Travel: it's the most exhilarating thing in the world, but it's also one of the situations where one—or many—things could go wrong. From the moment you leave your house to catch your flight to checking into a hotel to exploring a place you've never been before, it's a wild combination of factors that may get you out of your routine, but could also leave you miserable, broke, scared, lonely, or even worse. But still, when wanderlust calls, you've just got to answer. Below, a number of Redditors have shared their most outrageous travel stories. They'll either make you want to get out there and book a trip, or they'll make you want to strap yourself to your couch to make sure you never leave home again.
1. Smurfed
I went to use one of those free-standing, self-cleaning bathrooms in Paris. I didn't know you had to let the doors close and let it run its wash cycle after every use. I went in immediately after someone walked out, and got sprayed by dozens of jets loaded with water and blue cleaning fluid.
2. Advertisements Be Lying
I signed up for a three-day trip to Amsterdam that said it had good accommodations in the center of the city. It actually turned out to be a boat that was docked in a canal nowhere near anything. It was the middle of winter, and there was no heat on the boat. The sewage system malfunctioned and leaked everywhere on the second day, so the boat stunk.
There was nowhere to even buy food nearby, so I spent most of the trip huddled under a blanket feeling cold and hungry, and wishing I had the energy to walk into the city.
3. Unshakeable Enthusiasm
In Ecuador, my wife's bag was stolen, and she lost all three of her passports. In Botswana, I was hitching a ride in the back of a truck, which then ran off the road. In Morocco, my train derailed. In Israel, my friend fell down a mountain and was taken to hospital by helicopter. But in every case, everything turned out fine. Traveling is awesome!
4. Lesson Learned
I got hustled off an equivalent of 550 USD on the first day in Cuba for being too darn trusting.
5. Local Charm
A few months ago when I was in Italy, I decided to go read at the beach nearby. It ended up with me there nearly every day we didn't have anything planned. I should mention I was a 23-year-old girl in the middle of rural Italy, and the Italians are very open about how they think and feel. I was followed home and nearly run off my bike by one man.
I also found a guy watching me in the bushes, and I was asked out by random old men nearly every day. Though I loved my time in Italy, it did ruin it slightly.
6. That Doesn’t Sound Too Good…
About to land, a typical message from the pilot talking about the weather, etc. Then at the end of the speech he exclaims, "NO DON'T TOUCH THA-" with a swift termination of the loudspeaker soon following.
7. Prepare to Be Uncomfortable for 10 Days
I did a summer study abroad in Kenya. We had a home base, and then took trips around the country for 5-12 days. I would leave most of my stuff at the home base and bring a smaller bag with me on the trips. First day of a ten-day trip, my bag was stolen—literally everything I had with me except my passport and cash, which I thankfully had in a moneybelt-type thing on me at the time.
We felt pretty certain we knew who took it, and called the cops. Big mistake. By the time we left the police station, I was so fearful for the safety of the boys we accused, I couldn't leave without making sure the boys went with us. For ten days, I had to wash my underwear each night and hope it dried by the morning. Another girl had an extra deodorant she gave me.
By the time we got back, I never wanted to see those clothes again—ten days in a row, ugh. Lost my camera, binoculars, some amazing pictures, lots of stuff. Sucked.
8. Let’s Put a Smile on That Face
Was on a Chicago-DC flight a few years back (pre-9/11), and the guy sitting next to me takes out this ginormous Crocodile Dundee pocketknife, flips it open, then spends the entire flight cutting the faces off people in the in-flight magazine. Eeep.
9. Guns Are Scary
Many years ago on the way to the UK, we had a brief stopover in Dubai. I was around 9 years old, first time flying, and really suffering air sickness. We debark the plane and the heat hits me hard. I stumble from the steps to the tarmac and proceed to vomit foamy water...inches away from the toes of a security guy armed with a machine gun.
I was scared witless and couldn't move. My family apologized profusely and dragged me onto a waiting bus. Granted, this fellow didn't change expression or even move from my sad puddle, but darn, we were green travelers and had never seen guns before, let alone potentially pissed off a gun owner. I still cringe when I remember the look in his eyes and my mother’s face.
10. Sitting on a Mountain
I was sitting next to an adult with learning disabilities, and he pooped himself right before takeoff. It was a transatlantic flight. Next to a grown man sitting in a pile of his poop. Poor guy, but more pertinently, poor me.
11. Amateur Hour Over Here
Morocco: climbed Mount Toubkal, second highest mountain in Africa. We were too stingy to pay a guide, took a wrong turn. Boulders gradually became sparse, and the ground was so un-solid that we started slipping down the mountain. There's no mountain rescue around there, and this was too high up even for donkeys.
Hearing our screams, an actual climber came to the rescue. He vanished to help the others before I had the chance to thank him, but to this day I'm convinced he was a guardian angel. Bawled like a baby when I was safe. It's the only time I've ever genuinely thought I would die.
12. My Eyes, They Burn!
I went to the beach with my parents, and they wore matching outfits (including shirts with the city name on them) and fanny packs. It was horrifying.
13. At Least Someone’s Not out of Gas
My wife farted on a plane. It freaking stank so bad that I could hear people complain 3 rows back. She pretended to be asleep. An air hostess walked up to me and started blasting me with some flowery air purifier. I got the full blame for it.
14. This Is Not a Mugging
Atlanta. Downtown was really nice. Olympic Park, World of Coke, a very good Aquarium, etc. Outside the perimeter was like running the gauntlet in the post-apocalypse. I had a guy come up to me, pull up his shirt showing a revolver in his pants, and ask for $20.00 I still tell myself giving him $20 while my daughter went pee in the worst gas station bathroom her or my wife have ever seen wasn't a "mugging."
15. The Most Final Destination
I was on a flight when a guy that sat a few rows behind me died of a massive heart attack. It was a flight from Kenya to Stockholm, and I think I was around 11 years old. They couldn't land, as we were right above the desert, so they just kind of put a sheet over him and stored him under the stairs (it was a double-decker plane).
I remember walking past the corpse on our way out the following morning, and the sheet didn't cover his feet. I was 50% excited and 50% terrified that I had seen dead-person feet.
16. Don’t Drink and Drive
When I was roughly ten years old and on a trip with my family, we were riding The Ducks, a type of vehicle that is also a boat. I love the water and sight-seeing, so this was awesome. We passed a dam, and not 10 seconds after the boat left the dam behind, a speed boat came flying over the top of the dam and landed upside down on the concrete below.
They quickly brought us back to the tour station, and we saw EMTs carrying body bags out of the ambulance. Later found out on the news that the driver of the boat was a very drunk young woman.
17. Too Sweet to Smell
I was on a 14 (ish) hour flight from Vancouver, Canada to Shanghai, China. The old Chinese man beside me who spoke only Mandarin had really, really bad gas the whole way through. Things got really bad when he curled up in his seat to sleep, butt pointed toward me so he could face his wife. Worst part? They were a super sweet couple (as revealed through tons of smiling and nodding from each of us), and so I didn't want to make their flight worse by complaining to the flight attendant.
I swallowed my pride and a whole lot of old Chinese man gas that day.
18. And That’s How I Started My New Life as a Dutch Student
Not mine, but an old friend of mine has got to be the unluckiest traveler. Story 1: She flew into Poland—I forget which city—and was planning to take a bus from the airport to Krakow, which she was told would be a trip of a few hours. She got off the plane and asked at the information desk about the bus to Krakow. They told her where to find it and she went on her way.
She got on her bus and took a seat. The bus is starting to fill up. A few people are looking at her weird. She's thinking, darn, is this like when I wore the neon pink T-shirt in Germany and literally every other person I saw was wearing black or gray, and I looked like a freak tourist? Eventually, the bus fills up, the doors close, and they're on their way.
That's right about the point that she realized everyone else on this bus seemed to know each other. She was on a school trip of Dutch students visiting Krakow. The bus was already moving. They were really cool about it, but she was mortified. But hey, free bus trip, so she couldn't really complain that much about the circumstances.
Story 2: She was visiting Budapest with her roommate, and had been told they just had to visit the thermal baths. The way the baths work is that you shower, go into the baths and tool around/relax, and then shower again when you get out. Steps one and two went without fanfare. The baths were nice and relaxing, and they were ready to shower again and get out of there.
They went into the bathroom, and unfortunately, all of the showers were full. With people so loosey-goosey from the baths, some of them were taking a while, too. But this one old woman was showering in the middle of the room in a giant, super-powerful sprinkler—the spray went all the way to the ceiling, it was pretty incredible apparently.
The old woman finished up and my friend said to her roommate, "Hey, let's just use the sprinkler shower. We can both use it at the same time and get out of here faster." So they got into the sprinkler shower and started sudsing up, doing their thang. A few minutes later, a woman comes up to them, talking very quickly and gesticulating wildly.
"Sorry, only English," they repeat over and over. Finally, the woman motions for them to move out of the sprinkler shower. She looks at them, and then exaggeratedly pops a squat over the stream of water. They were showering in a bidet.
19. Logistical Nightmare
American Airlines changed my ticket due to delays in NYC. They did not tell British or Turkish Airways. So when I called to confirm my return ticket 2 days before I'm set to fly out of Nairobi, I find that both British Airways and Turkish Airlines canceled my return trip because I was a no-show. That's when the panic started to set in.
Turkish Airlines in Nairobi told me that the only thing I had to do to get my whole flight reinstated was to have American Airlines put in a code that said they diverted my flight, and that would auto update all the way through the system. American Airlines, however, refused to do that, and the woman on the line refused to bump me up to a higher authority.
