I’m so excited to share this one with you! I’ve gathered our top 10 most funny (and unlucky) travel stories from our round-the-world-trip, and put them into short stories in this blog post.
I want to show you that traveling isn’t always as glamorous as it’s set out to be. I’m sorry to break it to you, but that classic Instagram picture where you see someone sit in a bubble bath in the middle of the mountains with a glass of champagne is just not something that the majority of us will ever get to experience.
Traveling can be rough! In fact, two of these travel stories that I’m going to share are about poop, one has a sex worker in it, and another one is about bed bugs.
That’s as glamorous as it gets here on Worldwide Walkers travel blog – Sorry!
But all the mishaps that happened to us during our trip are what created these funny travel stories. And I honestly wouldn’t exchange any of them for a glass of champagne and a bubble bath in the mountains. Although, alcohol might have made some of these short travel stories a bit more endurable…
Anyways, this is our top 10 most funny travel short stories from our one-year trip around the world!
1. Getting bed bugs in Thailand
All right, so let’s start from the very beginning.
Glenn and I took a whole year out of our regular calendars and devoted this time to travel around the world. We left on July 10 2019, and we bumped into our first challenge only one week later in Thailand. I experienced every backpacker’s worst nightmare: Bed Bugs! UGH!
We had spent the first week getting over our jet lag in Bangkok followed by a celebration of Glenn’s birthday in Kanchanaburi. I finally started to adapt to my new lifestyle, and I was excited to go and explore some of the beautiful Thai islands.
So, we jumped on the night bus from Bangkok and made our way towards Chumphon where we got dropped off at 3 AM and had to wait for the 6 AM boat… That’s what happens when you always go for the cheapest option.
A few hours (and a couple of mosquito bites) later, it was finally time to board the boat! Little did I know that this boat would be the source of the next 2 weeks of hell for me. Because I apparently got bed bugs from this boat.
Later that same day, I remember waking up from a nap in our hotel in Koh Tao. My back was completely red and itchy. It looked like a rash, and I naturally started to panic (I’m an anxious type).
But Glenn calmed me down and convinced me to go to the beach and try to relax. And since I was convinced that it was just a rash (or some kind of allergic reaction), I said to myself, “what the heck, let’s go to the beach! The rash will be gone by tomorrow.”
Surprise, surprise – the rash wasn’t gone by the next day. In fact, it had gotten much, much worse! It was so red and fiery that I thought about calling my travel insurance – can someone please get me a doctor?!
I told myself to take a deep breath and just go and talk to the pharmacist around the corner, maybe they could help me. So, I walked into the pharmacy, lifted up my shirt and showed my back covered in the red burning spots. The lady in the pharmacy just said, “Oooh bed bugs.”
Excuse me? Did you say FREAKING BED BUGS?!
NO NO NO, I’d rather just have bad allergies acting up.
Come on, just tell me it’s a rash…
I actually (dumb tourist as I am) tried to convince her that it was a rash, but she just looked at me and repeated, “Bed bugs!”
So, I spent the next 2 days anxiously cleaning all of our stuff and looking for bed bugs, their eggs, and their excrements. It was pure hell! The following days, the swelling continued to get worse and itchier. I actually learned that the reason why my body reacted so badly is because I’m allergic to these small bloodsuckers.
Glenn on the other hand, he didn’t get a single bite…
It took more than 2 weeks for the bites to finally start to disappear. It was such an itchy nightmare!
But today it’s one of my “funny” travel stories. Who’s that dumb that they’d try to convince a pharmacist that they have a rash rather than just admit they have bed bugs? – ME!
If you want to read more about my story and learn what to do if you get these small bloodsuckers on a trip, then go read my blog post about it: Bed bugs in Thailand.
2. Fresh poop-laundry in Cambodia
This is quite the disgusting story… But it’s also one of my top 10 funny travel short stories! Although, it wasn’t much fun for Glenn – but we’ll get into that.
When you’re traveling full-time, you can’t do your own laundry. So, we often hand in our laundry to some locals in exchange for a bit of money.
