that trip, was to be comfortable in my own skin. I got used to the stares, the points and the giggles (locals were sweet but not very subtle!) and by the time I landed home in Ireland, I could talk openly about my alopecia without getting upset… a first for me! Not long after that, I set up Lady Alopecia – a website to inform and empower people like me with all forms of hair loss. Nowadays, I get messages daily telling me what an “inspiration” I am. I reply that I wasn’t always this way: I have that transformative trip to Indonesia to thank for it!

Emma Sothern, freelance copywriter, part-time yoga/meditation teacher, full-time alopecian

  https://ladyalopecia.com/  / Yoga for Alopecia  online course

African Townships

I’ve been blessed to travel the world my entire life, and, for the past three years, full-time. One of my most transformative travel experiences so far was in Africa, last year. 

The first thing that struck me was how white I am. I’ve never been a minority anywhere else in the world. The impact of noticing the color of my skin was humbling. Now I know what it’s like for many other people in the world. I think everyone should know what this feels to build more compassion for humanity. 

The layers of poverty in the townships and squatter camps was incomprehensible to me. Before my trip, I had no idea what a township was. I learned it’s a city onto itself. Inside are all levels of rich and poor. It was the squatter camp in Cape Town, South Africa, however, that really got to me. I saw innocent children laughing and learned they would fall prey to a cycle of abuse and drugs. I was inspired to work with a local church group creating resources to change the futures of these beautiful children. Experiencing this first-hand made me want to do more and inspired me to question the different levels of wealth in the world. I continue to question this. 

Finally, I felt a visceral connection with the land and the animals, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I drove through thousands of miles of beautiful nothingness, delighted that the land belonged to the animals, and I was the zoo. The leopard is the most beautiful animal I’ve ever seen. I felt like I came home and I can’t wait to return. 

Heather Markel , full-time traveler, travel writer and motivational speaker, www.HeatherBegins.com

Living to Share the World with Family

In 2006, I woke in the middle of the night. I stood up and immediately collapsed. I was five months pregnant, and I was frozen on the floor for five hours. When I could move, I woke my children and raced to the hospital. After 8 months of testing, the neurologists didn’t know why I had the brain crash, but they gave me 5 years to live. Devastated, I couldn’t imagine not raising our three children, aged 5, 3, and 4 months. For the first few years, I was busy dying. 

But, my husband’s 40th birthday was coming and I wanted to give him a magical trip so I arranged to show up at a conference he was attending across the country, and I whisked him away. Our visit to Costa Rica was all for him, I wasn’t the adventurous one. However, sometime between whitewater rafting, ziplining and canyoning down a 250-foot waterfall, a switch flipped in my mind. Even though I wouldn’t live long enough to give my kids the world, I could show it to them. I vowed to visit 50 countries before I turned 50, bringing them to international giants like China, Russia, and France, as well as treasures like Estonia, Montenegro, Haiti, and the Philippines. 

Fourteen years later, we have visited 49 countries, have experienced sixty-plus different languages, and made memories that have created children of the world. I can think of no better gift for my kids than experiencing the power of travel. 

Leanne Kabat , Mom of Three | World Traveler | Writer | Speaker

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights. It is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the minds of the living.” Miriam Beard

Central America in the Peace Corps

In 2008, I joined the Peace Corps. I’d left my digital career in pursuit of helping others. That desire sent me to Nicaragua in a small town call San Juan de Oriente. I’d never been to Nicaragua or even Central America.

My mission was to work with the town’s pottery makers to bring their creations to a wider audience. At the time, the town’s artisans largely competed amongst themselves for a limited range of regional customers. My goal was to bring them online.

But, what I didn’t know, was how much my travel experience would transform me. Thrusting myself from the typical middle-class American experience to a mosquito net covered bed over a dirt floor gave me an entirely new outlook on life. Don’t get me wrong, there was a certain peace to the sound of the constant jungle-like rain on the zinc roof. But, it was far from what I saw as “normal” at the time.

Upon return, I looked at the American experience of overwhelming luxury and consumerism with fresh eyes. It sent me hurtling down a path to escape the typical 9-to-5, build my own business, and achieve financial independence.

These days, at 36 years old, my goals harken back to my experience under those zinc roofs, on the rickshaws, and with the pottery makers who were born into a singular career path. By limiting our wants, my partner and I have the time to focus on others—and use our wealth to lower the ladder for those behind us. There’s enough in this world to remove struggle for so many that needlessly experience it, it just takes more individuals changing course.

C hris Wellant , Co-Founder of TicToc Life

Beyond the Caribbean Resort

One of my earliest memories is from 40 years ago, a family trip when I was 8 years old. We traveled to St. Lucia in the Caribbean. We stayed in a beautiful little resort and swam all day in the pool and in the gorgeous turquoise waters of the sea.

One day, my mom decided that we should explore the island and see the sugar cane fields. I will never forget that day. We left this pretty hotel with running water, a comfortable bed, and delicious food, and drove inland. After that, all that I remember seeing is poverty.

Everywhere we went, I saw one-room huts made out of scraps of corrugated metal, dirt, mud, and jungle barely contained. Then, at the end of our day, we passed yet another, except this time, a family was there. A father with two little boys, shoeless, were running, laughing, and smiling. Clothes were in tatters, garbage was everywhere, a fire was blazing nearby with a pot simmering, but all of them were happy despite the conditions in which they were living. Seconds later, we drove by and they were gone.

At that moment, all I wanted to do was to stop the car and talk to the man. I had so many questions. I wanted to ask him about his life, learn, and understand. What did the inside of his hut look like? Was it comfortable? Would the kids go to school one day? Were they hungry? And other more silly questions, like did it hurt to run around in bare feet? I was so completely and utterly curious about what I had just seen. And devastated that shortly after, we were back at the resort.

That moment triggered something deep inside me. Ever since then, I have been insatiable about my desire to travel and see different cultures. The more remote, different, untouched, and authentic, the better. Since then, I have been to over 65 countries, my children 45, and I look forward to the day when we can explore the world again.

Nicole Hunter , mother of 4 and a travel blogger –  Go Far Grow Close

Swimming with Whales in French Polynesia

For the month of September, I was on a remote island in French Polynesia swimming with humpback whales, living with a local family, and learning their traditions. We truly lived off the land and sea for that month, without enough internet signal for much more than an email or Whatsapp message. Though so much was going on in the world that seemed hopeless, being in that environment felt so healing. We were a small microcosm of the world, and yet it felt so complete. I suspect that spending 22 straight days in the Pacific, swimming with humpback whales, greatly contributed to this sense of wholeness. 

Swimming with such large creatures probably sounds crazy to some people. The days are long, the water can be rough, and the currents are often strong. It’s not easy Caribbean lagoon swimming – this is the mighty Pacific. Yet those moments when you jump in with a playful baby, a couple dancing and swirling around each other, or a group of playful adults, it somehow feels so beautiful and so safe. These gentle giants are amazingly aware of their large bodies, and their agility is impressive. They’re so interactive as well, regularly making eye contact and in some of my experiences, swimming with us for hours. 

Sometimes it feels like it’s not the same world that ‘normal’ life and the whale swims take place in, but I suppose we all need those escapes, don’t we? 

Kristin Addis , CEO of Be My Travel Muse

The magic of travel is that no matter how many stories you read, pictures you see, or research you do, you never know quite what you are going to get or how it is going to affect you. Every place, person, and experience is different, and there is no end to the growth that comes with travel. The experiences you gain, whether you realize it at the time or not, will forever have a profound effect on how you see the world and how you choose to live in it.

We hope these stories have inspired you to keep travelling and discovering what type of magic will transform you next.

“I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” Mary Anne Radmacher

Book Your Travel to ANY Destination

Use the interactive map below to search,  compare and book hotels  & rentals at  the best prices  that are sourced from a variety of platforms including Booking.com, Hotels.com, Expedia, Vrbo, and more.  Search for ANY destination by  clicking in the upper left corner of this map . You can also use the filter to fine-tune your search, and find restaurants, attractions, and more!

Tonya Fitzpatrick, Esq . is co-Founder of World Footprints , a social impact travel storytelling content hub she runs with her husband, Ian, that has been recognized as Best Social Impact Travel Media Company by CEO Monthly. She is an award-winning travel and business journalist, global public speaker, and 3-time TEDx speaker.  Tonya regularly shares her insights on career transitions, DEIA in travel and the transformative power of travel to audiences all over the world.  Recognized as Black Travel Journalists of the Year—an honor she shares with Ian, Tonya contributes her time and leadership to several boards and commissions in the travel community including SATW, The Explorers Club (DC), North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA) and JourneyWoman. Tonya has been appointed to the Maryland Tourism Development Board by Gov. Wes Moore.

More articles by Tonya Fitzpatrick, Esq.

A Little Reading… Seven Thoughtful and Engaging Travel Stories

Last updated on November 15, 2023 by Shannon

For three years now I have shared travel stories and narratives of my travels around the world. This blog started as a way to share advice and inspiration with other travels, while also recording my trip for posterities sake.

When I planned my own travels back in 2008 , there were very few other long-term travels sharing the hows of planning a round the world trip .

A lot has changed since then!

The travel community is huge; I’ve finished my own round the world trip; and I’ve also decided to shift into long-term, open-ended travels . Throughout all of these changes, throughout the dozens of countries I have visited , and within the thousands of new stories I’ve encountered, the heart of this blog has remained true.

It’s the same spirit of stories, advice, and inspiration that I continue sharing my journey.

The Best A Little Adrift Travel Stories

In all of these years, however, a lot of time has passed and I blogged prolifically. Some of my favorite and most useful posts were published and buried in the archives. With that in mind, I dug through my country and story-based archives to unearth seven varied posts. These seven stories range from the most popular to the most useful, to the most under-rated—and a lot in between too! Here goes:

Table of Contents

My Most Popular Travel Story

A Little Chiang Mai Living… A Thailand Cost of Living Breakdown

Probably the first truly viral post on A Little Adrift, people  loved knowing the breakdown of exactly what it cost me to live in Thailand earlier this year.  Not only did I list out my specific monthly costs, but I also shared what exactly I got for that amount of money.

A thanks is in order to Johnny Jet for mentioning the post in his newsletter, as well as BBC Travel, and the dozen or so others in the blogosphere who pointed to this post as a “this is what I want to do too!”

The point of being here and living each day is about quality of life; this post proves that, if you want it,  it’s possible to live a full and enjoyable life for a lot cheaper outside of Western countries and you don’t even have to sacrifice too many Western comforts!

My Most Controversial Post

A Little Confession… Cuba Gets an “ish” from Me

I rarely call out a travel destination in a negative fashion—every person’s travel experience is different. How we experience a place is impacted by our own states of mind, and our own expectations just as much as what we find once we arrive. And yet, my time in Cuba left me confused and underwhelmed. I would hate to discourage anyone from fulfilling a dream trip to the island, however, since they could arrive and have every dream and expectation met. So take this as merely my experience, your mileage may vary.

Before writing this post, I mulled over my Cuba experience for a full year, never truly sharing my thoughts until I decided to just give it straight: I loved elements of traveling through Cuba as an American, but I never got under the surface of the country. I left Cuba unhappy with the sum total of my experiences. But with more than 85 long and thoughtful comments and counting (about one person a week still stops in to share their Cuba stories), my Cuba post stirred up controversy and lively debate in the comments. If you missed it, why not pop over there now  and let me know what your thoughts on traveling through Cuba!

My Most Helpful Post

Round the World Travel Planning Resources

This resource page is among the most popular resources on my site, and it’s the most comprehensive spot for trip planning advice for anyone taking a long-term trip. I’ve spent every month since November 2008 making it chock full of answers to long-term travel planning questions. It contains everything that I learned as I traveled, and everything I wish I had known before I left.

This resource has taken years to assemble, and I regularly update it with the answers to the most commonly emailed questions that enter my inbox. Wondering what size backpack to take or if you should buy a RTW ticket?

Check here for my thoughts on the subject. And if you have a question that isn’t yet answered, join me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and let me know your question—I answer every single new message.

My Most Surprisingly Successful Post

A Little RTW Budget… Costs to Travel Around the World for a Year

I meticulously recorded all of my trip expenses and budget during the 11 months I traveled around the world. I have a bizarre obsession with pretty excel files and this post shares just how far my budgeting geekdom stooped.

This post includes country by country cost details, and I share my grand total for the year of travel (it came in at under USD $20,000 including Europe!). I was eager to put my stats out there for other long-term travelers coming after me and I am pleased as punch that other travelers regularly use my blank budget spreadsheet to track their own travels.

With more than two million views so far, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy to think of all the other budget-geeks out there tracking their travel budgets. ;-)

My Most Beautiful Post

A Little Spice… Taste Buds and the Global Palate

This one was a hard one for me to choose. I think my photography has progressed incredibly well over the past three years, but is far from professional level. I upgraded my camera last year to a Panasonic micro-four-thirds camera and the depth of field is stellar.

This foodie post was photographed during my Jordan travels and I think the food is well captured, well lit, and I hope my upcoming food posts this summer are similarly pretty as this one turned out!

I love my landscape photography too, but I think I’m a bit harsh on myself because I wasn’t sure that any were quite up to snuff to go in this spot. So, I solemnly swear to start working even harder on my photography so I have some wanderlust-inspiring photo-essays to share here in the future!

My Post That Didn’t Get the Attention it Deserved

A Little Mystery… Secrets in Ireland’s Heart

I loved writing this post and it makes me smile to even read it because it conjures up images of a chilly, windy, and rugged Ireland where I ended my year around the world .

I’m Irish-American and I inherited my dad’s fascination with the country. I think if it does nothing else, the post taps into a bit of that mysterious playful quality I found in so many of the locals I met while I drove around Western Ireland for three weeks. I love it and I think you might too. :)

Post I’m Most Proud Of…

A Little Love Letter… On Travel and Leave-Takings

I wrote this post sitting at a rickety table behind a great smoothie lady near my hostel in Bangkok, Thailand . I slurped down my icy orange juice and thought about my flight that evening back to the United States.

I had just been living in Thailand for five months and I was sad to leave, but happy at the prospect of hunkering down somewhere familiar with family and friends nearby. I was negotiating the feelings of “how can I be a traveler if I spend five months of the year at home?” I penned this post into my notebook, which is a rarity for me since I most often type.

I love my traveling lifestyle and I had a lovely moment of convergence in this post: it’s personal, the thoughts just flowed out of me in 30 minutes flat, and I like the tone because it wholly captures the feelings that settle over me each time I return to the U.S. from traveling.

So many stories on my site deserve to make it onto this list. In the years since I wrote these seven links, I have ventured through more than 40 more countries. I’ve shared more advice, I’ve shared thoughts and confessions about the life of a long-term traveler. And I’ve created a thriving community of travelers who I have met up with all over the world.

What a blessing this blog and community has been over the many years. I give thanks for your support reading and sharing and I hope these seven travel stories help educate, inspire, and entertain.

14 thoughts on “A Little Reading… Seven Thoughtful and Engaging Travel Stories”

I have been enjoying these from various bloggers. Thanks for sharing!

Now I’m really curious about the Cuban post :)

I had missed your “my most proud” post too! It came out when we were in Tanzania and offline and I had declared RSS bankruptcy and missed it. I’m so glad that I had a chance to read it now. Not only is it beautifully written, but it shows that you know what’s important to you in your life. Travel will always be there as a trusty friend, but sometimes being with family is more important. As our parents get older and we spend more time away from our friends, I think about this issue more often. Thanks for sharing this personal letter. 

Thank you Audrey, the balance of travel is one of the few truly tricky parts…enjoying the experience and weighing it against visits back home. It sounds like your holiday plans back home this year are well timed in your journey :)

Thank you so much for picking me Shannon!!!! I really love this look at some of your best posts. Now I have to go read all the ones I haven’t already seen.

You’re welcome Kirsten! Glad you’re game to participate – yay! Can’t wait to see some of your best posts I’ve missed too :)

I never saw the Secret’s In Ireland Heart so i checked it out and really enjoyed it.  I really wished there were photos to go with the post though.  Great list!

Thanks Kirk! There are a bunch of very pretty Ireland photos in it though…not sure if my offsite photo hosting was down, but they’re up for me and they are oh-so pretty :)

I enjoyed checking out your cost of living in Chiang Mai and food post.  It’s incredible the value one can achieve lliving in Thailand.  It’s no surprise so many backpackers, travelers and bloggers come there to stay indefinitely.  The food post is wonderful!  If you’re even in Bangkok a restaurant/guest’house called Green House has excellent Mediterranean food.

Thank you Samuel :) I find Thailand’s pull reaches me even when I’m happily back in the States on a visit! I haven’t tried Green House, but I definitely seem to fly through Bangkok often, so I’ll check it out, appreciate the tip, love Mediterranean food! :)

Love the Jordan food post.  Delicious photos!

The one you picked as your ‘Most Proud Of’ may be the best blog post I’ve ever read. Considering I have 138 blogs in my RSS feed (I know- It’s a little out of control) that’s saying a lot. :-)

Thank you so much Erik, I really appreciate you saying that. And as for the blogs…wow! I’ve been trimming down lately, but not sure I ever hit quite that many! :)

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Inspiring Travel Stories With Locals Around The World

A common theme I hear from travelers is how busy and stressful traveling can be. It seems we get so caught up in seeing the highlights of the city that we often forget to slow down and enjoy life outside of the ‘top ten ‘ lists. The following stories are positive encounters with locals that fellow travelers and travel bloggers have had. Hopefully, these travel stories will inspire you to look for different experiences on your next trip – regardless of whether it’s a trip abroad or one closer to home!

Check out our One-Year Honeymoon Itinerary for some travel inspiration and trip ideas!

You never know what adventures something as simple as “hello” will lead to!

Natalie from A Pair Of Traveling Pants  / Instagram

While in Vietnam in 2017, my husband and I booked a stay at a guesthouse in the beach town of Nah Trang. We thought we were the only people at this guest house until we met Felix, a German firefighter from Cologne. He was on holiday in Vietnam for a month and the three of us really hit it off, talking for hours and enjoying each other’s company.

We invited Felix to join us while we went to a couple of different areas in Vietnam and he came, a great addition. At the end of the trip, Felix invited us to visit him in Cologne, Germany and we took him up on the offer. I’d never been to Cologne, I’d watched an Anthony Bourdain episode where he gushed over the kölsch beer and schweinshaxe, but that was all I knew.

Felix really pulled out the stops for us. We spent three days in town with him and he drove us out into the countryside to show us the village he’d grown up in. We got a personal tour of the firehouse he works in, including a chance to try on fire suits and get taken up in the cherry picker. He took us to his favorite beer halls and introduced us to his girlfriend, Christine, who was a delight. In the spirit of travel and new friends, we drank and drank our weight in beer.

Thanks to Felix, we got a real insider’s look at Cologne, a place that will always be special for that reason. We’re still friends with him and are currently trying to get him to come to visit us in New York City.

Humanitalian from Humanitalian

I will always remember Madagascar as one of the best trips I have ever done. For the beautiful beaches of the west coast. For the astonishing Tsingy. For the hundreds of giant baobabs. For the great company of my travel-friend. But also, and probably mostly, for the company of Coco, our local driver.

