Tourists Share Their Scary Stories Of Things They Experienced On Holiday

Imagine planning your perfect vacation as an escape from your busy life, but instead, you got haunted by all of the worst things you could ever imagine.

From terrible accommodation, airline nightmares, ill-mannered people, and other crazy mischiefs, you would surely think it’s better to just behave in the comfort of your own home.

These horror holiday stories will surely scare you to take a vacation but cast your worries away.  Because by checking these out, you might just learn how to handle these situations. Come and explore these!

1. Over and Gone

When I was roughly 10, we were riding the ducks, a type of land vehicle, and a boat at the same time. I love the water and sightseeing, 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 bodybags out of the ambulance. Later found out on the news that the driver of the boat was a very drunk young woman.

ErrantWhimsy

I signed up for a three-day trip to Amsterdam which said it has good accommodations and is in the center of the city. It 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.

It didn’t end there. 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.

ihopeyoulikeapples

My parents got mugged in Colombia. My brother and I were about 50 yards ahead of them. Suddenly, I heard my mom scream in panic. We sprinted back.

And just in time, my mom swings her purse to connect. The guy went down hard instantly.

It turned out that she had the $1200 camera in her purse. Thank God that saved them from getting mugged.

Soy_tu_papa

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 was set to fly out of Nairobi, I found that both British Airways and Turkish Airlines canceled my return trip because I was a no-show.

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 through the system. 

American Airlines 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 on East Coast time and then I'd have to be Turkish office when they were open during their work hours.

I wish they did it sooner 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 me $5000 a person to get to buy the same tickets that we had. I seriously felt like I was drowning.

TheScamr

I have a couple of stories.

The worst hotel I ever stayed at was in Daraa, just over the border in Syria. 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. Then a couple of hours later I woke up COVERED in bed bugs and bitten all over. I ended 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 dirt 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.

The second one is when I stayed in a 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 shorted out three buildings. The toilets were better though.

The last one is when I went Hitchhiking through the Yukon, I got a lift from a couple who randomly pulled off the highway into a dirt road and drove 10 minutes into the middle of nowhere before insisting we all get out of the car. Then they showed me their collection of hunting rifles in the boot. 

That felt very sketchy indeed for a while, but being in Canada it turned out fine and it transpired that they just wanted to show me a great view over the next town and the mountains.

doomladen

I'm extremely terrified of flying. I had to fly to Las Vegas to be with my mother (driving wasn't an option). I have a little lightbulb-shaped glass jar that my portion of my brother's ashes are in.

 Of course, I was taking my brother with me because it's my brother and I'm not just leaving his ashes for good. it was my older brother. It was comforting to have him 'with me' because I was seriously in tears and he always protected me. 

Sure enough, TSA searches my carry on, asks what it is in my glass jar (a completely retarded question since you can see the bone fragments and all). In a very polite and almost sheepish manner, I explained to her it was my brother's ashes and that it was my first time flying. Then she looked at me with disgust on her face. I told her that I wanted it in my carry-on with me because I didn't want it to get broken or spill and that I was scared of flying. This woman threw them away, right in front of me. I started bawling.

OcarinaAndLime

We were stuck in Manila airport for 8 hours. It was supposed to just be a quick stopover.

Some kinda crazy storm started, then the power kept cutting in and out. None of the food stores took the card as a payment. There were no ATMs. 

Even the advertised free Wifi wasn't working. They changed our departure gate three times (and we only figured this out because we kept asking staff why our flight wasn't listed on the gate's TV).None of the staff seemed to give a flying hoot about anything (some even seemed to be taking a nap at their station, leaning on countertops, or leaning back in chairs with their eyes closed).

Then there was only ONE toilet block they had for the entire terminal had 4 cubicles (one was being used as a storage closet though).

And then as I was waiting in the freaking huge line for this toilet, word spreads down the line that the water is now not working. All of the toilets are out of order. So everyone just keeps using them and piling more and more paper and waste into the bowl.

Needless to say, the food on the actual plane sucked and I'm never flying with that airline again, ever again.

