35 Horrible And Creepy Travel Experiences These People Wish They Hadn’t Had

1992 I was walking up the stairs to the ticket booths in the Warsaw, Poland central train station. All of a sudden this dude is falling down the stairs coming to rest a few stairs above where I was standing. Dude had a long screw driver sticking out of his abdomen.

I was working at the Sochi Olympics and saw a pack of stray dogs chase and take down one of our teams translators before people scared them away. That was an eye opener.

Husband had a month long job in Japan. We joined him for the last week of his gig. My daughter and I had made reservations about two months ahead of the trip to go to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka (an hour by train outside of Tokyo). Since we didn't know husband's work schedule, only got tickets for her and I. Found out last minute that he had the day off so he came with us. They managed to find him a ticket and he joined us.

We left earlier than planned because he had to get back for a 5:00 call. We would continue on up to Harajuku after his subway stop. Two stops before we would have parted ways, the train came to an immediate stop and frantic Japanese came over the speaker. Shortly after that, the car started rocking. And kept rocking. And kept rocking. For about ten minutes. Hubs said he realized it was bad when he saw people taking out their phones and start texting (something you never saw on the subway). After half an hour, the car slowly crawled to the next station. A friendly English speaking woman informed us that there had been a bad earthquake, and the trains were shutting down.

We walked the two miles back to the hotel and met up with the rest of his crew. We had to stay in the lobby for eight hours while maintenance checked the building for damages before we could go up to our rooms. The aftershocks continued for the next five days before we flew back home.

We were in the Tokyo subway for the Tohoku earthquake on March 11, 2011. I can honestly say, I didn't start getting nervous until they started talking about needing to take iodine table because of the power plant emissions. And it wasn't until we were back home and watching all the news specials about the quake and tsunami that I realized how truly dangerous the situation had been. Mid western ignorance on earthquakes saved our trip, I guess.

The first time I ever visited the London Bridge was the day the terrorist attack happened where they drove a van through the crowd.

A friend and I were waiting for a night train in Naples and after someone tried to steal our bags decided to go everywhere together. It was a good thing because a man who had been whistling at us for an hour tried to follow us into the bathroom.

A cult behind several murders in China tried to recruit me for some reason.

I fell asleep on a long-distance bus in Greece and woke to a toothless old woman running her fingers through my hair. She kept repeating something in Greek over and over; other riders found it hilarious but wouldn't tell me what she was saying. Unfortunately I couldn't get off the bus, so I had to make her get away from me, and then sat there pissed off and embarrassed for the remaining 90 minutes of the trip

I have mostly traveled through Europe, and the only time I've ever really felt uncomfortable was when I was groped on the metro in Rome. We were packed into the car, and I felt a hand against my back...no big deal, I live in New York City, it happens. But then the hand slipped between me and the next person and around to near my stomach. Oh, maybe a pickpocket? Well I had a money belt, so I was okay there. The hand grabbed my breast. We were so tightly packed that I couldn't turn around, and I just...froze. I wanted to say, "stop" or "don't" or anything at all but in the moment every word of my Italian fled from my brain and I felt like a bucket of scalding water had been dumped over my head. The ride felt like it lasted forever. At the next stop I forced my way out of the car and out into the fresh air. Rome is so beautiful, but it felt pretty damn ugly that day.

A handful of men in Thailand were vehemently trying to haggle with my friends to purchase me. They kept pulling my arms to try and seperate us and asking "how much" and offering different amount of money.

Edit: Jesus this blew up! Thailand is a very beautiful place and very safe for travel, guys! The place I was at, Pattaya Beach, is the central location where we are allowed to stay when the ship pulls into port. It's basically nothing but bars and brothels. Don't go there. I don't know why they even let *us* go there. Even if you did go, you'd most likely not be in any danger, the people are very helpful and kind but every place has bad people and we happened to run into them. I'm not even sure if these men were Thai. Don't let this freak you out from going. SEA does have a dark underbelly of human trafficking but it's pretty unlikely you will be involved in it as a tourist.

And everyone who is freaking out about the Sailors "buying" underage girls; they're just stupid kids who want to get their d**k wet. They have literally no idea that these girls are underage and just think they're paying a prostitue. Most of these idiots can't even fathom that child trafficking is a thing. We make every effort possible to keep this from happening and inform our Sailors about what is really going on. Your average US servicemember is just as disgusted as you are that this happes to children.

When I was a kid, my dad used to lead groups of college kids to Central and South America to build houses. One year he decided that we should ride the chicken but from Guatemala City to Mexico City. Long trip.

We got to the border and a soldier with a hell of a big machine gun got on the bus and looked around. Saw that we had about 15 college girls on the bus, and then went and talked to someone on the phone. About two minutes later, a bunch of guys with machine guns got on the bus and informed us that all the males had to get off the bus and line up in front of it.

I remember that we did it, but there was a hell of a lot of tension in the air as we did.