He picked us up in Tulear and drove all the way north to Antananarivo, following the west coast of Madagascar. Well, he did not reach the capital, but that’s coming later in the story.

I firstly have to commend him for his driving skills. The sandy tracks of that part of the island are very tricky and junctions are very difficult to recognize. It was great to have Coco leading us so that we could spend our time enjoying all the baobabs and the brousse, how the bush is called. But the best thing about Coco was his sweet attempts to make us at ease. With his poor French, he tried to explain to us everything about Madagascar and the Malagasy people. And how much he knew. We ended up inviting him for every lunch, on the condition that he could take us to have some good local food and we could meet local people. We had many experiences together, including nine tire changes!

One night he made an attempt to let us hook up with some Malagasy girl, thinking it was a good way to thank us! Unfortunately, the time for goodbye arrived. We were heading to Antananarivo when the last tire broke. As it was getting dark and we had to fly out the day after, he managed to find us another driver. He had to stay with the car and find accommodation in the village. We left him some money, a torch, a hoodie, and a jacket. Once back at home, I managed to call him to say hello and he thanked us so much for all those small gifts that helped him during the night. We are now planning a second trip to Madagascar, this time on the coast south of Tulear. But one thing will remain the same: we will ask Coco to be our driver again!

Lauren from Laurens Travel Diary

I was walking along a beach in central Vietnam. The beach was quiet, the sun hot and half a dozen fishing boats bobbed by the shoreline. As I walked by, a young boy, no more than 12, popped up from sleeping on one of the boats. He seemed startled by me, but smiled and asked if I’d like some fruit. I looked over onto the deck and saw a coconut, some bananas, and a pineapple sitting on a cloth. It was a hot day and the idea of coconut water and fresh pineapple was appealing to me, so I climbed up onto the boat and helped the boy prepare the fruit.

He told me his name was Long and that he lived nearby but would come out here to his father’s fishing boat when he felt sad. I asked him why he felt sad today, and he answered: “my mother is angry at me for breaking a bowl.” After we’d enjoyed the fruit, I asked Long if he’d like to come to the market with me. He said he would, and so we headed to look around some of the handicrafts, where, after a while, he exclaimed: “the bowl is just like my mother’s!” I smiled at him and purchased the bowl from the woman.

I’d never seen such joy in someone’s eyes – I hope his mother was delighted when he arrived home with the bowl.

Seema from Mildly Indian

Our trip to Vietnam was a well-researched one. We had a clear outline of where we wanted to go. But, somewhere along the lines, we forgot that we need to learn how to ask for vegetarian food. with the places we planned a bit way out into the villages, it was indeed quite a strain to look for a decent meal.

The back and forth trying to find something vegetarian to eat left us with a mountain of unknown leaves alone for a couple of days. Then slowly it was getting nagging as we needed to eat.

This particular day we were on a trip to explore the river caves. We were on a local bus and got off at the boating spot. As we were rowing along, our stomachs growling and we were discussing the ordeal of finding food again. The boat lady who listening to the whole chatter and telling us to “duck” when the caves were low, suddenly said “chai”

Now, what was that?? A chai latte in the middle of the dark cave or did she want some tips for tea!!!

As we got down and tipped her. She vigorously showed eating action and said “Chai!! chai!!” again. We thanked her as we understood it was something to do with eating….and moved on to find a place to eat. We decided to try our luck and said “Chai” as we were ushered in. A quick exchange of words between the ushers and they cleared a long table for us and signaled us to be seated. Then one of them came and called us… We followed a bit scared as we didn’t know what mystery we were heading to. A small room to the corner of the buffet hall was quickly opened they said “Full chai!”

We entered and gingerly opened the bowls set on the table. Our eyes rolled out to see the array of vegetarian dishes, stirfry rice, tofu of 5 to 7 types, a myriad array of veggies. We felt like we were mythological “Bagasura”, the feasting demon. We didn’t mind missing our immediate bus. We were so thankful to see some wonderful food.

We thank the boat lady every time we mention Vietnam and spread the word “Chai” all along. Hope you have some wonderful interactions along with your travels too. It makes them not only memorable but humbling to know people all around are lovely and compassionate.

Ruben from Gamin Traveler

  A post shared by Ruben & Rach ⌁ Travel Couple (@gamintraveler) on Apr 6, 2018 at 6:00am PDT

Rachel was the one who introduced me to all the local food in the Philippines. She also introduced me to her friends in the country as well. As for me, I tried my best to cook Spanish food for them, too. All the while, we were traveling as much as we can to nearby destinations. Finally, after 2 weeks, I had to leave the Philippines because my flight had already been booked. But I knew I’d be coming back again and again to the country. Eventually, we decided it would be best to collaborate and start a travel blog, Gamintraveler.com. With my expertise in traveling and Rachel’s social media knowledge and skills, we knew we could make something special.

Rachel and I have already taken so many trips together since that fateful encounter. We’ve traveled to almost every country in Southeast Asia. What lies next for us? We are on our way to do a Eurotrip together! Everything’s exciting and better than we have ever dreamed! We are truly lucky.

I hope you enjoyed this collection of travel stories from around the world. If you did enjoy them, I hope you will take a look at their websites for more great stories and travel information.

If you have a story that you would like to contribute please send an email to [email protected]

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45 Funny, Heartfelt, Unforgettable Travel Stories

Adventurous Kate contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, I will earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks!

I tell travel stories for a living. I do this because I can’t NOT tell travel stories — every experience I have is shaped in the moment and waits in anticipation to shoot out of my fingertips.

And I live to share those stories with an audience. As humans, we’re hard-wired to be influenced by storytelling, and I feel like stories are what inspire people to actually book a trip.

To be honest, though, compelling stories are what’s missing from most travel blogs today, where SEO-driven travel planning posts make up the majority of the content.

We have SO many great travel stories to tell. But we’re not telling them as often as we should. So I decided to share some of the best stories in one place.

I reached out to my travel blogger friends to share their most entertaining posts of all time. Nothing travel planning-oriented, nothing keyword- or affiliate-stuffed — just fun, entertaining stories that would make a stranger smile or laugh. And did they EVER pay off!

Each of these stories is a treasure. I hope you enjoy them.

Note: Due to COVID-19 and a dwindled demand for travel worldwide, travel bloggers have lost significant portions of their incomes. Between people not researching or booking travel and advertisers reducing their spend, many travel bloggers will be making a small fraction of their usual income for months.

The best thing you can do right now is find a story you like on this list and visit several pages on their blog. It costs you nothing, but your eyes on their display ads (no clicks necessary, we get paid by views!) will earn them some much-needed cash in a difficult time.

Want to help out even more? If you love one of these blog posts, sign up for their email newsletter. You can find mine here.

Table of Contents

Funny Travel Mishaps

Are you looking to read about crazy mishaps that happened on the road? Here are some good ones!

Possibly My Favorite Travel Poop Story Ever

Nomadasaurus

OMG. I had never read this one before but this is one of the funniest travel stories I’ve ever read!

Jared tells the story of when diarrhea hit at the worst time ever — on a Chinese bus — and where he ultimately ended up pooping!

Embarrassing Stories From My Travels

Legal Nomads

Jodi is well-known for being pooped on while traveling — 14 birds and one bat so far — but this post shared plenty more of those stories.

If you’ve ever wanted to know the most embarrassing way to ask where to catch the bus in Argentina, here it is.

Hooked on the Cook Islands: My Giant Wedgie

Neverending Footsteps

Lauren is well-known for her extensive list of disastrous “travel incidents” around the world.

This one involves a snorkeling trip where she accidentally flashed her vag to an entire boat of people, including a family with young kids.

I Have a Confession to Make

Journalist on the Run

Imagine being a travel writer who gets paid to stay in a luxurious resort in the Maldives. Dream job, huh?

Now imagine that you get hit by the worst diarrhea of your life while pretending that everything is normal as the staff gives you a tour! Janet lays out her experience in excruciating detail.

When a City Girl Goes Camping

Suitcase and Heels

I may be a city girl who took her first steps in a tent — but not all city girls take to camping so easily.

Melissa shares a camping adventure in Newfoundland that did not go as planned! (NEVER forget the bottle opener!)

An Ode to Señor Frog, The Worst Car in Cozumel

Emily Luxton Travels

What happens when you rent a weird pea-green car that looks like an emaciated Volkswagen Beetle? Well, you definitely get an adventure out of it, Emily shares.

Know this before you rent a tiny car on a Mexican island!

How to Have the Worst Day Ever in Phuket (and How to Turn It Around)

Why Wait to See the World

Sometimes you have a travel day when you hit disaster after disaster after disaster — and sometimes it’s when you’re on your first full travel day with your boyfriend, ever.

That happened to Steph in Phuket, but soon she found a way to turn it around.

The Time I Got Pissed On in Manila

Aussie on the Road

Continuing the bodily fluids theme, Chris shares a rather disgusting late-night incident in a hostel dorm.

This proves that sometimes fellow backpackers are the most horrifying thing you could run into on the road!

Terrible Travel Tales: Mishaps, Setbacks, and Comical Foibles of Globe Trotting

Year of the Monkey

From missing a flight at the last minute due to a nosebleed to getting mistaken for a child at the age of 32, this is a big list of stories.

Paroma shares her favorite travel mishaps she’s collected over the years, all in excruciating detail.

That Time We Got Held Hostage by Monkeys in Ubud

Bridges and Balloons

And I thought I was terrified in the Monkey Forest in Ubud — Victoria and Steve got TRAPPED in a house surrounded by monkeys and couldn’t escape!

One of my worst nightmares. They seemed to handle it well.

My Embarrassing Driving Experience in Ourzazate

Norbert had never driven stick before in his life — so when the car he rented in Morocco turned out to have a manual transmission, he figured he could just wing it and learn to drive stick that day. NOT SO MUCH!

As a fellow driver who has never driven stick, I felt this one.

Ayurvedic Massage, Not for the Modest

Jessie on a Journey

If you had the chance to get a massage for just $16 in the heart of Kerala, India, you would go for it, wouldn’t you?

Then Jessie found out that this massage was done naked. COMPLETELY naked. With lots of oil and boob massage.

Scary Travel Mishaps

Sometimes mishaps can be on the dark side — though often you’ll find aspects of them humorous in retrospect. Either way, you won’t want to miss these posts.

Disaster Strikes

Escape Artistes

When horseback riding in rural Mongolia, Theodora’s son fell and severely broke his arm…in the middle of absolute nowhere.

This kicked off a breathless emergency of trying to find healthcare in one of the most remote places on Earth. It’s a gripping read.

When Traveling Sucks: A Hospital Visit in Fez, Morocco

Foodie Flashpacker

What’s worse than getting bitten by a bunch of bugs in the night? Getting bitten by giant mutant insects whose bites swell up enormously…right in the middle of your forehead.

Nathan details the story of his medical incident in Morocco and a doctor’s office that looks straight out of Chernobyl.

When a Man Comes Knocking

Borderline Crazy Bloggers

One of the scariest things while traveling is when a man has fixated on you — and because the culture is so different, you’re not sure whether you should be afraid or not.

In this story, Marieke shares the story of an Indian man who showed up at her door and kept refusing to leave.

Tales of Romance and Love

Do you love stories about love? I bet you do!! Here are three stories that will make you believe in finding love on the road.

The Last Time I Saw You (Part Five)

This Battered Suitcase

This is an ongoing series on Brenna’s blog where she tells the stories of the loves she’s met while traveling.

This is a short story that feels like it’s much longer — an incredibly romantic dalliance with a French man on a tropical island, then how it all crashes down once returning to real life.

10 Love Stories From My Travels

Adventurous Kate

It’s been years, but this is still one of my favorite posts I’ve ever written. I share ten different love stories from my travels, and tell you the ten locations where they took place — but you have to use logic and deduction to figure out which location matches with each story.

Nobody has ever guessed all 10 correctly. Maybe you will.

Nacpan and Calitang Beach: One of the Last Starry-Eyed, Lovestruck Journeys of the Previous Chapter

Nomadic Experiences

Looking back to days on one of the most beautiful beaches near El Nido in the Philippines, Marky tells the story of a special girl and the sweet moments they shared on one of the most idyllic islands in the world.

They’ve long since broken up, but he gently holds the experience in his hand, frozen in time.

Unforgettable Travel Experiences

These are the moments that got us out of our comfort zone, introduced us to memorable characters, and turned us into better travelers — and people.

How I Met Gunther, The Best Taxi Driver in Vienna

Budget Traveller

Every now and then, you meet someone who restores your faith in humanity. Gunther the taxi driver was one of those people.

Not only did he defy the odds to get Kash to his bus on time, he was unbelievably kind about the dilemma that happened next.

The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done: Two Weeks Hiking Japan’s Kumano Kodo Iseji

Adventures Around Asia

The Kumano Kodo hike in Japan is one of the most famous spiritual pilgrimages in the world. Richelle was excited to get out of her comfort zone — then ended up doing the hike in convenience store waterproof pants.

Despite a very tough start, it turned out to be a fantastic experience.

Hiking in the Atlas Mountains, Morocco

Inside the Travel Lab

Sometimes the most magical travel experiences take place in the most remote areas.

Abi extols the romance and beauty and culture of these isolated villages of Morocco, yet wonders if bringing more travelers here would be a good thing.

What I Learned From Giving Up Meat, Alcohol, and Complaining in India

Ashley Abroad

When Ashley went to Rishikesh, India, for yoga teacher training, she went out of her comfort zone by staying sober, sticking to a vegetarian diet, and giving up complaining.

Did it work? In some ways, yes, and she learned a lot about herself from the experience.

The Thrilling Adventures of Super Boyfriend

No Place to Be

So your girlfriend has dropped her camera in the Nam Song river in Laos. Surely a lost cause, isn’t it?

Not for Poi — a.k.a. Super Boyfriend — who leaped to the rescue, underwater among the sharp rocks.

Alaska Road Trip: Our Top 12 Adventures

Alaska is a destination that so many travelers dream of — but the reality ends up looking different from what you pictured.

Mike and Anne share gorgeous photos and stories from their multi-year honeymoon.

Controversial Takes

A lot of bloggers swear that controversial posts are the way to get traffic. I agree, as long as you go about it the right way. By that, I mean make a point, be fair, and defend it well. And PLEASE don’t trash the Philippines just to get crazy traffic.

5 Reasons to Stop Hating on “The Instagram Girl”

Follow Me Away

It seems so fashionable to hate the “Instagram girl” with the popular travel account — after all, who really wears a ball gown on top of a mountain?

But in this post, Victoria points out why the hate is misguided and the reasons why we should be supporting women with unconventional careers.

8 Reasons Why You Should Never Go to Wales

A Dangerous Business

Sure, Wales is beautiful and fun and interesting to explore, Amanda writes — but do they REALLY need all those castles and myths? Come on, now.

(Let’s say some people didn’t quite get the sarcasm.)

5 Reasons Travel Just Totally Isn’t Worth It

travelingmitch

I’m sorry, why are we even traveling, anyway? It’s so annoying, Mitch says!

What if people don’t speak English? What if you’re forced to challenge your preciously held views? WHAT IF YOU GET LOST AND CAN’T GET UN-LOST?! Better stay at home.

Is a Backpack Just Another Word for “Female Mid-life Crisis”?

GrrrlTraveler

Turning 40 and continuing to backpack around the world as a single woman with no kids. It’s what Christine enjoys — but is this what she really should be doing at this age?

For her, the answer is yes — and this post really shows how deep our cultural norms can set.

8 Reasons Hiking Sucks

Food Fun Travel

When people love food and wine and music as much as Tommo and Megsy, it’s not surprising that they’re equally passionate about what they hate: hiking.

Who needs to go back to nature? Who likes going somewhere without pubs? Is it a bonding experience? Bonding in misery, maybe!

How-To Guides You Never Thought You’d Need

Travel blogs are a great place to learn something new! And often it’s something you NEVER thought you needed to know…

How to Throw Out Your Garbage in Germany

Ali’s Adventures

Who knew just the act of throwing out your trash was so ridiculous and complicated in Germany?!

Ali shares what she’s learned as an expat in Berlin. Also, the comments are a gold mine.

How to Use the Toilet in India

BreatheDreamGo

Worrying about stocking up on toilet paper? Indians don’t use toilet paper at all!

India expert Mariellen shares all the tips for using the toilet in an unconventional (better?) way, and shares a hilarious video from Wilbur Sargunaraj.

How to Survive a Power Outage like a Puerto Rican

Indecisive Traveler

Reese spent years living in Puerto Rico, and during that time she went through quite a few power outages, including a four-day outage in 2016.

Step one? Immediately buy all the cold beer you can and take it home!

Big on Bidets: How Do You Use a Bidet and What is a Bidet For?

LL World Tour

Have you ever stopped in your tracks at the sight of a bidet in a bathroom in Italy or France and not known exactly how to use it?

Lisa shows you what you need to know. Because there’s nothing better than a clean anus!

Quirky Stories from the Road

All of us love to travel for the unusual things we discover on the road. Here are some of the best stories of unusual discoveries while traveling.

The Peens of Pompeii

Domestiphobia

Did you know that the ancient ruins of Pompeii are filled with penises? WELL, YOU DO NOW!

Katie visited the ruins for a day and was struck by how you can find a peen outline just about everywhere you look.

The Funniest Farm Market Sign in Southwest PA

Around the World L

Proof that there’s lots to be loved here in lesser-known parts of the US.

I love this sign that Lillie shared from a farmer with a side of sass!

Pictures of Cats and Dogs in Naples, Italy

2 Food Trippers

Naples is one of the greatest food cities in Italy — if not all of Europe — so it’s no surprise that the felines and canines of this city are as plump as they are adorable!

A cute post from Daryl and Mindi.

Sheep Driving Distractions in the Lake District

Raulerson Girl Travels

The Lake District of England is a wonderful place for a scenic drive…if it weren’t for the kamikaze sheep who leap right in front of your car!

I didn’t believe how fearless the sheep were until I saw Heather’s crazy photos.

How Creepy is the Ringling Brothers Circus Museum in Sarasota, Florida?

My Wanderlusty Life

You don’t have to be afraid of clowns to be creeped out by this weird museum, Ashley opines.

If you’re a hardcore circus fan, sure, knock yourself out! Other people? You don’t know what you’re getting into…

Lady Fails at Grocery Shopping

A Lady in London

Who knew it was so hard to grocery shop in the UK as an American? (Me. Boy, do I know that.)

Turns out none of the items are the same as what you would look for in the US (no tomato sauce ANYWHERE!) and Julie struggles to find normal items she just wants to cook.

Transportation in India: What the Tuk-Tuk?!

Traveling Canucks

Tuk-tuks are one of the most common forms of transportation in India — and they can be TERRIFYING.

Nicole and Cam vividly share every detail of a typical tuk-tuk ride, from near-accidents to carefully maneuvering around cows, and you’ll be white-knuckling it along with them.

That Time Angie Made Us Stay in a Sex Motel

Living the Dream RTW

When Jeremy and Angie had to spend the night in a Colombian border town, Angie chose a nondescript hotel.

Well. Turns out it was filled with a wide cadre of “hourly” guests all night long — and the walls were paper-thin.

You know…these funny posts don’t fit anywhere else, so here they are.