StenFace

I flew with China Eastern Air to visit family in Hong Kong. The businessman seated in the aisle was a rude man who constantly made displeased faces at me. He wouldn't even freaking stand up when I needed to get past him to my window seat (really bizarre).

He clearly knew I needed to get past him, but he made me climb over him, glowering at me as I passed. The seats were concrete, the air was stale, and the food was stand-up-comedian-level inedible: dry rice and awful bland fish.

There was no in-flight entertainment and they announced that no electronic devices were allowed at any time. I only brought my phone with me to keep me occupied, so I was SOL. So all I could do for hours was just try to force myself to sleep to not be conscious of how awful this all was.

On my return flight back to Japan, the airline decided that they couldn't let me fly without having a ticket booked to leave Japan. 

I explained that I have flown into Japan almost a dozen times without a departure ticket and it has never been an issue. They did not care and insisted that it was illegal (it's not) and they would deny me entry (they wouldn't).

By the time I jumped through enough of their terrible hoops to get on board, they decided that an hour was not enough to make my connecting flight in Shanghai, so they would have to book me on another flight a day after and charge me a few hundred more dollars for that.

I flipped them off and went down the hall to another airline. I gave them money, they gave me comfortable seats, a pleasant crew, good food, in-flight entertainment, and no inconveniences. 

Bog off, China Airlines.

Dyshin

I'm a guy and here's my stranger “doing himself”  story. I was staying with my girlfriend in Vietnam and trying to find some shirts so I could take her out to nice restaurants and not look like a filthy backpacker.

After a few frustrating hours of searching and thinking I'd have to get the shirts custom-made, I found some at Saigon Square. I walked home via the D1-D4 river, pretty pleased with myself. A few guys were fishing along the way, but nobody was nearby.

Then I noticed this guy, fifteen feet away in the very low bushes between the river and the freeway and I thought, he can't be pleasuring himself in public like that. But he was. I had to keep walking. He was between me and home and it was going to rain at any moment. Fine, I thought, I'll just stare at the river as I pass.

I don't know how many of you have confronted members of the public brazenly choking their turkeys, but you can't look away from insanity like that. I drew level with him and he was giving his manhood a working over and that was it, I started laughing. He looked up and we locked eyes for a beautiful moment, and the magic was over.

So I walked home, laughing all the way, and immediately messaged my girlfriend about it, and her response, verbatim was, "Oh my God. Did you buy the shirts?" In her defense, she thought my story was some elaborate Australian joke she didn't quite understand. 

Then I had to explain that the guy wasn't just urinating in public and he was doing more than that.

Marmalade

My family took a trip to Sudan to visit our 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 starting to hurt more.

She ignored it, thinking he must have rubbed it on something by accident. 

When he fell to the floor screaming with pain, literally hundreds and hundreds of flies came flying out of a single hole at the base of his neck. He was 8 at that time.

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 as heck.

CurryThighs

I saw a lifeless woman on a train platform in Varanasi, India. She was covered in a very sheer cloth. 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 who worked on the platform that there was a deceased woman there, he looked at me like he could NOT be bothered to care.

Although there were some very interesting things in India, I will never, ever go back. 

Boywonder5691

When the toilet clogged in my Brooklyn apartment, my boyfriend had to ask our landlord to borrow a snake to fix the situation. Our landlord was shocked and perturbed to learn that we flush toilet paper. He even instructed us to put it in a basket.

My boyfriend flat-out refused. We were equally shocked and tried to inform him that American plumbing is capable of handling toilet paper. It took a plumber telling him it was okay for him to back down and permit the flushing (but only one ply).

iloveLoveLOVECats

I started my travels to Australia. The flight was from 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 1-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, and 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 up and started abusing the service agents about their ineptitude (I kept myself together for a few more hours, but in the end, I just didn't care 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. However, after a few hours, people got acquainted with their neighbors and formed a certain solidarity, so that everyone kept each other's spot free.

In the late hours of the evening and with swelling feet, we all noticed the Emirates had started giving out hotel vouchers because all of the next Australia-bound flights were full. I didn’t care anymore, just let this misery end! When I was finally at the counter, I didn't get served for another hour. I had 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 pathetic answer). Also, they advised me 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. I 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 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. He went onto the phone for 20 minutes and then came back with new boarding passes for all of us! Deliverance!