After being on the phone and in and out of the Turkish Airlines office for two days straight, they finally gave me a waiver on their end. It was such a hassle, I would have to call American Airlines when they were open East Coast time, and then I'd have to be in the Turkish office when they are open during their work hours.
I wish they did it sooner and it would have saved me a lot of stress, but considering all that, I love Turkish Airlines and I hate American Airlines. It was going to cost my wife and I five thousand dollars a person to buy the same tickets that we had. I seriously felt like I was drowning.
20. Arachnophobia
I was in Egypt, and we were in a tour bus heading down the Sinai Peninsula to Sharm el-Sheikh. About halfway down the peninsula, we stopped at a rest area. I really needed to relieve myself, and ran to the restroom. I was undoing my belt and starting to pull down my pants as I entered into the stall (couldn't hold it much longer), when a huge spider crawled out from being in the toilet.
I'm convinced he made an audible hissing noise, but that might have been me. I ran out of there, pants half-down, screaming "ankabut kabeer! ankabut kabeer!" Which means "big spider." The owner sighed, grabbed a broom, and chased him out of there.
21. Never Too Old to Need a Burping
Sitting across from a young mom who had an infant and a 2-year-old. She had her hands full with the 2-year-old, so I offered to hold her baby. I'm a dad, I've fed and let sleep babies. She agreed and I held the baby, fed her a bottle, was patting her on the back to soothe her, and let her fall asleep. She did fall asleep, but not before projectile vomiting in my face and down my shirt. On the bright side, I'm pretty sure I earned Karma that day.
22. Save the Salamanders
Went to Florida with my family when I was around 12. Didn't know that some lizards' (or salamanders' in this case) tails will fall off as a way to avoid predators. After trying to catch a salamander for FOREVER, I was SO PROUD to have finally caught one, and when I looked down to see the little guy, all I had was a massive, still wriggling, tail.
Screamed like heck and ran away. Didn't try to catch anymore salamanders after that.
23. Stick in the Middle With You
An overnight flight—checked in online with an aisle seat, but didn't realize it printed as a middle seat until too late. Had a guy next to me trying to get comfy all night by putting his butt on my arm. That's until everyone woke up because, while passing out customs forms, the flight attendants realized a gentleman had died in his sleep sometime in the last 5 hours.
24. Crisis Averted
My political science teacher spent the last year traveling across Africa for personal enlightenment, and he told us a story from when he was in Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in Africa. His taxi driver picked him up from the hotel he decided to stay at (it was a one-night thing cause he just wanted to have a hot shower).
Being a hotel and all, obviously only people with money can afford to stay at such a location. Taxi driver starts to drive in the completely opposite direction of the destination, eventually getting to a very narrow ally. My teacher states "If you do not turn this car around, I'm jumping out right now and you don't get paid." (He said this while literally opening the door.)
Guy stops the car, ponders for a minute, and turns around back in the intended direction. The teacher is nerdy-looking too, really nice guy, just not the best physical appearance to look intimidating.
25. Nobody Likes a Jerk
My friend was sitting next to someone on a plane, and the someone kept bumping his arm in a rhythmic fashion until my friend opened his eyes and looked to see what was up. Unfortunately, what was up was the dude's you-know-what, and he was working hard. My friend was pretty scarred after that. I would be too.
26. A Different Sort of Attraction
I saw a dead woman on a train platform. She was covered in a very sheer cloth, and it was clear that rigor mortis had set in, so who knows how long she had been there. All the locals acted like it was perfectly normal. No one batted an eye, and they all just stood there waiting for their train. When I told one of the men that worked on the platform that there was a dead woman there, he looked at me like he could NOT be bothered to care.
27. We’re Going Brown
I had a colostomy bag for about 6 months to let my colon heal after an accident where it was perforated (I fell and was impaled on a barbed wire fencepost). On a plane coming off painkillers, so I had really bad diarrhea. It turns out my colostomy bag is not attached correctly, so the hole in my gut is not lined up with the hole in the bag.
I'm dozing off when I feel warmth and smell this horrible smell of fresh poop—my colostomy bag leaked copious amounts of liquid poop all over the front of me. Stunk up the cabin badly—had to go into the bathroom and try to get stuff off of my dress shirt and slacks. Stayed in as long as I could—came out soaking wet and about as embarrassed as I’ve ever been.
28. Really Packed a Lot Into a Week
Seoul, South Korea (2010)
- Lost my passport;
- Got robbed by my taxi driver (later called by Seoul police, they got the taxi driver and my passport);
- The hotel was in a different part of the city than advertised;
- Had a rice bun thrown at my head by an old lady outside my hotel, twice;
- Got yelled at by a US serviceman while at the DMZ gift shop. I'm American but wearing a "communist hat" according to him. When did the SF Giants beanie become communist?
- Got super drunk, almost got hit by a cab (I admit that one is all me);
- Got yelled at by some Korean teenager for some unknown reason. I was just staring at the city skyline. He tapped me on the shoulder and just screamed at me;
- Taxicab driver fell asleep while waiting in traffic on the way to the airport. I got yelled at for waking him up;
- Police at the airport thought my tattered (I had been traveling a lot at this time) passport was fake.
But all in all, I would visit South Korea again. I was there for a week, and even after all that I still had a blast.
29. Flight Is the Best Education You Can Have
This was a school trip, so we had close to 30 teenagers present. We were heading to DC from the west coast, with a layover in Chicago. Because of the large class size, we had to arrive at the airport around 5 AM so we could get through security. We made it to the gate area by 6 AM, and our flight was boarding at 7:30.
However, they pushed the flight forward 30 minutes...then 30 more minutes...then an hour...then another hour, until four hours had passed. Because they kept changing the time, we had to stay in the gate area in case of a sudden announcement. My teacher spent almost $200 that day just to buy us lunch because we were planning to have an airline meal.
We finally took off around 12:30 PM. When we land in Chicago, it's 5:30 PM with time zones adjusted. We're a horde of zombies by this point, since we had almost no sleep the night before due to excitement. We've missed our original connection by hours, and any other flights to DC that day are full, so we're booked onto a flight to Baltimore instead—which also gets delayed an hour.
Once again, my teacher saves the day by buying us pizza for dinner. My teacher is the type who buys gourmet pizza at a time like this, so she spent even more of her money like that. We take off at 8:30 PM from Chicago. Everyone wants to sleep, but my teacher won't allow it because if we sleep, we'll be even more tired once we're woken up.
With time zones adjusted, it's 11:30 PM when landing in Baltimore. Guess what—because of all the delays and airport switching, our luggage is lost. But the airline just tells us to keep waiting at the baggage claim—until it's almost 1 AM. Don't forget, this is a group of 30 sweaty teenagers who can't change their clothes.
So, after a 40-minute bus drive to DC—still no dosing off allowed—we locate our luggage and get it. It's almost 2:30 AM when we finally got sent to bed—and we have to wake up in 6 more hours for the first day exploring DC. In all seriousness though, that was easily the most fun day of the trip. While stranded at the first airport, my teacher talked to a lady at the gate, who was a professional artist.
After chatting a bit, my teacher arranged for my artist friend to show the lady some of her drawings, and she got some help on how to improve. My teacher also organized a drawing contest with a few students, while another group used a blank notebook to create a full role play game that lasted all 4 hours. One student who brought a book was reading out loud to not just our classmates, but to some of the other passengers as well.
While waiting at the Chicago airport, one talented boy pulled out a Rubik's cube and showed his skills for the entire gate area. It sounds horrible to explain, but I think it was actually my best experience on an airplane.
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30. Prickly Parisians
When I was in first grade and my sister was two, my family went to Paris. We were sitting in a garden eating a picnic and speaking in English. Some French teenagers heard us from the balcony above and started throwing rocks at us and yelling insults that I didn't know. I had to cover my little sister because I was freaked out that she was going to get hit on the head.
We ended up packing our stuff and leaving in a rush, as none of the adults in the park even moved to get them to stop. They were above us, so my parents couldn't. I had nightmares for a year.
31. Shoulder to Crash on?
On a flight to Rome from Atlanta. Stuck in the middle of an elderly woman and an Italian guy. It was a later flight, so about two hours in they both fall asleep. Their heads end up rolling onto my shoulders. I am a quiet and probably overly polite person. So, I just sat there awkwardly waiting for them to wake up because no one can sleep for that long on a flight, right?
I have shoulders like the clouds of heaven.
32. Airport Trauma
Must have been when I started my travels to Australia. The flight was Emirates, Zurich to Melbourne, with a changeover in Dubai. I was supposed to arrive in Dubai at about 7 am, then leave on another plane 3 hours later. Because there was fog around Dubai, we landed in Abu Dhabi instead. They informed us of the situation.
Since it was Emirates with their great situation, I didn't care much, they'd sort it out, right? After sitting in Abu Dhabi for 5 hours, we flew back to Dubai and finally landed there. My connection flight was gone, but since I had gotten myself a one-year visa, there was time enough to get to Australia. Once we entered the terminal, I changed my mind.
It was pandemonium and chaos, massive queues at every counter, for 5 hours worth of missed flights. I went to find a row of counters to add myself to the pile of people already there and got comfortable. For the next 15 HOURS! It was crazy: the queues never advanced, nobody seemed to be coming out, and the Emirates ground staff seemed completely incapable of handling the situation.
After 3 hours of standing there, most people cracked and started abusing the service agents about their ineptitude (I kept myself together for a few more hours, but in the end, just didn't give a darn anymore). The airline handed out water and some bread in the beginning, but that was it. So most people didn't eat or drink all day, out of fear of losing their spot in the queue.
