Counting down my top 5 travel disasters

If you’re a frequent flier/adventurer, you know that travel disasters are bound to happen, no matter how seasoned of a traveler you are. There are so many moving parts that go into traveling: accommodation, transportation, crazy people, sicknesses, weather, the WORKS.

Now, I would like to preface this by saying that i generally think that I’m a good traveler. I’ve spent extended amounts of time in quite a few different countries, I’ve been to 5 continents, traveled alone, and I typically make all the travel plans, even if I’m going on a trip with friends or family — just because I like to double check everything and make sure that all the bookings are confirmed and the itinerary is laid out efficiently.

I love planning so much I even made THIS free travel planner, so that you can do everything in your power to avoid the ~avoidable~ travel disasters. It has so many different sections so that you avoid going over budget, forgetting to check visa requirements or restaurant reservations, and helps you plan the absolute perfect itinerary. Truly - if you’re trying to travel without a hitch, download the free planner!! (it’s really pretty too, I promise:)

Regardless of you much you plan, however, life will always throw you curveballs - things that are entirely out of your power but can still just absolutely ruin the vacation vibes.

Whether you’re trying to make yourself feel better about some of your travel disasters, or simply looking for a laugh, I decided to count down my top 5 travel disasters (5 being the least disastrous, 1 being the most).

*****And a quick disclaimer: I do not mean to share these to discourage any of you from taking the plunge and traveling! Crazy people exist everywhere in the world, and oftentimes wherever you’re traveling is safer than some of the bigger cities in America. Be safe wherever you are, and just know that the beautiful travel moments FAR outweigh anything that goes wrong. I actually had to wrack my brain to come up with a list of 5 travel disasters, because honestly I just block them out! The only travel memories that I can recall easily are all the good ones. *******

So without further ado, let’s jump into the top 5 travel disaster countdown.

5. LOSING MY PASSPORT IN AMSTERDAM

^^ When I visited Amsterdam it even LOOKED ominous, I’m not even surprised something bad happened.

Let me set the scene. It was my last weekend trip that I had planned during my semester abroad in Spain, and while I had a fabulous time studying abroad, I had already endured two very recent travel disasters (never fear, they’ll be on this list too). I was hoping to make it through the last three weeks I had abroad before going home for Christmas without incident.

And then we went to Amsterdam.

Now, Amsterdam is a crazy city in and of itself, but plop someone who generally just has very bad luck into the midst of it, and bad things are BOUND to happen. I was prepping myself the entire plane ride. “Emma, you are going to be RESPONSIBLE. Nothing crazy is going to happen, you are going to make it out alive. Don’t lose anything, don’t forget anything, don’t get lost, don’t go into any coffee shops” (if u know what i’m saying). I was really trying my best.

We got off the airplane, and hopped onto the shuttle that was going to take us to city center, not far from where our hostel was located. We ended up sitting directly across from some HOT British boys who struck up a conversation with us, and while I was busy being distracted by their beauty and charm, my purse that was dangling on the armrest of my chair simply ~slid~ all the way to the back of the armrest, effectively putting it behind my seat, out of sight and out of mind.

We got off the train, checked into our hostel, and had nearly set off to go find dinner, when I realized that my purse was absolutely nowhere to be found.

When I tell you my heart sank right into my FEET

IMMEDIATELY I tried calling the train station customer service number, and I started sprinting back to the train station. I had no idea which train I had been on, or what car I had been in, or even what time we had boarded the train, but thankfully, by the time I got to the lost and found, my purse was sitting right on the counter, Passport intact, money and all my credit cards still present. It was a freaking miracle, and they handed it over with a simple, “Silly American, please be more careful.”

Because I figured it out before I even called my parents (one of my prouder moments) and it merely had the potential to be a travel disaster, that’s why it’s ranked at the bottom of the list.

Honestly, I was surprised because Amsterdam is such a crazy city, but the people in The Netherlands are just so kind that in retrospect, I’m sure I had nothing to worry about in the first place.

Read all about the good times we had in Amsterdam HERE!

