Most of us go on vacation to relax, but as it often happens when you are in a place where you don’t speak the lingo, things can go south in more ways than one. Someone asked “Travelers, what are some of the creepiest/scariest experiences you've had abroad?” and people shared their eeriest stories.
We got in touch with solo traveler Lavina Dsouza to learn some tips to avoid the sort of stories here. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote the most interesting posts, and be sure to comment your own thoughts below.
More info: Continenthop.com
#1
Hiking in Huaraz Peru, has been told to watch our gear as locals (and apparently foxes) might make off with items left around the campsite. So we made sure to clean the campsite extra well, packing all our gear in the tent and inside the fly. And after a long day hiking, off to bed. Middle of the night our tent starts shaking like crazy, I wake up freaking out thinking we were getting robbed, I started yelling and screaming. Part of the tent pushes in real far. I manage to get outside to start swinging and come face to face with the cow that had wandered into the tent ropes and got startled. Pretty lucky that it didn’t step down into the tent and hit us.
95points
#2
On a train in Athens traveling alone, a group of men tried to push me off the train with them at a stop. Three women started yelling at them and pulled me back. It happened to fast I didn't know until the one that spoke English explained they were trying to take me. They made sure I made it back to the hostel and told me not to wear what I was wearing ( shorts and a tank) while alone.
94points
#3
I witnessed a creepy old man groping a teenager on a crowded train in Osaka. The girl was just enduring it and you can tell that she was holding back her tears. I whipped my phone out and started filming the guy which made him use his other hand which was blocked from my view so I asked my guy friend to switch places with the girl. After that, on the next stop, the creepy guy got off. I asked the girl if she was ok. She thanked us and her friends also expressed their gratitude. I think all of them (all teenage girls) were aware of the groping but I read somewhere that it is not the Japanese culture to make a scene. I was aware that this kind of thing was prevalent in Japan but I'm still shocked to see it in person. That creepy man and the poor girl's face will be forever etched in my mind.
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89points
Bored Panda got in touch with Lavina Dsouza, a veteran traveler, journalist, and photographer from Continenthop.com and she was kind enough to answer some of our questions. Given the dour nature of many of these stories, we wanted to, instead, explore some of the positives while still staying safe. So we asked Lavina what travel advice she would give her younger self.
“Never be afraid to travel solo! But irrespective of whether you travel solo or not, always do research and have backup plans ready and have some breathing space if and when things go wrong so that you're not caught off guard and don't end up spending a fortune when you panic!”
#4
I was traveling in Nicaragua several years ago when I got lost and ended up having to take a taxi at 9:30pm back to my hostel. When the taxi pulled up to the curb, the taxi driver locked the taxi doors and told me that I had misunderstood the fare. He claimed I owed him $100 USD which was several times more than we had agreed upon. I tried to pry the doors open from the inside but was completely trapped. Thankfully, he let me out of the taxi after taking all the money I had on me.
The hostel workers told me I was incredibly lucky. A few days earlier, a taxi driver had kidnapped another young female, assaulted her, then dumped her barely conscious body in a field outside town thinking that she was dead. A few local schoolchildren found her on their way to school in the morning.
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72points
#5
In India our bus rounded a corner in the mountains and another bus was on the other side of the curve. Both busses skid to a stop about 1 foot from one another. Both drivers started laughing and poking fun at each other. We saw a bus from the '80s that fell down the mountain about 15 minutes later. Hella intense.
71points
#6
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.
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71points
Generally, more extreme experiences come when a person actually goes somewhere off the beaten path, but sometimes it’s simply a result of wanting to save some money at the cost of time and convenience, so we wanted to hear Lavina’s take on balancing the two. “I have been sharing travel tips and tricks on Continenthop.com for almost a decade mainly for professionals and yes, they value time over money!”
#7
Got pickpocketed by a group of 3 on a Paris metro. I'm paranoid of losing my wallet, so I'm always checking myself. When I realized it was missing, I made a bigger scene than the pickpockets were making (they shoved me into their friend and were trying to convince people I knocked him down). I stopped the train from leaving the station. One of the other passengers left to get got conductor and security. I guess that didn't sit well with the pickpockets, so they gave me back my wallet and took off running.
Edit: This event still freaks my wife out.
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70points
#8
We went on a family trip to croatia and on our way to the Beach we pulled over to the side of a road for a pee break. So we opened the car door and like always our dog jumps out first. He ran into the field right next to the Street. Then suddenly my mother starts screaming the name of our dog, because 10meters away from our car was sign that said: Stay Away, old minefield. Thankfully nothing happened
64points
#9
I had a pack of wild dogs chase me from my bus stop to my hotel at 3 am in Kosovo. I also had a old woman yell at me in Russian about not making my bed right on the train and then watched over my shoulder til it was to her satisfaction when I was on my way back to Bucharest from Moldova
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55points
“Travelers, especially from countries like the USA, tend to have limited holidays and prefer to see as much as possible within the limited time they have. While slow travel is the trend currently unfortunately not everyone can afford that in terms of time and for many countries who depend on tourism, as long as this is done in the most sustainable way possible it still helps provide innumerable locals with income! So in short, there's no right way to travel!”