Though after a few hours, people got acquainted with their neighbors and a certain solidarity formed, so that everyone kept each other's spot free. In the late hours of the evening and with swelling feet, we all noticed that Emirates had started giving out hotel vouchers because all of the next Australia-bound flights were full.
I don't care anymore, just let this misery end!! When I was finally at the counter, I didn't get served for another hour. I have no idea why. WHEN I got finally served, they refused to rebook me. After standing there from midday to 1 am, they don't want to give me a new ticket! They claimed that they couldn't do anything because I had booked with a 3rd party website (it's still their flight, it was a bologna answer).
Also, their advice was to call the company I had booked with, in Germany. It was nighttime there at that point. I was tired though, worn out and frustrated, so I just stumbled away and cried a bit. Couldn't use the ATMs to get money out for some reason, so there was no calling the booking agent, as my phone didn't get reception there either.
After a while, I just wandered back to "my" service desks and they had started grouping people together according to their destination. I went to the Melbourne group and just sat and waited. After quite a while, everyone's hero of the day showed up. I will be eternally grateful to this young and scrawny Emirates guy who just took everyone's passport and tickets, went onto the phone for 20 minutes, and then came back with new boarding passes for all of us!
Deliverance!! HAAA! In the end, we had to jog to the gate, because my new flight was about half an hour later. I left Dubai slightly traumatized at 3 am or something, after having stood in line there for about 15 hours. My too large shoes barely fit because my feet were so swollen. I slept through most of the following 19-hour flight.
Ah, and I forgot one. At about 11 pm, Emirates told us over the loudspeakers that they had run out of hotel vouchers, so everyone should go away and come back after 2 am...I will avoid that company for the rest of my life.
33. Hit Rock-Bottom at High-Altitude
Last time I flew, the lady in front of me was trying to deal with substance withdrawals on a cross-country flight. She kept running back and forth to the bathroom, squirming around in her seat, and trying to get the flight attendants to bring her more alcohol. I think everyone in the general vicinity was trying to find somewhere else to sit, especially when they cut her off and she lost her mind at the flight attendant. I've never been so happy to get off of a plane.
34. Communication Breakdown
Flying United Airlines out of Newark to Rome for a vacation with my family. About 15 minutes after taking off, the pilot comes over the intercom and says there is something wrong with one of the two engine’s fuel filters. It's not a huge concern, he says, but it would be a bad idea to fly out over the Atlantic without it working properly.
We head back to Newark, and the whole time we have to dump fuel because we are way too heavy to land. We circle the airport, dumping fuel, and finally land very hard since we were still heavy. Apparently, it was worse than what the pilot said, as they had other flights circle around and we had the whole landing strip with emergency vehicles all lined up and waiting for us.
After landing, we were told it would take one hour to fix. Two hours go by and they let us re-board. After sitting in our seats for 20 minutes, we have to de-board again because of a new issue. An hour later, we are allowed to re-board. 30 minutes go by and we have to de-board for a second time because of the inspector not clearing the plane for flight.
We wait another hour while United decides what to do, and they transfer all of our luggage and take a plane that was due to go to Argentina the next morning instead. All I got was some free miles and a ton of drink vouchers that I used on the flight back home.
35. With Flight Buddies Like These, Who Needs Enemies?
On a flight to Philadelphia this past summer, the airline employees had asked people with the larger carry-on bags to please check them at the door, as there wasn't much room on the plane. The bro in line in front of me had a huge bag, but kept telling the airline people "Nah, it'll be fine, it'll fit. Come on, don't worry about it, it'll be fine. Blah blah blah," until finally the employee got sick of it and just let him through with the bag.
Inside the plane, we go down the aisle a ways and suddenly, still several rows in front of my row, he throws his bag down into an empty set of seats, then enters the row himself until he's almost completely out of the way of the aisle, and starts digging through his bag. His butt is still sticking out into the aisle slightly, and I don't want to brush it as I walk by, so I wait for him to realize he was still accidentally blocking the aisle.
After about 30 seconds, the people behind me are grumbling, so I ask the guy very politely, not mad at all, "Excuse me, mind if I just slip by?" I assumed he just didn't realize he was still blocking he aisle. Suddenly he switches on to full "bro mode," wheels to me, gets in my face, and says very aggressively and loudly, "You even flown on a freaking plane before? You gotta wait until I put my bag up."
I'm not a confrontational guy at all, so I'm shocked and try to explain quickly before I can even really think about what I'm saying: "Sorry man, but your butt was the only thing in the way and I sure didn't want to touch it." Not very graceful or articulate, but I was in shock from the sudden aggression. He did not like it.
He pretty much yells in my face, spittle flying, "I don't appreciate your language," (uh, what, the word "butt"?) "Do you wanna turn this into something!?" He assumed an aggressive stance, arm cocked back slightly. I honestly can't even remember what I did or said next, but whatever it was, it was enough to make him give up on the attempted bro-down, turn back to his bag, and heave it up into an overhead bin.
He then goes back out into the aisle and goes down a few more rows... to my row...and sits in the seat next to my ticketed seat. Yep, we were seat buddies for the whole darn flight. When he saw I was coming to sit down next to him, he looked like he wanted to punch me. It was a very uncomfortable flight for the both of us, I'm sure.
36. Thieving Spies
I was traveling alone in southern France. One particular night, I decided to camp above a little beach in the outskirts of Nice. There were no flat spots, so I didn't pitch a tent, and slept in my sleeping bag on a sloped patch of grass. I got a terrible night of sleep due to a beach-cleaning truck, a group of teenagers that walked by (this startled me and them), and my bad choice of sleeping location.
I woke up early in the morning to find that someone had taken my pack of cigarettes that were sitting inches from me as I slept, which is creepy as heck now that I think about it. The next day, I decided to go snorkeling and stashed my backpack in a bush. I return to find that someone had stolen half my clothes, my journal, my souvenirs, and all my toiletries along with some electronics (I know, I'm an idiot).
This was pretty devastating, but the snorkeling was amazing. Later that evening, I was talking to a local fisherman on the beach, and I mentioned what happened. He said someone was probably watching me that morning, and saw me stash my stuff. None of this seemed too weird at the time, but looking back, it's really freaking creepy.
37. Who’s the Bigger Man?
I used to fight MMA for an organization called Caribbean Ultimate Fist Fighting. On one trip to Trinidad, I was forced to sit next to my opponent. Not a problem, we are professionals and got along just fine. The issue is I am 6'5" and 250 lbs, while he is 6'5" and 270 lbs. We had to take turns sitting up straight while the other leaned away.
38. The Trick Is to Never Sleep
My husband and I were traveling by rail around Europe. We got on a train from Nice to Pisa. We'd heard lots of stories about people getting robbed but figured the American tourists in Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts a couple of cabins down would be the most likely victims. We sat up chatting for a while, and after we crossed the Italian border, we decided to lay down—not to sleep but to just get comfy.
The last thing I remember is the door sliding open and then shut again and suddenly getting super sleepy. I fought the sleepiness as hard as I could but just couldn't fight it anymore. The next thing we know, we're pulling into the station in Pisa, and our backpacks were out of place. The minute we saw them, we just knew what had happened.
They hadn't gotten anything really important since that stuff was buried down deep in our big packs, but they'd gone through my husband's wallet and stolen my handbag out of my smaller pack. Unfortunately for us, all of our money was in my bank account, which we no longer had access to. So actually, I guess something important was gone.
We had to ring my husband's parents in Australia and get them to deposit AUD 500 into his bank account since he still had his card, which was unfortunately only about USD 250 at the time. That's all we had to travel on from Pisa to Bologna to Munich to Brussels to London, where we finally visited his brother. It was quite an adventure.
39. Your Own Worst Enemy
I had an early morning flight from Bangkok to London and decided the best thing to do would be to have drinks with my friends who were flying back a day after me. I got extremely squatters, then went to the airport. I was very late for my flight and had to be rushed through security, etc. Having not slept all night, I passed out as the plane was taxiing to the runway.
10 hours later, I woke up and was overjoyed when I realized there was only an hour or so of my flight left. This turned into mortification when I looked at the poor old Thai woman I had been sleeping on. I smelled atrocious, a mixture of sweat and booze and weeks of traveling. I felt so sorry for this woman.
She looked at me as if I was the devil incarnate, having fulfilled all the stereotypes of British people on gap years. The next hour was the most uncomfortable of my life, made worse by the fact I was dying for a leak but was too embarrassed to ask her to move so I could get up. I slept and sweated on a poor Thai woman for 10 hours, then had to endure her evil death stares.
I regret nothing. When I woke up, I discovered my TV wasn't working, so I'm glad I slept through the flight.
40. Fear Ruins Everything
Went on a three-week holiday with my SO to Brazil and was robbed after two days by four guys with knives in broad daylight on the Copacabana. We had nothing on us but a few Real (about $10). People who saw it happen did nothing, and it ruined the rest of our vacation because of fear it could happen again. Such a shame for such a beautiful country.
41. Pop Goes the “Me”-sel
I had a sinus infection when I boarded the plane. About halfway through the flight, I felt a pop inside my face... and then the pain started. You know that pain, that spreads into your teeth? I was doubled over in pain for the next hour. Somehow, I got up and stumbled off the plane after we landed. I blew my nose, and blackened, bloody mucus came out. For hours afterward.
It cleared up, the pain subsided, and I didn't think anything more of it. Take some antihistamines before flying.