4. Nearly dying (maybe a little dramatic) from a parasite in Bolivia

And when I say I got sick… I mean I got SICK sick.

I was 16 years old and volunteering at an orphanage in Bolivia for the summer, so I was in the middle of nowhere, eating very nutritionally poor food, drinking questionable water, and I think I got a parasite or something? Everything at the clinic was was happening in another language, and I was honestly just delirious at that point.

I had spent the previous few days absolutely vomiting my BRAINS out. Like, couldn’t sleep at night because I was throwing up every 5 minutes. I would take a sip of water, and it would come right back up within 2 minutes. I couldn’t keep anything down, but even after my body threw everything up, I was still dry heaving within an inch of my life.

I was hallucinating things that weren’t there, I was terrified, and I was in so much pain.

I went to the clinic, where they had me lay just my head in the shower under icy cold water, and it still took hours for my fever to break. Not quite sure how they fixed me, but it was by far one of the worst experiences of my entire life.

It’s not necessarily a travel disaster per say, as I could’ve gotten this sick at home, but I think it was the fact that I was so far away from home, living at the top of a mountain in rural Bolivia with no phone, let alone any cellular service, and non-english speaking doctors that really sent me over the edge?

You can’t really control if you get sick while traveling. It’s not something anyone ever signs up for! But it can definitely dampen spirits and ruin a trip if you only have a few days in a particular location.

I’ve literally never been that sick in my life. Not my finest moment. My abs were popping though

3. THE LOST WALLET

Passports are definitely way more important than a wallet while you’re traveling, but the passport story is at the bottom of the list because the outcome didn’t end turn out so bad after all. I found the wallet, no harm done.

Now recently, I had a 5 day break from teaching English here in Korea, and I decided to take advantage of that and head to Seoul by myself for an adventure.

Again, I consider myself to be a good traveler, and I was very cautious. When I arrived to my airbnb and they told me that they had lost my reservation, I thought I was bound for another travel disaster, but luckily that got sorted out in about an hour. I was so proud of myself for avoiding a crisis:’)

And the next few days passed without incident! I managed to make a few friends, see some beautiful things, eat some good food, and navigate the complex public transportation without an issue. That is, until I took the literal last subway ride I was going to take while I was in Seoul.

I was headed back to grab my bags from my hostel and to check out/pay for my stay, when I got to the front desk and realized I didn’t have my wallet. I assume it had dropped out of my purse while I was on the subway? I had used my public transportation card to get onto the metro, and somewhere between there and the hostel it just vanished into thing air.

People in Korea simply don’t ~steal~ things so I know it was just me being clumsy AF. I had no way of paying for the room I just slept 3 nights in, no ID, no cash, no way to withdraw money, no health insurance card. I was 3 hours away from Busan, I still don’t have a Korean phone number, and I knew literally no Korean that would have helped me explain my situation to the front desk assistant.

I ended up just ~giving~ him my debit card information to pay for the room, immediately cancelling my card (and all the other cards in my wallet) right after. I cried to a few subway workers who processed a missing belongings report for me, before SPRINTING to the train station to catch my train on time.

I left Seoul without my wallet, and haven’t heard from the subway workers since. It cost 90 dollars to ship new cards to me from the United States, and while not a total travel disaster (keep reading to the number 1 spot to see why this incident wasn’t as big of a deal as it could have been), it was just expensive, inconvenient, and downright EMBARRASSING to call my parents and tell them that i made yet another stupid mistake.

And now I have to make a trip to the DMV when I get back home to replace my drivers license, which is honestly the worst part of this whole thing.

2. Crazy people in Portugal

^^Me enjoying my time in Lisbon in absolute blissful ignorance that I would be getting robbed the next day

Don’t get me wrong, Portugal is my favorite country I’ve ever been to, and the hostel I stayed in was truly amazing and such a fun time, but sometimes people are just crazy and do things that most people wouldn’t even think of doing.

One night, in the hostel dorm, an older woman asked me for a piece of gum. She had recently confided (and by confided I mean: mildly overshared to the entire hostel population) that she was staying at the hostel because she was avoiding home, where there was a lot of abuse happening.

