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A few tourists went on an unfenced safari in Botswana and awoke to lions licking the morning dew from their tent. The campers kept enough composure to remain quiet and take video from within the tent.
I've camped on an unfenced reserve. You're assured that animals recognize tent structures as solid objects, just as any other building. Part of the experience is animals passing through camp and you accept the risks. Still, I would have been frozen solid with terror in this situation.
Made me wonder, what's the scariest, most dangerous or most unsettling situation you've found yourself in while on vacation? How did you handle it?
Made me wonder, what's the scariest, most dangerous or most unsettling situation you've found yourself in while on vacation? How did you handle it?
My boat nearly overturning in Lava Falls during a Grand Canyon river rafting trip. There wasn't much to handle; just high-side for all I was worth and hope the oarsman could regain control of our dory before we all ended up in the drink. (He did, but it was a terrifying few seconds!)
Pales in comparison but when in San Diego got on a crotch-rocket with a complete stranger at the wheel and got that thing up to 130mph+.
Nothing went wrong and can.t give more details but just so young, and oh, so naive.
When I was working in the housing projects of Detroit, we decided to take a trip to Northern Ontario. We had recently purchased a great book - The Ghost Towns of Ontario - and left for some exploring.
We found several ghost towns and took a few pictures. When we were looking for the fourth town, we were waved down my a shotgun-toting local demanding to know why we were there. We were told basically to turn around and leave the 't in area. I wasn't in a good position to argue.
I was working in one of the most crime-ridden areas at the time and where do I get a shotgun pointed at my head. In gun controlled Canada. Go figure.
While working in Dar es Salaam a couple years ago I hired a bajaj driver to take me to a place called the Slipway on Msasani Bay that has restaurants and shopping. It was only a few miles from my hotel and sounded like a fun place to spend the evening. I had hired drivers to go places or just ride down the beach and didn't think much of it.
As we were tooling down the mostly-deserted street, two guys on a dirt bike pulled up next to us. They were in army-green fatigues with no insignia anywhere but they both had AKs slung over one shoulder, and they pointed them in our direction as the passenger motioned my driver to pull over. I didn't know if they were interested in the driver or in me so as we rolled to a stop I prepared to make a run for it. They pulled the driver out with barely a glance at me. As it turned out, they were traffic police who were shaking my driver down because he didn't have a license. While they were busy with the driver I oozed out the other side of the vehicle and jogged the half-mile back to my hotel without so much as a backward glance and ordered Indian food from the hotel restaurant for dinner instead.
I mentioned this to a State Department coworker the next morning and she was horrified. Not because of the traffic stop, but because the Slipway was turning into a place to rob tourists and someone she knew had gotten stabbed there a couple weeks prior. Maybe it's just as well I never made it.
Hotels, if not looked after, could contain numerous hazards, as 10.3% surveyed attested to. Falling down an uneven staircase, getting food poisoning in the restaurant and slipping on a wet floor are all possible causes of accidents in holiday accommodation. LOL.
Hotels, if not looked after, could contain numerous hazards, as 10.3% surveyed attested to. Falling down an uneven staircase, getting food poisoning in the restaurant and slipping on a wet floor are all possible causes of accidents in holiday accommodation. LOL.
I stayed in a hotel with a small kitchen, modest suite. I opened a kitchen drawer looking for spoons and saw 3 used hypodermic needles rolling around in the drawer.
Ever had an odiferous filthy possibly homeless person sit next to you, brush shoulders with you or cough on you? There is this, admittedly politically incorrect, involuntary icky uncomfortable feeling of exposure, without understanding what you've been exposed to.
I felt that, mixed with indigence. Hightailed it outta there.
The scariest moment I have had while traveling was in Beijing. I always research places before I visit, and I make sure to learn a few words of the language, gain a rough understanding of the layout of the city, familiarize myself with the local currency...that sort of thing. Beijing was just supposed to be a layover, so I didn't do any research since I was only going to be in the airport. Well, a 4 hour layover stretched into a 3-day stay due to a flight cancellation. The first two days a couple of fellow students and I shared cabs to the city center just to wander around and enjoy this impromptu mini-vacation after our semester abroad.
Our flight departed on the third day, and the other students decided to spend their last few hours re-packing and relaxing instead of going out into the city again. I wanted to pack in every second I could, so I grabbed a taxi on my own. By this point I was relatively familiar with the route between the airport hotel and the city center. The outbound journey was just like the others, but the return veered far off the standard route into an area that seemed almost rural. I was terrified that the driver was going to rob and/or assault me on this lonely road. I had absolutely no way of communicating with him and no idea where in relation to the hotel I might be. I considered bailing out of the car when he stopped briefly for a traffic signal, but decided that wouldn't do me any good since there was no one else around to assist me and I lacked the linguistic ability to ask anyone for help anyway. After two to three times as long as the trip had previously taken, we finally pulled up to the hotel from the opposite direction as usual. Turns out he was just running up the meter! I was never so relieved and happy to pay an inflated fare in all my life!
Indian Taxi Driver from "Washington Flyer cabs" from Dulles airport literally threw my mother and me out of the cab when we got to our hotel because we forgot to pay the tip. He kept saying "this is America, not your country, this is America" and I kept thinking "well it's obviously not going to be Europe is it? I just got off a 7 hour flight!".
We tried to give him a tip when we realised what he was whining about but he threw the money back at us.
I was going to phone the police because I thought he was going to start attacking us, he was that explosive. Everyone sitting in/around the hotel driveway was staring at him/us, it was mortifying.
Last edited by GymFanatic; 11-28-2016 at 08:25 PM..
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