42. Do As the Locals
The capsule hotel I stayed in in Tokyo didn't have a western shower, only a sento (public bath). Taking a shower in these took my 1st Japanese teacher a week to mentally prepare herself for, as her Japanese colleagues would invite her to a sento and she would pull excuses until she caved. Yet I had to bite the bullet and do it on day 1.
After a 20 hour flight and a train ride from Narita to Shinjuku, not taking a bath wasn't an option.
43. Seriously, Wear Sunscreen
I went to Ibiza with my parents when I was sixteen...No wait, that's not the horror story, it gets worse. Our fully inclusive hotel had a swimming pool, and it was in the height of summer. I'm very white (ginger flecks in my hair, freckles), so off I skip to the pool, on my own, with no sun protection. It was the stupidest mistake of my life.
I was there with the full force of the sun raining down on me for three hours without a T-shirt on. At some point, an olive-skinned local says to me, as I'm sitting on the edge of the pool, "Hey, you've got really bad sunburn, are you OK?" at that point I feel fine, so I carry on...Much later on, I notice a tingling, but it's far, far too late to do anything about it.
The full impact of the damage I'd done wasn't evident for a few hours. Turns out I'd managed to give myself a horrific sunburn, and now I had severe heatstroke. My parents had to pay for a doctor to come and take a look at me, and she prescribed ginger tablets and glucose for some reason(?!). All that did was make it taste like acid ginger when I threw up.
Then I was in and out of consciousness for three days. When I woke up, my back felt like it'd been attacked with a cheese grater, and as the days wore on, my skin started to come off. I could peel A4-sized sheets of skin off my back and shoulders, and the tops of my feet were so burned that I couldn't stand or walk for long.
I learned that if you're white with the whole ginger thing going on, wear sunscreen, and a T-shirt, and a hat.
44. Treated Like a Piece of Jenga
When I was 14 years old, I took a school trip from Shanghai to Egypt via Qatar. All my classmates and teachers were scattered all over the plane, and so most of us ended up sitting next to strangers. I ended up next to Arab men, probably in their 40s or 50s, wearing traditional clothing. I was kinda a big-mouthed girl, and, having no understanding of Arab culture, I started to try and talk to them.
Neither of them was really talking back to me. Well, it was a 12-hour flight, so I tried to sleep right away and knock out as much of the time as I could. The only weird thing is, I went to sleep in the aisle seat and woke up in the window seat. Somehow these two dudes moved a 14-year-old girl in her sleep without her waking up and without anyone else on the flight thinking it was weird.
I woke up extremely confused and uncomfortable for the remainder of the flight. I remember at one point I asked the guy on the outside to let me out and to give me my seat back, and he said no.
45. Being a Woman Is No Picnic
While in Amsterdam, I was at a coffee shop and noticed three men watching me. They followed me all the way back to my house, and they only left when my father and brother in-law came running out the front door after hearing me scream for help. I was very lucky.
46. Face First Into Regret
I have been waiting for years to tell this story. I was 17 and flying from Seattle to Houston, having been out there to look around a college and hang out in the city. I have a lot of anxiety about flying, but I managed the first flight out there ok with the help of some Valium my mom gave me. The point where things go wrong was when I decided to see what it would be like if I had an extra pill, seeing as though I had a leftover pill from the first flight.
Long story short, I woke up in the lap of an old man sat next to me once we landed in Houston by him stroking my hair and whispering "wake up, we're here" delicately into my upturned ear. I left a little dribble on his crotch, which he insisted was not a big deal. Was absolutely mortified and was still slurring when my parents picked me up at baggage.
47. Waves Don’t Have a Universal Meaning
Sometime in the mid-80s. I was in my early-mid teens. Arrived at the Munich train station early in the morning. My family was with me, including my brother and Uncle Rob, who is only a couple of years older than I am. We needed to wash up a bit, and we hit the restroom while my parents waited outside. The restroom was empty except for us.
An older guy walks in and waves. Uncle Rob waves back, thinking "folks sure are friendly in Munich." Guy then gets between me and Rob and starts touching himself. My brother and I run out. Rob, however, did not realize what was going on. I yelled for him, and he figured it out real quick after that. When we told my mom and grandma what happened, they just laughed it off.
48. Just Because It’s Naptime Doesn’t Mean It’s Kindergarten
On a 14-hour flight to Japan, two children decided they couldn't sit still any longer and started running laps around the cabin. This was during the time the lights were off and windows were closed so passengers could rest. They were also screaming. It lasted for near two hours. I was pretty close to committing a serious crime. I just stuck my foot in the aisle and hoped they would trip.
49. Elevator Trap
I was 11 years old when we went to Slovakia with the whole family, and it was pretty much like any big city holiday, and therefore completely boring and uninteresting for an 11-year-old boy. So one evening when we got back to the hotel, I wanted to see if the hotel had any sort of cool features like an arcade room or anything else.
I just didn't want to spend more time with my family talking about all the boring churches and museums and what-not. So I went into an elevator and pressed for the lobby—and absolutely nothing happened. I figured the thing might be broken, so I just pressed to open the doors, and again nothing happened. I was slightly afraid now.
I was kind of stuck inside the elevator, so I knocked a couple of times on the door, which in hindsight was a bad idea. Because after I knocked on the door, the elevator started falling down. Not in a free fall, luckily, but definitely faster than an elevator is supposed to go down. A few seconds later, it hit the ground and stopped with a bang.
This was followed by a "ding!" and the door opened and let me into a small, completely dark room only lit up by the lights from inside the elevator, and then there was a locked door. The only thing I could make the elevator do now was open and close the door, so I sat in there waiting for someone to rescue me while I went through the 5 stages of grief in perfect order.
At first, I didn't believe it was real. It must have been some sort of mistake, and soon someone would open the locked door and find me. Then I got really angry because I was just trying to find something to do, and then I had to go and get trapped in a stupid elevator. Bargaining is pretty hard when you're alone, but I figured it was as good a time as any to start hoping for some divine intervention.
After that, I just cried until I accepted my fate and peed in the elevator as a sort of "screw you" to the hotel when they found my body so somebody would have to clean up my piss too. A while later, though, I heard something that sounded enough like footsteps for me to shout for help at it. Apparently, it noticed because they stopped and then moved closer to the elevator shaft (it came from a couple of floors up).
I shouted help again and again until the elevator suddenly said "ding!" and started moving up and opened the door on the very floor I had left it. There stood nobody other than my own big brother, who had gone out to look for me because I had been away for over an hour. When he had heard me call for help, he called the elevator.
50. Get 'em Ma!
My parents got mugged in Colombia. My brother and I were about 50 yards ahead of them and heard my mom scream in panic. We sprinted back, just in time, to see her swing her purse around and connect. The guy went down hard thanks to the $1,200 Nikon in her purse.
51. Alcoholism Is a Gas
Kind of the other way around here. So, a few years ago I was on a plane with my mom and grandma. Also, I need to say that my grandma was a raging alcoholic and was usually drunk or hungover, and today she was drunk and continuing to drink on the plane. For some reason, today my body decides to produce the worst smelling farts in my entire life.
Still haven't had gas that bad as I did that day. It hurts to hold them in, so I'm being all passive-aggressive and letting them out slow and silent. Of course, my grandma is smelling them and freaking out throwing a little hissy fit. I'm young and think it's funny, so I continue. She somehow gets the idea that it's the guy in front of her letting these smelly demons loose, and starts to kick his seat violently and yell at him repeatedly.
I'm sitting there thinking, "that escalated quickly.” The whole time this is happening, my mom was sitting there asleep, and she wakes up to horrible breath and her drunk mother yelling. Finally, out of nowhere my grandma just barfs all over my mom. If you've never seen what partially digested wine and waffle house looks like, I envy you.
The whole plane smells like barf and farts, and we've still got about another hour of flight left. Really uncomfortable, to say the least. Finally, when we land and get in the car, I decide I have to tell them, and by then I think they realized it was me all along. I admit to my crime, and my grandma gives me the most intense staredown of my life, and just says, "You little jerk."
Later on, my mom tells me that it was pretty funny overall. I still hear about that to this day.
52. PSA: Always Wear Sunscreen
I got so badly sunburnt in Thailand, and every time I smiled my face literally bled.
53. I Don’t Like Those Odds, Mister
I think I was about 7, as it was right after I'd started flying between parents for visiting. I was sitting next to this older kid when the plane started rumbling. I didn't exactly know what turbulence was, so I asked the kid. "Oh yeah, we're going down," he said. I was like...what. And he goes, "Yeah, I've done it a couple of times, only a few die every time. So you have nothing to worry about."
Amazingly, I didn't start crying, but the jerk was actively trying to scare a 7-year-old girl traveling alone.
54. How Disgustingly Terrifying
My family took a trip to Sudan (to visit my Dad’s family). My brother came back with a severe rash all over his back. The rash persisted for a few weeks, and the doctors had no idea what it was. Then, we were at the park one day and he started complaining about the rash to our mom, saying it was starting to even hurt more.
She ignored it, thinking he must have rubbed it on something by accident when he fell to the floor screaming with pain, and literally hundreds and hundreds of flies came flying out of a single hole at the base of his neck. He was 8. Apparently, some sort of African fly had laid eggs (or more likely cocoons or something) in his back when we slept.
They hatched when we were back in England. Scary stuff.
55. I Didn’t Pay for a Literary Critique
I was flying by myself and went to sit in my assigned seat. It was a row that only had two seats in it, so I only had to sit next to one other person. I ended up sitting next to this very talkative lady, who was maybe in her 40s. My first impression was that she was very well-dressed, and I assumed she was some type of business lady.
