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Funny travel tales from other backpackers
 I worked in a Zambian National Park doing scientific type stuff. It was great; you got really close to nature. Besides my pet scorpion, I’d also stumbled over lions, been surrounded by a vast herd of buffalo, trod on a spitting cobra, been feet away from a pack of wild dogs, watched elephants wander off with my washing trailing behind them, almost got flattened by a hippo and so forth. However, during the day (when it was about 42 degrees in the shade) your time could drag. To combat this I developed an intricate scheme to poke elephants with implements of rapidly decreasing reach. The aim was eventually to reach the toothpick phase of the plan. One must set oneself targets after all. However, I never got past the ‘elephant-poking stick’ stage. It was a beautiful stick, but you wouldn’t believe how quickly those big grey sods can turn round and get all stampy and ear-flappy. They can also hide behind surprisingly small things. Moral of the story? Hmm... Don’t mess with elephants, they’re bigger than you?Sam Bloomfield |
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 Ok well this is the first one that springs to mind... It's our last night in Belgium, we're in a town called Bornem and me and my mate Mike have been off the drink all week because of the Death March, so we go into town and get blind stinking hammered. Belgian beer comes in little cups instead of pints, so we felt we had to have 2 each. Anyway, after sampling 2 each of every beer in Bornem and topping it up with half a pint of cognac, we stagger back towards our hotel.Now, our Hotel is on the border of the town, on the other side of a busy motorway, and we decide it would be a good idea to streak across the motorway. No problems, we get to the other side and start to get dressed again... But what did I do with our room key? Oh gawd, I dropped it on the motorway. Picture if you will, two very drunk half naked English lads crawling across a motorway in Belgium looking for the key... BUT by some miracle we find it! Right, no more fun, get clothes back on and go back to our room. Walk into the Hotel, act natural, they won't suspect a thing. We get greeted by a suspiciously-welcoming Hotel Manager, barman and a few other Hotel Staff. Say hello, walk past. Excellent, they didn't suspect a thing. But as we get to the corridor... "Stef, have I still got my underpants on my head?" "Umm... Yep" "Oh bugger" Needless to say we didn't stop for our continental breakfast the next morning! Stef Marianski |
 I was in a hostel in Dublin and after a night on the tiles I went into my room and passed out. About two hours later I woke up to find my travel mates and their mates congregating in the room, thinking nothing of this I couldn’t be bothered to argue and fell asleep. About two hours after that (6am) someone went knocking on everybody’s bedroom door, saying it’s time to leave the hostel and that they have to clean out the rooms. Well, gullible, confused me went and packed all my stuff, got dressed and walked out, only to find that my so called travel mates thought it would be funny to play a practical joke! Now, I take earplugs everywhere with me.Caroline Cotteril |
 While travelling up the East Coast of Australia on the Oz Experience, one of the stops is at Dingo (a cattle station in the middle of the bush) and our driver Macka had got loads of fancy dress for us to wear and himself. After playing loads of party games on the bus we got stopped by the Police - we were all ordered off the coach including Macka who was dressed up as a woman, as were the rest of us blokes!! Very funny at the time!!Chris Cooke |
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When we were in Copocabana on Lake Titticaca in Bolivia we had decided to spend a day exploring the Isla del Sol. We had planned to spend the night there but after walking all day from one end of the island to the other we changed our minds. We just needed to get a boat back to the mainland. Spotting one we marched up to the boat captain and asked if we could come aboard. For some reason he seemed reluctant, even though we were willing to pay. After arguing for about 5 mins with this guy someone else on board stood up and said we could get on. It wasn't until we sat down that we realised that we had somehow manged to pick a boat that had been privately hired for a wedding party! As I looked at the perplexed faces on board I noticed the bride and groom covered in confetti. The next 2 hours were spent with them singing songs in Spanish and asking us to join in! I think I mumbled something about losing my voice, but it was safe to say we couldn't get off the boat quick enough when we finally made it back to shore!! When travelling in Turkey a few years back, we went to this cool island that had a beach full of turtles, and a natural mud bath type thing. Being the typical Brits we are, we got into our swim gear, and made a dash for the mud pool. Now, this stuff isn’t as thick and sticky as I’d first imagined it would be... in fact, it was altogether slippy!It took about 1/10th of a second before my feet had left the floor, and I was heading face first for a large rock. I’ve never seen people laugh quite that hard since! Jamie Ryan |