And at this point of our trip, we were staying in a hostel in Cambodia where they recommended us to go and give in our laundry to the family living across the street. We gave the family $5 and they did all of our laundry – nice deal!
The next morning, Glenn went to pick it up. We were packing our backpacks because we were heading onto a new destination in Cambodia. So, we had to catch the bus and were therefore in a bit of a hurry.
We started packing our “fresh” clothes when suddenly Glenn saw a big brown stain on his toiletry bag. He looked confused – What could this be?
I told him to smell it.
(All right, I know it’s really mean to tell someone to smell a brown stain, but it might as well have been mud?! There was only one way to find out…)
So Glenn smelled it. And then he gagged.
It was poop. Fresh sh*t. From a human.
We looked around to detect the poop source and saw that the plastic, which Glenn had gotten the laundry back in, had a big piece of poop on it. He had put the fresh pack of laundry on the bed – on top of his toiletry bag, which explains how the poop ended up there. So, somehow the family across the street had put our clean bag of laundry onto a poop.
We quickly learned that there were small poop stains on several pieces of Glenn’s clothes.
It was really disgusting… but somehow I couldn’t stop laughing when I learned that it was only on his stuff and not on mine (I know, I can be quite the mean girlfriend). Glenn on the other hand, he did not think it was funny at all – he was so pissed off!
We didn’t go back to the little family to complain because they were living in a small shed, and you could see that $5 meant a lot to their economy. Their small children were running around naked, so we assumed that it was their poop.
We just let go of the incident and instead decided to embrace it for what it was – a funny (and disgusting) travel story to add to the collection.
3. Getting spiked in Cambodia
Sooo… out of all the short travel stories, this is probably one of the least funny ones – at least for Glenn.
Glenn and I don’t go out and party hard that often. We are the kind of couple who instead enjoy the bar culture where you can have some great laughs with friends, do a bit of dancing, and play a round of pool.
However, if you ever make it to Siem Reap in Cambodia, then it’s mandatory to go on a pub crawl with your hostel. It’s a pretty rowdy experience where everyone drinks a ton of shots and gets absolutely smashed before waking up the next day with a raging hangover.
Sounds lovely, right?
Anyways, we joined the pub crawl one evening – which was actually more of a club crawl.
When we made it to the last club, we were all moderately wasted, but not completely smashed. So, Glenn and I started playing beer pong with another couple from the hostel. The couple suddenly left, so I saw the opportunity to also leave the table and go play table football with some of the guys from the hostel.
Consequently, Glenn was left alone at the beer pong table. BIG MISTAKE!
A few moments later, I saw that he was suddenly playing with a very tall slim Cambodian woman who was wearing 3 layers of make-up, insane amounts of glitter, and the smallest mini-skirt I’ve ever seen. She also had very broad shoulders, a big jar, and an obvious Adam’s apple… You get the picture now?
I honestly thought it was a pretty hilarious scene. It was obvious that she was some kind of sex worker in the way she was dressed and in the way that she approached Glenn. But what she didn’t know was that he had come with someone else – me!
Glenn and the tall woman was playing against two Cambodian guys who obviously knew the woman. It honestly looked a bit shady from afar. It was obvious that they wanted something out of poor drunk Glenn.
But Glenn isn’t stupid, he knew what was going on. But the reason why he didn’t want to leave the table was because we had paid for the beer, and he wanted to drink it all. So he just kept playing until there was no more beer left… My boyfriend is Belgian and he just can’t let any beer go to waste.
What he didn’t know (until he chugged down a full glass) was that they had swapped out the beer with something else – he said it just tasted like water.
Strange. Where had the beer gone? He didn’t even see them switch around the drinks.
After some time, the whole situation only got stranger, so I decided to interfere – it was time to just leave and go home.
However, the minute we left the club, Glenn suddenly lost the ability to walk. He was all drowsy and he felt like he had to puke. I supported him the best I could and we started to walk home. Keep in mind that we drank the same amount all night, which meant that I was also drunk – but in no way was I in his condition… and Glenn can normally drink way more than me.
So I knew that something was completely wrong with him.
Long story short, Glenn slept by the toilet all night and had a complete blackout. It was obvious that something had been put in his drink – he couldn’t remember anything the next day.