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 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 19h-flight.

Ah, and I forgot one. At about 11 pm, Emirates told us over 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.

Kokiri_Salia

This happened in Los Cabos, Mexico. I'm going to summarize it because it's late. This is one of my favorite stories as well that I love telling.

My family and I planned to snorkel during vacation. We signed up to take a water taxi to our preferred location. We got to the docks and we were shipped to the location. We circled the area and they gave us facts about it.

Then they began heading back. My father retorts and orders them to drop us off. He told them that we paid to snorkel, not to take a tour. We got on the shore and we were handed our snorkels, they told us they'd be back to pick us up in a couple of hours, and then they left.

3 hours later, they didn't show up, and we took a different taxi back to the resort. We left the equipment in the taxi. They promised to get the stuff back to the douchebags. My father decided to go have a chat with the guy in charge of the scam, and I went with him, because I felt in my gut that it was a good idea, and it was.

It probably prevented my dad from losing money and going to jail. We took a taxi from the resort to the town. We get to the docks and ask one of the workers (Neckbeard) that we paid to get us up there. The worker radios Neckbeard in, and seconds later he comes up to the both of us, pretty mad, asking where the equipment is. 

My dad started arguing with him, and the bearded macho said we gotta pay for them. $400 in total. Screw them We told him that we gave the equipment to another water taxi and that he said he'd get them to him.

Then, Neckbeard starts speaking in Spanish to the worker who was listening in. This was our chance. I whispered to my Dad, "We should get out of here.” My dad interrupts their little talk about how they were going to kidnap us and says, "I'm just going to go up the road and get my wife, and we'll come back in a second.”

We began walking away. My dad asked me if they were following us. Nope. We turn a corner, down an alley, enter a taxi, and ride back to the resort. Mission accomplished. Screw you, man. We laughed on our way back to the resort because of how awesome we were.

CervineService

Mine is not that bad. I took a trip to the Carolinas two years ago. I drove from Charlotte, North Carolina to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, then back. Unfortunately, our GPS didn't exactly work properly on the drive back to NC.

With all the bad luck, it took us through unpaved, unmarked dirt roads, and seemingly abandoned neighborhoods. As someone from Seattle who had never traveled outside of state before, while driving through those parts of the South I was convinced we were going to get shot by some crazy redneck.

SHINX_FUCKER

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. They were also yelling insults that I don't know. 

I had to cover my little sister because I was freaked out that she was going to get hit in the head. We ended up packing our stuff and leaving in a rush. None of the adults in the park even moved to get them to stop and they were above us so my parents couldn't. 

I had nightmares for a year.

Tsugamertensiana

I did a summer study abroad in Kenya. We had a home base and we 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. On the first day of a ten-day trip, my bag was stolen. 

Everything I had with me was taken 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. 

That was a 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. 

I lost my camera, binoculars, some amazing pictures, lots of stuff. Sucked.

Kendallsan

I was traveling alone in Southern France. One particular night, I decided to camp above a little beach on the outskirts of Nice. There were no flat spots, so I didn't pitch a tent. I 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 awful 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 returned 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 freaking creepy.

AlbertaDwarfSpruce

I was spending the holiday at a friend's place in South Australia. He was at work and my GF needed to go to the doctor. We decided to walk to the next town over as we didn't have a car and buses didn't come to the town we were in. So we got a little sidetracked and ended up on some dirt road in the middle of nowhere. 

Then off in the distance, we see the dust kicking up from a car coming towards us. It got closer and I could see it was a Holden station wagon lowered way down with shiny rims and driving really slow. Then I saw a car full of massive Maori dudes in full Moko tattoos. They were some of the hardest-looking dudes you will see.

My GF is cute as heck and only like 17, so the car slowed down and I was starting to worry. They stopped and in my mind, I'm thinking I'll just have to try and pull the eye out of the first guy and hurt him so badly. They'd probably just end me anyway.