After a few moments of small talk, I find out that she is a nuclear physicist. Don't get me wrong, she was polite directly to me for the most part, but she came off as condescending on just about every topic that we talked about. It made me pretty uncomfortable. She made it sound like everything was not worthy.
She would tell me why everything sucks basically, and why her way was better. There was a lull in the conversation, so I tried to read a Stephen King novel that I brought along. She, of course, asked me what I was reading as soon as I picked up my book. When I told her, she had to tell me how much she dislikes Stephen King. "A bunch of phooey."
She then wiggled her hands in the air and said with a silly voice, "Ooooh...look at the floating lantern! So scary." She then told me that it wasn't real writing. She recommended that I read The Hunger Games. That was the first time I ever heard of The Hunger Games, so I had no idea what it was. I said I would check it out, though.
Years later when I think about it, I think, "She made fun of me for reading Stephen King because it isn't real writing, then she says I should read The Hunger Games?" I'm not saying that Hunger Games is bad, but once I found out what it was, I figured she would have been reading some obscure hard sci-fi book from the 1960s or something. Not Hunger Games.
56. Canadians: So Kind It’s Scary
The worst hotel I ever stayed at was in Daraa, just over the border in Syria after I spent the day traveling from Jordan (this was 20-odd years ago). This place didn't look too sketchy at first glance. I crashed out in bed but woke a couple of hours later COVERED in bed bugs and bitten to heck. I end up sleeping on the floor.
In the morning, I go to the loo and it's like the Apocalypse in there. As if a prison dirty protest had been taking place for 10 years. Horse-sized cockroaches everywhere, and somewhere beneath the smeared poo and detritus was possibly a hole in the ground where you're meant to do your business. It was so bad that when Trainspotting came out in the cinema a year or two later, I laughed at the toilet scene because it was so tame compared to what I'd seen in Syria.
I also stayed in a really sketchy hotel in Cairo, with mice running along the skirting and bare wires protruding from the wall just above my pillow. After a couple of days, I wanted to find out whether the wires were live, so I touched them together—and ended up shorting out three buildings. The toilets were better though.
Then, hitchhiking through the Yukon, I got a lift from a couple (boy and girl) who randomly pulled off the highway onto a dirt road and drove 10 minutes into the middle of nowhere before insisting we all get out of the car, and they then showed me their collection of hunting rifles in the boot. That felt very sketchy indeed for a while.
But being in Canada, it obviously turned out fine, and it transpired that they just wanted to show me a great view over the next town and the mountains.
57. Welcome to the Real World, Baby
When I was an infant, I was sitting on my father’s lap when the flight attendant leaned over him to give coffee to the person sitting next to him. Her hand slipped, and the boiling coffee spilled on my bare chest (father was changing my shirt) and burned my entire chest. Had a massive scar for a year or two after, and apparently, she broke down crying during the flight.
58. Mortality Transcends Time Zones
Was flying back to the states from Japan. The flight in itself was already a really long one. My family and I were seated at the very back of the plane, couldn't get any more back than that as far as seats went. Anyways, halfway through the 9-10 hour flight, a couple rows ahead of us we just hear this poor woman frantically screaming in another language.
I believe it was Mandarin or something along those lines. I looked up and saw her constantly screaming something, it must have been a name or a cry for help. I believe it was her husband, he was unconscious and wasn't responding. The flight attendants came by, and they even managed to find a doctor who was on the plane.
They dragged his body toward the back of the plane and found he didn't even have a pulse and were applying CPR to him literally right next to my sister, who was sitting on the other side right of me. They constantly tried, but nothing worked. He died from heart failure, and according to the people with the gentleman, he had many health issues.
After they stopped, the flight attendants asked my family and I if we could move seats. They had to wrap the body up in blankets and move him somewhere until we landed. They planned on putting him in one of the bathrooms and sealing it off for the remainder of the flight, but their regulations didn't seem to allow that.
So instead, we moved and took the seats of the family of the deceased. They ended up buckling him into my seat, and I ended up sitting where he sat. So, for the remainder of the flight, there I was sitting in the seat of a man who had just passed away. this all while his body was buckled into the seat I was previously in.
It was a really strange feeling; it wasn't comforting at all. Because of our positioning, turning the plane around wouldn't have mattered. We were hours from any land that could offer medical help. That was another thing, too: It's frightening to be in a situation where no potent help will come. I hope the family found some peace.
59. Can Anything Else Go Wrong?
In Thailand we went kayaking, the kayak got stuck on some rocks while we were making our way back to the shore. Me and bf at the time both stepped in sea urchins and had to limp to the clinic to get them removed. I had a TON of them in my feet. It hurt lol. To add to that, right before we went kayaking I grabbed a quick bite and later got food poisoning from that meal.
So while I stepped in sea urchin, the bad food I ate was festering up in my stomach and got me super sick. So I pretty much got double whammied all in one day. My time in Koh Phi Phi was Koh Poo-Poo. I started vomiting and going to the bathroom from food poisoning while we were back at the hotel. At least we weren't out and about.
So I ended up limping with my healing foot back and forth to the toilet in the hotel room.
60. Welcome to our Intergenerational Struggle
On a three-hour flight, I was sat between two obese women who were a mother and her grown daughter. They kept talking over me. When I asked if one of them wanted to switch with me, they laughed and said, “Oh no! We are fine! Mom wants the window and I like the aisle.” So, I had to just sit there between them awkwardly with my arms crossed (they both claimed the armrests) while they talked over me.
61. Three Okays Are Apparently As Good As None
Two nights ago, drunk guests in the room next door in Kuala Lumpur were playing loud music and screaming until 4 am. I knocked on their door every 30 mins after midnight, they would open, I'd tell them I had a 5 am flight next morning so I really needed to sleep, they would say "ok ok ok" then close, keep quiet for literally 30 seconds and then continue.
Total idiots!
62. Nothing Like a Long Flight to Work on Your Memoir
Direct from Moscow to Houston on a Singapore Airlines flight. Behind us sat an elderly Singaporean couple who took off their shoes and used our armrests to put their feet up. The smell was unbearable. I was in the middle seat, my boyfriend on the window side, and an older guy on the aisle. The older guy starts by complaining nonstop about the smell.
He's berating the flight attendants over it. They keep asking the elderly couple to move their feet, but they keep putting them back. The man eventually decides to calm down. He introduces himself to me by telling me that I better not have to use the restroom during the 13-hour flight because he won't feel like moving.
He then spends several hours telling me, through my headphones and obvious disinterest, about all the languages he speaks, the places he's worked, and all the money he makes. At one point, he was telling me about his childhood in Louisiana and I (having no idea what to say because I don't want to talk) mention I have family in Shreveport.
He takes the opportunity to make it clear how stupid I am because it's not relevant because it's several hours from his hometown. About halfway through, I told him to let me out to use the restroom and watched him storm around the cabin like a toddler in anger. He berated me about my timing (?) when I returned to my seat.
63. Dying and Diving, Vacation Style
I stayed at a hotel where I had to help save the life of a desk clerk who had been stabbed. I think he would've eventually called for an ambulance himself but he was in too much shock when I got there so I had to take matters into my own hands. The more creepy thing is that the assailant must have just left before I got there.
If I would've been there a literal minute or two earlier I would've encountered them and could've been hurt too.
64. Grounded by Life Below
I had to fly back home from across the country because my dad fell into cardiac arrest and wasn't expected to make it. I had one phone call with my mother explaining the situation, and that’s all I heard from anyone. I was on a plane home with the thought that my dad had passed at some point during the flight. It was so, so brutal.
Being on an 8+ hour plane trip with the thought of not seeing your father ever again and every painful emotion racing through while being in the air with a plane full of strangers was one of the worst moments of my life. Hope I never experience anything like that ever again. But I will add that once I hit the ground, I was told that my father had woken up and was making progress against the odds. Glad to this day I still have him.
65. Never Forget That Some Sisters Are Evil Twins!
First time backpacking around Europe in the early 2000s in the summer. My sister and I, who were new college graduates at the time, go on a six-week tour. Midway we're in Berlin and the next stop is Munich. We're traveling on a budget and the hostel in Berlin helps us out in making reservations to their sister hostel in Munich with glowing reviews for four nights. The hostel in Berlin was one of the best we had experienced so we were game.
We show up at the Munich hostel and find out there rooms are above a beer garden laden with smoke. It wasn't the noise or atmosphere that bothered us, it was the cigarette smoke. I'm an asthma sufferer and the slightest sense of it induces my asthma. We stayed one night in a four bed shared room. The second day we find a nearby hotel and opt to book there.
I ask the receptionist manager if we can opt out of the last two nights since it was high season and finding replacements in our head shouldn't be much of a problem. We were willing to forego a night's payment. This place was so old school they did not accept credit cards and did everything by handwritten ledgers. The manager was in his late 50s, and shouted at the top of his lungs that we must pay for all four nights or he will call the police.
After trying to discuss this with him in a civil manner, he shouts "You Americans think you do this in OUR HOUSE? This is our house, you obey our orders. This IS Germany!" He then threatens that if we don't pay the remaining nights he will come to our rooms with some other men and tussle. My sister and I return to our room, tell a fellow American backpacker what happened and that things might get elevated in the room.
We wait for an hour, no one comes—we book it out of there and since they only accepted cash—they had no formal trace of who we were, etc. One of the oddest situations to be in.