 We had joined an unofficial trip on an old fishing boat from Ko Tao to Mu Koh Ang Thong - an archipelago in the Gulf of Thailand. As a Marine National Park, tourist boats can currently only go there for daytrips and the islands are uninhabited, apart from the park warden. The group of about twenty of us set up camp on the island where the warden lived. All the camping jollities ensued until suddenly, heavy grey clouds engulfed the sun and someone pointed out about six tornadoes whipping up the sea in the distance. Fat raindrops began pelting down, so we ran under trees, but the rain was so hard we were drenched within seconds. This left only one other place to shelter - a small toilet block. However, after we had all squeezed into the cubicle, a Norwegian girl started shrieking - there were scorpions crawling round the toilet. We exited at great speed, back into the torrential downpour. By now it was getting well past bedtime, and we looked at the warden’s cosy log cabin longingly. Surely he’d invite us in to stay the night, you would think. Nope. But he generously offered to let us crawl underneath his house, which was on stilts on the beach, to shelter. It was impossible to sleep with an electrical storm now fully blown. The thunder was echoing off the limestone cliffs of the islands, producing a stereo-surround-sound effect. Drifting in and out of an uncomfortable doze, I felt something scuttling across my chest, and as I went to whack it away I felt the furry body of a rat. In a flash I scrabbled out from under the house and ran down the beach, determined never to go camping again.Rachel Ricks |
 I was camping in the middle of Yellowstone National Park not twenty paces away from a bear den which the Ranger had pointed out to us that day. It was late one night when I woke up, dying for a loo. Mindful of the bears, I grabbed my flashlight and stuck my head out the tent opening, looking left and right. I headed over towards the toilets when I heard a noise. The garbage cans in front of the toilets were moving. I could hear growling and rummaging. There were black bears in the rubbish! For a stupid second, I considered going past to the toilets anyway but instead, turned round and crept slowly back to the tent. About two paces away from my tent, I heard a very loud growl. Terrified, I jumped into the tent, zipped it up, and sat shaking on my sleeping bag listening to the growling. The growling only finished the next morning when one of the other campers stopped snoring!! Yep, the growling, at least, was no bear...Tori Oram |
 I was on an overnight train going from Budapest to Venice and as we passed borders the guards came into our sleeping cabin and demanded for passports. When I handed them my passport they all nudged each other and laughed. Admittedly I did look like Olive Oil and it wasn’t the best picture of me. I was asked for my ID and my Bournemouth Uni student card was apparently valid, to which they didn’t find that funny.Suzanne Leeson |
 Whilst sleeping on a bench at Pireus Harbour last summer I had probably the biggest shock of my life. It was the small hours of the morning, and I was waiting for a boat to take me to a Greek island. Anyone who has been to Greece will know what I mean by the ‘stray dog’ issue the country has. Few of them have the recommended amount of limbs, and they tend to just wander around looking generally pitiful. There were a few of them doing just this at the harbour but I took little notice as I was used to them by now. In any case, I managed to fall asleep, but woke up from a deep exhausted sleep at one point, and could feel someone breathing on my face. I opened my eyes only to look straight into the face of a huge one-eared mongrel with three legs and approximately half a tail. My compassion for the poor creature was somewhat overwhelmed by my surprise at this confrontation straight from the dream world, and I jumped up and screamed quite feebly, waking up several fellow bench-snoozers and even making the poor dog jump. My embarrassment mounted as the backpackers around me grumbled or laughed at my apparently absurd behaviour, and I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night for fear of another encounter with Fido, who remained staring at me until I left in the morning, although at a slightly safer distance than before.Leilani Jordan |