So the guy in the back rolls down the window and says, "Got a smoke bro?" I gave him a cigarette, and then he was like, "Got a light bro?" I gave him a light. He said,  "Thanks, bro" and they drove off.

I thought I was probably going to end there and then and God knows what would happen to my GF, but it all ended happily.

Mox_au

We were having a vacation in Amsterdam. I was at a coffee shop chilling. All of a sudden, I saw 3 men watching me. 

On the way back to our house, they followed me. They just left when my father and brother-in-law came running out the front door after hearing me scream for help. I was very lucky.

Carrotsncocaine

We went on a trip to California during my senior year in high school. Then, we went to Rodeo Drive to see the Walk of Fame and the street performers.

I watched all kinds of street performers and people dressed as various fictional characters. Some were cool, others were kind of shoddy. But none compared to Barney the dinosaur, or as I called him, “Barney the Sleaziosaur.”

His costume was made out of purple carpet. Not even joking. You could see where it had been stapled together and could see that plastic hairy-looking stuff sticking out. Probably came out of a hippy van or something.

Anyway, a friend of mine got called a "freaking broke Mexican" by this Barney because he wouldn't give him 5 dollars for a picture when he snapped a pic of him with his camera.

Not 10 seconds later, a little girl who couldn't be over the age of 6 came running up to Barney (while he and my friend were still yelling trash talk over a short distance as we left) and she hugged his leg.

I don't know what happened exactly but he yelled something and pulled his head off. The little girl proceeded to cry and not in just a sniffly tearful way. She bawled.

CrypticCryptid

My brother and I were in Bodrum, Turkey. We had met up in Turkey as he was training in Thailand and I was currently in Sweden, so we thought Bodrum would be a nice place to party and relax.

The night was a bit chilly so I borrowed a spare jumper from him, labeled with his fighting gym from Thailand. That bit is important and relevant later on. 

We settled to sit and watch the football at a club, ordering beers as we went from the waiter. Later that night, I told my brother that our currency was starting to run out and we had no means to exchange more money. We asked the waiter to bring out our tab so we could settle it and he kept delaying it.

He then brought us a couple of shots “on the house” and kept being friendly but failed to bring out the tab. That happened again and again, even when we told him we needed the tab as we had no more money. 'On the house' was a lie. The bill came out as almost double our original budget, including some extras we didn't even drink. They also charged us for the peanuts on the table.

So cue the awkward silence of a waiter standing over us, flanked by three other waiters. 

They're expectantly waiting for the couple of hundred lira to appear. We had like, 80 or something. It's getting tense and everyone appears agitated.

My brother took the lead and got up to face the waiters. In the most broken Turkish he could muster, he explained to the lead waiter that we were both professional fighters on tour through Asia and Europe and that we had come to our home country to enjoy the scenes. 

He began ranting about how he was so disappointed at being treated like this, then motioned to me and added that I was becoming really angry at the whole situation. I was stone-faced, mainly because I was confused.

One by one each waiter started to back off and a nearby bouncer who had floated in basically backed out. The waiter agreed just to take the 80 lire and apologized for the confusion on the bill. We made a slow escape around a corner and then basically got the heck out of there.

Don't go to Bodrum.

Echocdelta

I was 11 years old when we went to Slovakia with the whole family and it was like any big city holiday and therefore uninteresting for an 11-year-old boy. So one evening when we got back to the hotel, I wanted to see if it had any sort of cool features like an arcade room or anything else than spending time with my family talking about all the boring churches and museums and whatnot. 

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 because 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. 

After I knocked on the door, the elevator started falling. Not in a free fall, luckily, but faster than an elevator is supposed to go down. A few seconds later it hit the ground and stopped with a bang followed by a "ding.” 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.

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 get 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 and afterward, I just cried until I accepted my fate and peed in the elevator as a sort of "screw you" to the hotel when they would find 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, he noticed because they stopped and then moved closer the the elevator shaft (it came from a couple of floors up) and I shouted for help again and again until the elevator suddenly said "ding" and started moving up and opening the door on the very floor I had left it. 