Soldiers crammed into the bus. We waited.

Finally, they got off the bus and we got back on and away we went. It was a whole lot of nothing, really, but I remember my dad, the leader of the group, looking very pale and sweating bullets.

Edit 1: this was in the late 80s. We'd heard lots of tales of bad stuff.
Edit 2: chicken BUS. We didn't ride the chicken, we rode the chicken bus.
Edit 3: okay, they might not have been machine guns. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. They still were large caliber guns, I was 12 and I was unarmed. I'm sure if it had gone differently and I'd have been shot to death, it would have given me great comfort to know that my death was caused by a semi-automatic.

I was traveling in Costa Rica with two flashy businessmen who were there to possibly purchase a gentleman’s club. We were staying at the Radisson and asked the concierge to get us a cab to the club. We got in the cab and made sure that the driver knew where we were going. We were told it was a 10 min drive. About 7 min in I realized that we were not in a touristy part of town. At all. The driver is whispering into his phone in Spanish, staring at us in the rear view mirror. I get uneasy and look at my companions, who are clearly feeling the same way. We ask “are we almost there?” Oh si! Uno momento. More whispering. Not good. We are being set up. It’s been 10 minutes and we are in a sketchy residential area.

I’m sitting in the middle and my partner opens his briefcase and hands me a pen and tells me to stab someone if I need to. What?! He passes another pen to the other man. He’s sitting directly behind the driver and takes his own gold pen and holds it to the drivers jugular and screams “TAKE US BACK TO THE RADISSON RIGHT F*****G NOW”, the partner snatched the drivers phone and hangs up. I’m just clutching the pen.

We did make it back to the Radisson. The jewelry was deposited into the safe in the room for the rest of the trip and we eventually made it safely to the club. I was young and naive, I had had my passport for 3 days at this point and didn’t really get that we shouldn’t have been traveling there with that amount of flashy jewelry.

Was in a hostel in England. It was late night at the bar and lots of people were hanging around. There were 2 guys there from Eastern Europe. Both big guys, very intimidating. They were hitting on the girls working there. Got to the point where they were drunk and groping on them. Things were escalating and the girls were clearly not cool and needed help.

So now it’s 1;00 am. Two female bartenders being harassed badly by these guys. Probably 8 other people in he bar. 5 guys, and together, we probably weighed as much as the 2 dudes. We decided we had to act. One of us stood up and told them they had to go. The other 4 of us were holding our beer bottles by the neck, ready to use them as weapons, the guys stood up.

This was probably the most scared I’ve ever been. I was ready to fight, but didn’t want to be in this situation. THANK GOD the guys started yelling in another language and walked out. The girls locked the door immediately and thanked us. We all hung out a couple hours drinking free beer and tried to calm down. In hindsight, glad I had the experience. One of her girls there is still a good friend of mine. That kind of situation can bond people I guess, lol

I was working in a poor community in a small village in Romania (helping to build a small extension to a school), at around dusk I decided to go for a short walk to the local shop for some water when a car drove past me. They suddenly broke and reversed down the road and stopped beside me, telling me to get into their car as they want to show me their cool things (radios, cars, knives) they kept slowly curb-crawling me and demanding I got in the car until I got back to my group whereby they sped off. For the next couple of days the same car (I believe) kept driving past and stopping outside where we were staying (for 30 minute intervals several times a day) and I was staying a good hour away from the village.

Creepy as all hell and I still believe it could have gone badly.

I was on a volunteer trip to Guatemala and we took a day trip to see some Mayan ruins on a small island. My friend and I were looking for a bathroom and several locals pointed us in the direction of one at the top of the mountain. We found a small building with no door and one toilet. My friend says I can go first and she’ll stand watch. I start going about my business when I hear my friend saying that I should hurry up and then I hear a mans voice shouting something in spanish about “permiso”. Out of no where he barges in while I’m mid pee pointing a very large gun at me. He had some sort of uniform on so he may have been police but I’m not sure. I pull up my pants, completely paranoid, grab my friend, tell the man Lo siento over and over and run as fast as I can down the hill. He was shouting after us but didn’t follow. Although nothing happened I was terrified and my poor friend still had to pee!!

Gypsies in Romania tried to (what I can only assume) sell me a baby... The woman, who looked like she was using since the day she first saw light, kept a one sided haggling conversation in her own language all the while shoving the tiny child at me. The swarm of children aged between 2-12 kept touching me and what I can only imagine is "appraising" my clothes... This didn't really end until I had to raise my voice and go serious. I walked away and went back to the village where I was staying with a friend of mine at his distant relatives' house.

After telling our hosts the bizarre tale attempted human trafficking, they proceeded to inform me that the child was most likely stolen from somewhere else in Romania, another town most likely. It was apparently a local racket, reselling newborn kids to international tourists. What really gets me is the way in which they were telling this story. As if it was business as usual.

P.S. Hosts where very kind hospitable people. Lead tough lives though...