The only time he had been drinking something unknown and different from what I was drinking was when he was playing beer pong with the Cambodian prostitute and her two male friends. They were obviously running a scheme and must have put some kind of tranquilizer in his drink.
If a situation seems strange, then remove yourself from it! Don’t be like Glenn and insist on drinking the last drop of beer – only to find yourself in a strange blackout within the next hour.
What a night. I honestly had a great time! Glenn… not so much. This night definitely deserved a spot in our hall of fame of funny travel stories!
Just a little side note to this story: Cambodians are some of the friendliest people on this earth! I don’t want to scare people off from going here with this story because getting spiked can happen anywhere in the world. To show how nice Cambodians are, I’ve added a picture of Glenn chatting and laughing with 5 friendly monks!
4. Learning about domestic violence in Vietnam
This is one of my favorite funny travel short stories!
This story both shows how incredibly friendly Vietnamese people can be towards foreigners, and how we humans can still manage to find a way to communicate without knowing each other’s languages – and in spite of big cultural differences.
This funny travel story takes place in Tam Coc, which is one of the most beautiful places in all of Vietnam! Read my blog post about things to do in Tam Coc, and you’ll see.
We stayed in a guesthouse and one night the owners invited us to join them for dinner. We gladly accepted! They had cooked an impressive feast, and we were excited to try some new Vietnamese food.
The only problem was that we didn’t speak Vietnamese, and they didn’t speak English. So after a while, we ran out of body language, and it became quiet around the table. I mean… you can’t rub your tummy and say, “mhmmm” all night. We had to find something to talk about.
So we pulled out Google Translate – every traveler’s best friend.
And it turned out to be so much fun!
The owner wanted to introduce his wife, so he said something in Vietnamese, which came out in a monotone robotic Google Translate voice like this, “My wife’s name is Bitch”.
We all fell into a coma of laughter!
His wife’s name is “Bich”, but Google translated it into “Bitch”. It was hilarious!
We had so much fun and ate so much fantastic food (which they insisted we shouldn’t pay for). However, the more rice wine we drank, the weirder the night became.
The man started telling us stories about how his wife was being violent to him all the while his wife was sitting right next to him and laughing about it. Then the wife tried to teach me how I should punish Glenn. According to her, I should take his money, so he doesn’t go sleep with other women, and then I should start slapping him – Give him the “100 hands” as she called it on Google Translate.
We don’t condone domestic violence in any way! But we also didn’t want to be rude to our hosts, who were both laughing about this matter. So, we kind of just laughed along…
Even though the whole night took a weird turn, we still had a really fun night! These people were so generous to us. And despite our cultural differences, language barriers, and different views on domestic violence – we still had one of the best nights of our entire trip.
It was definitely one of our best local and cultural experiences, and today it’s one of my favorite funny short stories from our one year of travel.
5. A dog pooped on my seat in Bolivia
Okay, so here goes my second poop story… Apparently one wasn’t enough.
This short story definitely deserves a spot in our top 10 funny travel stories – I still can’t believe the bad luck we had on this day.
This travel story takes place in one of the most incredible places in the world – Salar de Uyuni! Salar de Uyuni is the name of the famous salt flats in Uyuni, Bolivia. It’s an area that doesn’t look like it belongs on earth. It’s honestly one of the most incredible places you can visit in this world! And I’m not exaggerating.
However, we made the mistake of choosing the cheapest salt flat tour that we could find. It’s a habit to look for the cheapest tours when you’re a budget traveler… But word of advice – don’t be a cheapskate when choosing a Salar de Uyuni tour.
Long story short, we ended up sitting with our knees in our faces in the back of a jeep for more than 8 hours with a really rude Bolivian family, a guide who didn’t speak English, and an ugly little dog.
The whole tour was one big mistake from our side. We should just have paid for something better from the beginning!
It was such a bizarre day because we were visiting one of the world’s most amazing places, yet we weren’t really enjoying it because of the weird tour we had gotten ourselves into.
And after several hours of disappointment in our fellow explorers, just before the tour was over and we were about to head home, then the rude Bolivian family’s little dog took a sh*t on my seat.