There stood nobody other than my big brother who had gone out to look for me because I had been away for over an hour. Then he heard me call for help and called the elevator.

Xeeroy

I was about 6 or 7 back then. It was in Wisconsin Dells at an indoor water park. I had already had a couple of years of swimming lessons and I was good for my age. I had to go with my parents on all of the rides, but one time, my dad was in front of me and went alone. 

I followed by myself. On this particular ride, you had to use a raft thingy to go on it so I set mine down in the entry shoot and the lifeguard held it while I got in. So he asked,  "Are you ready" and I said, "Yes" so he kicked the raft, and it just flew out from under me.

 I tried to just grab for anything that I could to stop myself from going down but couldn't. 

I'm going down this ride scared that I'm going to end there or we will get kicked out. The next thing I remembered was flying out of the ride, hitting the water, and just sinking. I remember distinctly looking up at the top of the water wondering, "What do I do?"

 The next thing I remember is the lifeguard at the bottom jumping in and grabbing me and handing me over to my father.

Cornhuskers12

My husband and I were traveling by rail around Europe. We got on a train from Nice to Pisa. We heard lots of stories about people getting robbed but I 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 remembered was the door sliding open and then shut again. I suddenly got super sleepy. I fought the sleepiness as hard as I could but just couldn't fight it anymore. 

The next thing we knew, we were pulling into the station in Pisa, and our backpacks were out of place. 

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. 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. 

Then we had to travel from Pisa to Bologna. We also traveled from Munich to Brussels until we reached London where we finally visited his brother. It was quite an adventure.

Rationalgia

Many years ago on the way to the UK, we had a brief stopover in Dubai. I was around 9 years old, and my first time flying. I was suffering from 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 heck, we were green travelers. We 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 white face.

Nibb1yPig

I was in Egypt and we were on 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 the stall (couldn't hold it much longer) when this little scary hairy thing crawled out from the toilet.

 I'm convinced he made an audible hissing noise,  but that might have been me. I ran out 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.

KingGilgamesh1979

I went to Florida with my family when I was around 12. I didn't know that some lizard's or salamander’s tails would fall off to avoid predators. After trying to catch a salamander for what seemed like forever, I was so proud to have finally caught one.

After I caught it, I looked down to see the little guy. All I had was a massive tail still wriggling on my hand. I screamed so loud and ran away. I didn't try to catch any more salamanders after that.

WanderingNeverland

My wife and I were newlywed and on our honeymoon in the Dominican Republic. After checking in, we discovered my wife's makeup had been stolen out of her suitcase (most likely by a baggage inspector). My wife was inconsolable and devastated that she wouldn't "look pretty" on her honeymoon. 

We were at an all-inclusive resort and none of the little shops had makeup and we had no plans to leave the resort for excursions. The concierge informed me that the closest town was a 1-hour walk but they advised me not to leave the resort as I would likely be robbed, mugged, taken, etc. It was our first night out of a 7-day stay and she refused to leave the room so I had no choice. 

I was armed with my only 4-inch folding pocket knife. I struck out down the unpaved, unmarked, and single-lane rural road. In the 80°F heat and 99% humidity, I wore pants and a hoodie to try and conceal the "gringo." I couldn’t even speak a lick of Spanish. 

After wandering around the "town" for over an hour, I stumbled upon the Farmacia. The pharmacist spoke English and I paid $5 for the only makeup kit they had. I think I sprinted the entire way back to the resort.

I was held up at the gate by staff until I convinced hotel management to contact my wife so she could bring my passport down to the gate. Hands down worst experience of my life.

GunsAndJesus

This happened in Bangkok, in a red-light district. I got lured upstairs to a strip club by a “No pay for anything, only one drink” line. I have been told specifically to NEVER GO UPSTAIRS IN THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT. I bought the drinks. Eventually, I noticed we were the only ones in there. 

I was forced to hold a balloon so a stripper could shoot a dart out of her lady part (managed it on the fifth attempt). When I attempted to leave, I was suddenly surrounded by fat strippers, and the manager demanded £80. He threatened to bring the pimp in. I paid and got followed out by the pimp. I wet my pants.