66. He Left His Decency at the Airport
I was on a late-night flight from Las Vegas to Charlotte. Clearly, the best thing for me to do during the flight was to sleep through it. Maybe about an hour before we were scheduled to land, I was woken up by a grab on my breast then a hand down my side. I remember jolting myself upright (I had my head down at the time) and coming face-to-face with this man.
He was grinning and absolutely REEKING of alcohol as if he had freaking bathed in it. He started to reach towards me again, so I pushed him away. He turned and walked away after that, but after a few steps, this dude collapses. The flight attendants scrambled over to see what had happened, and of course, there was a nurse on board who hopped up to see what was going on as well.
Feeling guilty, I put my head back down to "sleep" so I could eavesdrop on what was happening an aisle behind me. Apparently, this dude was 1) so out of it when he got on the plane that the attendants had refused to serve him alcohol multiple times during the flight, and 2) he was on all kinds of crazy heart meds and he shouldn't have been drinking in the first place.
67. C’mon Lady, Have a Sense of Humor!
I travel a lot, both for my work and for fun. My absolute worst hotel stories involve bed bugs—ironically at the Sheraton Philadelphia and the Hilton Anatole in Dallas. I also found two cockroaches in my bathroom at the Sheraton in Philadelphia. When confronted, the lady at the front desk offered me 2,000 reward points.
I asked her if it was a 1,000 points per cockroach. She wasn't too impressed. I am usually happy to pay more and stay in a nicer hotel or go camping. So, I have been fortunate enough to avoid some of the crappier hotel nightmare stories.
68. You Don’t Need to Crash to Burn
I was flying back to the upper Midwest from Jamaica (fairly long flight) and hit a big storm over the ocean before hitting the mainland. My buddy was sitting next to me and had just gotten back from the bathroom when we hit some major turbulence. Because of this, he didn't have his seat belt on when the plane dropped a good 20 or 30ft.
It was like a full free-fall moment out of the movies, everybody's drinks and all, and he flew up and hit the ceiling and then came back down. Meanwhile, a lady in the row next to us who was part of one of those Jesus trips (like the groups all wearing the same t-shirts) starts hyperventilating and screaming that she doesn't want to die over and over.
She also straight up poops her pants. Turbulence eventually went away, but the smell of her poop lasted the remaining 3 hours of the flight...
69. Gotcha!
Wife and I were wandering around Montezuma, Costa Rica trying to decide on a place to stay. We asked other tourists elsewhere for suggestions, and one place kept popping up. I forget the name of it now (I'd remember if I looked it up), but it was a hippie hostel right on the beach. We get there and ask to see a room before booking.
The host brings us back to the lousiest concrete seven by eight slab of a room, with a stained twin mattress on the floor and a bucket of water for washing. Quotes us $30. Nah, no thank you. We walked one block inland away from the beach and found a really nice quaint hotel for $35, with a new king bed, AC, cable TV, and a great courtyard.
I don't know what those other people were thinking to recommend that first place. Must have been a running joke.
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70. Have a “Safe” Flight
At the airport: I have TSA Precheck, so I get to go through the fast line, leave electronics in the bag, etc. I was on a business trip coming back from Detroit to Toronto. TSA flags my bag to go through the X-ray again. And again. And again. The third time, a guy comes, picks up my bag, asks if there is anything sharp he may hurt himself on (No) before he pulls out my phone charger, Kindle charger, and laptop charger.
He puts the chargers back in the bag, sends the bag through. Flagged again. The guy told the woman at the machine to get up and leave after she couldn't even identify a phone charger on the machine without claiming it was dangerous. On the actual flight: again, flying home to Toronto, this time from Tampa. Apparently, there was a storm rolling in and the pilots were trying to outrun it.
Usually, when a plane reaches the start of a runway, they line up, stop, ask for clearance, then take off. We did not stop. They opened the throttle before we had fully completed the turn, which was how I knew stuff was going to be serious. We were screaming through the sky. Climbed steeper than I ever have, stayed at high throttle the whole way.
I linked into the internet to tell my friends that we were hauling butt. We land 40 minutes early and practically skid into the jet bridge. We were the last flight allowed to land.
71. Second to One
Was in Haiti, took the bus from Port-au-Prince to Cap Haitien, and got in MUCH later than we'd anticipated, at about 10:30pm. It was raining torrentially, and since Haiti was in the middle of a gas shortage all of the streetlights were out and it was pitch black. Our Google Maps was telling us that the bus stop was a few kilometers out from town and far from the hotel we'd planned on staying at, so we decided to just stay at the hotel attached to the bus stop, then figure things out in the morning.
Came in to find one sleepy guy running the place, who showed us to a dark, dingy room, that didn't appear to have been cleaned, and had the sheets just bunched in a corner. He quickly tried to tidy up, and threw the corner sheets onto the bed. Then he charged us $80 USD and wouldn't budge. Slept horribly. Got up in the morning and made our way to the hotel that we'd PLANNED on staying at, which was $60 for a beautiful room overlooking the city, free super fast Wi-Fi, included breakfast, bright restaurant, and even had an infinity pool.
72. On Your Right, You’ll Be Seeing Red
Was flying from California to Minnesota, and it was a normal flight at first, but all of a sudden, the sky turned blood red. We had apparently flown through the smoke of a forest fire and the pilot gave us no warning. Thought the apocalypse had started…
73. What’s Bugging You Guys?
This story took place a few years ago in Mandalay. The hotel room was dirty and had lots of mosquitos but my wife and I figured whatever, it’s just a few nights. So the first morning we are lying on the bed trying to figure out where to go for the day when we look down and spot a giant bug sitting between our heads. We noped out and managed to snag a deal on a luxury hotel doing a soft open.
74. I’m Old Enough to Be PO’ed, Ma’am
Well, when I was 13, I flew from Denver to Sydney solo. My flight out of Denver was 15 minutes late taking off. No big deal; I could easily make my layover in San Francisco. Except when I disembarked, the gate attendant stopped me because there was a whole debate on whether or not I was flying unassisted or with an escort flight attendant.
Again, an easy problem to solve. I try telling everybody that I have copies of all my paperwork saying I get to go solo. Every time I tried to speak up to tell them this, the adults would shush me or simply talk over me. They eventually held me until I missed my flight. So here I am, stuck halfway across a continent, alone in a city I've never been to before.
So, I finally convince them to just call my mom, who takes nobody's foolishness. They set me up for the night in a hotel room with a flight attendant. I only have a backpack with some books and my Discman. No change of clothes, toothbrush, etc. We go eat their continental breakfast, and I grabbed a grapefruit half because everything else looked gross and grapefruit is awesome.
The flight attendant asks me if I'm on a diet, then looks at me like maybe I should be (I don't think I was 100 lbs. at the time). My host (jailer) had to get on a flight, so we go back to the airport where I'm locked in the unaccompanied minor’s room. It had half a set of Jenga blocks, 11 pieces of a 12-piece puzzle, and two episodes of Degrassi playing on a loop.
I was stuck there for 12 hours. Nobody told me I had three free meal tickets, so I didn't eat all day. Then finally at 10 at night, I get on my flight to Sydney. After 36 hours, I had a breakfast in flight. All because everybody decided a 13-year-old girl had no right to self-advocate.
75. You Were in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time, My Friend
Check into a motel in Dothan, Alabama on our way to vacation. Cheap place but solid and quiet. Around 1 am I hear some commotion outside but it quickly passes. Ten minutes later I hear some cars pull up and doors open and close. Then the sound of the room next to ours being raided. Turns out the guy next to us was wanted on some federal warrants.
The feds were out there for a while. I couldn't leave as our car was blocked in. The kids went back to sleep but I couldn't. Spent most of the night sitting outside watching. They comped the room though.
76. The Apple of My Eye
I was about 11 or 12 and we were on our way back from a trip. There's this cute little 2 or 3-year-old sitting behind me, so I start playing with him and his mom asked him, "Do you want to share your apple with her?" So, this little jerk threw this freaking apple at full speed right directly into my eye, giving me a semi-black eye for a few days.
The remainder of the trip was so awkward between him and I. I hope his baby strength disintegrated as the years went by. Not really a "horrible" plane experience, but definitely one I haven't forgotten...
77. The Key to a Good Hotel Experience is Not Letting Anything Like This Happen...
I was staying at a guesthouse in Qui Nhon, Vietnam. Decent place, family run, clean and well kept, about $10 USD a night. Everyone was nice, but very little English spoken. I'd walked down to the beach that evening, met a fellow backpacker at a bar, and we had drinks until about 11:30 PM. I walked back to the guesthouse to see the main gate surrounding the yard locked up tight.
The house was surrounded by a nine or ten-foot tall iron fence, and I couldn't get in. All the lights were off, and there was no buzzer. I pace back and forth for about ten minutes trying to figure out what to do. I finally find a ledge that I could use as a boost and manage to pull myself up and over the fence. I walk up to the front door and knock.
The very nice early 20s guy sleeping on a cot by the front door (if you've been to Vietnam you know this is normal) cautiously opened the door. He recognized me and let me in and started chattering in Vietnamese. Finally, he said—"how you?" and I motioned that I went over the fence. His eyes bugged out! A guest at his place had had to jump over the fence 'cause he'd locked up for the night.
Then he said ... "but.... keys?" This was the kind of place where you were supposed to leave the key to your room at the desk. They know who is in and who is out by which keys are left in the "checked in but not in" pile on the desk. I didn't know that I was supposed to do that (no one stopped me on my way out) so I had my key with me. Since there weren't any keys in that pile, he assumed everyone was in for the night, and locked up.
I apologized to him because it was my fault for not leaving the key. I didn't want him all wound up that I would report him in the morning for locking me out.
