I've got a few scary ones but I'll start with one. In the late seventies (a long long time ago) there was... No the story is, in the late seventies on the way back to Austria from a trip home to good ol oz, myself and friend stopped off at Sri Lanka. There was people everywhere at the airport and we innocently got sucked in by a "free" taxi ride to the city. It was MILES from the city and they said we will give you a free ride and then maybe, only if you like, you can do a tour with us tomorrow. We will take you to a hotel and then see how you feel in the morning. Well that was our interpretation of it anyway. Half an hour later we stopped at the road stall. They got us some "queen" coconuts, sliced off the tops and gave them to us to drink. Yummy. Nice guys we thought. And you know it took me 20 years to realise that "queen" coconuts were actually GREEN coconuts. I looked everywhere for them but noone had queen coconuts. Anyway we rocked up at this "hotel" which wasn't but we stayed there, no-one else was staying there, paid the bill in the morning took our bags and headed off to the bus depot. We wanted to go to Hikkaduwa the cheapest way and that involved the bus with all the locals, pigs and all. Anyway, there we are at the bus stop and suddenly our taxi "friends" are there. With a knife held to my throat (true story) we paid for our "free" taxi ride. We were a little naive I think. I've got some others but lets hear yours.

I remember taking the "magic bus" form London to Athens. That was scary. The first hint of irregularity came when the driver asked the passengers how to get to Dover. Someone knew. All was well for a while. There were two drivers an alpha and a beta, both Greek. They took it in turns sleeping and driving. You couldn't sleep when the alpha was driving (He drove as if he was competing in one of those giant truck races) except when he stopped in the red light district in Amsterdam. Then he had to make up time... Then the beta got lost. They had a row and the alpha took over and we were treated to still more schincter clenching, scrotum shrinking, forget about sleeping, maniacal driving. We had to drop off one of the passengers in Hamburg. He was German and they were Greek. They dropped him off on the side of the autobahn 20 km from anywhere, and its illegal to hitch hike on the autobahns. When we got to the Yugoslav border the alpha walked down the bus passing out cartons of cigarettes to the dazed passengers. After we crossed he took them back. We eventually got to Athens in the middle of the night so utterly buggered that they had to turf us out of the youth hostel the next morning and we went to sleep in the park.

But no one put a knife to my throat.

I was vegging out traveling home from work on Friday in the 100km zone coming up lonsdale freeway when I looked up and saw a car wheel in the air traveling at great speed coming down straight towards my head. I swerved then it hit the side of my van and I survived to windsurf another day. I later found the fwd with a wheel missing of the trailer on the side of the road.

Yeah, remember Charles Sobrage?..

Susie said...

. The moral of the story is, memorise the name of your hotel!

.
Amen to that bit. I had to go with my young daughter to a hospital in Peru after having arrived at a hotel 1 hour before. When we settled in at the ittle mud brick(really) clinic I realized I'd left the bit of paper with the phone,and name of the hotel on it. The next day we got in a 3wheel MC taxi and headed off into the Sacred valley going south. I was sure the hotel was north. after 20 minutesof trying to convince the taxi driver, we got run off the road into a ditch,by a truck.
when we pulled it out of the ditch I turned the taxi around and got him to drive the other way. Eventually we drove past a crumbling Spanish Colonial fronted place that looked familiar and got him to stop whilst I checked if it was the one. He said no it wasnt, But it was . All that fun only cost us us 3 soles( 95cents).
I thought that was scary but it paled when the next day ,another daughter almost stepped of the edge of a mountain in Macchu Pichu. Thankfully her clothing was tight so when I grabbed her collar she came backwards instead of slipping out. Scary part was that no-one else in the group noticed

Hmmm, it would be between trying to get over the border between Ceuta and Morocco and ending up with my brother surrounded by Moroccans trying to steal our car and anything else they could get their hands on. Or.. In Tunisia just after the Good Ol US of A bombed Iraq - we had our coach pelted with rocks and had to hide behind a police station in the middle of no where until 2 big pickups with machine guns on the back escorted us to safety..

I'm sure there are others!

Frant, my problems were caused by my stupidity - after these issues I travelled the world for a year, including Africa with no problems what so ever.

Susie said...