I was SO mad that I refused to get back into the car. I wasn’t mad at the little dog, but at the irresponsible family who had been feeding the dog candy and other kinds of crap all day.
The Bolivian family started to panic a bit when they saw how mad I became, but their solution was just to hand Glenn a tissue.
WHAT?!
So, they wanted Glenn to clean their dogs poop? I honestly couldn’t believe how rude they were, and both Glenn and I refused to clean up after their dog.
The poor tour guide had also had enough of the family, so he just took the tissue and started cleaning the seat.
I was just thinking to myself, what kind of person doesn’t clean their own dogs poop?! They were such bad dog owners. After the seat had been cleaned with a tissue, they even wanted me to go back into the jeep and sit on it… They didn’t offer to change seats.
Glenn and I eventually reached a point where we just started to laugh because of how unfortunate the whole day had been. That’s why today this story made it into one of my top funny and unlucky travel short stories.
If you want to read more about this unfortunate day, then go read my blog post: How (not) to visit Salar de Uyuni
6. Getting stuck on a mountain in Bali
This funny travel story is one of those classic Southeast Asia backpacker stories that involves a scary scooter fall and a breakdown in the middle of nowhere.
We had rented a scooter from our guesthouse in Bali. It was in a very poor condition, yet we thought it was a great idea to drive to the top of the steep 600 meter high Mount Lempuyang, and visit the famous temple on the top.
But of course it turned out to be a very bad idea…
The hill was too steep for the scooter. I was driving with Glenn on the back, and I turned the gas as much as I could, but we were basically standing still on the hill. So Glenn had to jump off and start walking up.
We decided to take turns in driving and walking up the steep mountain.
It went fine, until it didn’t…
At some point during Glenn’s turn of driving, I heard him scream, “F******CK!”, and then there was silence.
SH*T! Did he drive off the mountain?
In a complete panic, I tried running up the steep hill. I made it around the corner and saw Glenn in the middle of the road. He had fallen with the scooter. But he was okay, and there luckily weren’t any scratches on him or on the scooter.
I was so grateful that nothing had happened to him!
Apparently, my scooter helmet, which was laying between his legs, had rolled off during a sharp turn. So he tried to reach out for it but consequently lost his balance on the scooter. He said that the only way out of the situation was to just let himself fall slowly onto the side.
The only problem now was that the scooter wouldn’t start. The battery was completely dead.
We tried several times, but after 20 minutes we had to admit to defeat. We were stranded on top of a mountain in Bali… At least we had an incredible view over the island and the ocean!
I remember how funny it was when Glenn tried to ask for help when cars were driving by. Glenn waived with his arms signaling them to stop and help us, but they didn’t get the message because the people in cars just smiled and waived back.
After about half an hour, Glenn randomly tried to start the scooter again – and it magically worked!
We were contemplating whether we should continue up the road to the temple (we were only 900 meters away), or if we should just ride back down.
We took the fall and the broken scooter as a bad omen and decided to just head back down the mountain.
So basically, we never got to see the temple… But riding up that hill in the first place wasn’t a complete waste because now we have yet another travel tale to add to our collection of funny stories.
I know so many travelers who have scary scooter stories, and now we have one too! Although, today we find it quite funny and mostly just laugh about it. But please be careful on the scooters in Southeast Asia… A lot of accidents happens.
You can check out some my blog posts about Bali here:
7. Drunk on rice wine with locals in Vietnam
While writing these funny short travel stories, I find it a reoccurring theme that it’s often Glenn who is the subject of the stupid things that happen… Coincidence???
Glenn is also the main character in this story, which he later that day came to regret.
Long story short, Glenn and I was out exploring Hanoi when we started to feel hungry. We walked around in an area that didn’t have many food options, so when we saw a little local street vendor we decided to just go for it.
It was the kind of place where you sit on small plastic chairs, and you throw your leftover food onto the ground. Not very hygienic, but a great cultural experience.
The local people sitting at the little street food restaurant were excited about two foreigners joining them. One of the men told Glenn to come and sit next to him by slapping the little red plastic chair besides him. Glenn sat down, and he was quickly offered beer, cigarettes, and rice wine.
