"I Had Nightmares For A Year": 41 Vacations That Ended Up Being More Like Trips To Hell

We were down in Florida one summer, i think I was 7 or so. Mom and I had left the hotel to go shopping/play on the beach. Dad stayed behind to have a nap. When Mom and I get back, we open the hotel room to see several blood-covered towels littering the floor. Mom calls for Dad - no answer (my dad is a little hard of hearing after 40+ years of concert piano and electric pipe organ playing). She tells me to wait by the door, while she heads to the bathroom to investigate. I hear her yell out "OH GOD!" and run in to see what's up. Turns out, Dad had knocked something off the bedside table, bent down to get it, and smacked his head on the window-mounted AC unit when bending back up. We spent the rest of the day in the ER.

A different Florida trip, I hit a nightstand with my face in my sleep, getting a pretty deep cut about 1cm above my eye. Mom hears the thud and sees me with a blood covered face, and freaks out I've gouged out my eye or something. We spent the rest of the night into the morning in the ER.

Maybe we should stop going to Florida.

I went to the beach with my parents, they wore matching outfits (including shirts with the city name on them) and f***y packs. It was horrifying.

In Ecuador my wife's bag was stolen, she lost all three of her passports. In Botswana, I was hitching a ride in the back of a truck which ran off the road. In Morocco my train derailed. In Israel, my friend fell down a mountain and was taken to hospital by helicopter.

But in every case, everything turned out fine. Travelling is awesome!

Atlanta.

Downtown was really nice. Olympic Park, World of Coke, a very good Aquarium, and blah, blah, etc.

Outside the perimeter was like running the gauntlet in the post-apocolypse. I had a guy come up to me, pull up his shirt showing a revolver in his pants, and say, "Hey, whitebread, you got fi' dollas fo' a hit?".

I still tell myself giving him $20 while my daughter went pee in the worst gas station bathroom her or my wife have ever seen wasn't a "mugging".

I'm certain if our car happened to break down there we would have all 3 died terribly.

When I was roughly ten, we were riding The Ducks, a type of vehicle that is also a boat. I love the water and sight-seeing, so this was awesome.

We passed a dam, and not 10 seconds after the boat left the dam behind, a speed boat came flying over the top of the dam and landed upside down on the concrete below.

They quickly brought us back to the tour station and we saw EMTs carrying bodybags out of the ambulance. Later found out on the news that the driver of the boat was a very drunk young woman.

My sister my mom and I were almost trafficked. We are originally from the balkans, living in Germany. When my parents divorced my mom took us for a holiday back home. The bus drive was 30+ hours. We almost arrived and my uncle was supposed to pick us up at the bus station. But we didn’t arrive. It was around 11 pm and the bus drivers said we had a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. There were 3 other women left in the bus. They started crying, since they told us there were some nice taxis waiting for us on the street to bring us to our homes. Which in retrospective was ridiculous since we all lived in different cities. But my mom and sister already got into the taxi, bags in the trunk. Then the women started screaming and crying, trying to call their husbands. Luckily one husband wasn’t living far away so he came with his family and the bus drivers were scared and the Taxis left.

Long Story short: we later found out that a lot of women and Girls went missing the last couple of months due to human trafficking.

Signed up for a three day trip to Amsterdam that said it had good accommodations in the center of the city. It actually turned out to be a boat that was docked in a canal nowhere near anything. It was the middle of winter and there was no heat on the boat. The sewage system malfunctioned and leaked everywhere on the second day so the boat stunk. There was nowhere to even buy food nearby so I spent most of the trip huddled under a blanket feeling cold and hungry and wishing I had the energy to walk into the city.

American airlines changed my ticket due to delays in NYC. They did not tell British or Turkish airways. So when I called to confirm my return ticket 2 days before I'm set to fly out of Nairobi I find that both British Airways and Turkish Airlines canceled my return trip because I was a no show.