50 Amazingly Achievable Things to Do Before You Die

Fevered Mutterings

Forget those usual bucket list items — go skydiving! See Machu Picchu! — and focus on things that you CAN do. Trip on a shoelace. Use a leaf as a bookmark. Walk into plate glass.

Mike makes sure you’ll finish this post with a smile on your face.

8 Places to Travel in Case of a Zombie Apocalypse

Amateur Traveler

So once the zombie apocalypse actually hits, where should people be going? Chris shares his favorite spots, including Louisville, home to the famous baseball bat.

I have to admit, the isolated Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha is an inspired choice.

8 Funny Facts About Traveling With Your Twin

Slow Spirit

Guilherme and his twin brother Gregório are identical twins who travel together — and they are VERY distinctive-looking. They get photographed nonstop, people who meet them individually refuse to believe there are two of them, and yes, they play a lot of pranks.

I laughed out loud at their hostel prank!

Thanks for reading! We loved sharing these posts with you.

Which one of these stories was your favorite? Share away!

The Best Travel Writing of 2021: Our Favorite Stories of the Year

Tom Lowry , Skift

December 28th, 2021 at 1:30 AM EST

In a year when travel's recovery began, only to sputter, the pandemic was still a story for Skift that just kept giving. Our reporters and editors kept their heads down on crisis coverage, but shared some of the adrenaline too, on other worthy travel topics. Here's our team members' favorites, and how those stories came to be, in their own words.

The first year of the pandemic was an extraordinary achievement for Skift’s team of reporters and editors covering the unparalleled crisis in real time. Year two tested the mettle of the team in new ways, as glimmers of hope seesawed with the heartbreak of setbacks. But the journalism was no less exceptional in 2021.

As I am at this time every year, I am proud upon reflection of what Skift’s journalists accomplished. As is our tradition, I once again asked the difficult question of every reporter and editor who each produce a couple hundred stories a year: Which one was your favorite? They delivered, of course, explaining why the story was their favorite, and how it came to be.

We hope you find that our favorites are yours, too.

Edward Russell, Airlines Reporter

Behind-The-Scenes With American Demothballing Jets From Pandemic Storage

The Backstory: After writing so much about airlines pulling down their schedules, parking jets, and threatening to furlough staff, it was refreshing to actually see how airlines were recovering. In this case, how American Airlines put their jets back in the air to be ready for the then-forecast surge in summer travel. I flew to American’s largest maintenance base in Tulsa, Okla., to see exactly how the carrier did this. The team in Tulsa walked me step-by-step through the process of checking and re-checking every flap, seal, door, and crevice to make sure they were up to par for carrying passengers again.

What really struck me on my visit to Tulsa was how, for all the doom and gloom around the pandemic, the dedicated professionals at American never ceased working hard to make sure every aircraft was safe and ready to fly. Even for the seemingly thankless task of keeping black widow spiders from building webs in wheel wells.

Matthew Parsons , Corporate Travel Editor

Companies Face Challenge of Inclusivity on Travel for Remote Workers

The Backstory: The conversation around business travel shifted even further to remote work In 2021, as the phenomenon flipped from temporary measure to mainstream movement. It spring-boarded countless scenarios, mostly tinged with tourism because destinations saw plenty of marketing opportunities.

But among the images of work and play, I was struck by a conversation I had with the co-founder of a community interest organization who wants to level the playing field. Talking with Lorraine Charles of Na’amal , I was reminded the brave new world of remote work doesn’t revolve around middle and high-income countries, where people have ample opportunity to travel and work where they please.

Charles’ mission is to make remote work available for refugees, for people who don’t have the privilege of a U.S. or European passport, or the means to hop from one sun-kissed island to another with their laptop. She told me she wanted to help convert refugees into employees by training them on the softer skills needed, like Zoom meeting etiquette, then help them connect with potential employers.

In the same way travel broadens horizons for a tourist, does the same apply to an organization that recruits outside of its comfort zone? Later on in the year the topic was broached by immigration lawyer David Cantor , while the growing need for intercultural communications also emerged as a one-to-watch topic during 2021.

The plight of refugees around the world was brought home as we witnessed crises such as the large-scale evacuations from Kabul, and the tragedies of migrants in France attempting to cross the channel to the UK. Climate migration may also become a factor in the years ahead. 

A lot of progress has been made in diversity and inclusion over the past few years, and this is one area that I imagine, or hope, more organizations will address over the coming years.

Sean O’Neill , Senior Travel Tech Editor

What Accor’s Top Technology Executive Has to Say May Surprise You

The Backstory : This year, we launched Skift’s first Travel Tech Briefing , a guide for travel executives to decide if their company should “build, buy, or partner” to stay ahead in enterprise technology.

I was delighted that the first edition spotlighted Floor Bleeker, who gave his first interview since becoming Accor’s chief technology officer. The hotel giant had taken a contrarian tech strategy but hadn’t publicly discussed it before.

Until recently, Accor had planned to centralize its core technology systems. That’s a common trend among many large hotel groups. But around the time Bleeker came on board, the company decided to give up its plan to centralize its core technology systems. It will now be running multiple property management systems instead, allowing owners to tap upstart players, such as Treebo and Mews, after it certifies them.

While the move may seem like small potatoes to an outsider, the decision is significant for the hotel technology sector. It allows smaller players to compete to provide critical software to properties. Guests could be the ultimate beneficiary as competition may spur faster innovation in how hotels interact with guests.

Madhu Unnikrishnan , Editor, Airline Weekly

The United Airlines Engine Failure Is a Story Being Wildly Botched by Media: Commentary

The Backstory : On February 20, 2021, one of the two engines on a United Airlines Boeing 777 exploded in spectacular fashion, showering a Denver suburb with wreckage and terrifying passengers with sights of flames shooting out of the jet. The story dominated U.S. television news for several days, and pundits spouted dire predictions about Boeing’s future and the safety of commercial aviation.

Granted, it’s been an exceedingly difficult few years for Boeing, after two fatal crashes grounded its best-selling 737 Max for almost two years (forcing Boeing to admit that the aircraft’s flight-control software was flawed and responsible for the crashes); Federal Aviation Administration inspections of its 787 have halted delivery of a long-range aircraft airlines depend on; and its 777X has been delayed by several years. Boeing has gotten a lot of things wrong in recent years, but the United 777 failure was not one.

There’s an old adage that says a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth puts on its pants. Television news fell all over itself to air video that had already spread on social media. Important context was missing. Yes, the footage was horrific, but what was lost was why the incident happened. A fan blade broke loose from one of the aircraft’s Pratt & Whitney engines, causing the engine to fail and exposing its combustion chamber. The fan blade did not pierce the fuselage.

What was lost in the consumer media’s coverage was this: The aircraft stayed intact, and its many safety systems prevented a catastrophic accident. The crew performed flawlessly and safely landed the airplane without any injuries. In fact, most of the flight’s passengers were rebooked and carried on with their travels that same day. In other words, the real story was that the everything and everyone worked as they should, which may be a lot less exciting than the breathless stories the news media reported, but important to note.

Lebawit Lily Girma, Global Tourism Reporter

Why Tourism Needs to Step Up and Push for Vaccine Equity

The Backstory: The horrific pandemic surge in India in April had just unfolded and in parallel, the travel industry in the U.S. and Europe, and their consumers, were focused on planning for the start of a “hot vaxxed summer.” The contrast was glaring and a clear sign to me that vaccine access would be critical for a full and fair tourism recovery. So while it was a difficult choice to make — this being my first full year of tourism coverage for Skift — I am most proud of this initial story on vaccine equity. It became the first in what has been a series of updates from us throughout the year after leading this conversation for the travel industry.

Why this topic continues to matter is because first, it’s an issue that remains critical for the industry and continues to impede and influence travel’s recovery everywhere, as we’re currently witnessing with the Omicron variant. Second, it’s critical to push travel leaders in the major source markets to recognize that solely advocating for the lifting of border restrictions is a short-sighted approach. There’s a clear business case for the industry — particularly the World Travel & Tourism Council and the United Nations World Tourism Organization and their members — to use its political muscle to push for more rapid vaccine distributions and donations globally so that the recovery is sustainable.

Third, this is a time in which we need bold leadership and vision. We saw companies such as Intrepid Travel and Expedia Group move forward with vaccine equity campaigns some months after this initial story was published. Many more need to follow.

We need this industry to have a reckoning on what global tourism should represent and stand for in the future, and that it’s about more than arrival numbers and gross domestic product. Vaccine equity is an opportunity to do just that.

Rashaad Jorden , Editorial Assistant

How One Tour Operator Is Using a 1977 Hit Tune to Lure Back Travelers

The Backstory: I was looking to write a story about a tremendously successful tour operator marketing campaign that I thought could become a regular feature, and I was referred to Steve Born, the chief marketing officer of the Globus family of brands. 

How exactly? Globus was saying that landmarks popular with their guests – including the Eiffel Tower and the Easter Island statues – had missed them by singing Player’s hit Baby Come Back. Born explained in the story how the campaign came about and why it had enjoyed success.

It was my favorite story from the year because as Born mentioned, travel is fun and supposed to bring a smile to travelers’ faces. Seeing the video of popular landmarks — or even thinking about it — has never failed to elicit a chuckle from me. Born talked about the hard work that went into creating the campaign, which was timed to coincide with the reopening of numerous destinations. 

But most importantly, travel for many is a cause for celebration, and despite numerous ongoing challenges, some tour operators have had things to celebrate this year. 

Cameron Sperance , Hospitality Reporter

Lessons for Travel’s Recovery From Anthony Bourdain’s New Book

The Backstory: Some travel stories span beyond one’s assigned beat. It was timely to see the late Anthony Bourdain’s travel guide come out just as unruly airline passengers and rude hotel and restaurant guests became the unfortunate legacy of the pandemic. You couldn’t go days without seeing a headline of a diverted aircraft because some idiot wouldn’t wear a mask and punched a flight attendant to make a point — a point the federal government and airlines responded to with jail time and a lifetime ban from flying.

Restaurants and hotels weren’t spared the abuse. Irate was the default mood for patrons who had to wait longer than expected for a meal or, heaven forbid, were told by hotel management to keep their volume down.

Bourdain’s book made me miss his weekly wisdom doled out on his TV series, and I felt a particular bond with the words since I live in Provincetown, Mass. — the seaside town at the end of Cape Cod where he got his start in the world of restaurants.

But the guide also painted some important travel lessons: Always remember you’re a guest in someone else’s hometown. Be patient in this era of longer waits: It’s not neglect; it’s a labor shortage crisis.

Oh, and stop being a jackass to hospitality workers.

Angela Tupper, Deputy Editor, EventMB

The Catch-22 of Zero-Covid Zones: Events Happen But Can Cancel on a Dime

The Backstory: A major part of our 2021 news cycle was dominated by Covid coverage, but this story was particularly compelling because it approached a well-known news story from an under-reported angle. While major publications were drawing attention to Australia and New Zealand’s success with enforcing a zero-Covid policy, there was very little coverage of what this approach meant for the event industry. Headlines announced that life Down Under was able to continue largely as normal, apart from periodic snap lockdowns whenever a handful of cases were confirmed. Were large-scale events able to move forward as well? 

Through multiple interviews with event professionals in Australia, a consistent story emerged: The nation’s successful suppression of Covid transmission made it much safer to hold events from a public health standpoint, but the measures needed to maintain zero-Covid status also meant that a lockdown could be triggered by just one case — with events therefore prone to last-minute cancelation. In other words, reducing the health risk indirectly amplified the financial risk. In turn, What began as an investigation into the viability of events turned into a conversation around the need for event cancelation insurance. With private insurers unwilling to cover the risk, lobbyists were calling for government-backed programs. 

In some ways, this story provided a glimpse into the “stop-and-go” future that the global event industry would soon be facing in a post-vaccine world periodically threatened by new variants of concern. Since then, the UK has announced a government-backed event insurance scheme, as has the Australian state of Victoria. The impact of these programs will be a story to watch in the coming year.

Dennis Schaal , Founding Editor

Vacasa Paid $619 Million for TurnKey Vacation Rentals in Mostly Stock

The Backstory: This story combined two things I love: A scoop of sorts and scouring Securities and Exchange Commission financial filings.

What’s the first thing that travel veterans ask you when they learn of an acquisition? Namely, what do you think the sale price was? On smaller deals, when a startup gets bought by a public company, the buyer doesn’t necessarily have to explicitly disclose the price, and when a private company acquires a startup, the usual thing is there is no public statement about the price.

Vacasa’s acquisition of a smaller property management company, TurnKey, wasn’t a small deal, it turns out, but it involved two private companies. I therefore didn’t expect Vacasa to disclose the acquisition price — and apparently neither did the rest of the press — but the twist was that Vacasa was slated to go public in a blank check merger and was filing its financials with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Vacasa eventually went public, on December 7.

I love reading certain Securities and Exchange Commission documents and frequently tell my reporter colleagues that you can find all kinds of news bits and scoops if you take the time to read them, which I often do during the evenings or on weekends — for fun.

So there was the price tag and details about the deal in a Vacasa financial filing. Vacasa acquired TurnKey for nearly $619 million, mostly in stock. As TurnKey had only raised some $120 million in funding, it appears as though co-founders T.J. Clark and John Banczak did fairly well for their investors.

Miguel Neves , Editor-in-Chief, EventMB

Event Tech Investment Tracker

The Backstory: For my favorite article, I am going to say the  EventMB Event Tech Investment Tracker . This continually evolving post sums up a lot of my learnings in 2021. I knew that joining Skift to lead EventMB, I would bring the event professional’s point of view with me. With this post, I am not distilling what I have learned from all the amazing editors at Skift and their unique ways of looking at the travel industry. I’ve had help from many members of the Skift and EventMB to make this post a real at-a-glance review of the crazy world of mergers and acquisitions in event tech. Everyone I have shared it with has given positive feedback and I know it will be an important part of future iterations of the EventMB website, so the story will continue to evolve.

Colin Nagy, On Experience Columnist

Doha Quickly Comes of Age Ahead of World Cup 2022

The Backstory: This was an interesting story to report, as Doha is in the harried run-up to a major milestone, the World Cup in 2022. The event has been a forcing factor for a lot of the obvious things like hospitality and infrastructure but also has accelerated a lot of Qatari soft diplomacy: museums, interesting small businesses and centers to attract more of the global creative class. Covid has put a damper on a lot, but it is clear to see there’s been clear vision and a lot of progress. I liked this piece because it was an honest look at what is working well, and what needs to be improved in a region that has a lot of shallow, one-note coverage from Western outlets. There is a lot of depth and moving parts to the modern Qatar story: from regional and global politics, to business, investment, real estate to national country branding and the desire to live up to the promise of the World Cup. These are my favorite stories to try and make sense of when I can.  

Ruthy Muñoz , Freelancer

How Unruly Do Airline Passengers Have to Be Before the Government Decides to Prosecute?

The Backstory: I love writing feature stories that bring extraordinary people to the forefront, but surprisingly, when faced with choosing my favorite account this year, a Skift feature wasn’t it. Instead, my favorite story is accountability in the other pandemic- unruly passengers.

As a former flight attendant, I understood there’s only so much flight crews could do without the backup of airlines, the FAA, the Justice Department, and Congress.  Writing this and other stories on unruly passengers and holding everyone accountable to bring about needed change is what the power of the journalistic keyboard is for me.

Lisa Jade Hutchings , Branded Content Writer

How Event Professionals Can Cope With Imposter Syndrome

The Backstory:  I have had the opportunity to work on some great stories this year, such as the effect of the pandemic on local event industries around the world and an analysis of the sector’s commitment to net-zero. However, my favorite post explored the topic of how event professionals can better cope with imposter syndrome. 

While massive technological advancements and innovation have taken place within the sector, I wanted to delve deeper into the human experience of an event professional through real-life insights into the current situation. As professionals working in a high-stress industry (events), the cancellations and job losses due to the pandemic have impacted the mental health of those working within the space. Because of this, many planners have experienced crippling self-doubt in adapting to new tech, event formats, external stressors — all while learning new skills.

In writing the post, a background of the syndrome was given, alongside actionable tips to coping so people could gain tangible value by reading the piece. To better understand imposter syndrome, its effects, and how people can manage, insights were gained by speaking at length with a counseling psychologist, researching the topic online, connecting with others in the industry, and drawing on past personal experiences. 

The highlight of the post for me was seeing the effect it had on others in the industry — people were able to relate and felt that a voice had been given to an experience so many people live with daily.

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Our mission is to serve the 50+ traveler who's ready to cross a few items off their bucket list.

My 7 Most Unforgettable Travel Experiences

Heather Markel

• Activities and Interests
• Destinations
• Food and Drink
• History and Culture
• Sightseeing

I’ve just started my fourth year of nomadic life. In the past three years, I’ve been to 25 countries (if not for the pandemic, it would have been at least 10 more!) and had some of the most wonderful experiences of my entire life. Here are a few of my favorite experiences in some of the countries I’ve had the privilege to visit:

1. Seeing My First Leopard In South Africa

I was deeply moved by the visceral connection I felt with the land and the people while in South Africa. However, I didn’t expect to become obsessed with seeing a leopard before I left. I went out on several safaris, including Chobe and Etosha national parks, where I missed out on seeing a leopard the first time and was robbed of seeing leopards the second time. Thus began my obsession.

It wasn’t until I got to Kruger National Park that I finally saw one. In fact, I saw five. The first was a mother and cub, but it was dark so impossible to take good photos. The next day, we stopped for one by the side of the road, stalking an impala. Its perfect, sinewy muscles quivered in anticipation, and I felt like I saw the most beautiful animal I had ever encountered. Lean, the perfect killing machine, and yet also stunningly beautiful. Eventually, she walked with a swift, confident gait, and disappeared into the tall, dry grass. I will never forget that leopard.

2. Drinking Yerba Mate And Malbec In Argentina

Last year was my first in Argentina, and it became one of my favorite places in the world. Drinking yerba mate was an experience of sharing culture, intellectual conversation, and making new friends. In Bariloche, I took a class and learned the proper way to prepare it, and that there are many different brands and flavors. I shared many cups with strangers and learned about their lives, and even developed lasting friendships. In my opinion, you cannot truly understand the culture of Argentina without trying at least one cup of this drink, which boosts many healing properties as well!

Before heading to Argentina, I was an avid fan of malbec wine. But there’s no comparison to drinking it in Mendoza. I went to the Uco Valley, famed for the best malbec wines in the world, and they were all excellent. The experience is divine — you can take a bus, a local train, or a bike, depending which vineyards (called bodegas) you plan to visit. I had a glass most days of the four months I spent in Argentina.

3. Nail Art, Massages, And Learning Motorcycle Culture In Vietnam

Vietnam was a combination of sights, sounds, and smells. Prices were so cheap I simply couldn’t comprehend how I could make it through an entire day spending so little.

One day, a friend treated me to a manicure and pedicure with nail art. I pulled up complex nail art photos on Instagram I liked, thinking they would make a modified version. Instead, my manicurist made a perfect, highly detailed copy of the designs I showed her. In fact, they looked better on my nails than they did on Instagram. The whole process took her two hours, and cost $20 USD. It remains the most incredible manicure and pedicure I’ve ever had.