Frant we are so sheltered (mostly) here in oz that it would be good for our kids travel with their eyes open. Sorry though if its got you worried. I'll give you another one. I left my hostel in Munich at nighttime to find a phone box. Then of course I got lost didn't I cos I have no sense of direction. This was my first trip to Europe and I spoke no German then. I walked and walked and ended up in the red light district. I had no idea of the name of the hostel or the street or anything. There was lots of cars following me slowly along the street. Then I saw a taxi. I hailed it down and the only place I could think of to go was a caravan park where some other mates were staying. Only they weren't. The local caretaker walked me through the caravan park looking for them. I ended up sleeping on the floor of his cabin. Lucky for me he was a gentleman. The next day he took me into the city to try and find my hostel and at the train station I saw my girlfriends who were accompanied by a policeman. He had been telling them I probably took off with a man. They told him I was not like that, which I'm not but of course it didnt look that way. I was about 22 at the time. The moral of the story is, memorise the name of your hotel! The scariest bit was being followed by all the cars.

Susie, I think that you have missed my point. You never hear the truly scary stories. All that is being recalled here are yarns about how our naievety and poor decision making skills has put us in a position that we weren't comfortable with.
My scariest and there have been a few was only recently while travelling as a businessman in China. I still can't believe that I didn't make the obvious and sensible decision.
Was offered a big chaufer driven Audi limo for a trip from Shanxi to Xiian (normally about an 8 hour drive). The driver was a punk who modelled himself on American gangsters complete with gold jewellery. Chain smoked with one hand constantly holding a cigarette the other holding the horn depressed. We took off through the village streets at 80k hit the minor arterial roads at 160 k and finally got onto the freeway where from the back seat I could clearly see the speedo hovering around 250 k. ...and freeways are shared with agricultural vehicles so we were coming up to the back of tractors at about 225km hour. I was **** scared of dying. Figured that even if I asked my host to get the driver to slow down we might cruise at 220 k. I decided my best option was to say nothing as the best chance of survival was to get the trip over in the shortest possible time. Now I don't know why I didn't just say STOP and refuse to go any further. Fortunately my poor decision turned out OK but mostly its only by luck.

Scariest travel experience for me was leaving the Sari Club with my whole family, wife and two kids, hopping into a taxi only to have the club explode about 3 minutes later as we pulled into the driveway of our hotel.

I've got quite a few but the gravity of one in particular didn't hit me until it was all over..

Whilst living in Indo I became friends with another expat who operates a surf resort in the Mentawai Islands. We would help each other out whenever possible and this time it was my turn to do some electrical work for him. In exchange for the work my fiancé and I got two weeks all expenses paid on his island, awesome so far. The Mentawai Islands are off the continental shelf 90 miles from closest port of Padang, where I was living. The resort operated two boats, both of which I had worked on during the off season so I was familiar with the vessels but only at their moorings. The first boat 'Blue Fin' was a big mono hull with two Volvo penta inboards, the second 'Surf Cat' was a cat with twin Honda outboards. Both boats had been operated for two seasons without fault however this season two new captains were employed. It was April and first group of the season were mostly Brazilians with four Aussies thrown in the mix.

The crew had loaded food and beer into 'Surf Cat' overnight, in the morning the guests piled onto Bluefin and their boards were loaded on the top deck on 'Surf Cat'. My wife an I decided to travel out on board 'Surf Cat' with the crew and cargo rather than spend a few hours with the Brazilians. Talking to crew we learned that the weather forecast wasn't good and the boss had considered delaying departure for one day but had felt pressure to get the trip underway. The plan was for the two boats to travel within sight of each other for safety.

Spirits were high onboard both vessels when we left the harbour and day was beautiful with blue skies and no breeze. The first sign of trouble was that Surf Cat couldn't get up on the plane, she was sitting low in the water and seemed to be overloaded. The captain didn't know different because it was his first trip with a load on board. We tried to flag down Bluefin to transfer some cargo but contrary to instructions the captain of that boat wasn't hanging around, he hit up the big diesels an slowly disappeared over the horizon travelling at thirty-five knots which was about 20 knots more than we were capable of. We still could have turned around at that time but I guess the thought of 12 Brazilian surfers with no food, beer or surf boards weighed heavily on the mind of our crew.