I of course said yes to the request for gum, and unlocked my locker to reach into my purse (where all my money was) to get her a piece. Now, I don’t know for sure that she was the thief, but this is the only scenario I can work out in my head.

I then re-locked my locker, put the key in my coat pocket, climbed up to my bunk bed (the top bunk out of 3), and proceeded to fall into a HEAVY sleep… WITH MY COAT ON. I didn’t sleep at all the previous day so I was sleeping like a log. The next morning, when we woke up for our flight, We grabbed our things and headed out to call a taxi.

It was then I realized that I had absolutely no money in my purse, when I had just the night before withdrawn 100 dollars from the ATM.

While not a huge loss, I was a college student, and I think anyone would be blown to have 100 dollars robbed from them.

The most unsettling part, however, was that someone must have climbed up into my bunk, found the key in the coat I was wearing, unlocked my locker and taken everything, and then replaced the key. I like to pretend that she was just an expert lock picker to make myself feel better, but still. what the FREAK.

At the same time, if her story was true, she probably needed the money more than I did, so if she was the culprit, I hope it helped her!

Would I stay in that hostel again? 100% yes. It was not the hostels fault!! People are out here wilding no matter the location. Despite getting robbed, it was still my favorite weekend trip I took while studying abroad in Europe.

Read all about the good times in Portugal HERE!

1. The phone wallet combo deal of my nightmares

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve made it to the number one travel disaster. This one is TRULY just a mess. It’s all over the place. Buckle up, because it’s a wild ride.

The year was 2019. It was my 20th birthday. I was studying abroad in Granada, Spain. My friends took me to an absinthe bar, where the signature shot was a double glass with tequila, vodka, and absinthe all mixed together.

Obviously, that’s just a recipe for disaster.

I thought that since I was officially twenty years old, I would automatically become way more responsible and more of an adult? Boy was I wrong.

Quite a few shots of absinthe later, we decided to hit the club, which is where everything hit the fan. People kept buying me drinks because I was the birthday girl, and it felt wrong to refuse! I definitely drank more than I should.

But to be fair, I’m always the mom friend, and no matter how inebriated I am I am always super cautious! My bag was strapped across my body, my phone and wallet (which was attached to the back of my phone) where inside a zipped pocket inside the zipped purse. But after an hour or so of dancing and having a blast with all my friends, I went to go check my phone and it wasn’t there.

Let me remind you: my wallet was one of those sticky ones attached to the back of my phone case. My phone was gone, which meant that my credit cards, debit cards, IDs, health insurance cards, and everything else was completely gone. I immediately tried to track my phone using a friends phone, but I was mildly hysterical and couldn’t figure out my password in time.

By the time I logged in to Find My iPhone, the SIM card was already taken out and it was not able to track it’s location.

Spoiler alert: a few weeks later, when Find My iPhone alerted us that my phone had turned on, we tracked it and it was literally in Western Sahara…. LOLLLLL

I reluctantly headed home at 3 in the morning, Facetimed my parents on my freaking IPAD, and explained the whole thing to them.

There I was, one month into living in a foreign country, with no phone to take pictures with, unable to use google maps or text my friends, no money and no way to get any. My parents ended up wiring me money a week later, but finding the post office without google maps took the better part of a day. They also mailed me a phone, which ended up getting stuck in customs for three weeks. It affected my life for the better part of a month and was definitely my top travel disaster.

So — when I lost my wallet in Seoul, my first thought was that at the very least I still had my phone!

By far my worst moment. Happy birthday to me:)

I actually learned a lot from it, and even wrote a whole post about this disaster and it’s repercussions HERE.

There you have it!

That’s the full rundown of my top 5 travel disasters.

Which one made you laugh the most? Any travel disasters that you want to share in the comments below? I’m sure that hearing yours will maybe make me feel less bad about myself LOL!

Just to reiterate: Bad things happen everywhere, no matter what you do! Please don’t let these little travel disaster horror stories deter you from traveling the world: in the end, they just make for better stories😉

What’s your worst travel disaster?