When I look back at my time in Vietnam, I still can’t believe I managed to cross a street, ever. And yet, somehow, I found the rhythm of the motorbikes and survived. Looking at my photos, I’m amazed that entire families rode their motorbikes together. The motorbike seemed to be a mode of transportation as well as a way families spent time together. One of my favorite photos is of a woman kissing her son as she drives along.

Who doesn’t love a massage? How about a really excellent, hour-long massage for less than $10? I got a few massages a week, they were so good and affordable. My favorite massage parlor was in Hanoi.

4. Eating Honey And Red Kiwifruit, Seeking Greenstone, And Learning About Maori Culture In New Zealand

Now marooned in New Zealand for almost a year, I’ve had a lot of time to get familiar with the culture. I’ve had a few surprising lessons on the food front. Firstly, being raised in America, I thought kiwifruit only existed in green. As it turns out, it comes in gold and red as well. The red is the sweetest, and perhaps one of the best, fruits I’ve ever tasted. It is only available during March and April, so you have to time your visit to New Zealand just right! The other surprise for me was honey. When I’ve gotten it at home, it crystallizes long before I finish a jar. In New Zealand, I’ve learned to use honey almost every day. Whether that be in my tea, on toast, plain, or as a skin remedy, I’ve gone through many jars.

When I first arrived, I noticed all the stores sold jewelry made out of a green stone. I learned it’s called pounamu and is found on the South Island. While, at first, it seemed like a tourist souvenir, it now seems like a rite of passage. I had no idea the greenstone came in so many shapes, colors, hues, and varieties. I’ve already bought two pieces because they represent a deeper connection to the country for me, and my time here, which I will never forget.

I didn’t realize the movie  Moana  was based on this area of the world. Locals I’ve spoken with believe the fictional Polynesian island of Motunui is based on New Zealand, since the story is partly based on Maori legends. Looking at the landscapes, I can certainly believe a demigod pulled mountains out of the sea!

The indigenous people came here via the sea, as Moana’s community did in the film, and their history and culture are fascinating. This is the first country I’ve been to where tattoos signify family and tradition and are specific to the tribe each person descended from. In fact, the Maori tattoo artists have to study the designs of over 100 tribes to do their job properly.

5. Playing With Highland Cows And Getting Heathergems In Scotland

If you’ve read any of my other articles, you may know that I love cows! I have to admit that the Highland cow stole my heart. With a crop of hair over their eyes leaving one to wonder how they see past it, and babies that look like giant blobs of fur, it’s impossible not to fall in love with them.

Scotland is also known for my namesake growing on hills. I’ve seen the Heather plant, but what’s wonderful in Scotland is that a company found a technique to color the roots of the Heather plants and make beautiful jewelry. Heathergems is located in Pitlochry, Scotland, where you can visit the factory store, but their jewelry is available throughout the country. I still treasure the pieces I bought there.

6. Seeing The Moai On Easter Island

Easter Island struck me as one of those places most people see photos of but don’t actually go. It’s a tiny island, a four-hour flight from Santiago, Chile, and seems so remote and impossible to get to from the U.S. that I’m sure I wouldn’t have gone if I didn’t quit my job. On my way to Santiago, I found a round-trip flight on a Dreamliner for less than $300 USD. I snapped it up and had an incredible experience.

The island is expensive and touristy, but no matter, there are layers of intrigue to it. Most people stay only a few days, but I stayed almost a week, giving me more time to see the stone statues, called Moai, and learn about the island’s history and people. Seeing the Moai in person, you really understand how huge they are — and that they weigh a lot. Therein lies the intrigue. They were built long before we had the modern technology to move them (and it’s still not easy, proven by the tsunami that knocked many down in the 1960s). All the statues were built in the one quarry on the island and then moved to their current resting places. But at the time they were built, there were warring tribes inhabiting the island. So not only did the statues get moved, they got transported safely. The mystery will make you believe in aliens.

7. Learning Monks Aren’t That Different Than The Rest Of Us In Cambodia

While in Asia, especially in Cambodia, I developed a minor obsession with the monks. I loved the orange color of the robes most of them wear, and the energy they carry with them as they walk. Even the young boys with shaved heads seem somehow dignified and full of purpose. Their robes provide a beautiful contrast to the aging stone of the temples they live in.

For me, it was the contrast of holy and normal life blending together that really fascinated me. Seeing a monk shop for groceries like any non-holy person was humbling. For a moment, we had something in common. I had some silly idea that monks still led more sequestered lives, so seeing them smoke cigarettes and use smartphones was a real surprise! I enjoyed their presence everywhere I went.

There are so many beautiful experiences to be had in every country. I feel lucky and blessed to have had these, and know many more await me!

Inspired? Here are the destinations mentioned in this article:

• South Africa
• New Zealand
• Easter Island

Heather is a full-time travel coach who is passionate about helping professionals seeking more freedom and flexibility to ditch their desk and discover their destiny through full-time travel. She provides her clients with the path to the mindset, money, and mastery to make a full-time travel lifestyle possible. Since quitting, she's become an international best-selling author and is about to do her first TEDx talk! Learn more about Heather's travel adventures on her website, Heather Begins.

I've been to 54 countries and have lived in 10. These 5 underrated places are worth the trip.

• Kate Boardman has visited 54 countries around the world and lived in 10, including the US.
• She's enjoyed spots like France and Bali but says people should visit underrated places like Oman.
• In Guatemala, she climbed an active volcano, and in Ecuador, she swam with hammerhead sharks.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kate Boardman , a 36-year-old former teacher and current content creator from Massachusetts who has lived and traveled all over the world. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I first lived abroad when I was 15, when I participated in an exchange program in Germany. I lived there for a year, attending school and staying with a host family.

That was my first exposure to living overseas and truly immersing myself in other cultures. From there, the travel bug hit me hard. It inspired me to study international business in France while I was at university, and future trips after that.

I've been to 54 countries and lived in 10, including the US. The sense of freedom and self-growth that comes from traveling is unbeatable. I also love being able to see the world in a different way.

The most popular destinations are popular for a reason.

Everyone talks about Paris, London , Bali — all travel destinations that are super popular, in part thanks to social media.

I visited Bali in early 2012 and saw it expand firsthand. There was a lot of construction — with many beach clubs being built — and it became overcrowded by foreigners. It's led to locals being priced out of their homes.

I also think spots like Cancun are super overrated; there are way cooler places to visit in Mexico. Many tourists spend a week in an all-inclusive resort and think that's fun — but that couldn't be more unattractive to me.

Obviously, there's still beauty in places that are oversaturated and famous. But I think that there's an excitement that comes from experiencing places that are off the beaten track.

It's often in those places that you can have the most surprising experiences.

I was treated like family in Iran

I would say my favorite country that I have visited is Iran. I went in 2018 and was there for 10 days.

Normally, when I'm traveling, I backpack alone and stay in hostels as a solo traveler. However, in Iran, if you're American, Canadian, or from the UK, in order to get permission to enter the country, you need a set itinerary and a licensed travel guide.

It was a very coordinated trip and a bit more challenging to visit, but it was so rewarding because I was welcomed with the warmest hospitality.

One of the unique aspects of this trip was how close my guide and I became. He went above and beyond, inviting me over to his family's house for dinner, where I got to meet and hang out with his friends and family. It was truly special.

Because I had a guide, everything was kind of set for me in Iran. He arranged different accommodations, including a road trip through the country, where we stayed in various cities at different guesthouses.

It only cost me around $1,000.

The nature and landscape of Iran are absolutely beautiful and amazing. The sights, attractions, and history are mind-blowing. You've got these gorgeous mosaics everywhere. All of the architecture had my jaw dropping in awe while walking around.

The food is also delicious, and the markets are incredible, each filled with gorgeous textiles, jewelry, turquoise, and rugs.

I would totally visit there again. I hope the political situation changes because that would definitely be one of my group trip destinations. I think it's just incredible.

Georgia took me by surprise

Georgia is just one of those countries that's not on a lot of people's radar. And then they go there and they're like, 'Whoa, that's awesome. Why didn't I know about this before?'

I knew very little about Georgia before I visited in 2018. I spent only five days in the country, but I was completely blown away.

I stayed in Tbilisi, which is the capital city. It's a really beautiful, trendy, and artsy kind of city. It has amazing wine and incredible food.

Probably one of my favorite things about the trip is that I stayed in this hostel called Fabrika . It was an old Soviet Union sewing factory that they turned into a super cool, industrial, hipster hostel.

In Tbilisi, I also went on a pub crawl throughout the Old Town, which featured a bunch of underground cellars and bunkers that have been turned into trendy nightclubs and bars.

During my time in the country, I took a trip out to the countryside to an area called Kazbegi, which is absolutely stunning. There were gorgeous and breathtaking mountains, hills, and massive churches.

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In the city, I also had a Turkish bath, which is a big thing in Georgia. I got a full scrub down.

Guatemala has something for everyone

When most people from the US think about going to Central America, they're focused on Mexico or Costa Rica. Guatemala seems to be a place that kind of gets overlooked.

But life is great in Guatemala.

You've got beautiful weather all year round, the jungle, rainforests, and the Caribbean's white sand beaches, while the Pacific side has its black sand beaches. It's got a little bit of everything.

I first lived in Guatemala in 2021, where I worked as a teacher at an international school. They provided housing in Guatemala City. However, after I finished working for them, I moved to a beach town on the Pacific coast and lived there for about six months.

I've traveled there on other occasions too, staying for periods of four or five months.

The typical salary for a Guatemalan is about $500 a month, with a good salary being $1,000. I would say that $2,000 a month is more than enough to live there extremely comfortably.

There are a lot of digital nomads moving there, especially to Antigua — an old colonial town with a lot of charm, cobblestone streets, and painted buildings.

There's just so much to do in Guatemala; it's so magical.

The biggest must do is hiking the active volcano called Acatenango . Sometimes, you can see it erupting right from its base camp. There's not many places in the world where you can experience that.

Another good place to visit is El Paredon, a super up-and-coming hippie surf town. The surfing is great, and you've got these black volcanic sand beaches. It's just a really laid-back place.

Lake Atitlan is also an incredible spot. It's surrounded by volcanoes and several Mayan villages, each with its own personality and vibe.

Oman's deserts are magical

Oman is in the Middle East, bordering the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. I've been there three times between 2016 and 2018.

The country is culturally rich, and the capital city, Muscat, is really beautiful. It has old traditional marketplaces and gorgeous architecture — the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque is definitely worth checking out.

The deserts there are incredible, so doing a desert trip is a must. I camped out in the desert with the locals, rode camels, and drove Jeeps over the sand dunes.

Having tea and watching the sunset in the desert was magical too.

Oman also has wadis, which are basically big canyons in the middle of the desert with swimming holes. There, you'll find bright turquoise water contrasting with the orange rock.

The country's islands are also beautiful and incredible for snorkeling. They look like you'd be in the Caribbean, but you're in the Middle East.

The Galapagos Islands are truly like nowhere else in the world

I visited Ecuador last year for about six weeks. I was leading a gap year program with a group of high school students. We split our time between the Galapagos Islands and the mainland, which consisted of cities and the Amazon.

Because Ecuador has incredibly unique biodiversity that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world, The Galapagos Islands are an absolute must. I've never seen such incredible wildlife in my life; so many species exist only on those islands.

While visiting The Galapagos, my group went snorkeling with 50 to 100 hammerhead and Blacktip sharks. We also swam with sea lions and saw giant tortoises.

Another amazing aspect of Ecuador is learning about the Inca culture. My group did a homestay and lived with a family for about 10 days and learned about their way of life.

We experienced how connected they are with Mother Earth, whom they refer to as Pachamama, and learned about their traditional medicine: They grow their own food and seek out plant medicine when they're sick, rather than relying on processed foods.

Learning about and sharing their way of life was truly special.

I want to show people how to travel the world

There are many beliefs people have about different countries and cultures, sometimes considering them too dangerous, expensive, or unattainable.

I want to inspire more people to explore, step out of their comfort zones, and experience more of the world. I am hosting group trips with the goal of bringing people to these countries and showing them why they are so life-changing.

Watch: From Nepal to Kosovo, here's how countries are celebrating Pride

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Once In A Lifetime Travel Experiences – The Travel Stories

On the road experiences—something that is inevitable if you choose to travel. These can include great experiences, awful times, funny occurrences that you’ll never forget and the just down right weird.

Traveling is about making memories. Memories lasting forever. Check out all travel stories which end up as Experiences for Life – the kind you will never forget and can’t wait to tell your friends about!

Keen for even more entertaining and inspiring travel stories? Check out are huge collection below.

Read all the great stories from around the world. You can instantly share them as well if you enjoy them!

Find all 180+ short travel stories here.

Traveling Jamaica to record our 1st Reggae Song

Our adventure in Jamaica started with a wonderful mistake. My boyfriend and I had booked a hotel two hours away. Instead of paying $50US to sit with tourists on a charter, we paid $2US and traveled with the locals .

Four days later, we stood on the side of the road to catch another $2US public bus to Ocho Rios. Bumping into a local couple we befriended, they set us up with some of their friends that were going to pick us up and drive us around to find a new hotel.  Rule #1 Always trust your gut.

Our new friends then drove us to find a hotel, to their favorite jerk chicken spot and to their homes. Two hours later, we cut our first reggae song! Rule #2 Chill with the locals.

My Cab Driver hunting an Iguana for dinner – Panama Experience!

Cab fares in Panama are determined in advance. There is no meter running, and for good reason. You never know what could happen. There are random stops, occasional detours, and the odd errand that you, as a passenger, should be happy to tolerate. This week, my cabbie stopped in the middle of the road when he spotted a large iguana on the shoulder . He began to chase after it as I sat in the front seat watching the drama unfold with my iPhone.

Losing the lizard in the dry leaves, I gave a whistle to the cabbie and p ointed to the spot where the reptile sat motionless . The Panamanian lept down on the iguana like Spider-Man from above and returned to the truck, lizard in hand.

“ Comida? ” I asked. (Food in Spanish).

“ Si…la cena! Ha ha ha ha. ”

He tied the iguana up like a chicken and then put him in the cab with us, under his knees. I am sure it was dead by this time, and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t placed in the BACK of the little pickup truck. Cab rides will never be the same, and I am grateful for the Panamanian experience.

Read: Real Travel Love Stories – Travel the World to find your Soul Mate

Varanasi, India: A Terror Attack in the City to Die – a True Travel Story

I cannot imagine myself in a more awful yet interesting place than Varanasi. It is one of the oldest cities in India and the holiest city of Hinduism. Varanasi is also considered as Shiva’s favorite city, which he never leaves. Above Varanasi hovers a mixed mist of smoke and fumes, so that at night no stars can be seen. The narrow streets are littered with garbage and feces, and cows, pigs, dogs and monkeys are roaming around. Drug dealers and pimps are standing near the Ghats, the stairs leading to the Ganges, looking out for tourists to scam.

Many religious people come here simply to die, to be cremated on the banks of the Ganges, before the ashes will be handed over to the river.

They say, this way it is possible to break out of the cycle of birth and rebirth. The city is full of sick people waiting for death.

One evening, we had gathered together to visit a so-called Puja on the Ganges. It is traditionally a Hindu ceremony in Varanasi. Suddenly in the midst of the ceremony a bomb exploded. One child died, many people were injured. According to the newspaper Hindustan Times, a terror organization called Indian Mudschaheddin confessed to this attack.

We wrote up a big new guide to the best hostels in Delhi .

Get some energetic vibes in Bam – When an Earthquake hit Bam

“Bam is still here!”

Said Mr. Panjalizadeh, owner of the Akbar Guest House in Bam, Iran.

“We get energy from you people who visit us.”

In 2003 a 6.6 earthquake hit Bam, devastating the city. Most of my Iranian friends thought I was crazy to drive all the way to Bam. “There’s nothing there,” they said. Nothing could be further from the truth. True, the place had been wrecked, but – after visiting the stunning citadel – I joined Mr. Panjalizadeh for tea in the garden of his guesthouse, seriously damaged by the earthquake and which still resembles a construction site.

But, opening his torn visitor’s books salvaged from the wreckage, I read the treasured memories of his previous guests. I felt humbled by what I read, and energized by this old man’s optimism.

Read: 17 Solo Travel Stories – From Fears, Lonelyness and the best time of the Life!

Walking solo in a GULAG of the Stalin Era – crimes of the past

In Siberia, you read a lot about GULAG and their unfortunate guests. So we had to go to Perm-36, a former soviet labor camp where “country enemies” were imprisoned .

In a forest 100 km northeast from Perm and closed for tick-borne encephalitis, as we discovered after 2 hours in a bouncy minivan, we managed to enter the camp thanks to a kind employee and walked through barbed wire fences and bare dorms with wooden beds.

It’s touching to see how people had to live for minor crimes like being late for work or reading censored books .

Waiting for Kumari, a goddess in Kathmandu

We were in Kathmandu waiting for Kumari to come out of the palace. She is a goddess and a very young girl , chosen among numerous Newari female candidates according to strict body figures and after frightful trials. She cannot lay her feet on the ground, so servants carry her on a sedan out of the palace. Furthermore, she’s not looking to anything in particular with her composed gaze, almost ignoring everyone.

It’s a bittersweet condition: her destiny is already written, she soon will be a woman and will lose her goddess status, as another Kumari shall be appointed .

Skydiving 15,000 feet over Queenstown, New Zealand

Absolutely petrified. That’s one way of describing my anxiety before jumping out of a plane at 15,000 feet. But I had never done anything like this before, so that made it desirable. What makes traveling different is the unknown, the ability to experience new things without over thinking it. So that’s what I did; at 15,000 feet, of course. And I can honestly say that it was the best experience of my life. Complete silence as I free fell into nothingness. It was exhilarating.

Read : 34 best hostels in New Zealand

Ticking of the bucket list: Cage-diving with Great Whites

So, this is a sneak preview of my old Bucket List:

– 14. Learn how to swim

– 15. Go cage diving with Great Whites

And then one day in November 2014 I said: “Sign me up for the cage diving with great white sharks, please”, ok, so I may have skipped a step with learning to swim, but really how essential was it to know how to swim when going cage diving with Great Whites?

After attending an amazing International Civil Society Week in Johannesburg, South Africa, I jumped at the chance of taking a two-day trip to Cape Town. If you need something you wake you up at 6am on a Wednesday, get into a cage with 8 Great Whites surrounding. The adrenaline junkie within will be truly pleased.

From Zero to Kilimanjaro, the Highest Peak of Africa

This was it. What was I thinking? “Stephanie, you have never climbed a mountain in your life, never mind starting with Kilimanjaro.” At that stage there was no going back, it was time to take on the challenge. After spending two months living with a Maasai Tribe, the decision came to tackle Kili with three friends.

This was an experience I will never forget. These overwhelming feelings of happiness, fear, tiredness, excitement and anxiety all at once .

Standing at the highest peak of Africa, I told myself, this was my time. It was time to challenge myself and do it while seeing the world.

Drinking Shots with Vietnamese War Veterans

It’s true that it’s the people who make the difference! I’m lucky to be traveling with my best friend Hannah, but don’t worry about doing it alone either because we have met the most incredible people….