We continued for a few hours and land had long disappeared behind us. I struck up a friendship with Chong who was a big half Hawaiian, half Chinese, Paramedic from California who volunteers every year at the camp in exchange for a surfing holiday. We lounged on the fly bridge listening to Jack Johnson on his ipod. My fiancée, two waitresses and the wife of the resort owner could be heard talking and laughing on the lower deck. Life was peachy.

Sometime around midday we must have been about 30 miles off shore the port outboard developed a knock which turned into a rattle and ended up sounding like a midget with a jackhammer was trying to escape from deep within. Chong and I actually had to convince the captain to shut it down, this was the first we learnt of the captain's true seafaring ability. Restarting the engine only produced the same deathlike noises, it was terminal. A little investigation found that the captain hadn't compensated for the load by throttling the engines back to match the boat speed, he had actually been running both engines with wide open throttle. We were to later find that overheating had cause the bottom end bearings to melt. So now we were down to one doubtful engine and travelling at eight knots in the middle of the sea with no land in sight and no radio communications, no need to panic yet at least it was still calm and sunny.

Now it's mid-afternoon and the mood on the boat is somewhat less jovial then when we departed, particularly considering a good Sumatran afternoon storm has been building ahead of us for the last hour. The sky grew darker, the sea swell was rising and our hapless crew pressed on. Visibility reduced to a few hundred meters through the rain but I could still see the water melons floating in our wake. Hang on, water melons don't generally float around in the ocean and neither do bananas. It dawned upon me like a king hit, we had taken a wave over the bow and the fruit had washed off. Racing below we found the front deck should have been self draining but the drains were blocked with sodden cardboard, water rushed through the lower cabin and the girls started crying. We quickly cleared the drains which allowed the captured water to return to the ocean. To this day, that remains the only time in my life where I have donned a life jacket for it's intended purpose.

The girls are now drenched to the bone and huddled in a circle on the back deck praying to Jesus, Allah and Buddha all at once. The captain is chain smoking and I am holding a knife prepared to cut away the surfboards on the top deck for floatation should we go down. I had already made the decision that my fiancé was the only thing that mattered, I had her put a bottle of water in her pocket and so did I. My contingency plan was to grab her and two boards and hope we made it through the night. Chong and I spend the next hour in the bilge bucketing water out to the crew because we found the way the bulkheads were installed in the hull didn't allow the trapped water to enter the compartment holding the bilge pumps.

The storm broke up and in the eerie twilight our wound cat limped on. Soon we were to discover our captain's true failing, he couldn't navigate at night. I was the first one to notice this, the compass which had been following a bearing of 225 since we departed was slowly swinging through 360 degrees and back to 225 again. This son-of-bitch was doing circles! By now we had a mutiny on our hands, the captain was demoted and a 16 year old deck hand took the wheel. Farmie was his name and he meant business. His first order of business was to kill all the cabin lights and throw a towel over the instruments, we bobbed around on the pacific in the dark until he found what he was looking for. Over the horizon, coming in an out of view behind the swell was the faintest light you could imagine. Farmie set course for that light and for the first time in hours the mood on the boat relaxed a little. I even managed to take of my life jacket.

The light grew larger and brighter over the next three hours and we kept steaming towards it. We could eventually make out the silhouette of two island and this light was a coming from a fishing town on the inside beach of one of them. 'Surf Cat' cruised into harbour at 2am much to the surprise of the locals who graciously took in this motley crew and bunked us down for the night. I awoke early to have a look around and found Farmie and the Captain at the jetty talking to a group of fisherman. It seems they were in total amazement at how we navigated the reef at night without ever having seen the entrance to the harbour. The fisherman proceeded to describe how many bommies and rocky outcrops surround the island and told us how the safe entrance is marked by sticks. Somehow we had managed to avoid being smashed into pieces. It may have been the prayers that guided us home, it may have been the skills of our deckhand, it may have been dumb luck but we made it.

We were escorted away from the island in the morning and found we were only about 8 miles off course, our island was the next one along. We arrived just after dawn just as the search party was about to set off on 'Bluefin'. I still remember arriving at the surf camp to a reception of pissed off Brazilians. They grabbed their boards and went surfing. I had a beer.