 After a relaxing afternoon walking around Wat Po in Bangkok I decided to complete my feeling of serenity by opting for one of the famous foot massages on offer in the grounds of the temple. An hour later with an inner smile and ultra pampered tootsies I walked back to the pier to catch my ferry home. Boats of all shapes and sizes passed me by whilst I enjoyed the sunset ...hang on! Sunset? it was now getting late and my overnight train journey to Chiang Mai getting imminent! At last the ferry arrived - I leapt on (these boats don’t hang around) and felt huge relief...and then huge pain as I lay on the floor of the ferry nursing a nasty knock to the head, whilst less fortunate ones flailed around in the river around me! Thai ferry drivers it seems are not known for their manoeuvring skills and needless to say the effects of the massage didn’t last for long!Lorraine Bridges |
 In 2003 I was teaching English in Hanoi with two other volunteers, Sarah and Richard. One evening we were invited out to try karaoke by an expat friend of Richard's father named Jim. Envisioning a noisy bar full of inebriated businessmen murdering 'My Way', I was soon to discover there is more than one kind of karaoke bar in Vietnam. We were led up a narrow staircase to a dimly-lit room, equipped with karaoke machine, sofas, coffee table, crate of warm beer, and two Vietnamese prostitutes. This was a 'karaoke om' (holding bar), where groping the girls goes hand in hand with singing 'House of the Rising Sun'. Such establishments (unsurprisingly) don't have much of a female clientele so much confusion ensued as to exactly what was expected of the girls, seeing as these Western men had 'brought their own'. A joint look from Sarah and me confirmed that no extra accompaniments would be required that evening, and as Jim launched into a duet with a girl my age wearing a dress the size of a cashew nut it dawned on me that the sofa I was sitting on was wipe-clean. Finally, despite having secured a post-gap year place at Oxford, Richard proved himself to be not the brightest button in the karaoke brothel by continually putting the microphone in my face in an attempt to get me to sing Disney songs. Luckily the room was hired by the hour (as you would expect) and the madam came up before he wound up singing 'Hakuna Matada' in the back of a Hanoi ambulance.Emma Gittens |
 We were staying at Australian Backpackers near Kings Cross in Sydney when this quality thing happened. One lazy afternoon when we had nothing to do and we were trying to save a bit of money, a guy that works at the hostel comes to us and says 'do you fancy free food and beer for an afternoon?' Obviously this is not the kind of offer you turn down... so we accepted not even asking what we had to do. It turned out an Aussie country and western singer called Adam Harvey was in town and shooting the video for his latest single 'When lonely met love' and all we had to do was be in the video! We were taken to a hotel on the other side of town where we were given beer, presumably to get us drunk enough to dance around for a while. And that's exactly what we did! We went through about 10 takes of this song, dancing like idiots and getting more and more drunk all afternoon... we even got to meet the soon-to-be legendary Adam Harvey! A thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. Look out for me on Aussie MTV!!Adam Lunn |
 I don’t have one travel story I have far too many small incidents to tell so here are my main funny moments of summer camp last year: Chasing mice with water guns, dyeing all my clothes orange/pink by mistake a few hours before I was meant to be on the plane, getting severe sunburn on my bottom, the local wildlife turning our toilet roll supply into a nest, bacon dripping in fat, scrambled eggs that smelt of fart, sneaking out of camp to get take away, water gun fights, chipmunks, skunks, explaining English phrases such as 'y-fronts', the kids going on their first dates, lanyard, singing cheesy songs and shouting camp cheers, mice running up the walls, having no electricity or water during the blackout, getting Harry Potter shipped out to me to the envy of everyone at camp, going on a really cheap tour to Niagara Falls and finding out it was a bargain because it was in Chinese, having my face on a screen in Times Square, and lastly my parents waiting for me at the airport with banners and balloons as it was my birthday!Grace Avarne |
Click here >> if you've got any traveller's tales and post them on the messageboard. We're always on the look-out for travel tale gems - it's great to read about others' experiences.
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