The man constantly filled up Glenn’s glass and yelled “trăm phần trăm!”
trăm phần trăm apparently means 100% – or bottoms up!
The Vietnamese man made it his mission to drink Glenn under the table. Glenn looked at his watch and saw that it was just past 12 PM, which is the appropriate hour to start drinking in his world according to Belgians, so he accepted the challenge.
The only problem was that Glenn had never had Vietnamese rice wine before, and it’s not unusual that rice wine has an alcohol percentage of 40%. So, I knew that Glenn would get completely smashed from this little game he was playing.
A lot of Vietnamese people started to join in on the scene, and all of a sudden Glenn was chugging rice wine with half of Hanoi’s citizens (yes that’s a complete overstatement! My point is that a lot of people joined).
When the bottles were empty, I decided that it was time to end the show and move on with the day.
Glenn was so drunk that he started hugging the old Vietnamese grandmother who was part of the street vendor family. To my surprise, the grandmother responded by touching and grabbing his biceps. It was such a hilarious scene from my sober point of view!
The street vendors didn’t want us to pay a dime because they were just so happy that we had stopped by to join them for lunch and a drinking game. It’s incredible how generous people around the world can be!
I saw that Glenn’s condition worsened by the minute, so I got a taxi to take us back to our hostel. 20 minutes later, Glenn had his head in the toilet and then passed out on the bed for hours.
Just a little advice; if you’ve never had Vietnamese rice wine before, then take it easy – it’s really strong!
You can watch this funny travel story in our travel vlog beneath:
8. Dehydrating on Roy’s Peak Track in New Zealand
Out of all our funny travel stories, this short story is probably the dumbest one. We absolutely have no one to blame but ourselves for this…
This is the story of when we dehydrated on Roy’s Peak Track in New Zealand.
It’s really dangerous to go hiking without enough liquids, so I don’t know how funny this travel story actually is – but at least we learned from it, nothing happened, and we can just look back and laugh about our stupidity today.
So basically, we thought it was a good idea to hike one of New Zealand’s toughest trails at noon on a hot sunny January day. Furthermore, we thought it was a good idea to do it without enough water.
We completely underestimated how tough this hiking trail was and therefore miscalculated how much water we would need… The hike ends at the incredible 1578 meter high viewpoint, and it was at this point that we officially ran out of water.
The remaining 8 kilometers turned out to be a nightmare.
We were walking back down for more than 2 hours in the blazing hot afternoon sun without any water. We both started to feel really bad – obviously dehydrating and feeling dizzy and powerless.
This just shows how IMPORTANT water or any type of liquid is while hiking. It’s super dangerous to go on a hike and not have enough water… ALWAYS bring more water than you think you can drink. More often than not you’ll end up opening that extra bottle.
We miraculously made it back to our van in the parking lot in one piece and drank everything we could find in the van. The only cold thing we had was milk, so Glenn started chugging all the milk. I didn’t care about cold or hot I just needed something liquid – and a lot of it! So, I took the gallon of water we had in our car and started drinking from it. Although, it was actually more like tasteless tea because it had been standing in the sun all day long.
It was honestly such a pathetic sight! I can’t imagine how stupid we must have looked in the parking lot of Roy’s Peak trail, panic-drinking everything we had…
Today it’s just one of our funny travel stories – “Remember that time we almost dehydrated and died on Roy’s Peak?” – and then we have a laugh. But lesson learned: NEVER underestimate a trail, it can be so dangerous if you start dehydrating because you didn’t bring enough water.
If you want to read the full story, then check our my blog post: How (not) to hike Roy’s Peak
9. Almost missing our plane to Chile
Come to think of it, this short story isn’t actually that funny compared to some of the other travel stories.
But it still deserves to be told because it was one of those, “What the F*CK!”-moments. It’s also one of those dreadful travel stories that many full-time travelers have experienced, and it feels so unfair and unnecessary.
That’s why we just have to laugh at it.
So basically we had paid A LOT of money for a direct flight ticket from Auckland in New Zealand to Santiago in Chile. The tickets were non-refundable, so we couldn’t afford to miss the flight.