Scariest thing to happen to me was when someone stole my purse and I lost EVERYTHING. I lost my ID, my credit cards, my check book, my ATM debit card my camera. . .it was pretty horrendous. At least I had my passport safe in my luggage, so that was a godsend. It is EXTREMELY annoying, horrible, inconvenient and scary when something like that happens. I was so stressed because I pictured this creep looking at pictures of me and my family in my vacation photos in the camera, and it totally ruined my vacation because all I did was be on the phone all day to try and cancel credit cards, try to monitor if any suspicious activity was happening on my card, my bank accounts, etc. The perp also stole my phone, so I had trouble calling my friends when I went back home (lost all their numbers). So I have to underline the importance of keeping your identity secure while traveling. This site has very good tips:

http://gabwith.us/how-to-avoid-ident...-staying-safe/

It may seem like a hassle but believe me, when you actually lose everything, it won't seem like a hassle anymore.

when i was 19 i went to port moresby for a 10 day sailing regatta. on the first night i got talking to a local girl who worked behind the bar at the yacht club. one thing led to another and i ended up getting a lift back to her place. which turned out to be a windowless shanty in a village suburb of moresby. in the morning i stuck my head out the door and a dozen young blokes from the village were waiting for me in a semi-circle around her hut. as soon as i emerged they all stood up and crossed their arms over their chests staring at me. i didn't know where i was or how to get back to where i was billeted. i kept a big stupid grin on my face and tried to slowly walk out of the village, and they followed a couple of feet behind me until i was far away enough.
i reckon if i had of run or showed how scared i was i would have copped it.

Long story, but somehow I accidently entering a 'secure' military base, in the middle of nowhere in Qatar (Middle East) on an off road bike. It was secure from 3 sides, the other side opened out onto the beach which I happened to be cruising along and then before I knew got chased by some angry men in uniform in a jeep. When they caught up with me, they were screaming at me pulling my hair pointing their big guns at me and yelling at me in Arabic. I understood a little bit of arabic and was trying to tell them it was an accident. Then they calmed down and started talking quietly amongst themselves for 10 mins then told me to FO. That was bad. I'm sure their 10min tet a tet was discussing what to do with me. Plenty of people have disappeared in Qatar.

stamp said...

when i was 19 i went to port moresby for a 10 day sailing regatta. on the first night i got talking to a local girl who worked behind the bar at the yacht club. one thing led to another and i ended up getting a lift back to her place. which turned out to be a windowless shanty in a village suburb of moresby. in the morning i stuck my head out the door and a dozen young blokes from the village were waiting for me in a semi-circle around her hut. as soon as i emerged they all stood up and crossed their arms over their chests staring at me. i didn't know where i was or how to get back to where i was billeted. i kept a big stupid grin on my face and tried to slowly walk out of the village, and they followed a couple of feet behind me until i was far away enough.
i reckon if i had of run or showed how scared i was i would have copped it.

You were lucky!
Also hope you had a little rubber thing, certain diseases are rampant over there.

well before wolf creek,about 1999,was travelling around oz,doing the stretch from alice to darwin.In the middle somewhere,nearing dark,we had picked out this roadhouse that you could camp at.When we arrived,nothing short of freaky was what we both saw and felt .Went in to pay,a few seedy fellows at the bar that was about the size of a small loungeroom.went back to our chosen spot,no one else was staying there but us.We were both desperate for a shower and entered the filthy looking donga,almost walking straight back out,there was no cleaner here!There was all sorts of **** over floor and in the shower,and some decent amounts of blood and god knows what in the basin !had the quickest wash and out of there!The area behind where we were staying looked like the yard that john jarrett had in Wolf creek ,crap everywhere.the next couple of hrs we didnt see anyone come thru the roadhouse,we had dinner, then slept in the car.the mrs was freakin at every noise,which made me jumpy,just this eerie feeling at this place.We had been awake for a few hrs and had just dozed off when headlights beamed in to the camp area.the mrs was up in a flash,who is it ?How the hell would i know!best feeling ever when we saw it was a britz camper,then hear pommie voices with bits of, my god, what is this place ?they were freakin too.spoke to them in the morning,and they felt just what we had,eerie place !