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78. Swiper No Swiping!
Not me, but my dad, who was a first officer (co-pilot) at the time. I won't disclose the airline or the airport. They had lined up the plane on the runway, ready to take off, when a fox ran across the runway. It stopped in between the runways to hunt, and my dad and the pilot called into the tower, telling them they were going to have to wait for a fox to exit the premises.
They didn't want to take off because they didn't want to suck it up in the engines and crash the plane. Tower asked them to confirm it was a fox and asked which area they were in so they could send someone out to take care of it. They said they'd had prior experience with said creature and would get out there right away.
The Captain responded and the plane waited. So, after watching the fox jump around a bit, the Captain got on the intercom and informed the passengers why they were being delayed, and because he and my dad had taken a shine to the fox, the Captain indicated where the passengers could look to see it, too. Everyone was loving the fox.
Suddenly, an airport maintenance truck drove into view and headed towards them, no big deal (Most airports have dogs or something to chase off wildlife that they can then call back). Then my dad and the Captain noticed that the truck wasn't slowing down. The truck hit the fox going at full speed. My dad said it was terrible and sent the fox tumbling.
Obvious that it was dead, and the truck drove off. Awestruck with horror, my dad and the Captain turned to look at each other. The Captain then got on the intercom and apologized to the passengers for what they had just seen. They indicated that was not the standard practice they'd been expecting and gave out numbers to the passengers who had witnessed the event so that they could call the airport staff and report what they had seen.
My dad told me that both he and the Captain felt terrible because they had, unknowingly, called in a hit on the poor little guy (the airport clearly had some strange past with it), then let all of the passengers watch. Clearly, not a great flight for anyone. In short, the whole plane watched a fox get viciously run over by the ground crew.
79. Working Right Through Your Vacation
One of the hotel staff had somehow gotten seriously injured and wounded when I had arrived. He was bleeding heavily from his face, it was a very deep wound. I call 9-1-1 and then since I'm a nurse I ask where their first aid kit is. He tells me, I go to open it and...it's completely empty. Grabbed some towels from a cart behind the front desk and had him put pressure on it until the ambulance came.
80. That’s What You Get for Being Generous
Business class was overbooked, so I volunteered to move back to economy class in an aisle seat by the bathroom. I got a two for one deal for doing so. While sitting in my new seat, right before taxiing, a kid and his mom came hauling butt toward the bathroom. Right before the kid gets to the bathroom, he projectile vomits in my lap.
I cleaned my clothes the best I could, but I smelled like puke the entire way back home. From feast to famine.
81. The Ants Go Marching Hundreds By Hundreds (Hoorah?)
I was staying in a hotel and was brushing my teeth at the sink when suddenly, hundreds of ants came out of the tap. That's the worst story I have.
82. Can Tragedy Strike Twice?
I was traveling to Europe June of 2009, shortly after the French plane from Brazil crashed, Air France Flight 447. We were exactly over the same place it crashed, and there was the most INSANE amount of turbulence due to a storm. Whatever idea you have in your head, multiply that by like 100. Maybe even more than that.
It was so bad that me, my mom, my sister, and the rest of the plane were crying, some more than others. Everyone knew what happened to the French plane not even a few days before. My mom was making a prayer for us—my mom, 14-year-old me, and 8-year-old sister had to accept death. There was this Norwegian lady who was knocked the heck out, and woke up an hour later when it was not as bad.
When she woke up, she was hysterical, everyone told her this was much better than what we faced an hour ago. I seriously hate turbulence on plane rides.
83. Always the Reception You Want to See
When I entered the hotel I was supposed to stay at, there were already cops all over the place, although I don't remember the specifics of what happened. Either someone went out for the evening, returned, and a guy was found dead, or it happened overnight. Kind of weird since I don't think the city I was in is that unsafe.
84. Missed Connections
I used to read a lot when I was younger. I was about halfway through The Hardy Boys books when our family went on a vacation. I sat next to an older woman and pulled out my book to read. I was terrified that she would, in typical old-lady fashion, start asking old-lady questions about my reading and my schoolwork, etc.
So, I tried hard to ignore her. To my surprise, the only question she asked was, "Is that a book you read for fun or is it for school?" I responded with a one-word answer: "Fun." Then she pulled out her bag and a ball of yarn and knitting supplies. She asked if I wouldn't mind her elbows getting in the way. I scooted over away from her as best I could.
I was so uncomfortable and awkward. For the remainder of the three-hour flight, I endured her bumping me with her elbows. I was visibly annoyed. As the pilot signaled us that our descent had begun, she tied off her knitting and handed me a ball of something. I unraveled it. A bookmark. She spent the three-hour flight knitting me this gorgeous bookmark.
It had a tassel and a pattern and everything. Perfectly functional. I felt like such an jerk for blowing her off throughout the flight. We had a great conversation about how she used to read Nancy Drew and whatnot. She was actually a pretty cool old lady. So not only was I incredibly uncomfortable for three hours, but I spent the last 15 minutes of the flight guiltily trying to make up for how much of a jerk little kid I was.
85. The Uninvited Guest That Just Keeps Coming Back
I was in India, a little south of Delhi. I was sitting in bed looking out the window kind of in a jet-lagged haze. Suddenly a dark blob jumped out in front of the window and rammed into my window. I about had a heart attack! It was a monkey, and every morning it would do the same thing. Basically, jump at the window and bang on it to get a rise... what a jerk!
86. Now That’s a Disney Ending
I have my own vomit story to tell. I live in Orlando, so Disney central. Flights to/from Orlando are always full of kids going to/coming from Disney. Well, I was flying to Montana when the little girl across the aisle from me decides it’s time to vomit all over the aisle. This did involve vomiting all over her clothes as well.
It turned out that all of her extra clothes were in the storage under the plane. It was at this moment that I saw the most adorable and selfless thing any 6-year-old has ever done. This girl dressed as Belle sitting two rows in front of us walks back and hands the other girl’s mother a clean princess dress, not yet unpackaged from Disney.
The family thanks her and asks her parents for their address to have it cleaned and sent back. The family lets the girl who vomited keep the dress, and Belle instantly became the most adorable girl on the plane. Hope for future generations increased by 1000. I was sitting there, honestly trying not to weep in my seat.
87. Taking One For the Team
I was staying at a hostel in Cambodia, in a big room with 30 beds or so. In the middle of the night, a girl came back from partying on a ton of drugs. She flopped into a top bunk bed that wasn't hers, and then proceeded to vomit and poop in her pants. It dripped down through the bed and the rest of us in the room woke up to the poor guy in the bottom bunk just screaming in horror.
We were all up for the next hour (at about 3 AM) trying to air the place out before we could go back to sleep.
88. No One Should Sit Easily Upon the Iron Throne
When myself and my brother were young, my family went to Cancun. We had puzzles and things with little magnetic pieces so they wouldn't fly all over the plane, but my brother dropped one under the seat in front of him. He naturally went to grab it, but somehow got his head stuck under the seat. I mean, he was really stuck in there.
So, the flight attendant cleared all the seats ahead and behind us and tried pushing and pulling my four-year-old brother out of his metal prison. Eventually, after many tears, he was freed. After the flight, my dad was on the shuttle bus to get our car, and he overheard hypotheses of what had happened. "It was probably a heart attack," said one lady. "No, I heard it was a bomb threat," proclaimed her husband.
89. They Must Have Been Pretty Shocked to Hear That
I was staying in a hotel where two people loudly getting it on for hours in the room next door. So hard, my bed was literally moving with every thrust he gave her, which is what woke me up. After an hour, I finally called the room, when the guy finally answered, I told him to “move the pillow so I could see the girls face." They stopped instantly.
90. Everyone’s Worst Nightmare
We were flying from San Francisco to Cincinnati. In the middle of the flight, the pilot requests for everyone to fasten their belts because they are expecting a bumpy ride. Apparently, there was a weather disturbance that had been reported. Just prior, he had casually announced that we were at 40,000 feet, due for the expected time, and so on.
After the announcement, we hear tons of these sort-of popping sounds, and we're all like WTF is going on? It got really bumpy... and it turns out, it was giant hailstorm hitting the plane. Then it got really bumpy. The pilot again announces more sternly for all crew to take their seats and for no one to get up. Now it was getting really really bumpy.
Then, it happened. We fell right out of the sky. There is no other way to describe it. It was like you were just sitting in a chair suspended from a rope at the top of a cherry picker and someone cut the rope. We dropped like crazy, and then WHAM. It was like the plane landed in an enormous vat of cream filling.
I don’t know how else to describe it—it was like, kind of soft, but still a big jolt. The jolt impacted on one wing more than the other, so the plane went askance and all sorts of luggage went flying out of the overhead compartments on the right side. They flew over to the left side, smacking a bunch of people in the head.
Some people who were not completely or at all buckled up—not the smartest folks—flew up and hit the ceiling, then fell back into their seats. There was screaming everywhere. Absolute chaos. Then, as if it couldn’t get any worse, the pilot screams over the intercom, "Denver, we're in serious trouble up here, I need…" and then a few other words we could not understand.
He freaked everyone out even more. He had forgotten to turn off the cabin speakers from the earlier announcement. It was super rough for a few moments, and then we drop like crazy again. The same thing as before, but a much harder landing. I mean, we dropped for what seemed like minutes but was probably only 10-15 seconds.
Wham! A much harder landing. More stuff went flying everywhere, more people were crying, praying, and screaming. It was nuts! We cruised through that, and it became smooth again. The pilot later announced he was sorry about the “mistaken” overhead announcement, and kind of downplayed that we were ever in any real danger.