The second was in Morocco. I climbed Mount Toubkal, the second-highest mountain in Africa. We were too stingy to pay a guide and took a wrong turn. Boulders gradually became sparse, the ground was so unsolid, and we started slipping down the mountain. 

There was no mountain rescue around there and this was too high up even for donkeys. Hearing our screams, an actual climber heard and came to the rescue. He vanished to help the others before I had the chance to thank him. To this day I'm convinced he was a guardian angel. 

I bawled like a baby when I was finally safe. That was the only time I've ever genuinely thought I would die.

LowriLlew

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 and freckles), so I skip to the pool, on my own, with no sun protection. 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 okay?" at that point I feel fine so I carry on. Later on, I noticed 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. It turns out I'd managed to give myself horrific sunburn, and now had severe heat stroke.

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. As the days passed by, my skin started to come off. I could peel A4-sized sheets of skin off my back and shoulders. 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 (my hair is brown, but you can see ginger in it, with freckles on my skin, etc. ) wear sunscreen, a t-shirt, and a hat.

MaxMouseOCX

I went to North Carolina when I was 14 with my best friend and her mother to stay with some friends who lived on the Cherokee Reservation. We went to this fast food restaurant for a snack one day and a drunk man around 30 verbally assaulted us and called us nasty names until our friend got involved.

I also went with this same best friend to Krakow, where we sat in the park eating lunch. It was a nice day with lots of people hanging around until this homeless guy came up to us and just started talking. 

At first, we tried to communicate that we're American and our Polish is minimal. He kept talking for a bit. 

Then, he was trying to ask us in English where we were staying, and trying to touch my friend's hand. Suddenly, the police rolled by and he just gazed upwards and said in a distant, whispery voice, "Policja." He tried to communicate that we should go with him somewhere else. No, friend. 

We were left alone.

Blipo

When I was a kid (probably around 9 or 10), I was alone with my mom on a Spanish island for 2 weeks. After a few days, my mom began talking to this young couple. One night we went out to eat with them. 

They were great, the woman was a bit quiet, but the man was awesome. He taught me a lot of cool things and was a very cool man to a 10-year-old boy. Of course, my mom and the young couple were drinking a couple of drinks and so on, so they were maybe a bit tipsy. 

When we got back to the hotel where we were staying, all four of us went back to our room, where we talked and had a nice time. 

My mom later told me, that when the man went to the bathroom, the lady had taken my mom's hand, and told her: "Please don't let me be alone with him, he hurts me."

Now it was bedtime for me, but I remember a lot of screaming and stuff from the living room. The guy was hurting the heck out of this young innocent woman, in front of my mom who could do nothing. Some neighbors heard the noise and came in to help and get him away from her.

I don't know what happened to the young couple, but my mom and I got an upgrade from the travel agency to a better hotel.

139Lenox

Sometime in the mid-80s, I was in my early mid-teens. I arrived at the Munich train station early in the morning. My family was with me, including my brother and Uncle Rob. Rob is only a couple of years older than I am.

  We needed to wash up a bit and hit the restroom while my parents waited outside. The restroom was empty except for us. Then, an older guy walks in and waves. Uncle Rob waves back thinking folks sure are friendly in Munich. 

The guy then got between me and Rob and started doing things to himself. My brother and I ran out. 

Rob then did not realize what was going on. I yelled at him. Finally, he figured it out. After that, I told my mom and grandma what happened. They laughed it off. I guess today they would have said something to a cop. That could have been a dangerous situation.

Glazed_Annulus

I got stuck on a snowy mountain 40 km from any town in Iceland. Roads were open so I started driving. The roads got icy (I'm Canadian so I'm used to snowy driving). I decided we should turn back and stay in the town we had passed. Went to turn the SUV around at a crossroad and it just slid off the road up to the top of the tires in the snow. The 4X4 would not work. 

There is a free emergency rescue response team in Iceland, but Neither of my friend's US cells would work out there. Luckily, mine worked. Took nearly 3 hours for the rescue to come. It was freezing. Reindeer were passing by. Then it got dark.