Turkish Airlines in Nairobi told me that the only thing I had to do to get my whole flight reinstated was to have American Airlines put in a code that said they diverted my flight and that would auto update all the way through the system. American Airlines refuse to do that and the woman on the line refused to bump me up to a higher authority. After being on the phone and in and out of the Turkish Airlines office for two days straight they finally gave me a waiver on their end. It was such a hassle, I would have to call American Airlines when they were open East Coast time and then I'd have to be Turkish office when they are open during their work hours.

I wish they did it sooner it would have saved me a lot of stress but considering all that I love Turkish Airlines and I hate American Airlines. It was going to cost my wife and I five thousand dollars a person to get to buy the same tickets that we had. I seriously felt like I was drowning.

I was watching the 6 Nations in a pub in Wales and they ran out of Stella and everyone had to drink Kronenbourg.

F*****g intense.

My family took a trip to Sudan (To visit my Dads family). My brother came back with a sever rash all over his back.

The rash persisted for a few weeks, and the doctors had no idea what it was. Then, we were at the park one day and he started complaining about the rash to our mom, saying it starting to hurt more.

She ignored it, thinking he must have rubbed it on something by accident, when he feel to the floor screaming with pain, and literally hundred and hundreds of flies came flying out of a single hole at the base of his neck. He was 8.

Apparently some sort of African fly had laid eggs (or more likely cocoons or something) in his back when we slept. They hatched when we were back in England.

Scary s**t.

Got stuck on a snowy mountain 40km from any town in Iceland. Roads were open. Started driving. The roads got really icy (I'm Canadian so I'm used to snowy driving) so I decided we should turn back and stay at the town we had passed. Went to turn the SUV around at a crossroad and it just slide off the road up to the top of the tires in snow. 4X4 would not work. There is a free emergency rescue response team in Iceland. Neither of my friends US cells would work out there. Yay Rogers canada. Mine worked. Took nearly 3 hours for them to come. Freezing cold. Reindeer walking by. Got dark. Finally came and pulled us out. They said we shouldn't have been there. The road was closed. Nope. The internet road service said it was open. They said there was a sigh further back by the (open) gate that said the road had closed. They stopped to show us the sign on the way back. The sign in English said "this road may be closed in winter". 1. Not winter. 2. Not may be....is! Maybe work on the translations a bit. We made it out safe and sound though. Took a different route south in the morning.

We went to the Dominican Republic for our honeymoon. One day we decided to take a day trip that the resort was offering. The trip included sightseeing by bus, lunch, a trip to a waterfall and ended with a horseback ride. There were about 7 of us in the group. At the end of the day, we were on our way back to the stables and we ventured underneath a bridge. A dude appeared out of the dense bushes/trees cussing at us and swinging a machete. One of the horses dumped it’s rider and the rest of us took off while the tour guide “negotiated” ($$$) with the man. We all made it back to the bus safely but wide-eyed.

I went to ibiza with my parents when I was sixteen... No wait, that's not the horror story, it gets worse.

Our fully inclusive hotel had a swimming pool and it was in the height of summer, I'm very white (ginger flecks in my hair, freckles), so off I skip to the pool, on my own, with no sun protection, I was there with the full force of the sun raining down on me for three hours without a tshirt on, at some point an olive skinned local says to me, as I'm sitting on the edge of the pool "hey, you've got really bad sunburn, are you OK?" at that point I feel fine so I carry on... Much later on I notice a tingling, it's far far to late to do anything about it.

The full impact of the damage I'd done wasn't evident for a few hours, turns out I'd managed to give myself horrific sunburn, and now had severe heat stroke.

My parents had to pay for a doctor to come and take a look at me and she prescribed ginger tablets and glucose for some reason(?!), all that did was make it taste like acid ginger when I threw up... Then I was in and out of consciousness for three days.

When I woke up, my back felt like it'd been attacked with a cheese grater and as the days wore on my skin started to come off... I could peel A4 sized sheets of skin off my back and shoulders, the tops of my feet were that burned that I couldn't stand or walk for long.

I learned that if you're white with the whole ginger thing going on (my hair is brown, but you can see ginger in it, with freckles on my skin etc), wear sunscreen, and a tshirt, and a hat.