Like stopping for a bike break in Hoi An and ending up doing shots of rice wine at the insistence of Vietnamese War Veterans, some of which were missing limbs but still had the biggest smiles and funniest stories.

Read: The coolest and best hostel in Ho Chi Minh City with rooftop terrace and fun vibes

This travel story from Vietnam was contributed by Heather, a friend of Hostelgeeks. Heather Jayne Wilkes is from Wales, UK. She’s a world traveler, exploring every single corner of the globe to find experiences, joy and stories to share.

We are 100% Independent: Some links on Hostelgeeks are so-called affiliate links. If you decide to book through these links, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you . Your support allows us to keep producing high-quality, independent content free of influence from hostels or external advertisers. Learn more here . 🙏

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Screen Rant

Park min-young’s time travel k-drama perfectly flips her most famous role 6 years later.

Park Min-young’s latest TV role, Marry My Husband's Ji-won, perfectly flips her most famous character from one of the best K-dramas of all time.

• Marry My Husband flips Park Min-young's Secretary Kim role in a revenge-filled time travel story.
• Ji-won escaped an abusive marriage after going back in time and decided to focus on her professional career.
• Both shows involve second chances and reevaluating life priorities for the main characters.

Park Min-young’s character in the time travel K-drama Marry My Husband perfectly flipped her most famous role, Kim Mi-so from What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim . One of the most acclaimed actors of her generation, Park Min-young has starred in several successful shows. This includes hits like What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim and Forecasting Love and Weather , the former of which is widely considered one of the best K-dramas of all time . Following a two-year hiatus from Korean dramas, Park Min-young recently starred in Marry My Husband , which ran from January 1 to February 20, 2024.

While shows like Her Prive Life and Forecasting Love and Weather were very well received, What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim arguably remains Park Min-young’s most famous role six years later. Released in 2018, What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim featured Park Min-young as Kim Mi-so, a highly efficient secretary who was now reconsidering her priorities. The show also starred Park Seo-joon as Young-joon , Mi-so’s boss. There are some interesting parallels between Marry My Husband and What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim , especially when it comes to the differences between Park Min-young’s characters.

Park Min-young’s Marry My Husband Character Flips Her Secretary Kim Role

Kang ji-won has the opposite goal from kim mi-so.

In Marry My Husband , Park Min-young plays Kang Ji-won , who, at the start of the series, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. On the same day she received her diagnosis, Ji-won found out her husband was cheating on her with her best friend. Not only that, but the two of them were counting the days for Ji-won to die so that they could get the insurance money. To accelerate things, Ji-won’s husband tried to kill her once she found out about his affair. While Ji-won did tie in this timeline, she instantly woke up 10 years in the past.

Mi-so’s story was not as tragic as Ji-won’s, yet both of these characters realized there was something wrong with their lives and decided it was time to change.

Ji-won was mysteriously given the chance to rebuild her life in Marry My Husband , after which she decided not only to plot her revenge against her soon-to-be-husband but also to ditch everything that was hurting her. Ji-won built new friendships, stopped caring about pleasing everyone, and focused on her professional career instead of living for her fiancé. Ji-won regained control of her life after leaving an abusive marriage as part of a toxic family that also included an abusive mother-in-law. Her character arc in the time travel K-drama was the opposite of what Mi-so went through in What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim .

In What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim , Park Min-young’s character is somewhat happy professionally but dreams of building a family and wants to focus more on her personal life. Secretary Kim had built an incredible reputation as the trustable, competent executive secretary of an important CEO, yet she was not fully happy. Mi-so was tired of being known as “Secretary Kim” and wanted to build a life outside of work. Mi-so’s story was not as tragic as Ji-won’s, yet both of these characters realized there was something wrong with their lives and decided it was time to change.

How Marry My Husband Is Different From What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim

Marry my husband was about ji-won finding her strength.

Marry My Husband and What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim play with some similar tropes , including but not limited to romance at the workplace. That said, they are very different shows with very different tones. Marry My Husband adds a supernatural element to a classic tale of revenge, with the time travel aspect of the story setting the narrative for Kang Ji-won’s journey. Most of the show is told from the perspective of Ji-won, allowing viewers to connect with her as her plan for revenge progresses. Most Marry My Husband characters are oblivious to Ji-won’s secret, except for her boss, Ji-hyuk.

Marry My Husband Ending Explained: Does Ji-won Find Happiness?

What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim , on the other hand, tells its story from the perspective of Park Min-young and Park Seo-joon’s characters . It becomes clear right from episode 1 that Secretary Kim and Young-joon have feelings for each other and might become a couple. From then on, the show explores how Mi-so’s decision to leave her job affects not only her life but also her boss’ life. Their pasts are slowly revealed as the show progresses, with audiences learning that their connection is deeper than anyone imagined. Compared to Marry My Husband ’s time travel plot , What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim is more grounded.

Marry My Husband & What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim Do Have Things In Common

Both k-dramas were about second chances.

Despite the differences between What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim ’s Mi-so and Marry My Husband ’s Ji-won, both shows are essentially about the same thing – second chances. Even though they were facing different challenges, these two characters were given a second chance in life and reconsidered their priorities. Ji-won’s tragedy led her to distance herself from all the toxic people in her life, which is why Marry My Husband was not only about revenge but also about fresh starts. Park Min-young’s character in What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim was in a relatively good place, yet she rightfully felt like she deserved more.

Stream Marry My Husband on Prime Video

Stream What's Wrong With Secretary Kim on Hulu

Marry My Husband

25 Crazy Travel Stories You Need To Read To Believe

Table of Contents

What is your craziest travel story?

That is exactly what I asked some of my favorite bloggers.

The result?

A list of 25   truly crazy travel stories you need to read to believe!

While this compilation has many funny travel stories, you’ll also find scary stories, wild road trip journeys, and outrageous anecdotes that will make your heartbeat quicken as you imagine yourself along for the ride. Honestly, some of the stories below might even make you tear up.

Like many of the best travel stories tend to do, they’ll certainly make you feel something, and will likely leave you with an important life lesson, as well.

Make some popcorn, grab a beverage, and settle in, as you’re about to travel around the world through short crazy travelogues!

Experience Travel #BeyondTheGuidebook [Free Personality Quiz]

Before we dive into some of the craziest travel stories you’ve ever heard, I want to invite you to take my free travel personality quiz .

This short and fun quiz helps you uncover your perfect type of trip based on your answers.

Not only that, but your results come with suggestions for unique trips you won’t find in your guidebook.

Once you get your results, feel free to share them on social media using the #BeyondTheGuidebook hashtag to keep sharing and discovering incredible journeys.

On that note, let’s dive into these great travel stories sharing truly shocking moments from the road.

Can You Believe These Crazy Travel Stories?

1. crazy encounters on the bus in south america.

My journal pages are filled with interesting short travel stories from riding the bus in South America .

One of these craziest experiences took place when I was riding from Cuzco to Lima in Peru.

Now, if you’ve ever ridden this windy bus leg, you know it’s almost impossible not at least feel a little ill. Honestly, if you’re only a bit queasy and not puking out the window, you’re lucky.

Somehow I actually didn’t feel that unwell, though at one point I did need to use the restroom. Luckily, this bus had a toilet in the back.

Or maybe that was unlucky, because as I walked down the aisle, a man stood in the center, blocking me.

“Perdóneme? Perdóneme?! Perdóneme??!!” I said, asking to be excused multiple times.

He didn’t budge. Instead, he stared at me with vacant eyes, almost like his soul had left his body.

As I stood there trying to pinpoint what was wrong with this man — and also how I could get him to move before I peed my pants — he proceeded to projectile vomit on the both of us.

On the plus side, he bent his head down at he did it so it mainly got on my shoes and pants and not my face…Yay?

This is one of the many funny crazy stories I have from this trip.

-Jessie from Jessie on a Journey

2. A crazy experience getting high in India

If you love short funny trip stories , then you won’t want to miss this next one:

In the humorous video above, I share about trying bhang lassi in Varanasi — and the very unexpected and wild night that ensued because of it.

By the way, if you’ve tried bhang lassi before, I’d love to know in the comments of the video if you had a similar experience.

Or is it just me?

Either way, this is one of my funniest travel stories from the road and one of the India travel stories I always love to share!

-Jessie of Jessie on a Journey

3. An ordeal in Madrid

One of my craziest travel experience stories happened when I was on a gap year in Grenoble, France, and mum and I were invited to Estepona, Spain, by a friend. We had three days of fun and on the fourth day were driven seven hours to Barajas Airport for our flight back to Lyon .

I’m a bookworm and once engrossed in a book, I’m truly lost. This got me in trouble when it was time to check-in and my bag had disappeared.

My bag…with my passport and film camera, gone!

We asked the people around us, but nobody saw anything.

Cue panic, frantic conversations in broken English, and gesticulations to find security to report.

We finally found airport security, filled out a form, and were told that most likely it was a cleaner that stole it when I was occupied as such theft was common there. There was nothing to be done but report it to the U.S. Embassy.

“What’s the embassy address, please?”

“I don’t know.”

Okay then. Looks like we’re in for a long weekend.

This was a Saturday evening.

Stranded in Madrid with not many Euros, my mum’s card only worked in France so we had no way of paying for a hotel until Monday. We dug up some coins to use a payphone to call our host in Estepona to explain the situation, ask for some Euros (to be repaid), and help with rescheduling departure.

Somehow, we got a taxi and had him take us to a cheap hotel which I’m sure was used for “alternative purposes.” Honestly, I felt that people thought that we were prostitutes — from their leers and us not having Euros to pay — since we were Black female travelers .

While there was definitely a language barrier when trying to request a room without putting a deposit down, we somehow got it.

We also asked for Western Union to receive Euros from our host, deciding that if I couldn’t get my passport on Monday, we’d insist on an emergency travel document. So, our host rescheduled tickets back to Lyon for Monday night.

I barely remember Madrid because of the stress; the language barrier, trying to find the U.S. Embassy, and having difficulty finding anybody willing to communicate with us.

Luckily, someone finally took pity on us and provided an information number to call. Thank goodness, because at this point we had little cash to get by until our wire transfer arrived.

On Monday morning, my mum and I got into a cab and gave the driver the address to the embassy. He recognized it immediately, and let us know that it was blocked and he couldn’t drop us at the gate.

This was confusing until we got there and saw these giant rock-like obstructions placed in a maze-like pattern on the walk towards the gate, and it wasn’t a straight walk either. I’m pretty sure we were being monitored via sniper rifles, which was incredibly nerve-wracking!

We reached the gates alive, asked for Consular Services, and headed in. I had no other details or documents to prove citizenship — it was 2002, so we didn’t have smartphones.

Luckily, the Universe and copious tears helped as I remembered I was a dual citizen and they could verify in their database from that. I wasn’t living in the U.S. at that point so double whammy.

I got a new passport in an hour after I cried that I couldn’t stay in Madrid and just wanted to return to France that day.

It probably helped that my mum scolded me again in their presence and they felt I’d suffered enough.

We had checked out and took our luggage to the embassy so they saw that we were serious about leaving. Thankfully, we made it to Lyon and caught a bus to Grenoble.

I’ve never been to Spain since then as that was a traumatic experience. I know it doesn’t represent the country as a whole, but it definitely soured my appeal for Madrid, at least.

– Ena from Musings and Adventures

4. A short travel story about a long way home

In March 2020 we were happily campervanning in Puglia — in the far south of Italy — when the Italian government announced a nationwide coronavirus lockdown.

We were traveling 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) in a straight line to our home in southern Poland, and we knew we either had to head there immediately or we would have to stay in Italy for an indefinite period.

We didn’t want to go through northern Italy, but a phone call told us that the Albanian ferry was not an option. For a moment we considered taking a boat from Rome to Spain, which was virus-free at the time. Fortunately, in retrospect, I had a feeling against this, and so we decided to make a beeline up the Italian motorways for home.

The Italian roads were deserted apart from heavy goods vehicles, and we crossed into Slovenia easily. We found a lovely little isolated farm on a hill and thought we would stay there for a week or so to self-isolate while this thing blew over.

The next day our host asked if we could leave as we had been in Italy and he was nervous about that.

News had come through that Poland would be closing its borders within days.

A straight road home through Hungary was already closed, so from the quaint rural idyll of Slovenia we turned north-west and joined the big Austrian autobahns, and now we wanted to head north-east to go back home through Slovakia.

From the Slovak border to our home it’s only a 400-kilometer (250-mile) drive. Unfortunately, the Slovakian border guards turned us away.

This border was already closed.

We headed west and tried the Czech border, and the same happened; this border was closed as well.

It looked like we were stuck in Austria, though there was one more option:

Drive around the Czech Republic and go through Poland through Germany — just an extra 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).

The Austrian – German border was easy to cross, but unfortunately, the long drive wasn’t kind to our van and approximately 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the border the van broke down.

In all of this misery, we found a great car mechanic’s workshop. The diagnosis took only a few minutes, but waiting for the new part took an additional day.

Finally, on the eighth day of our trip, we were on our way home with a brand new driveshaft.

We arrived at the Polish border after queuing for a whole day on the roads. We felt so fortunate to be in our vehicle with all home conveniences, while so many others sat out the long day and evening with their families packed into small cars.

We crossed at exactly midnight.

And finally, home.

Talk about crazy road trip stories!

The Polish border guards had taken our address and contact details, and we spent the next fortnight after our 3,500-kilometer (2,175-mile) 10-day road trip in statutory home quarantine. Our quarantine was administered by a phone app and police visit to check if we were home and to bring us milk for coffee.

– Ania from The Travelling Twins  

5. Stuck in the Troodos Mountains

Our craziest travel story happened in Cyprus in 2015. We had booked an expensive spa day in the Troodos Mountains and after a wonderfully relaxing day where we had massages, facials, and the works we came to pay on our credit card.

After trying a few times and ascertaining we didn’t have enough cash to pay, we ended up leaving our passports as a guarantee to come back and pay the following day. After checking our online banking, we realized we had made the worst rookie mistake:

We hadn’t authorized the credit card to be used abroad. So, we ended up withdrawing the cash using our debit card and incurring foreign transaction fees that we were trying to avoid.

The following day we set off back up the mountain to pay our dues and retrieve our passports when nearing the top of the mountain our hire car came spluttering to a halt. We had checked the digital fuel gauge before setting off and had a quarter of a tank that now was empty.

We did the only thing we could think of and called a local guy we had been scuba diving with earlier that week to ask if he happened to know of a fuel station nearby.

After a quick Google he found that there was one two miles back down the mountain in a tiny village we had passed through. We managed to freewheel the car back down the winding mountain road to the village and into the fuel station…

…only to find it was closed because it was Sunday!

Now we were panicking, stuck halfway up a mountain with little to no cash, no passports and now no car when a lorry driver pulled into the station.

He came over to ask if we were okay and even though he didn’t understand much English he worked out our dilemma and pointed us to where the lorries fill up.

There was the option to pay at the pump!

Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers , as he helped us out with the pump and the machine, which was in Cypriot, and we thanked him profusely and continued on our way.

We arrived at the spa 10 minutes before they closed and were able to settle our bill and retrieve our passports.

– Steph from Book It Let’s Go

6. Experiencing the deepest earthquake ever recorded

We had no idea what was going on.

We had just completed an incredibly complicated set of instructions which led us to our Airbnb “cozy room” in Tokyo, and cozy it was indeed.

The whole bathroom was a kind of prefabricated pod — such as you might find on an airplane — and the bedroom was compact, to say the least.

I woke up with a white wine hangover from a wild celebratory night to a most unexpected sensation:

The whole room was swaying in a peculiar manner from side to side.

My friend Julie was up and screaming “what’s happening, what’s happening?” as if I had any clue. We had only just got there for heaven’s sake.

I was very woozy but my mind was working.

“I think it’s an earthquake,” I said calmly.

“What?!” she screamed.

I staggered out of bed and all I could think of doing was to Google “what to do in an earthquake.”

“Get underneath a table,” I read.

I looked ruefully at the very small table in the room.

Then I noticed a helpful “bedroom browser” laminated guide which was actually on the small table that I hadn’t noticed before.

The room stopped swaying and then started again lurching this time from side to side like a drunken sailor. The cups were shaking and I was feeling rather sick.

Sure enough, the bedroom browser had a section on what to do in an earthquake. It noted that all buildings in Tokyo were earthquake-proof, though if you were worried the door frames could protect you as they were all reinforced steel.

We didn’t feel particularly protected. Julie rushed downstairs to seek assistance, though she was met with a shrug from the old lady downstairs who simply replied that Japan sometimes shakes.

By now, I’d emailed our Airbnb hosts, who also noted that Japan sometimes had earthquakes, but that they were almost always small.

Well, the earthquake we experienced that night in the Shibuya District of Tokyo was the deepest ever recorded. It was 677 kilometers (421 miles) down, which is almost incomprehensible.

Although the epicenter was off the coast of the Ogasawara Islands, it shook the whole of Japan and the aftershocks were felt as far away as India and Nepal. The center of the earth actually bubbled up through the pavement in some places.

I was aghast that it got so little international attention. It didn’t cause a tsunami — the more shallow quakes actually do this — and no nuclear power plants were affected — but it was still a crazy experience.

– Elaine from Eccentric England

7. A scary travel story about a time I nearly drowned in Zimbabwe

This is one of the scariest travel stories I’ve ever shared and a truly crazy experience.

Wandering around Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, my travel companion and I saw a sign that read “Go whitewater rafting in the Zambezi.”

We figured, why not?

At the raft landing, a guy was giving instructions. I remember him saying, “Whatever you do, if the raft overturns, don’t let go of the rope.”

The safety equipment and the raft itself looked worn but we imagined that’s how frequently-used equipment should look.

We were not rafting experts, but one thing we knew for sure was that Level 6 rapids were only for extreme adventurers — not novices booking tours — everywhere in the world. Rapids go from Level 1 to Level 5 like a roller coaster in the water, but for tours, you never see a Level 6.

Once we were in the raft and rapidly rushing down the river, our guide, Banu, turned to me with a smile and noted we were going to experience Level 6 rapids. I was shocked and looked for a way to the shore, but it was too late. We were already about to encounter our first rushing rapid.

Whenever I think about the travel horror story that unfolded next, I see everything in slow motion:

The raft began to overturn. As I continued to hold on to the rope, I realized that the raft was tipping at such an angle that I must either release the rope or my arm was going to break. In that nanosecond, I calculated that I had a better chance of surviving with both arms than with one broken arm despite the guide’s warning to not let go.

We were immediately sucked into a whirlpool further and further into the dark water. I struggled toward the light above me thinking if I didn’t reach the surface within the next few seconds, I wasn’t going to make it.

At that moment, I had an overwhelming sense of disappointment that I was going to end my life then and there.

Suddenly I reached the surface but saw the raft too far away. I could hear another rapid coming and knew I couldn’t survive another drop without a raft.

One of the men that had been in the raft with me had also overturned but he managed to hold on to the rope. I could see in the distance he was debating whether to let go and reach for me to pull me in, risking his own safety, or to continue holding on like he was instructed.

He let go, reached me, and pulled me in.

We made it back safely. Later I found the guy who helped me and brought him and his wife a drink.