Finally, they came and pulled us out. They said we shouldn't have been there. The road was closed, yet the internet road service said it was open. They said there was a sign further back by the gate that said the road had closed. 

They stopped to show us the sign on the way back. The sign in English said, "This road may be closed in winter".Maybe they should work on the translations a little bit. We made it out safe and sound though. We took a different route south in the morning.

Cenatutu

When I was young my Dad had a job that sent him all over the world.  We would always go visit him for a week or two wherever he was. He had been working in London for about a year and we went to visit him. We rented a flat that was across the street from the park that surrounds Buckingham Palace.

My father had gotten up extra early to go to work that day, however, when I woke up, it was sirens on TV and news reports that the underground had been bombed. We spent the day hunkered down in the flat. My Dad had made it to work without a scratch but had he gone in late, well I like to think he still would made it out. 

The owner of the flat, an American, told my father that if it came to it he would get me, my brother, and my mother on the company plane to the US at any cost. Unfortunately, that would mean that my dad would have to give up his seat on the plane (for the guy taking us back). 

The flat owner told my mother to leave everything in the flat and put passports in her purse just in case we needed to more or less run for it.

My mom is probably the most level-headed woman I know. She basically told us to not worry. We stayed in London for the next week or so and we saw some of the sites (whatever was within walking distance or by cab) although everyone was pretty on edge. Since my dad worked on the other side of London, he had to walk back. It took him hours, but I was happy to have him home. 

Honestly, the worst part was how much it felt like 9/11 (we're from NY, and my dad works in NYC) and the fact that we were there for both of them, not knowing if your loved one was safe. All in all, it was one of my favorite trips (aside from the bombing part) and I had a wonderful time.

Princess_Honey_Bunny

I was on an Island in the Caribbean with a group of British people that I was working with. One night we were out drinking and one of them said,  "I know a great strip club nearby we can go to." Well, being a naive young man, I didn't realize that what he meant to say was "I know a horrible brothel we can go to." 

Anyway, the brothel was gross, but that's not the horror part of this story. The horror part was that we took what could only very loosely be described as a taxi to get there. The dude in the van who we asked for a lift said,  "Yeah, let me go get the driver" and walked into the bar to get a pretty sloshed-looking dude.

We're already in the van, and no one thinks this guy is driving but he is. 

He hops in the van and starts moving before we can even say anything. Surprisingly, he's driving fine. However, these dudes start speaking Spanish assuming none of these pinche gringos speak it. 

As it happens, the passenger said to the driver something along the lines of, "Creo son ricos y tengo puñal. Que quieres hacer?" To translate in English, “I think these dudes are rich and I have a weapon. What do you want to do?”

At this point, I decided to start talking to these dudes in Spanish and the guy seemed shaken by it so they just took us where we wanted to go.

Crnelson10

In Argentina, at a bus station, my friend and I noticed some white stuff had magically appeared on our luggage. A man offered his napkin, but we shouted no and ran off to the bathroom.

It's a tactic some people do there to rob you. 

They spray your bag with shaving cream, to make you think a bird crapped on it, then another person offers you a napkin while the first person steals your stuff while you're not paying attention. 

It was kind of scary to think we were almost robbed.

Albino_oompa_loompa

I went backpacking for 3 months and while we met some fantastic, kind, and lovely people who helped us along the way, we also met some down-right awful people. I have many fun stories to tell at parties, but the night we arrived in Indonesia stands out among the awful stories.

First, we realized we didn't have any of the local currency, but no problem,  there were ATMs. But we still ended up being the only people left in the arrival hall (it was 3 in the morning). So the airport people decided to be major douches towards us. They demanded to know where we were staying and since we didn't know, it ended up with them taking our passports and saying they were buying us tickets home.

This one guy we were talking to kept changing his behavior, one minute being all "big guy" and threatening while his coworkers were looking, and the next minute, comforting my friend who broke down crying in the middle of it all. 

After about an hour they finally let us through, we got our bags with no trouble and found out a driver was waiting for us, booked by our travel agency.

It was just the best because we had already been dreading trying to find a taxi in the morning.

