Hello there! March is here and I am happy to announce that my domain, msmeetingadventures.com is celebrating its 1st year in the cyberspace. Yey! In line with this celebration, I decided to start a month-long series of epic and funny travel misadventures to give tribute to my first blog post and the birth of Ms. Meeting Adventures. Without further adieu, here’s the first part of this “Travel Misadventure series” featuring travel bloggers all over the world and their epic travel fails.
Getting Soaked at Songkran
by Nate of www.travellemming.com
Last year I was
traveling solo through Thailand during April when Thailand celebrates the new year’s festival of Songkran. The first day of the festival, I was taking a ferry to Koh Tao when I was warned by some other passengers about the fact that the festival essentially consists of a giant country-wide water fight, in which it’s considered entirely socially acceptable — even desirable — to simply dump a bucket of cold water over a stranger on the streets!
And, sure enough, within seconds of getting off the boat, I came under fire from a seemingly endless army of Thais and foreign revelers armed with super soakers and buckets. I frantically did what I could to wrap my electronics in the little plastic I had, all while dodging incoming fire from all sides.
The journey to my hostel was only 10 minutes, but in that time my bag managed to get entirely soaked through as if it had spent the evening at the bottom of a swimming pool. I did manage to salvage my camera, but otherwise, I was in pretty poor spirits.
That is until I realized there was really only one thing to do: buy a super soaker, take to the streets, and pay it forward! It turns out Songkran is a lot more fun when you’ve got the ability to defend yourself!
A “shitty” plane encounter
by Scot & Hayley of www.internationalhotdish.com
Visiting friends is always a reason to celebrate. Over the years my visits to a buddy in Los Angeles have taken this to the extreme, often resulting in missing flights home the next morning. This year, however, was destined to be different.
Instead of our usual antics, we bought some In and Out Burger and settled in for the night – with a lot of beer. We ate and drank ourselves into the wee hours of the morning, got a little sleep, and were awoken by the three alarm clocks we set the night before.
We hopped in the Jeep and he drove me into the airport. The hangover wasn’t bad until I got on the airplane. Once there, my stomach performed a death roll and I knew it was go time. I scrambled for the toilet as the plane was ascending and stayed there for the next hour as we flew to Las Vegas. The rest is history.
Blessing in disguise
by Somnath of www.travelcrusade.org
This was one of my disheartening adventures last year when I planned to make a visit to the UNESCO World Heritage site, Valley of Flowers in India. I planned the trip in Autumn, but to my surprise, I was disappointed when I reached the destination.The bridge to the valley was broken and shattered to pieces due to heavy rainfall and landslides.There was no other alternative to reach the valley, even the locals would not allow me to go beyond the safety zone.
I had to turn my way back to the lowland and return from the UNESCO site. But the good thing was that there was another place of great importance in the area, so without wasting much time I headed towards the important Gurudwara of Punjabis, Hemkund Sahib which was 4 km right from the place where I made my way to the UNESCO site.I was quite fortunate to visit the sacred destination and the holy lake inscribing it. Pilgrims can take bath inside the lake after visiting the Gurudwara and seek blessings. Although the journey was a bit disappointing as I could not make it for what I came but was fortuitous to catch a glimpse of the sacred lake and make my trip a success.
Saved by a fairy godmother
by Talia of www.hulwithkids.com
When traveling in Australia, my husband and I decided to couch surf through most of the country. This was an excellent decision; not because of the money it saved us, but because of the invaluable connections we made with locals that lead us to
amazing off-the-beaten-path locations in each new city. Their advice was gold and everyone was amazing!
I connected with a very sweet woman in Melbourne through Couchsurfing who had great reviews. She lived in the suburbs, and it was difficult to find her home so it was 10:30 pm when we finally arrived.
We walked into the house and were greeted by no less than 15 people smoking pot and completely drunk – including the 50-year-old host who was, apparently, a former Olympic swimmer. She showed us to the shed where we were supposed to sleep – it was dreadful and full of animals, some of which we didn’t recognize. We went to brush our teeth and the bathroom was so disgusting, that we literally held everything in until it was early enough to catch a train back into Melbourne. We didn’t even brush our teeth until we got to the train station.
It was one week before New Year’s and everything was booked solid. In my desperation, I tweeted that we were stranded in Melbourne. Amazingly, I received a reply from a Twitter friend – and she invited us over to stay with her at an amazing home in Melbourne. It’s been over 7 years since then and we still call her our fairy godmother, and the best part is that she was in Israel when our eldest daughter was born, so she got to meet her.
Stay tuned for more epic travel fails stories…
There you have it! Our first batch of this Travel Misadventure series. I had fun reading this first batch of epic travel fails from different bloggers and I hope it also brightened your day in a way.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all my “friends” who took time to read my blogs and travel stories (some forced. some voluntarily haha) and to these travel bloggers who celebrated with me in this little milestone by submitting their epic travel fails stories. Thank you and see you in my next post!
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Tags epic fail, misadventure, stories, Travel, travel fail
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