Luckily, everything went smooth. Until it didn’t.
As always, I had done my research and checked all the necessary information we needed to know in order to enter Chile. I also researched whether you needed proof of an onward ticket or not, which you should ALWAYS check before going anywhere. After a small hour of research, I concluded that it was okay to fly to Chile on a one-way ticket, so I didn’t think more about it.
That is, until we were standing at the check-in desk in Auckland Airport and a lady from the airline staff asked me, “May I see your return ticket?”
I told her that we wouldn’t return to New Zealand, but instead move into Bolivia afterwards. We just hadn’t planned that far.
…She said we needed an onward ticket to get on the plane, and thus refused to let us check in.
I started panicking.
We had spent so much money on this flight ticket, and it was going to be my first time in South America. And now I maybe didn’t get to go?!
The thing is, you get nowhere in life if you just sit down and cry. So, I picked myself up and we started looking at our options. We looked into buying a plane ticket out of Chile, but we couldn’t decide for how long we wanted to stay in Chile. We also didn’t know which city we should fly out from… There was just too much pressure on us to start planning our whole South America trip in just 1 hour.
So, we found another solution.
There is a website that offers “fake” onward tickets for $12 per ticket… The tickets are actually real, but they automatically get cancelled 24 hours after you buy them. It honestly sounds super shady, but at this point we didn’t care. We just needed a quick solution to our problem.
So, we bought two random onward tickets online and hoped they would arrive in our mailbox before the check in closed. About 20 minutes later, we received our two “fake” tickets out of Chile to somewhere random in the US.
I was a bit nervous to return back to the queue for check-in, but at least now I had the proof they were looking for.
When we made it to the check-in counter, we didn’t get the same woman as before. We were now being checked in by the woman who was standing right next to the woman who rejected us.
We handed in our passports and ticket numbers, but when I asked her if she wanted to see our onward tickets she said, “No thanks”.
WHAT?!
So that one lady sent me into a complete panic coma for nothing? Apparently it’s up to the individual to ask you about your onward tickets…
I felt so annoyed that she had to put us through the stress, yet I was super relieved that we were allowed to check in!
It’s just one of those typical travel stories that you only think is funny afterwards… I know that a lot of people have experienced this around the world. And it’s super annoying that it’s up to the airline to ask, and not just a permanent requirement for the country. Because then you can never be sure about what’s right or wrong.
When we arrived in Chile, nobody asked us to see anything. The immigration officer took a quick look at me and my passport and gave me the approval stamp in less than 2 seconds.
10. An uncomfortable hospital visit in Bolivia
Okay, this short story might be a little bit uncomfortable – but it actually turned out to be one of the most funny travel stories from our trip.
It’s not funny because I got sick. But the hospital visit turned out to be rather hilarious!
We started our trip in Bolivia at a 3500 meters altitude, which led to me getting altitude sickness. I was feeling awful, so I decided to call my travel insurance who advised me to go to a lower-altitude city and visit a hospital. They booked me in at a hospital in Sucre for the following day.
When Glenn and I showed up at the hospital the next day, we were the only ones there. So, it didn’t take long before a doctor was ready to see me.
The doctor was nice, but he didn’t really speak English, and we didn’t really speak Spanish… So it was limited how much I really understood of what was going on.
He took my temperature and listened to my lungs. Everything was luckily in order!
Then he guided me into a small room where I didn’t really know what I was waiting for. A few moments later, a woman came to take a blood sample from me. She took out a comically large syringe and just started tapping my arm. I remember thinking, why does she need so much of my blood to do a few tests?
But I just complied.
Then I was sent into another room where I (again) didn’t know what I was waiting for.
Another lady came in with another syringe, and she signaled me to drop my pants. She then give me a jab in the butt and injected something in me… And to this day, I still have no clue what was injected into me.
Then that same lady handed me two cups and a little wooden stick. The items looked like take away dressing cups, and the stick that’s left after eating an ice cream.
Basically, they needed a urine and stool sample from me. And I did what I had to do… Although, it wasn’t easy to do it in a dressing cup.
All there was left for me to do was wait for the test results, which arrived a few hours later.