He also said the current altitude was something like 18,000 feet. Whatever the exact numbers were, we had dropped about 10,000 feet, or 2 miles. It was the worst of the 500,000+ air miles I spent. You never heard so many people clapping upon landing.
91. Wild Goose Chases Are Worse On No Sleep
Flying into Venice, Italy, I had been awake for almost 24 hours and was exhausted. Next, I was stuck in the sun on a crowded boat for about an hour on the way to Lido. Pinned against the stern without shade, that was enough time for me to get sunburned. Sweaty and sunburned, I get off the boat and get on a bus for a ten-minute ride to my hotel.
I show up at the address and the hotel is no longer in business. It is just an empty shell of a building with a sign and a phone number that I couldn't call. I did not receive any notices in my messages. I go and get back on the next bus to go back to where it picked me up in the first place, so I paid to go nowhere, essentially. Frustrated, hauling my luggage around the bumpy streets, and in broken Italian, I ask local business owners what happened and where can I go.
I was sent to a "sister" hotel of the same chain. Thank goodness they honored my other reservation and gave me a very nice room. Friggin finally.
92. She Wanted a Cool Cat
I travel quite a bit and have seen a few weird things, but on a recent trip from Vienna to Venice things were taken to a whole new level. We were about 20 minutes into the flight when I noticed that a woman sitting across from me had a Persian cat in one of those cat carrier bags. The plane was really warm and the cat was sitting in the bag panting.
Well, the lady decided to let the cat out of the bag to let it cool off a bit. After trying to shove the cat's face up into the air vents for a minute, the cat literally freaked out. It was clawing at everything, attaching itself to the seats in front, jumping around, hissing, you name it. The thing went nuts! Anyway, after about five minutes of more of the same, the cat completely lost it, tried to climb the seat in front and—wait for it—fell over dead!
We couldn't believe what had just happened. The owner was trying to shake the cat around a bit to wake it up, but it was a goner. For the duration of the flight, she just sat there holding her dead cat, and sobbing quite profusely. It was honestly really hard to watch.
93. Accidental Hero
On a redeye flight, just as I fell asleep, a woman passed out in the middle of the aisle and hit my leg. I was so doped up on Dramamine, I didn't even realize it and fell back asleep. The flight attendants put an oxygen tank on the floor, and put the tank’s mask over her mouth. Apparently, they used my hand to hold it in place.
When I woke up a few minutes later, I was like, “Why am I holding an oxygen mask over someone's face?"
94. Falling for the Oldest Trick in the Book
While I was backpacking and passing through Rome in 2008, we randomly met up with some other like-minded travelers. One of their friends was a very loud Northern Australian girl who had a been there, done that type mentality, along with a grating sense of self-importance that could wear down even the heartiest of listeners.
We spent a day walking around the old city while attempting to block out our new temporary companion’s shrill voice, who insisted on squawking useless recommendations about how to spot tourist traps and how we should always travel on a strict budget. At one point she became very excited and bounded over to an alley containing some men sitting at a cardboard box while proclaiming that, "Here's the easiest way to double your travel budget!"
She kneeled down, handed over 50 Euros to the street hustler to try and pick which cup had the ball in there, and lost. Undefeated, she turned around to give us a courageous wink, then put down 100 Euros to the now smiling hustlers, which was again instantly lost. The scam-shanty was de-constructed incredibly quickly and all the scammers left in different directions after having made an entire day's work with just one sucker.
95. Off the Tiger Beat
I once went on a trip to Swaziland (now known as Eswatini) with the dumbest adult woman I’ve ever met. It was a mission trip, so we were there to work, but she just kept asking about shopping, refusing to touch dirty things or try cultural experiences. We get to the sightseeing safari and we get about halfway through our ride when she taps the tour guide on the shoulder and asks, “So when are we going to see the tigers?”
He replies, “Tigers?” She says, “Yeah tigers. I don’t know what you people call it. Like a lion but with stripes?” He tells her that there are no tigers in Africa. She insists, “Yes there are! I promised my kids I’d see tigers and bring back a picture of me petting one.” He tells her again that there are no tigers in Africa and that she probably shouldn’t pet the lions.
She spent the rest of the trip complaining about not being able to see tigers on the wrong freaking continent.
96. Are Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman Runaway Prisoners Too?
While on holiday in Fiji with some friends, we met an American woman who was amazed that because we were Australian, that we were even allowed to leave the country to go on holidays. She was still under the impression we were a penal colony.
97. A Bundle of Tragedy
I worked at Barcelona airport for a few years, and the saddest moment was also a goodbye moment. A couple with a two-year-old child had come to Barcelona to visit family of hers—she was Spanish, he was British. It broke my heart when we at the sales desk realized a "Jim Wilson" who requested Special Assistance was on the flight.
"Jim Wilson" is airline carrier code for a corpse being transported back home. So yes, the dead body was the child who had apparently collapsed for reasons I don't know, and now was being sent back to England. There were literally 30 people, all family of hers in the airport, saying goodbye to the little coffin. I never saw a more lost person than the mother, not to mention the grandmother.
It was shocking, many of our coworkers had to take a break for several minutes as they could not stop crying. Now I'm a father of a 9-month-old baby girl...and I'm just crying remembering this. I hope that the family found a way to deal with the pain.
98. The World Does Not Revolve Around the Greenback
I was on a tour of Europe with my first wife and her mother. I believe we were in France and mother-in-law was really angry that stores wouldn't take her dollars. A few places (large department stores) would do a dollar exchange at the cash register, meaning that if she was buying 30 Euros of something and the exchange rate was 30 Euros = 50 dollars, they would take her $100 bill, convert it on the spot to the equivalent in Euros (in this case 60 Euros), give her the purse, and then the change of 30 Euros.
She was pissed, thought she was going to be ripped off, and wanted to call the police, the US consulate and 9-1-1, which isn’t even the emergency number in France. She wanted to pay in US dollars and get change in US dollars. The best part of the story? Back in the US, she worked retail at Macy’s. So I ask her, “When French people come into your store, would you take their Euros?”
Her reply: “Why should I? That's America, we are American, we use dollars; why can't they learn to use dollars just like they learned our language?” She was dead serious. Yes, she was not that bright.
99. Consider It a Bonus
Baggage handler here. I once was sorting out luggage until I found a rather peculiar bag. It was tied up with rope, very loosely closed and just didn't fit the normal luggage look. I read the tag to where it’s going, and it was headed for Colombia (which I handle), so I go ahead and grab it to throw into the bag cart.
As the bag hit the cart, the piece of rope holding it all together tore apart and its contents fell out. Lo and behold, lots of illegal substances. Now this was in 2000, so I don't remember any type of high security. So I picked up the stuff and popped it back in the makeshift bag. As I was placing them in, I then found a stash of hundred dollar bills.
Not one or two, I'm talking wrapped in bands. Tons of money. So being the teenager I was, I pocketed it and had my own bag filled with nearly $25K. The next day, I bought a used car, paid my school off, and invested in an IRA for retirement. Thanks, stupid people!
100. Angels in the Heavens
When I was really ill in October 2017, my father also became even more ill than I was in another country. There was nobody else around for him who actually gave a damn, so I had to fly over there to see and support him. I planned to bring him home with me after he had recovered from his surgery. I had just been through a lot of trauma, and I was in no physical or emotional state to be getting on a plane—but there was literally no other option.
The flight was only around two hours long, but even that was way too much for someone as weak and frail as I was at that time. When I was waiting in line to board the plane, I could immediately feel myself getting dizzy and panicky—but that got a lot worse when I got onto the plane and when it started to take off. I started having a full-blown panic attack, hyperventilating and crying in my seat.
I was sitting at the window, and there was a rather large man sitting in the middle with his daughter on the outer seat. The man noticed me crying, and he and his daughter switched seats. She took my hand and said something along the lines of "You’re okay, we're here. There’s no need to hold this anxiety back, we’re not going to judge you, just let it happen and everything will be alright."
She just hugged me and told me she’s so sorry while I hysterically cried. Once we landed, she and her father drove me in their car directly to the door of the hospital my dad was admitted to (over an hour away). They even offered to book me a hotel for a night or two, but thankfully I already had my accommodations sorted out. I do not know what I would have done without those people that day. We have each other on Facebook now, and she still occasionally checks in with me to this day.
101. Business Class Or Nothing
I was waiting on a flight in Denver. A little old man gets on and is arguing with the flight attendants about how he's in "business class" and he paid for "business class.” This is a two class flight, first and coach, the flight attendant tries to explain to him, but he's having none of it. I figure he was probably connecting to an international flight that had three classes at the next airport but whatever.
He decides he's going to sit in first class anyway. So he gets into the last row in first class, squeezes all the way over to the window seat, and refuses to budge. After a lot of arguing with the flight attendants, the cops get called in. Meanwhile, the HUGE man (probably 6’8’’ tall) whose seat he was sitting on had arrived and was just laughing at the whole situation.
The best part was when the cops arrived and the huge man had to tell the cops, "Hey, it's not me.” The cops spend probably 20-30 minutes trying to talk the poor old guy into moving to his proper seat, but he's not budging and becoming more and more incoherent. So finally the cops have got to do something: they put on their rubber gloves, grab the guy, drag him out of the seat, and put him on the floor to cuff him.
The old guy is screaming and crying like someone’s killing him. Finally, they get him off the plane. The cops came back in to get everyone's contact info in case they needed them for a trial. The poor flight attendants had to clean the seats because the old guy had soiled himself when they were pulling him out of the seat.
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