Not me, but a friend of mine encountered some crazy s**t while travelling in Taiwan.

This was around Taichung. There were four of them, Her with two other girls and one guy. Hopped in a Taxi and gave driver the destination. He goes the right way for a while, then abruptly pulls off into a side road. Still driving along, my friend asks him in Mandarin where the hell he's going, since they've been to this place before and they know wherever they're going now is not what they asked for. Driver says nothing, gets on the celly and speaks to someone on the other end in Taiwanese. No one in the car understood this language, the mystery was in how the driver figured this out since they were all Asian and could have easily passed for natives visiting home for the holidays. The car pulls into an open field, surrounded by trees in every direction with only a single house in the middle of it. He parks right outside, and it appears people were emerging from the building. Several of them. Driver pauses for a brief second, starts the car up again, and commences driving along. A few minutes later, the group find themselves on the side of the main road as the cabbie drives off.

What the three girls in the back of the car did not know at the time was that upon stopping outside that house, their fourth member sitting up front pulled out his knife and held it right above his knee. Making sure it was in plain view of the driver. Once the cabbie saw this, he started the car up again. No doubt realizing the dangerous situation he inadvertently found himself in. They never figured out what the driver planned on doing, but anything even close to kidnapping couldn't have been good. Cabbie was reported to the authorities, but they left for the states before finding out anything further.

Got so badly sunburnt in Thailand every time I smiled my face bled.

Traveling with two kids under the age of 2 across the country (4 hour advanced time change.) They never fully adjust but we do. The second day upon arrival I have an ear infection so bad my ear had a pulse and was a weird shade of purple. I went to the doctor and got some drops, and was fine. We are there for a wedding and its at a camp ground. Someone decided it would be ok to bring their baby who has some sort of virus and has a h**h fever, but "its ok, she had tylenol, the fever is broken." Well when I was at the cabin showering and getting ready, someone let our kids play with the sibling of the sick baby. This was half way through our trip and not 48 hours later, my youngest comes down with a fever, throws up all over my husband. She refuses to eat and is completely miserable for three - four days. Two days later my oldest is in screaming agony because of her tummy; she can't poop, has a fever and is vomiting (twice all over my husband). Our flights were for the next day. Our youngest comes home completely fine, no fever and back to normal. Our oldest had a panic attack on the plane 45 minutes into an 8 hour flight. She freaks out she has to go to the bathroom so my husband takes her and then she screams for me, as he is walking up the aisle to get me while carrying her, she throws up all over him and some poor lady's arm. (Luckily super mom packed spare clothes for everyone except myself, and a tub of sani-wipes which made do for a quick sponge bath). Miraculously we made it home. My daughter ran a fever, barely ate any thing and didn't poop for a week. She would scream in agony over her stomach. We went to the emergency room twice and were told she had the stomach flu both times, and on the second visit that it might help to give her a suppository at home. Which I did and didn't like what I saw. I googled and all signs pointed to a very common parasite that would have lived in the area we were camping in and she just so happened to swim in the river and get a few mouthfuls of water. Another trip to a hospital (this time a Children's hospital) and she was better within days. This was the worst 3 weeks ever. It was the trip that never ended. We did learn one thing, they always want Daddy if they are going to p**e.

Got locked in a French insane asylum. I was studying abroad, with two girls who I thought were good friends of mine. We had made plans to do spring break together. However, they told me two days before that they wanted to make it a girls trip. I said fine, and made plans to go to Scandinavia on the spot, booking some pretty nice hotels for myself, at a discounted rate because I was prepaying. They thought that because I was traveling by myself, that it was evidence that I was going to k**l myself, and told our university. The university made me see a French psychologist (who did not speak English), and because I could not convey to him that there was a misunderstanding, he called for orderlies to take me to an insane asylum, where I spent three days until I got phone access (no one there spoke English either, and they would not call in a translator.) And then a day and a half more until my father could fly over to France to get me out. I know it is not the French people's fault, but seriously, f**k France.