Then we arrived at a hotel and got our key. All of a sudden, someone yelled "Hey pretty ladies!" We looked and got an eyeful of man parts. Welcome to Indonesia!

One fun note: One of my friends has pretty bad eyesight. She wasn't wearing glasses and it was in the middle of the night, so she couldn't see what the man was doing. She actually stepped towards him all curious about what he wanted until we grabbed her and explained. We still tease her about that.

Sascha7410

I got locked in a French insane asylum. I was studying abroad, with two girls who I thought were good friends of mine. We had made plans to do spring break together, however, they told me two days before that they wanted to make it a girl's trip. 

I said, “Fine” and made plans to go to Scandinavia on the spot, booking some pretty nice hotels for myself, at a discounted rate because I was preparing. 

They thought that because I was traveling by myself, it was evidence that I was going to harm myself. 

So they told our university. The university made me see a French psychologist (who did not speak English). Because I could not convey to him that there was a misunderstanding, he called for orderlies to take me to an insane asylum. 

I spent three days there until I got phone access (no one there spoke English either, and they would not call in a translator). Then a day and a half more until my father could fly over to France to get me out. I know it is not the French people's fault, but seriously, screw France.

Whydoihaveto12

My family and I visited Manhattan for fall break. Our hotel is on Broadway, in front of the giant screens. The first night, we went out and walked around to a restaurant. I'm not even out of the hotel for 2 freaking minutes, and I'm suddenly surrounded by 3 black guys, all taller than me (I'm a 5'7, 140 lb, 18-year-old white kid). 

They suddenly said stuff like, "Support my albums" and "Dude, I'll give change." So they charged $10 a CD. 

I gave a 20, my lowest bill size, expecting change. The 10-dollar bill is hanging in front of me. I asked for change, but they said no.

At this point, my family has moved on through the crowds and I have to go. I then found out I got hustled out of $20. I was in a pretty bad mood the rest of the night. 

Doctor-who-allons-y

Not so much a horror, just embarrassing.

 My family and I were in Venice. I was at the time a high school defensive lineman and my brother was playing guard for a D3 college. We are large people. 

We got to the hotel, the concierge took us and our bags onto the microscopic elevator. 

The doors won't close and there's a loud buzzing noise. He looked around, confused, as clearly this had NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.

He then looked up at the "maximum capacity"  sign. He laughed and said, "I'll a-take-a da next-a one!" (Semi-racist accent added for effect).

Picrophile

I got lost at night in the city and a call girl gave me directions back to my hostel. She tried to convince me to go to her apartment with her. She also wanted me to share my empanadas with her. This happened in Puerto Iguazu, Argentina. 

Most establishments were closed due to it being Sunday, and I hadn't eaten all day.

Finally, I found a take-out place that sold glorious and delicious empanadas. I had walked far and wide trying to find this place and tried to take a shortcut back to the hostel. I ended up walking through a dark, sketchy neighborhood.

I had the life scared out of me by a dog, and ran into this woman, who looked to be in her 50s. She was persistent.

HeroicallyNude

The scariest thing that's happened to me while on vacation occurred in Minsk, Belarus. We were on a large bus tour and we were receiving a tour of the city from a local. At one point, she pointed out the president's house to us and someone took a photo. Up until this point, the city had seemed strangely empty, not too many people around us, and I thought we were alone in the square. 

Out of literally nowhere, three armed guards appeared and started yelling at her in Belarusian or Russian, I'm not sure.   

They tried to take away her camera until she quickly deleted the photo and showed them that it was gone. Not the most terrifying thing, but we were being watched and that was a little unnerving.

Belarus in general though was very nice and everyone else seemed very friendly.

Historyhedgehog

We were camping in the jungles of Nicaragua. All of a sudden, a giant tree fell and collapsed the structure I was camping under, with me and my boyfriend still in the tent. It took eight hours to get out from under the collapsed structure and to the closest hospital in Managua.

I injured my back and couldn't walk for a while but I'm mostly fully recovered now. It's a genuine miracle that we survived at all. In fact, if we hadn't been exactly where we were (between two structural beams) we would have been crushed.

Analogart