– Talek from Travels With Talek

8. A memorable train journey

Towards the end of my semester abroad in Florence , I decided to visit my friend from Brno. We agreed to meet in Vienna, so I purchased dirt-cheap tickets for a 12+ hour overnight train from Venice in coach.

I was self-assured by my ability to travel solo by then, so this didn’t phase me. But, within an hour of getting on the train, a man came to sit in my cabin across from me.

He was Indian, but I remember him so distinctly because he spoke German. And he was a very loud man.

About five hours in, my eyes were getting heavy. I noticed his fleeting glances, but I shrugged it off as curiosity. At 2am, it was hard not to drift to sleep.

Sometime past 3am, I was woken up. This man had moved across the cabin to sit in the seat immediately next to me. He was shaking my shoulder aggressively, demanding, “Massage? MASSAGE?’

“Ummm, excuse me?”

My heart started thudding like bricks. I tried to move cabins but was dismissed by the clearly exhausted conductor.

Miserably, I slumped back down in my seat, with Massage Man across from me for four more agonizing hours until we finally reached his stop. The entire way, I sat fighting back every urge to fall asleep as best as I possibly could.

I shook off the incident and had the time of my life that weekend. My friend and I visited Austria, the Czech Republic, and even Slovakia in just four days!

On my ride home, I was in a cabin full of businessmen. I sighed to myself, thank goodness.

But after a few short hours, they had disappeared, one by one. I was left, once again, alone in a cabin with not a man this time, but a boy. He was maybe 16, and he was crying.

My heart sunk. This was going to be another difficult ride.

What I learned was that this boy was Syrian. His family was nowhere to be found, but he had an uncle living outside of Venice that he was supposed to meet. He spoke virtually no English or Italian, and he was clearly distraught.

The first few hours were uncomfortable but I could feel him opening up, calming down.

We spent the final hour of our train ride playing Pictionary. I wrote every Italian phrase I thought might help him on a piece of paper and shoddily illustrated what each sentence meant, watching as he shook his head or nodded in understanding.

As the doors closed behind him at the train station in Venice and I made my way back to Florence, I watched him slowly disappear, paper clutched in hand. I remember the subtlest hint of a smile forming at the edge of his mouth, though there were still tears in his eyes.

You could say that moment was enough to exonerate the craziness that was Massage Man. And maybe it was. Because even though I was shaken up by the weekend’s series of events, the very next Friday I boarded a flight for yet another solo trip destined for Portugal .

And there have been countless solo trips since.

– Rachel from Rachel Off Duty

9. Handcuffed in Berlin

My crazy travel story involves a case of faulty handcuffs.

I was leading a student trip in Berlin a few years ago, and as we strolled along the banks of the Spree, we came across a number of pop-up stands selling World War II memorabilia.

Hats, badges, and bits of the demolished Berlin Wall crowded the tables. My students skipped over anything historical and went straight for a pair of metal handcuffs.

A student named Alex ended up buying them, putting them on with both hands held out in front of him. Unfortunately, immediately after posing for pictures he realized the key to open them didn’t work; it just kept turning in the hole.

The original seller was no help, he didn’t have a key that worked. Alex was stuck!

We walked a few blocks down to a bike shop, hoping that they might have a tool that would be helpful for opening handcuffs. The well-intended bike repairman took a stab at opening them with his wrench, but as we heard a click-click we realized he had actually made them tighter!

Time being of the essence for Alex’s slightly blue fingers.

We decided to head to Alexanderplatz where we knew there would be a policeman. No one offered to help us as we walked, and I later questioned what type of city Berlin was that no one stopped to question why there was a woman with a boy walking down the street in handcuffs at 3pm.

We finally found a good-humored policeman in Alexanderplatz and as he wearily looked at Alex’s bound hands I used my one semester of German to explain “Wir haben ein Problem.”

He laughed and took us to the police station where he came out with a terrifying tool that was finally able to cut off Alex’s handcuffs.

Hopefully, this is the only school trip I ever have to chaperone that involves handcuffs!

– Kristin from Growing Global Citizens

10. Crazy storms in Algonquin Park

Here’s a story about what not to do on a canoe trip.

I was part of a guided multi-day canoe trip in Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada — the largest Provincial Park in Ontario. It can be pretty remote in the interior.

With clear skies in the forecast, our group made a day trip from our camping site to a beautiful sandy beach. Beside the beach — up on a hill — sat a small wooden cabin which had been boarded up.

That afternoon, we swam and relaxed without a care in the world. But when it was time to leave, the wind had changed direction creating large waves that crashed into the beach. We now couldn’t launch the canoes from the beach without tipping. So, the group decided to wait it out.

While we were waiting, the sky became very dark and the clouds looked rippled. The wind began to kick up sand and create bigger swells that crashed the shore. Then the rain and lightning started — further away at first and then much closer.

It became apparent that this storm was coming right for us.

People started to panic. We couldn’t head for the trees because they were falling. We couldn’t head for the water because of the waves. We couldn’t stay on the beach because of the lightning. So, we were trapped, and the storm was getting worse.

In a split-second, we made a decision:

Someone pried a board off one of the cabin’s windows, smashed the glass with a rock, climbed inside, and opened the door for all of us to scramble inside. I will never forget running along the beach towards the cabin in wind and rain so disorientating we could hardly see.

Luckily, everyone — a few dozen people — got into the cabin safely. The group was soaked and some were in tears. Others just watched the storm in awe.

After the storm passed, it became too late in the day to leave the beach so everyone had to sleep in that cabin. Thinking we would be back at the campsites that evening, only one group had brought their food barrel so we all had to ration spoonfuls of a pasta dinner.

Early the next morning we canoed double the amount to make up for the lost time. We later found out that the storm system produced a tornado that had touched down in the area!

 – Eric from Ontario Away

11. The sailing trip turned drug-running operation in Indonesia

If you’re looking for crazy real stories, get ready for this one.

Our boat weighed anchor in a small bay off the beach of a small island that was part of the eastern islands in Indonesia, the ones located between Lombok and Flores.

The crew gathered us for a briefing of our stop and, unlike other stops, informed us that disembarking would not be optional. We would all leave the boat and partake in a hike to the center of the island to swim in a series of natural waterfall pools.

Despite the protests of a few passengers who were not up to a hike, we loaded into the small boats and were brought to shore.

Nobody was staying on the boat and nobody would be staying on the beach. Reaching the beach, I began to swing my leg over the side to leave the boat when several men stepped out from the tree line. It took me all of two seconds to realize they were holding guns.

I hesitated, along with the rest of my fellow travelers. Our eyes locking in an instant of terror.

“So, this is how this happens,” I thought, envisioning the headlines across western news:

“Travelers go missing in Indonesia” or “Travelers held for ransom in Indonesia.”

I knew how this could end.

We looked to our guides, who at the time looked chill and unphased by the men on the beach. They calmly told us to exit the boat, as this is where we would start the hike.

Unsure what other options we had, we all hopped onto the beach, gathered ourselves, and began following one of our guides into the jungle.

Tailing the rear of our group was one of the armed men. Trotting to the front, I asked our guide why there were men on the beach with guns, for one, and why we were being escorted by one on our “hike.”

He looked at me, smiled, and said, “He’s just here to make sure we don’t leave early.”

To the surprise of our whole group, 40 minutes of slogging along a jungle trail found us at the waterfall we had been promised.

Trying to relieve our anxiety, we all proceeded to spend the next 90 minutes swimming in the pools, exploring the area, and pretending that what we had just seen was a hallucination.

The anticipation was undeniable as the beach drew closer on our return. What would we see? Would this be the part where we were kidnapped? Shot?

My imagination was running wild as the trees opened up to the beach. Much to our surprise, we were brought directly to the small boats, while the armed beach men watched from the tree line.

Moving my camera to the side to get in the boat, they stepped slowly back into the trees, perhaps thinking I was attempting a photo opportunity. I’m not that stupid, but at least they didn’t overreact.

Boarding the main boat again, the crew acted as if nothing happened. They prepared lunch and chatted with us about the afternoon activities.

Of course, none of us could let it go.

That night, we made our way to the front of the boat to watch the sunset. It was at that point we all realized that the more than 100 large blue barrels that had been sitting in the space below us, were gone.

– Lina and David from Divergent Travelers

12. Robbed of everything on my solo trip to Europe

I have been a solo traveler for over six years, and the crazy travel story I’m about to share — which takes place on a two-plus-month solo trip through Europe — has been my worst experience so far.

Missing two busses in a row to Bruges, I decided to go to Brussels instead, arriving by an overnight Flixbus at Brussel-Noord station early in the morning.

Getting off the bus, I placed my bag down for a few seconds to put on my jacket. It probably took less than 30 seconds, but when I looked down to pick the laptop bag, it was gone!

In total shock, I thought of at least collecting my backpack from my bus first; however, when I walked to the other side of the bus where it had been stored, I realized in shock that it was also gone.

I had to be hallucinating. How was this possible?

I checked with the driver. He looked around, but of course, it was gone. What was even more startling was that he replied calmly that robbery was quite common there and then he left. I didn’t receive any contact number, let alone support from Flixbus.

So on just my fifth day in Europe, in less than two minutes, I had lost almost everything — 200+ Euros, my credit and debit cards, my clothes, and my laptop.

Being a full-time travel blogger , losing my laptop — my bread and butter — was a huge blow. I was alone in a new city with no one that I knew and nowhere to go. I will never forget the anxiety, anger, and fear as I sobbed.

Luckily I was wearing a sling bag, where I had kept my passport and mobile phone. After a while, I called people back home and found connections from friends about someone in the city.

He arrived and took me to the police station, and let me stay in his apartment until I sorted things.

After two days, I shopped for everything, gathered some courage, and continued the rest of my trip. It was a crazy experience indeed!

Reshma from The Solo Globetrotter

13. Accused of kidnapping in China

We took our first international family trip to Beijing when our son was five months old. Although we were nervous about the flight, we were also excited to explore the city and walk on the Great Wall of China.

During our time in Beijing, we had a lot of fun and were photographed a lot — which we expected, being two Black women with a biracial son. A woman even chased us down the street to ask if our son was Korean.

Overall, it was an interesting experience, but our story starts when we were departing Beijing.

While at the airport, we were waiting to go through security and were pulled aside for questioning. We were surprised and confused, especially as we were escorted to a small room with security with our baby.

When we got into the room we were suddenly hit with a barrage of questions:

Where was our son born?

Who is his father?

Did we have pictures of the birth?

Who carried the baby?

Could we prove he was our son?

I was shocked, as I considered that we were being accused of kidnapping.

How could we have kidnapped our own son when we received a Chinese visa and had no problems when we arrived?

Their questions didn’t make sense given the fact we provided all of the required documentation to receive the visa.

After getting over the initial shock, we showed pictures throughout my pregnancy, our son’s birth certificate, pictures taken immediately after his birth, our donor contract, and a statement from our fertility doctor.

Luckily, we had all of the documentation handy because we were going through the adoption process — to avoid things like this in the future.

Once they reviewed the documentation, they were satisfied that we did not kidnap our son and we boarded our flight back to San Diego.

– Corritta and Mea from It’s a Family Thing

14. An intimidating encounter in Venezuela

The first time I traveled abroad was to Venezuela. I was 24, incredibly naïve, and spoke no more Spanish than you’d find on a Taco Bell menu.

During my trip, I intended to fly from one part of the country to another for a couple of days. Thinking something along the lines of, “Well, I won’t be leaving the country,” I left my passport in the safe inside my room at the resort where I was temporarily living.

At the airport and in line to board my plane, an angry camouflage-adorned man with an automatic weapon as tall as me pulled me aside and loudly demanded to see my passport.

I tried explaining that I’d left it in my room — and what the hell did I need it for anyway since I wasn’t even leaving the country — and whatever else I thought would help.

The entire time he was yelling at me in Spanish, waving the hand that wasn’t hovering over the trigger, and getting angrier by the minute. This is also while my plane was boarding without me.

Just at the moment when I think I’m for sure about to get locked up abroad, a tiny elderly Venezuelan woman approaches and shoves herself between us.

She, apparently completely aware of what was going on, proceeded to yell back at the man whose gun was definitely larger than her. He yelled at her, she yelled back, she pointed at me, he pointed at me, they both yelled some more.

Before I knew it, the intimidating angry officer turned and left. She smiled timidly as I thanked her and walked away without a word.

I have no idea what they said to each other. I didn’t even know why the whole situation took place until I read the news a few days later.

As it turned out, my trip had coincided with the 2007 Venezuelan constitutional referendum, an election in which Hugo Chavez sought to abolish presidential terms, therefore potentially becoming president of Venezuela forever.

This was also during a time of heightened tensions between Chavez and now former U.S. President George W. Bush — a time during which Chavez had accused Bush of sending Americans to Venezuela to tamper with the election.

Unbeknownst to me, I’d fallen right into this national suspicion. Chavez ended up losing that election, his first and only loss in his nine-year presidency, and a loss I had nothing to do with. I swear.

– Ashley from My Wanderlusty Life

15. When upsetting experiences turn into inspiring travel stories in Costa Rica

Driving on a rural dirt road in Costa Rica in Central America, we were miles from anywhere. We stopped along the road to snap a photo of the bright yellow Sloth Crossing sign when something moved in the yard of a run-down shack and startled me.

Suddenly, a spider monkey came running on the ground toward me, but just as quickly its head was jerked back when the tether it was chained to ran out, flipping it back onto its belly.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The small female was tethered to a clothesline by a tight collar around her neck. She looked into my eyes and seemed to plead for me to do something. Anything.

The house looked abandoned, we had no cell phone and felt helpless. We couldn’t risk trespassing and a confrontation with her captor. Though we knew it was illegal to hold monkeys in captivity, we were in a foreign country, with no one to turn to and just a few hours until we had to leave.

So we did the only thing we could think of:

Took photos of her captivity, noted the latitude and longitude of our location and the direction we’d taken from Puerto Viejo, and begged her forgiveness at having to leave.

As soon as we arrived at the airport the next morning, I emailed our friends at the Jaguar Rescue Center who had expertise in rescuing and rehabilitating monkeys. I was certain they could help.

After we got home, weeks passed with no word, until one day an email came from the owner Sandro, written in Italian.

He thanked me for our call for help. They’d followed my directions and found the monkey, still chained to her tether. After weeks of nourishment and care, they released her back into the jungle.

But then something even more amazing happened.

A female spider monkey they had released just weeks earlier, who’d been separated from a sibling and was always sad whenever she was left alone, came running from the jungle to embrace the new monkey being released.

It was the sibling she’d been separated from, and the two were finally reunited!

Sometimes just when you think there’s nothing you can do to change an impossible situation, the simple act of reaching out can make all the difference. This is truly one of the most amazing travel stories I’ve ever experienced.

– Lori from Travlinmad

16. Quarantined on an exotic island

My craziest travel story is also my most recent, a COVID-related misadventure that happened just before borders shut around the world.

The Philippines only had about 30 cases at this stage and had travel restrictions from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, but not Vietnam, where I was flying from.

On day three in the Philippines, one of my tour buddies had a slight fever at one of the mandatory temperature checks, which meant we had to head to a rural hospital for her to get checked before reaching our overnight stop in a small coastal town.

Hours later, she was taken to the main hospital on Palawan for further tests, and we continued to our overnight stop.

We finally made it to the tiny seaside town at 9pm — six hours behind schedule — where we were told by local authorities we weren’t allowed to set foot in the town due to health concerns.

After another two hours of sitting on the bus, it was decided last minute that until our friend got her results back, we were going into quarantine…

…on a private island, a short boat ride away!

We had 30 minutes to shower and pack a small bag of essentials before jumping onto a boat in the pitch black.

There was no power on the island except for a single light and no reception or showers. We slept in tents on the sand and spent the next day searching for turtles in the bay (we found one!), playing volleyball, and trying not to think about how long we’d be out there for.

Additionally, we consumed copious amounts of rum and sat around a bonfire at night sharing our craziest travel stories so far.

On the third day of being on the island, we headed out to a snorkel stop where our guide managed to get a spot of cell service. He was hoping for news on our tour mate, preparing for what we thought was the worst-case scenario, us being out there for 14 days.

What he didn’t expect to hear was that Manila was going into total lockdown in 36 hours and that we had to get back to the mainland, then the main city, then fly to Manila and all fly out of the country ASAP.

To break this down further, we had to get a boat to the mainland, then a bus to Puerto Princesa, and during the drive all 21 of us had to book flights from Puerto Princesa to Manila while every other tourist on the island was doing the same.

A bunch of us managed to get one of the first flights out at 7am, but others in the group missed out and spent the entire next day at the airport waiting for standby flights, finally being allowed onto one that landed at 11pm, an hour before Manila’s lockdown came into effect.

The following day we all had to book urgent flights back to our home countries, as Manila Airport was allowing foreigners to return home, but not to visit another destination. $2600 later, I was on a one-way flight to New Zealand, my home country where I haven’t lived for three years, to “move in” with my parents who I haven’t lived with in 10 years!

Absolutely.

But, was the island the coolest place in the world to be quarantined?

Oh, and my friend’s test came back negative, thank goodness!

– Alexx from Finding Alexx

17. From hell to heaven in Mumbai

Several years ago, I went to Mumbai to meet a friend booked into an Airbnb. Airbnb was still relatively new in India , so I knew I was taking a risk. But I never thought I would end up in the “chicken dungeon”!

The chicken dungeon was a large sub-basement room at the base of an apartment building; the only real window was a door to the tiny backyard filled with chickens wandering freely, squawking constantly, and making a mess.

Opening the door was unappealing, but keeping it shut plunged the room into dungeon-like darkness. It was a gloomy space and the only good thing about it was that my Facebook updates kept my friends entertained.

So after three days, I logged back into Airbnb and chose somewhere close by, but very different. I went to see it and when I walked through the door…

… it was like heaven.

The room was in a light-filled apartment, facing the Arabian Sea. Huge windows looked out to the shimmering waters; at sunset, I had a front-row view.

It was perfect, so I went back to the chicken dungeon, grabbed my things, and moved out. My friend arrived that day and I had to quickly change for the opening night of the Mumbai Film Festival.

First, we went to the opening ceremony, in a grand building that was still in the last stages of renovation. I had to go into a narrow hallway, still under construction, to find the women’s washroom.

At the first door I found, I gave a big push. It was the men’s room and Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan was coming out the door. I narrowly missed smacking him in the head, which would have been very bad as he was the emcee. It was my first “run in” with the Bollywood legend, widely considered the world’s number one movie star.

After the ceremony, we all went to the opening night party, which was at Antilia — the world’s most expensive house, with a cost of $2 billion USD to build.

In just one day, I went from the worst place I have ever stayed, the chicken dungeon, to the world’s most expensive house, an elaborate 27-story building in south Mumbai.

In India, everything is possible.

– Mariellen from Breathedreamgo

18. A knife fight on a bus

I looked down in disbelief at the big knife in my hand. I guess I had just been in my first “knife fight.”

After spending the most amazing time in a converted school bus in a Colorado village, I’d ridden the bus from Glenwood Springs to Denver in Colorado . I was keeping costs down on a two-month trip around the U.S.

The bus was completely full and as we clocked up the hours to Denver, the gentleman in the aisle seat opposite me started acting weirdly.