The doctor told me that I did indeed suffer from a light altitude sickness, but that I also had salmonella. So here I was, battling 2 illnesses at once!
The doctor prescribed me 4 different types of medicine… which I also wasn’t 100% clear about what was.
I don’t think I’ve ever been to such a confusing hospital visit where my whole arm was tapped of blood, I got injected with something mysterious in the butt, and I had to poop in a dressing cup.
But the hospital did help me out a lot, and I was eventually cured for any illness I had – and for that, I’m grateful!
If you want to read the full story about me getting altitude sickness and going to the hospital in Bolivia, then you can find it here: Getting altitude sickness in Uyuni. Or check out my blog post from Sucre, which is the beautiful city where I went to the hospital: Things to do in Sucre
I hope you enjoyed my compilation of these 10 funny (and unfortunate) short stories from one year of travel. As you can see, we ended up in some bad situations on our trip, but we always tried to get the best out of it. The world isn’t as dangerous as you would think, and situations often gets better if we can find something positive in the negative. Laughter truly is the best medicine!
If you have any funny travel stories that you want to share, then feel free to leave a comment. I would love to hear them. Thanks for reading and happy travels!
Nice Post ! I have read your other posts which are really informative for any traveler.
Thank you! Glad you found them informative 🙂
Losing and Finding My Way in Japan
by
Norm Williams
For much of my career, I traveled the world as a salesman. Our company hired people in
each country we sold in to help with various duties. One year I went to Japan, and the sales agent
chose the Kokusai Hotel in Kyoto for my stay due to the efficiency of its proximity to his office.
I left early on a calm, bright morning to find my way through a beautiful historic part of the city
built in traditional Japanese style.
The cute, smiley hotel receptionist had written directions on a map, circled the area of
my destination, and wrote out the address in Japanese in case I needed help. Shyly, she said in
broken Japanese-English and with her hand covering her mouth, “It’s in this area. If you get lost,
here’s the address.” With an early start and a clear sense of direction, I felt comfortable about
arriving on time – a business culture imperative in Japan.
I thought I found the circled area on the map with ease. I then compared the hand-written
address to the kanji characters on the buildings to discern a match. With no Japanese reading
ability, I struggled as if trying to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs without the Rosetta stone. I
soon realized, “I’m lost, and not just in the usual way when I’m at home in the U.S. I’m lost
without local reading or speaking ability, not knowing anyone in the city to go to for help, and a
cell phone without reception in this country to call my sales agent.” Bewildered and
disappointed that I could not find the way on my own, I began to wander.
I looked for help among the passers-by.
I used my ignorant foreigner look, which I had patented around the world — the clueless,
helpless, American businessman who is hopelessly lost, out of his element, and pleading for
some host country compassion. I tentatively approached a businessman, presumably walking to
work. Being deep in thought, I surprised him as a foreigner. But, kindly, he took pity on me. He
looked at the address and, after a long pause, said, while shaking his head side-to-side,
“Aaannnooo.” To me, this sounded like, “I don’t know.” Later I learned that “anno” is the
Japanese form of “mmmm.” We parted with a mutual look of apology.
I continued to beg for help as I disrupted Kyoto’s quiet, morning street routine. A coffee
shop appeared to be a prospect for a captive audience of potential helpers. A lone, older man,
enjoying his coffee and newspaper, sat in the corner, isolated. I cornered him. He had no choice
but to help.
He took a long, discerning look at the address, then the map, then the address, then the
map again. He pointed to a spot on the map with an air of precision and confidence. But
beneath his veneer of clarity and calm, I thought I saw a man pinning a tail on a donkey piñata
while blindfolded. Time to move on, I thought.
I learned later-on that addresses in Japan are codes to unravel. They indicate a ward, a
district within the ward, a subsection of the district called a chome, a block number within the
chome, and, finally, a building number. In Japan, they number buildings in the order of their
construction. They are not in numerical order as in the U.S. The address I looked for could be
located anywhere on the block, not somewhere in sequence. In place of a conventional numbered
street address, an address in Japan could read like this in the U.S.: “Go down this alleyway, take
a right at the nightclub, continue past the graveyard, and it’s the red door on the right after the
old oak tree.”