#10
A good friend of mine in Zimbabwe was grabbed at gunpoint and forced into a van, thankfully they only took her to an ATM and made her drain her account then they left her somewhere outside town. Could've been so much worse
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54points
#11
Was on a flight once going into Orlando that hit some unexpected turbulence. This was no ordinary turbulence. We went from 0 to 100 in an instant. People literally flew out of their seats, luggage fell from the overhead bins, people screamed like they were going to die. There were several sudden drops in elevation strong enough that people's arms flew up in the air and my butt came out of the seat. I've flown quite a bit and sometimes it gets bumpy. This was the first time I seriously thought something bad was going to happen.
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53points
#12
It was my first time visiting New York City. My aunt and uncle who both work in FiDi (Financial District) took the whole week off to show me and my family around Manhattan. It was a beautiful Tuesday morning and we just had our photos taken around Wall Street when the first plane crashed into the WTC
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52points
She is absolutely right here, as slow travel has become a pretty significant movement over the last few years. In short, the idea is to be as sustainable as possible, which often means traveling shorter distances, using up less carbon, walking often, only eating locally, and, generally, staying in a place for a longer period of time. But, as Lavina mentioned, this does tend to come at a cost. Slow-travel enthusiasts still need to work out a framework to make this concept actually applicable to the average person.
#13
Met a guy in Munich on the street who had lived in the same house as I did... in Cincinnati... 40 years ago...
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51points
#14
I was traveling by van through the mountains in the Philippines with a friend that is a really big guy. We came up on a checkpoint with soldiers searching cars. The guys we’re all wearing mismatched clothes and did not have any insignias on their uniforms or trucks. They searched all of our bags and we’re asking questions of the driver in Tagalog, which we did not speak. We heard them say American and we we’re the only two Americans on the bus. They talked for a little while and finally waved us through. Later we told the story to another American and he said we had gone through a Guerrilla controlled area where Americans had been kidnapped for ransom lately. They all agreed they did not take us because of the size of my friend. I think we got really lucky that day.
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50points
#15
I was walking around in a town in Algeria. I wandered in to a neighborhood, and noticed there were hardly any people out. A little further, and there were literally no people out. I started to feel a little uneasy. And then I see an extremely tall man walking towards me, straight towards me, obviously with intent. He gets closer, and I see an older gentleman with a long grey beard and wearing a grey tunic. I stop. He comes right up to me and says, in pretty good English, “you’re not safe here, we need to get you off the street”. I say “OK”, and he says “follow me”.
We walk a few blocks and we come to a door, he says “wait here a minute”, and he goes inside. He opens the door again and invites me in. When I get inside, there are maybe a dozen men. They are all dressed in black, and they are staring absolute daggers at me. Grey-beard lays in to them, starts shaking his fists at them, gets really worked up. Then one of the younger guys goes in to the kitchen and brings out some tea and cookies, and offfers them to me.
So, I’m drinking tea, and trying to smile, and one of the young guys asks where I’m from and I say “The States” and he starts talking about the CIA and stuff... and then I say “you think the CIA is bad here? Let me tell you about Central America”, and then pretty soon everybody is warming up to me and we’re laughing and talking s**t about American foreign policy and drinking tea.
After a bit of that the older man invites me back to his apartment. He has a huge library. I gift him a book that I had finished. And then he tells me what had just happened. His little brother, who was one of the younger men, was the leader of a radical group, all the other men I had met. He had overheard them getting ready to kidnap me. But he had shamed them for not being good hosts, and for disrespecting him because it was his house. He said that I would be safe from then on.
TLDR: Gandalf saves my life and got a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for his trouble.
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48points
However, slow or “fast,” many of these trips still ended up scaring the people who took them, so we wanted to finish with some general advice from Lavina that anyone could benefit from. “Research! If planning a trip by yourself try to check which localities are safe, pick tours and companies that are local give back to the community, and make sure you keep family and friends informed of your whereabouts. Always make sure you carry a power bank and any medications needed and keep track of the cultural rules in a country so that you're not caught off guard due to random arguments.” You can find more of her work at Continenthop.com and Instagram.
#16
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.
40points
#17
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.
38points
#18
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.
37points
#19
Visiting Chicago from Seattle for a week. I booked an Airbnb with a gentleman understanding that I would be in a household with maybe 5 other people as he did bunk beds in the room. The Airbnb was marketed as close to trains, decent area, and the house looked clean with many useful amenities.
Upon arriving at the house, I find that it's run down, unclean, with only the sheets being changed by the maid. On top of that, many appliances were broken and there was no potable water. That was the first strike. Next, there were upwards of 15 people staying in the house. That bunk bed situation? He had 5-6 rooms with varying amounts of bunk beds squeezed in and no room to walk. No one in the house knew about the other rooms from the listing.
I dropped my things off to explore the city and noticed the neighborhood was a bit sketchy but thought nothing of it. When I can back there was one of the other guests sitting waiting for an uber eats because he was too terrified to walk down the street and get food.
Apparently, the night before I arrived, 3 people in the house were mugged while walking 5 minutes from the train to the house. That night, 8 of us sat on the floor of the "living room" (seemed like a small dining area but a lovers couch was place in there with a broken TV) and heard 2 separate occasions of 8-10 gunshots a block away.
I immediately moved to a hostel and argued with airbnb and himself until I received a refund.
Mike, screw you.
Tl;dr: Ended up in an Airbnb in a bad part of Chicago were three housemates were mugged and two people on the street were shot. Didn't stay another night.
36points
#20
A cult behind several [crimes] in China tried to recruit me for some reason.
33points