Initially friendly and chatty at the beginning of the ride, he started to get louder and more disturbed, smacking the chair in front of him. His Mountain Dew bottles — I later found out — were full of something that smelled like peach schnapps.

He hotboxed the only toilet on board, and coming back to his seat smelling of weed and booze.

He also started to get “friendly” with the girl in the seat next to him. I intently tried to mind my own business, being very British, slipping earphones in to listen to music, and gazing toward the front of the bus.

The man’s direct seat neighbor was tough, though. He started to stroke her leg suggestively, but she kept rebutting him, moving his hand off, and giving him a piece of her mind.

But then it happened far too fast, though his inebriated actions seemed so slow. A knife came out of a holster from his bag, and he was holding it at the woman’s throat, telling her to “stop being a b*tch.”

I don’t quite know what got into me.

My state of not wanting to get involved turned into a lurch across the bus. I held his hand back and then she managed to get the knife out and pass it to me. I had no idea what to do, but to pass it to the people behind me, and it made its way down the bus.

Strangely, he was so intoxicated he doesn’t seem to notice the loss.

We stopped in the next town for what the bus driver said would be a smoking break, but it was just a rouse. The chap got off, lit up his cigarette, and the driver drove off.

He was left in a vest top, in freezing November temperatures in the Colorado highlands. His jacket, wallet, phone, and bag were all next to me, still on the bus.

When we arrived in Denver, I packed up his belongings and tried to give them to the driver. He wouldn’t take them. I left them at the driver’s feet on Denver bus station pavement and finally got to walk away.

– Dave from Dave Chant

19. A funny travel story about Thai trotts and hornet hives

It was a crippling cramp that came from absolutely nowhere.

I doubled over with the pain but my friends were not in the least bit sympathetic to my cries. The bus we’d been waiting for in the searing Thai heat for the last two hours had just arrived and there was no way we were not going to get on it.

The pain in my stomach came in long, sweat-inducing waves and my dizziness raced along with the endless palm-fringed landscapes that passed our window. And then, thump, my stomach dropped like a rock from my ribcage to my ankles and it became apparent that I would need to find a bathroom – post haste.

Clambering my way to the driver, I presented him with a primal look of fear that seemed to transcend all communication barriers.

I darted off of the bus before it had even stopped and ran towards some small buildings up ahead. Two men in shirts and ties stood smoking in the doorway of what looked like an office – the local tourist office, I decided.

Distressed, I asked, “Toilet? Toilet? Bathroom! WC!” But they didn’t understand.

Desperate now, I put my charades skills to work and roleplayed a man pissing at a urinal, then pulling his trousers down and sitting on a toilet. My audience on the bus behind me continued to cheer me on, which bothered me only because it distracted the man from the matter at hand.

Finally, he waved his hand towards a corridor inside the office and nodded.

I ran inside like a headless chicken and opened the door, greeted by what I can only describe as a hole dug in the dirt. Not a moment too soon, just as I was about to be thrust into the air by the force of my own bowels, I assumed the position and relaxed into pure, unadulterated bliss.

I didn’t care that I could hear the bus pulling off.

I didn’t care that I had lost all dignity or that I’d probably never find my way home.

I didn’t even care that every corner of this blessed “bathroom” — which had one of the craziest toilets I’d ever seen — housed countless hornet nests the size of basketballs, in and out of which buzzed angry residents the size of blackbirds. They hovered around my face and ears and landed on my back, but I simply didn’t care.

I was so blissed out by the sense of relief that I surrendered to them entirely.

With a modicum of sensibility now restored, I wandered slowly like a drunk back into the office, where I found the man in the shirt and tie lying down on a sofa, watching TV. I waved and held my hands together to say thank you and he did the same as I hobbled towards the door.

And that’s when the true horror of it all came crashing down.

First I spotted a kitchen, then a few family photos dotted around the place on frilly little doilies. It wasn’t an office at all, but someone’s home that I had barged my way into like a marauding white devil, demanding to be escorted to a bathroom so that I could decimate it.

Back outside, the bus was, of course, nowhere to be seen. But my friends, to my dismay, were sitting at the side of the road with our bags and their thumbs in the air.

Seemingly moments later we were all crammed into the back of an old pick up truck, bouncing along dusty roads with a gang of farmworkers gawking at us.

My friends didn’t speak to me for days, but somehow it didn’t matter, for I had experienced the ultimate in Thai hospitality.

It really was amazing.

– Ben from Driftwood Journals

20. A very unusual CouchSurfing experience

I’ve always been a fan of the website Couchsurfing.com because it connects you with locals while traveling. Couchsurfing in Africa is my favorite because I’ve had unique experiences with my hosts.

I was staying at eco-hotel in Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda, which was a beautiful place to disconnect and experience the lake that inspired Wakanda from Black Panther. Yet, I yearned to immerse myself more into the local culture .

I looked for a Couchsurfing host who was from the lake and found a guy named Josh. He said he could pick me up at my hotel with his canoe and that I could spend a night at his home.

When Josh came to pick me up, I was surprised that his boat had no motor and only one paddle.

Josh started paddling, and naturally, we conversed about our lives. I thanked Josh numerous times for picking me up and finally asked what time he left his house to get me.

He told me 5am!

That meant the canoe trip would take four hours. I had no idea I’d be in a canoe for so long, venturing off to a random place with a person whom I met online.

During the canoe ride, it started to downpour, so we found the closest land and huddled under a tree until it passed. The whole situation was humorous to me since this was a truly unusual experience.

The boat ride was enjoyable, and I appreciated the slow pace.

After four hours, we finally made it to Josh’s home, and I immediately loved it. You could tell the home was built with love.

Josh’s house is far away from regular amenities like grocery stores, so it is essential to be self-efficient. There were lots of fruits and vegetable trees, and Josh even taught me how to make the infamous “ rolex ” that you’ll find as street food throughout Uganda.

Josh and I were similar ages, but our lives were quite different. He wakes up and decides what activity he will do to entertain himself, whether that is building something new on his dock, being social with friends in the village, or taking his canoe for a day-long trip to pick up a Couchsurfer.

– Kesi from Kesi To and Fro

21. Tsunami evacuation in Sri Lanka

It is rare that I get to bring my mum with me on my world travels, but when I do I always make sure they are experiences to remember. Although not always for the intended reasons.

“Never Again!”

On this occasion, she had just flown from the UK to meet me in Bangkok before a shorter haul flight to Sri Lanka the next morning.

She was in her late 60’s at the time and her verbal protest was about two days before she arrived into the mayhem of Sri Lanka tuk-tuks and traffic.

So she was more than relieved to set base on the southern coast at Ahangama — 3 kilometers (less than two miles) from the city of Galle, when we sat down to celebrate with food and drinks at our beachfront hotels.

But before our biryani had even arrived, a deafening siren sounded across the coastline as an 8.6-magnitude quake rocked the Indian Ocean. We were otherwise clueless at the time as everyone else was running in all directions, panicked, until I decided to get up and ask what’s going on.

By this time the hotel manager had already jumped in the back of a tuk-tuk and when I asked the only member of staff around on what to do he pointed to a tall red pole on the horizon and said to climb it. Fortunately, there was a big tour bus in the hotel who let us jump in the back with them as we joined the mass evacuation of the coastline.

After around 30 mins driving uphill, we were all welcomed by a betel chewing farmer who let us wait in his gardens until the warnings were eventually lifted and we returned to the hotel.

That night we barely slept through the aftershocks until the next morning when we escaped the coastline and I forced my mum back onto tuk-tuks and local buses through eight hours of travel to reach the scenic hill town of Ella.

– Allan from It’s Sometimes Sunny in Bangor

22. Getting scammed in New Delhi

If you love crazy short stories that also teach a lesson, here you go:

After nine years of dreaming of India, I had officially arrived in the infinitely chaotic and historical city of New Delhi.

After finally making our way through immigration, my partner Charles and I got right into making our first mistake — an epic travel fail that would shape the unfortunate events to come.

I stupidly decided to buy an Indian SIM Card. Not only was it overpriced, but I was told it wouldn’t activate for over four hours, which was far from ideal.

Nevertheless, I was still in my dream country and was thinking of all the delectable street food that would be up for tasting later that night.

Or so I thought.

Though I had opted to use our budget hotel’s pick up service, no one was there to greet us, and without cell service, making a call was out of the question.

So the metro it was. The metro ride itself went without issue. It was only once we wandered out of the underground station and found ourselves thrust into a gaggle of rickshaw drivers did our fate really set in.

Overwhelmed and a bit taken aback by the cacophony of scenes and sounds unfolding all around us, we easily slipped into our second mistake:

Hiring a rickshaw to take us to our hotel with no compass, maps, or cell service to speak of.

As I sat in the back of the rickshaw transfixed by Delhi life, we were suddenly brought up to a gate being guarded by two heavily armed men.

“Paharganj is very dangerous, you cannot enter without permission.”

Scared, naive, and of course lacking any means of communication, we agreed to be taken to this tourist agency.

The small, official-looking office was headed by an exceptionally suave young man who insisted that riots had shut down Paharganj, a budget-friendly neighborhood known to be frequented by backpackers.

The man proceeded to call our “hotel” where a man answered and reiterated that yes, in fact, the hotel and neighborhood were closed. As I pushed him to look up other budget-hotels in Delhi, the calls he made always had the same result that they were full or closed.

Soon we were left with an ultimatum:

Stay in a “safe” 5-star hotel or accept their offer of a private taxi driver to take us hundreds of miles north to Himachal Pradesh, a mountainous state we had planned to head to tomorrow.

Due to a combination of stress, jet lag, culture shock, being out of my comfort zone, and, of course, no way to check any of these claims or prices, we acquiesced. And so began our journey with Lali, a taxi driver they contracted to drive us for nearly a day straight on little to no sleep.

The next 24 hours were a whirlwind. Within an hour, Lali’s exceptionally jovial personality had come out. He procured us Indian hashish, fresh mangoes, and our first taste of real local cuisine.

All was well and good — until Lali nearly fell asleep at the wheel, that is. After insisting we stop for the night, we pulled off into the next motel we saw, a random establishment on the side of the highway.

Twenty-four hours and one near-crash in the foothills of the Himalayas later, we finally arrived, thankful our absolutely insane start to our Indian adventure was about to be traded in for the tranquility of the mountains.

It would take a week for us to truly come to terms with just how badly we’d been scammed.

We learned that the correct price for a taxi that distance was ⅓ of what we paid. Additionally, Paharganj never closed, wasn’t particularly unsafe, and all the phone calls made to the budget hotels were actually fake as the “employees” on the other end were in fact just players in the scam.

Though it might have started off on a very bad foot, the rest of our time in India was magical.

We even returned for a much longer trip the following year, this time armed with the knowledge that cell phone service — even if it’s roaming — and the use of Uber are two essentials for a successful Delhi experience.

– Samantha from International Detours

23. A crazy short story about a false alarm

Here is one of my most embarrassing travel stories :

I was staying in a five-star hotel in Malacca, Malaysia, with my boyfriend when suddenly we heard “gunshots” outside.

As a Pakistani, my boyfriend was instantly reminded of the infamous 2008 Mumbai Hotel Attack, in which a group of gunmen sieged a high-end hotel and killed scores of people. He wanted to cautiously check out the hotel lobby but when he moved the door lock, it made a strange sound that we had never heard before.

Scared for our lives, we locked ourselves inside the bathroom with all lights off. We tightly embraced each other and barely dared to move even a millimeter.

Things did not get any better when we realized the WiFi was turned off and there were steps near the door. In a great panic, I decided to contact my mother and tell her about the situation, while my boyfriend posted on Instagram.

After about three hours, the phone in our room rang. Not sure of what to expect, my boyfriend carefully left the bathroom to pick up the phone.

The minute while he was on the phone was perhaps the scariest time in my life. Who could have called us? Was it the receptionist telling us to stay inside or the attackers announcing our last hour?

My boyfriend came with a big grin on his face.

“Get out, everything is fine!” he told me, laughing.

It was the hotel lobby who called. They had heard about our panic and wanted to reassure us that everything was fine and the “gunshots” we heard were actually fireworks!

Relieved and embarrassed at the same time, I called my mother and told her about the false alarm.

In an even more embarrassed tone, she told me that she had contacted the Malaysian police from the other end of the world and that she now had to call them back because of our false alarm.

When I thought it could not get any worse, I turned back towards my boyfriend staring at his phone and saw yet the most embarrassed face ever. Among his Instagram followers were very well-connected people who in response to his posts had notified various Pakistani politicians as well as the embassies of three countries in Malaysia about the “terrorist attack on a Malacca hotel.”

Now it was my boyfriend’s job to explain the situation to his audience.

He went on an Instagram livestream to apologize for the false alarm; however, most of his followers believed he had just pulled a giant prank and never forgave him.

– Arabela from The Spicy Travel Girl

24. An encounter with an angry buffalo

I volunteered at a wildlife conservancy in Kenya with a small group of women, and we worked on a variety of projects there. We tracked and photographed endangered giraffes, collected wire snares to combat poaching, and set out to repair an animal hide.

There was a small building in the bush where you could observe animals without being seen; however, before we started to work on the building itself, we needed to clear a path to the little hut because it was covered in weeds and rocks.

Our group of four, along with two guides, hacked away at the thick overgrowth with machetes. One guide kept our vehicle close and another stayed far ahead of us as we worked.

Suddenly, I heard our guide up ahead screaming. I couldn’t make out what he was yelling, but my instincts told me to run. I raced as fast as I could back to our vehicle and swung open the back door.

I glanced up ahead:

A massive buffalo was stampeding towards us!

Jumping into the JEEP as quickly as possible, I slammed the door behind me. Our other guide was safely in the car — honking the horn repeatedly in an attempt to scare away the buffalo — and one of the women was safe in the passenger seat.

The mother-daughter duo in our group wasn’t far behind, and the daughter raced to one side of the car. Her mom jumped on the hood of the car to try to escape the buffalo.

Just as her daughter pulled her off the hood, the buffalo smashed its horns into the car.

The JEEP shook back and forth violently. The buffalo backed up and snorted heavily. The daughter pushed her mom into the front driver’s side door and I pulled the mom’s arms to get her into the car.

Once her mom was mostly inside, the daughter dropped and rolled underneath the car. Luckily, the buffalo walked to the opposite side of the vehicle at this point. The buffalo raged once again, slamming its horns into the side of the car. We shook back and forth as I stared into the buffalo’s eyes from inside the vehicle.

Every day, when we drove around the nature reserve, we typically saw large groups of buffalo grazing in the fields. They always watched us from a distance, and never seemed too threatening.

Sadly, this particular buffalo was injured and isolated from her group. When she heard us working in the thicket, she was angry and lashed out at us.

Thankfully, the buffalo eventually stopped attacking our car and wandered away on her own. But, one of our guides — the one that warned us — was still missing.

I was so grateful to be alive, but I was so worried about him. Did he warn us, just in time, before the buffalo killed him?

It took several more minutes, but he soon emerged from the bushes.

To escape the buffalo, he had jumped into a giant cactus tree. Although he had some cuts and scrapes, he was alive.

The preparedness of our guides and his screaming saved our lives. It really was a miracle that we all survived.

– Lauren from Justin Plus Lauren

25. File this under crazy hotel stories

One of our weirdest travel stories was during our trip to Assam.

Our train to Guwahati arrived 10 hours late. Instead of reaching at 10am in the morning, we reached at around 8:30pm at night. Once we were out of the railway station we started looking for hotels for the night.

We approached a few hotels but without any luck, likely because it was peak season at the time.

Finally, we went to a decent-looking hotel and got a small room. It was a sorry-looking room with a single bed, but we were supposed to stay only for the night and so we decided to take it.

It was quite late at night when we could hear some, err, “funny noises” coming from the room beside us. I looked at Agni with a “What have we gotten into?” expression. But we were so tired that we did not want to think about it and simply slept.

It was little after midnight when there was a lock at the door. We did not pay heed at first, but the knock was persistent and then we heard a voice from outside saying, “Open the door or we will break it. Police outside!”

Our sleep vanished in a jiffy and soon Agni opened the door. In came two police constables, who started asking various questions.

Huh? Why have the police come to the hotel?

I looked out and saw other policemen taking some people away.

They asked us various questions about our place of stay, where we were going, and many others.

For some reason, they were not ready to believe that we were married. The policemen looked skeptical and they took Agni away to another room for questioning while a female constable started asking me questions.

After about 15 minutes of interrogation, they wanted to see our marriage proof.

Quick note: This incident happened almost eight years back and India was still quite a conservative society then and did not approve of a girl and a boy staying together outside marriage.

We were not carrying our marriage certificate then; however, Facebook came to our rescue at that time. I went to Facebook and opened our marriage album that was full of photographs of our happy moments of marriage.

The lady constable somehow seemed to trust me.

Very soon, Agni was also brought in. The policemen talked among themselves and then told Agni very sternly, “If you are a family man, then you should book rooms in proper hotels.”

We seemed to have convinced them. Later, we realized that the hotel was a completely seedy one and dealt with a number of shady businesses. The next morning, we checked out of the hotel as soon as possible, vowing to never return to this place again.

Looking back now, we can add this to our list of funny vacation stories; however, at the time, we were a bit scared when the police came barging through the hotel door.

Nevertheless, we learned a valuable lesson that day – we should carry a copy of our marriage certificate everywhere to prove that we are married!

– Amrita and Agniswar from Tale of 2 Backpackers

Travel Insurance

The above crazy, funny, and scary travel stories offer solid reminders about the importance of getting travel insurance .

My go-to travel insurance company is SafetyWing , which offers a full suite of straightforward products to keep you safe on your trips.

Unlike most travel insurance companies, you don’t need to price compare plans and get quotes. You simply put where you’re going and for how long, and purchase.

One really unique feature:

SafetyWing includes limited coverage in your home country, too, as long as the visit isn’t for an appointment to treat an ailment that began on your trip.

So if you’re home and an accident happens, you have 30 days of at-home coverage (or 15 days in the USA) during every 90-day cycle.

Click here to learn more about SafetyWing .

Bonus Short Travel Stories

Love short travel stories ? Then check out:

17 True Short Adventure Travel Stories To Inspire Your Next Trip

23 Inspiring Travel Stories Sharing The Kindness Of Strangers

16 Short Funny Travel Stories That Will Make You Laugh Out Loud

38 Inspiring Travel Love Stories From The Road

21 Travel Horror Stories Sharing Scary Travel Experiences

8 Crazy NYC Subway Stories That Will Make You Hail A Cab

A Host’s Perspective: My Worst Airbnb Horror Stories

11 Epic Travel Fail Stories From The Road

18 Scary Travel Stories From Haunted Hotels To Creepy Cabins

Do you have any crazy travel stories to share?

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11 Comments

There are some really crazy stories in this list! My favourite is the one where the monkey gets rescued in Costa Rica and reunited with it’s sibling. We have a few crazy stories from before we had children – such as a trip to Goa where we somehow ended up dancing round a camp fire in the middle of the jungle with a couple of locals and a toothless musician!

I love everything about this post! What a cool, fun read. I really can’t believe some of these. Thank you for sharing these stories.