Little wood exit in Louisiana. It was dark as s**t, every sign and street lamp had bullet holes in it. Same night had a car burning on the side of the road. Apparently someone was burned to death in the trunk of the car that night. I’ll never take that exit again even if there is daylight with police presence.

I went to an ayahuasca retreat in Peru. The retreat itself was amazing and I'd recommend it to every living person. It was held pretty deep in the Amazon and in order to get there you have to either pay for a group bus or take a small motorbike taxi. No one is really willing to drive that far otherwise. After the retreat was over I had a couple days to stay and relax before I came back to the states. The girl that I bunked with had some time as well and we decided to go into Tarapoto, the nearest town, and just adventure around a while. We shopped and ate and took a tour through a chocolate factory. She was staying in a hotel in town to catch her early morning flight the next morning so I took a motorbike taxi back to the jungle alone. About halfway down the road the driver stopped and a man holding an AR came up the cab and started asking me questions about where I was going and what I was doing, etc. I was completely alone with the driver, who stopped for this guy and the guy with the really big gun in the middle of the Amazon. I was beyond terrified. The whole ordeal lasted less than 5 minutes and ended with me paying the gun guy a "toll" of 10 soles (I think less than $8 usd, not completely sure on the conversion). The driver insisted I had to do this, so I did and we thankfully drove away. A few miles later the driver stopped again and I almost had a heart attack, he insisted he had something to show me and that I should get out of the cab, so I did. It might have been stupid, I still don't know what the right thing to do was. He took me to the edge of the road where there was a cliff and below was the spot where a smaller river smashes violently and spectacularly into the face of the Amazon River. It was among the most beautiful and fantastic things I saw in Peru. We stood in silence and watched the rivers merging for a while before he safely delivered me back to the retreat. It was a scary ride, but man what a f*****g story.

I once attended a work training event at a nice hotel in Dallas. For some backstory, I was a 19-20 year old girl. During some downtime in the evening, I decided to walk across the street to a d**gstore and purchase some snacks and water (the hotel sold a single water bottle for $7, so I wasn’t having that). As I got to the d**gstore, there were 4 or 5 men in a car and they were yelling strange things at me. It scared me and made me feel a bit uneasy, but I went inside and stayed inside the d**gstore for a bit longer to wait them out. I decided to go back to the hotel after a while, so I walked outside and they were still there. Waiting for me.

At this point I was very scared and these guys were all yelling things at me, I ran across the street even though the crosswalk wasn’t telling me I could go. I ended up making it. I went up to my room paranoid that they would be able to see what floor the elevator went to. After a while inside my room, I stupidly figured they were gone, as I didn’t see them follow me into the hotel. I assumed I was being paranoid about the whole thing, so I went downstairs to smoke a cigarette by the fountain at the hotel (at this point the smoking age was still 18 in both my state and Texas).

After I got down there and smoked for a bit, I truly realized my mistake. The men were there in the same car. They were yelling at me. One of them was speaking with a valet man / hotel employee and looking at me. I immediately called my mom, she was yelling at me and scared for me. Then I got off the phone with her to call one of the women who were in training with me. Toward the end of the phone call with the woman I was training with, a man approached me from the group saying how beautiful I was and then walked away and watched me with the group of men. The hotel employee was nearby and I kept making looks at him, showing that I was scared and uncomfortable but he had no response. I thought to myself that maybe these men were also staying in the hotel, so that could’ve been why they were there. But soon after the call, the woman came and found me and stayed with me. She was older than me and seemed very much like she could be my mother, so she stared them down with the most “momma bear” look I’ve ever seen and they ended up leaving soon after. At that point I realized they had never been staying at that hotel, and those men were definitely 100% going to do something to me if she wasn’t there.

The next day I spoke to some of the other women in my training class, and one of them was literally d***ged by a man from the hotel. She had completely blacked out and woke up with her face down on a table outside with no memory of it. It turned out that the area of Dallas was known for s*x work, but I’m not sure if that contributed to what happened to either of us.