Next, I found a lady pulling boxes on a cart. I guessed that a delivery person would know
the area well. After quickly reviewing the address, she waved me hurriedly in another direction
as if she knew exactly where to go. We eventually reached her old van in front of a gas station.
She took out a map. As she looked at it for a long time, a deep crease began to form in her
forehead. Her air of confidence became a look of “I don’t know.” Fortunately, her fellow
worker, who sensed the problem, stepped in, analyzed the address and map, and then pointed
with the certainty of a commanding general to an area of buildings across the street. My
translation of her gesture, however, was: “It’s somewhere over there!” Another pin-the-tail
moment.
By now, I trusted no one walking the street. So, I waved down an expert – a taxi driver.
His response to reading the address was an elongated samurai grunt and finger-pointing fit in
Japanese-English, “Why are you taking a taxi? It is around here. We don’t need to drive
anywhere!” But I could detect uncertainty in his expressions as he desperately tried to help me.
I responded to him in my best, polite international English that I had learned works around the
world – simple words pronounced slowly and loudly with a local accent as if the person cannot
hear me well enough. In English with a Japanese accent, I said, “Pleeease driiiive meee tooo
theee ahdresssss ah. I wiiill paaay youuuu eeeeven if it iiis aaacross the streeeeet.” Then it
dawned on me that he did not understand any of my Japanese accented English. So, I resorted to
the universal sign language of desperation conveyed with an American G I Joe gusto that said
through body gestures, “I don’t want to walk there. I am very late! Please drive me even if it
costs $50 to go 10 feet!”
He interpreted my gestures differently from what I meant because he zoomed off with me
towards the center of town. He tossed me what looked like a Japanese language guide-book to
the city with pictures of landmarks and pages of street maps. It was like he was giving me a tour
of the town as he pointed to various places. Perceiving the misadventure ahead, I emphasized
my unwavering interest in going to the phantom address by vigorously and repeatedly pointing at
the address written on the paper. He responded with more grunts mixed with smiles as if saying,
“You can point all you want. You are my prisoner.”
After many miles, we arrived back where we began the city tour and parked outside the
gas station. A determined and, apparently, a compassionate man, the driver did not want to let
me down now. He went to the gas station’s workers and pulled them together for a conference.
For what seemed like an eternity, they diligently researched maps, considered directories,
animatedly discussed possible locations, and pointed in various directions. Then the gas station
workers appeared to bow to each other in a humble celebration. Grandly, one of them stepped
forward from the group and pointed to a building directly across the street. In the same direction
that the cart puller’s fellow worker had gestured to, and the taxi driver told me about, I
wondered, in despair, “Could it be that the building was, all this time, just over there, and I
hadn’t listened to them?”
The elated cab driver, who dearly wanted to finish the job, eagerly waved me into the
taxi. Ecstatic, I jumped in. With a simple U-turn, he would deliver me to the door of the
building across the street. But, of course, that would be too simple. We drove in Japan, and the
strict traffic laws overrode any sense of simplicity. My cab driver pulled out, zoomed off, took a
dozen or so turns down one-way streets, and we finally pulled up to the building that was across
the street. I could have walked back and forth between the building and gas station twenty times
while in the cab.
Gratefully, I paid the taxi driver a ransom for my release plus a tip for the city tour. As I
walked into my sales agent’s office sixty minutes late, his lady assistant graciously approached
me, saying, “He is waiting for you at the Kokusai hotel to bring you here.”
“Oh My God! What message did I miss that told me to wait there?” I thought in anguish.
“I spoke with a half dozen Japanese, disrupted their morning routine, struggled endlessly to
understand them, walked many city blocks, traveled unnecessary miles, felt the helplessness and
hopelessness of being lost, arrived an hour late, and I only had to wait for the sales agent to
quickly and efficiently take me to his office!
Feeling quite humble, I entered the meeting room and sat down at the conference table.
My sales agent began to speak, and I listened carefully to his direction.
Have just reread this post. Hope you’ll pass through this corner of the world again soon ❤️
I will as soon as I can ❤️