Ahh!!! Haha, I can relate to so many of these stories! Especially urgently needing a toilet in Southeast Asia + accidentally getting high (accidentally tripped in Gili T lolol). Travel is full of so many crazy, gross, scary, weird, awkward moments….but that’s part of what makes it so fun and interesting.

Love the reading these amazing and joyful travel stories. I really enjoy my traveling time. So amazing article for me. Thank you for sharing this article.

Nice blog with great post, Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for sharing these travel stories with us,I found out by reading this article how much there is still to know and learn, There are good and bad people everywhere so we should travel very carefully, highly informative article,thank you

I love reading this blog, it is so nice

thanks for sharing this wonderful article am glad that it has always been my stress killer thank a lot dear

This is very beautiful, thanks for sharing such a great article with us.

Why is it travel bloggers don’t comprehend that most people loathe travel stories? It’s akin to hearing someone account a dream. And no, the rest of us aren’t jealous. We’re just bored of the one sided conversation incessant travelers have with themselves while we are present.

very perfect article thanks lot

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What I Learned After Flying for 18 Hours With My Toddler

By Jessica Rach

All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Riding one of the longest flights in the world is already an undertaking—then I had to do it with my talkative son in tow. Even though flying with a toddler can be tough, I was determined to introduce him to the paternal side of my family who I hadn’t seen for over 20 years. So we embarked on an 18-hour journey from London to Bali . Here is what I learned about flying with a toddler after the trip—and what I wish I had known before.

Consider the duration of each leg of your flight if you have a stopover

Rather than take the usual connecting route through Dubai , I opted for a stopover in Singapore . I reasoned that it would be kinder to all involved to get the bulk of the trip out of the way in a 13-hour marathon and then completing the remaining three hours from Singapore to Bali. This worked out really well: We began our journey from London with a night flight and didn’t have to interrupt my son's sleep , which would have happened if we had stopped in Dubai after just seven hours.

Think about the timing and length of your stopover

Will you want to nap your child and use the opportunity for a day-trip in the city , or do you want to get the journey over with as quickly as possible? I opted for the latter, keen to get to my destination. We had a perfect two-hour window to stretch our legs and burn some energy before getting on the last leg of the journey, which I wanted him to stay awake for (so we could adjust to the local time in Bali as soon as possible).

Plan a night flight around your arrival times

To minimize jet lag , consider any sleeping schedules and the local time difference, and take advantage of a night flight if you can. I booked an outbound night flight, but realized the local time on arrival would be midnight, and we would be expected to sleep again—a recipe for jet lag disaster. Luckily, we stayed awake for the last leg of the journey; we were all so tired once the plane landed that we got to sleep pretty quickly on arrival.

Ask how your airline can help with kids

I flew with Singapore Airlines , which I soon discovered to be very family-friendly. I was offered baby, infant, vegetarian, western, and Asian options for my three-year-old son’s inflight meals on booking, an impressive selection from which I was able to pre-order. They also gave us an inflight entertainment pack, which included a puzzle and coloring book. The team made a real fuss over their smaller passengers. For those with babies, most airlines will warm up expressed milk on a flight and you can request a blanket for breastfeeding privacy.

Choose the best seats in advance

Luckily, I was able to select my seats upon booking, so there would be no last-minute kerfuffle trying to get the best window seats within a civilized distance of the toilets. Though I didn’t need baby changing facilities, I made a mental note to pack a slimline foldable toddler toilet seat. We managed to get a seat with no one behind us, so I only had to worry about potentially annoying one row of passengers. The window seat kept my son entertained during take-off and landing when entertainment had to be put away.

Ensure a checked stroller is included and permitted on board

My Bugaboo Butterfly was permitted on Singapore Airlines, but I was also flying a leg of the flight with their sister airline, Scoot, which only allows strollers onboard subject to space. Unfortunately, the buggy had to be checked in without a buggy bag, which I was slightly nervous about, but thankfully, it came back without any damage. For other suitable stroller recommendations, see our guide to the best travel strollers .

Invest in a plane bed

I decided to bring a seat extender to turn my son’s seat into a bed. Many airlines have varying rules on which convertible beds or seat extenders are permitted, and they are only allowed in the window or middle seat, so it's always a good idea to check before traveling. Decide whether you want to use a kid's suitcase that converts into a bed box like the Stokke ride-on or invest in an inflatable mattress. I opted for the Bubba board as it provided the perfect balance of comfort, low weight, and easy set-up. It was a total game changer, and my toddler slept solidly for over 10 hours. It took me two minutes to lay the board on the seat and clip the extension to the tray table, and my three-year-old immediately curled up and fell asleep. This will be accompanying us everywhere from now on.

Take a backpack as your carry-on

Put as much as you can in your checked luggage and keep the essentials in a travel backpack to carry onboard. You'll want your hands free when running to and from flights and going through security. I took the Longchamp Le Pliage backpack , which was great; although it doesn’t have many compartments, it’s really spacious, light, and easy to clean with wipes. I kept my phone and documents in a handy-to-reach sling bag , which, at the risk of looking like a packhorse, saved me from rifling around for everyone’s passports during the endless checks.

Check out the airport facilities

I asked about booking the airport lounge as we would have to arrive at least three hours before the flight departure time, but it proved too costly. Instead, I read up on the airport’s children’s soft play and playground areas, which my son was thrilled with.

Pack an entertainment goodie bag

Though the airline offered great inflight entertainment and an activity pack, I decided to wrap up an array of travel toys including Play-Doh, paper and pens, snacks, headphones, books, and the famous iPad for him to open and alternate at varying intervals. I also packed an inflatable cushion and blanket in the hopes that a “bedtime” routine would help give everyone a restful night. However, a pillow and blanket were included with our seat, so I could have saved the luggage space.

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Best carry-on luggage for your next trip

As a participant in multiple affiliate marketing programs, Localish will earn a commission for certain purchases. See full disclaimer below*

The best carry-on luggage can easily fit in an airplane's overhead compartment and hold all your travel essentials without giving way. I spoke to Briggs & Reiley CEO Richard Krulik about what makes a good carry-on and listed the best carry-on luggage to buy now. Krulik only provided general shopping guidance, he did not make any product recommendations.

Carry-on luggage buying guide

Spinner wheels: "You want smooth wheels since that makes a huge difference when you're rolling the bag through a very long terminal," says Krulik. 360-degree spinner wheels are the best as they can rotate in any direction and will glide smoothly at the airport or train station.

Additional pockets: "A front pocket is always a real plus on a carry-on because you may want quick access to a magazine or a light jacket," says Krulik. Some carry-ons also have extra back pockets.

Telescopic handle: "You also want a firm solid handle that's not flimsy or wobbly," says Krulik. An adjustable handle is also important as we're all different heights, he adds.

Locks: You must buy a carry-on with built-in locks or lockable ones. TSA-approved locks can help keep your bag safe on the off chance that you need to check it in at the gate. You can also use your carry-on to hold travel documents instead of using the safe in your hotel room.

Durability: Ballistic nylon is the strongest and most long-lasting durable material, according to Krulik. That said, reinforced polyester is also a great option if you're looking for hard-sided luggage says Krulik. Before you shop, also make sure to look at a brand's testing requirements. Brands will usually test the bag's wheels on uneven surfaces to see how they hold up, and check how strong the outer shell is by subjecting the bags to drop tests.

Style: This depends on personal preference. Maybe you want a monogrammed travel suitcase or a bag that stands out from the rest - maybe in a pastel color? You'll want to think of your bag as an accessory, says Krulik. Keep your personal style in mind when you shop.

Size: Every airplane has different carry-on requirements, that said most domestic airlines require that your carry-on be 22 inches x 14 inches x 9 inches in size. International airlines are a bit different, while many follow the same domestic rules, some airlines prefer carry-ons only to be under 22 inches tall. Either way, check your chosen airline's baggage size requirements before purchasing any of the below.

Best carry-ons

Best carry-on bag.

Proxis Global Carry-on Spinner

Samsonite is a brand I swear by, having owned their luggage pretty much my entire adult life. The Proxis is one of their newer collections and a great option if you prefer hard-sided luggage. It has dual spinner wheels for maneuverability, an adjustable aluminum handle and a rugged exterior that won't get bumped or bruised during your travels. It also has a USB port, in case you want to charge any devices and a TSA-approved lock for safety. The interior has mesh pockets for additional storage and cross straps to hold your garments. Since this is a smart suitcase, you may have to remove the installed battery during security check, so keep that extra step in mind.

Dimensions: 22" x 14" x 9"

Best splurge

Briggs & Riley Essential Expandable Carry-On

Briggs & Riley makes some of my favorite carry-ons and I love them for their lifetime warranty - if you break a zip or see a dent in your suitcase, you can send the suitcase to the brand to have it repaired for free. This particular option is available in three colors and can also be monogrammed, making it easy to identify in a sea of similar-looking luggage. It has a TSA-approved lock and features the brand's flagship expandable and compression technology which allows your suitcase to hold more, without increasing its dimensions. The handle is adjustable too, and there is a carry handle on top, on the bottom and on its sides. There is also a built-in garment folder to make packing easier and zipped pockets on the interior for any essentials.

Dimensions: 22 x 14 x 9 - 11.5 in (includes wheels and handles)

Largest carry-on bag

The Carry-On Roller In Text Me Red

This aesthetic carry-on is one of my favorites as it stands out from the other options on this list. It has a durable polycarbonate hard shell build and is available in multiple colors. It has spinner wheels like our other options and also has top and side carry handles. It also has TSA locks and is expandable just in case you need to fit more in. The interior has compression straps to hold your clothes, and also a separate pocket where you can store dirty clothes or undergarments. While it doesn't have an exterior pocket, it does come with an additional small pocket on the interior that is designed to hold any small valuables.

Dimensions: 22.85" x 15.75" x 9.85" (including wheel & handle)

Best water resistant

Terra 45L Carry-On Luggage

This is the best combination of both soft-side and hard-side luggage. It's made from polyester and polycarbonate. It has 360-degree spinner wheels like the other options and also has multiple exterior pockets for any travel documents or essentials. It has a designated laptop compartment, is expandable and also has a water-resistant exterior - perfect for unpredictable weather. The inside has compression straps and mesh pockets for storage. Plus, the product is made from recycled bottles, making this one of the most sustainable items on this list.

Best budget

Wrangler Smart Luggage

This budget-friendly carry-on sets itself apart thanks to its convenient cup holder attached to the bag. It also has multidirectional spinner wheels, top and side handles and is expandable, if needed. It even features a phone holder and also has a USB port option for your devices. The interior has one large zipped pocket and a side with compression straps. It's the most basic interior layout compared to the other options, but at its price, it's still one of the best carry-ons you can buy.

Best carry-on duffel bag

Away The Weekender

Away is another great luggage brand and they make both carry-on suitcases and duffel bags. The Weekender is a great pick for short trips and can hold a 15-inch laptop plus multiple changes of clothes. It has a detachable shoulder strap for comfort and a water-resistant design that's built to last. The interior has mesh pockets and a detachable key clip to help keep your everyday essentials organized. Right now, you can shop it in four colors.

Dimensions: 20.9" x 11.8" x 9.4"

Is hard-side or soft-side luggage better?

Soft-side luggage is less susceptible to getting scratched up, according to Krulik. That said, one isn't really better than the other, it's more a matter of personal preference. Soft-side luggage also has tons of additional front and back pockets for storage, which is not common on hard-side luggage. If you're packing items that are fragile, a hard-side option is better, according to Krulik.

How can I efficiently pack my carry-on?

"One of the things that I think people don't realize is every time you make a fold in your clothes, it's adding bulk to what you're packing," says Krulik. Fold your shirts in half instead of threes, he adds. "Secondly, there's dead space inside those shoes that you're packing." Stuff them with travel shampoo bottles or anything else that fits says Krulik. Finally, if you have an expandable suitcase, make sure you avoid expanding it till the end of your trip. "If I go with a maximum bag that's stuffed to the limits, I have no place to put anything that I might want to buy on the trip."

Meet our expert:

Richard Krulik: Krulik is the CEO of the travel luggage brand Briggs & Riley. Krulik only provided guidance on how to shop for a carry-on, he did not make product recommendations. Products were individually selected by our editor.

* By clicking on the featured links, visitors will leave Localish.com and be directed to third-party e-commerce sites that operate under different terms and privacy policies. Although we are sharing our personal opinions of these products with you, Localish is not endorsing these products. It has not performed product safety testing on any of these products, did not manufacture them, and is not selling, or distributing them and is not making any representations about the safety or caliber of these products. Prices and availability are subject to change from the date of publication.

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Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin is the latest pawn in a mostly successful propaganda war waged by Hamas, the terrorist organization that runs Gaza.

In a video released this week by Hamas, a drawn and gaunt 24-year-old Goldberg-Polin, now missing his left hand after being injured in the Oct. 7 attacks, describes the “hell” of being in captivity for 200 days.

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It is an appalling abuse by Hamas, compounding the war crime of taking civilian hostages with another one — subjecting them to humiliating and degrading treatment.

No one will be fooled by the exploitative video. Goldberg-Polin’s carefully scripted words were almost certainly written by Hamas.

But past attempts by Hamas at controlling the narrative around the Israel-Hamas war have been more successful, which raises a troubling question: why are so many willing to readily accept the lies of a terrorist organization?

The use of the term “mass graves” — an evocative phrase that alludes to not just death, but inhuman acts, carnage and evil — is another recent example of Hamas propaganda.

Earlier this week, there was much “shock and horror” that mass graves were found at Nasser and Al-Shifa hospitals in Gaza. Authorities in Gaza quickly blamed Israel for the deaths, and floated allegations of torture and executions.

Col. Yamen Abu Suleiman, Hamas’s director of civil defence in Khan Younis, said , “There were signs of field executions. We do not know if they were buried alive or executed. Most of the bodies are decomposed.”

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United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said he was “horrified” about the news, and much of the world’s media adopted the same attitude.

A lie, it is said, can be halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on.

There are mass graves at the two hospital sites but only because Palestinians, unfortunately, had to bury relatives there in large numbers.

The use of mass graves by Palestinians during this war has been well documented . As early as November, Al-Jazeera reported that, “More than 100 bodies of Palestinians previously held at Al-Shifa Hospital by Israeli forces have been finally buried in a mass grave.”

That same month, Reuters reported that more than 100 bodies were being buried in a mass grave in the Al-Shifa hospital compound.

“We are planning to bury them today in a mass grave inside the Al-Shifa medical complex,” Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, told Reuters . “The men are digging right now as we speak.”

The same situation occurred at Nasser Hospital.

The BBC reported in January that, “People had been forced to bury 40 bodies inside the grounds of Nasser Hospital because it was not safe outside.”

An investigation by geolocation experts also documented mass burials by Palestinians taking place at these hospitals, and released pictures and videos to prove it.

The group Geoconfirmed labelled Al-Jazeera’s claim that “civil defence members and paramedics have retrieved 180 bodies buried in this mass grave by the Israeli military” as “ disinformation ,” concluding that, “This is a known graveyard/mass grave and at least partially dug by Palestinians.”

It added, “This is not the first time claims like this were made. The discovery of graves in Al Shifa, for example, that were also at least partially dug by Palestinians.”

The group’s Twitter thread ends with a warning about “making assumptions and unproven claims,” and with almost a weariness adds, “All this while we should be talking about the important issue: Hundreds of people died and are buried at this place.”

All these Palestinian burials took place publicly, and tragic as it is for families to see loved ones buried in a mass grave because of war, it is a far cry from people being executed and then buried in secret which is the implication from the Gaza reports.

But the dead, the living and the gullible are all grist for the Hamas propaganda mill.

In October, based only on the word of terrorists, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly were quick to jump on the bandwagon that implicated Israel as being behind a missile strike that hit the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City. Bombing a hospital was “unthinkable,” said Joly , while Trudeau called it “ unacceptable .”

The cause was later determined to have been a terrorist rocket that misfired.

It should come as no surprise that Hamas is willing to lie and mislead in a propaganda war that involves its members filming the Oct. 7 attacks, parading hostages around in videos, inflating the war dead, lying about strikes on hospitals and about the graves of their own unfortunate dead. This is all intended to portray Hamas as the victim and the face of resistance.

What is strange is that politicians, as well as large sections of the public and the media, are buying into a narrative crafted by a murderous, amoral, duplicitous cult. Last year, Michael Milshtein, a retired Israeli intelligence official and an expert on Palestinian media affairs, told The New Yorker that Hamas thinks all westerners are stupid. They may be right.

It’s not that Hamas has made truth a casualty of war, it’s that it has convinced so many to embrace lies with easy abandon.

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Choosing your next vacation isn’t just about where you visit, but where you stay.

To help travelers book the vacation possible, Tripadvisor , one of the biggest online travel agencies, revealed its  2024 Travelers’ Choice Best of the Best Awards  — including the list of the world’s best hotels .

The list ranks destinations that received a high volume of above-and-beyond reviews and opinions from the Tripadvisor community over the past year — out of 8 million listings, fewer than 1% achieved the milestone.

New York City is still one of the top tourist destinations in the world, so it’s no shock that three of the top stays in the US are right here in Manhattan: The Luma Hotel in Times Square, The Bryant Park Hotel and Casablanca Hotel by Library Hotel Collection, also in Times Square.

But although many people agree NYC is the greatest city in the world, none of its hotels made the list for the best stays on a global scale.

The top hotel in the world is the Hotel Colline de France in Brazil, according to Tripadvisor.

The luxurious stay was highly rated for its “sophistication and comfort” shown through its glamorous rooms and luscious spa.

The live piano music played at breakfast and complimentary sparkling wine were also nice touches.

“The hotel’s sensational design and warm atmosphere make it a unique choice for an elegant, yet cozy, getaway,” Tripadvisor said.

Best hotels in the world

• Hotel Colline de France, Brazil
• OBLU SELECT Lobigili, Maldives
• La Siesta Hoi An Resort & Spa, Vietnam
• Adiwana Suweta, Indonesia
• Iberostar Grand Packard, Cuba
• Emerald Maldives Resort & Spa, Maldives
• La Siesta Classic Ma May, Vietnam
• Secrets Akumal Riviera Maya, Mexico
• Padma Resort Ubud, Indonesia
• Sofitel Mexico City Reforma, Mexico

The top hotel in the US is the Shore Hotel in Santa Monica, California, according to Tripadvisor.

The pet-friendly hotel stands out with its beautiful view of the ocean and eco-friendly but slick design — its proximity to the Santa Monica Pier also helps to attract guests.

Travelers also raved about the variety of food options, including the in-room breakfast options and the poolside bar.

“A stylish atmosphere and attention to detail ensure a fab stay for you and your furry friend,” Tripadvisor said.

Best in the US

• Shore Hotel, Santa Monica, California
• Luma Hotel Times Square, New York
• FivePine Lodge & Spa, Oregon
• The Bryant Park Hotel, New York
• Hotel Emma, San Antonia, Texas
• The Loutrel, South Carolina
• Lotte Hotel Seattle, Washington
• Four Seasons Hotel Chicago, Illinois
• Ironworks Hotel Indy, Indiana
• San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter on the River Walk, Texas
• The Lodge at Woodloch, Pennsylvania
• Koloa Landing Resort at Poipu, Autograph Collection, Hawaii
• Casablanca Hotel by Library Hotel Collection, New York

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