Triphap - Funny Travel Stories and Travel Horror Stories

My buddy and I start off on the Trans-America Trail (http://www.transamtrail.com/) in Tennessee, planning to ride our motorcycles all the way to the Oregon coast mostly offroad. It's a Saturday afternoon, we've just had an oil change done on our KTM 640 Adventures.

Hours later as I'm rounding a bend my engine stalls, I look down and it's smoking. Turns out the guy who did the oil change only hand tightened one of the oil drain screws (LC4 engines have two) and it had vibrated almost entirely out. The only thing stopping it was skidplate below the engine.

The bike is unridable. It was the first day of the trip. I had it shipped out from the west coast. So much planning had gone into the trip. We're on a tight schedule. It's a Saturday night and the majority of motorcycle shop are closed on Sunday and Monday.

We do the next logical thing, get a few six packs of beer and a couple pizzas and start drunk brainstorming.

The next morning the two of us are riding on my friends bike. It's a 350 pound bike, my friend weights about 250, I weight 170, and god only knows what *both* of our gear... read more >>

The signboard proclaimed, 'Jimmy G's Pub.'

We could spot nothing to the right or the left of the brightly painted log cabin. It appeared to have sprung up out of nowhere, precisely at the moment we wanted to take a break from the excruciatingly long car drive through the exquisite Irish countryside.

The inside was even more quaint, straight out from a Jonathan Swift setting --- a juke box, a dart board, dusty framed pictures; a harp propped (probably never strummed), a trumpet, all vying for space with other knick-knacks --- tins, cans, bottle openers, coins that went out of circulation aeons ago --- all adding to the happy clutter and the pastoral warmth of the place.

"Welcome, ladies, anything I can do?" a voice boomed in the deep Irish accent. It was warm as it is clear. A tall man emerged from the anteroom. Ducking his head to avoid colliding against the low railing of the door, he appeared to be in his late seventies.

"Can we…er.. have some..Tea?" someone from our journo's team inquired. "Tea?" he snorted. "Not care for anything stronger?" he teased. "No Sir, tea should be fine," said my colleague and he grunted, "O.K, I will try.... read more >>

When I was a senior in high school, two of my best friends and I decided to go to Italy for spring break instead of the general beach trip that most of the other kids in our year were taking.

One of my friend's older sister came with us as a chaperone (a 21-year-old chaperone). The four of us spent 3 days in Rome, took a train to Florence for another 3 days, another train to Venice for 3 more. At the end of our stay in Venice, the plan was to take a flight from Venice back to Rome for one more night and day, and then to fly back to the states. The flight was only going to be about 30 euros a piece, which seemed a pretty great deal.

We were staying in a hotel in a small town called Mestre, outside of Venice itself for cost reasons. 5:30 in the morning, we go to the bus stop that will take us to the airport. The bus, due at 6:00, was still conspicuously absent at 6:30. Our flight was scheduled for 9am, so, worried, we go back to our hotel and call a cab. The cab comes... read more >>

It was early Summer, 2009. We had been talking about going to New York City since our senior year of high school in 2007. We fell out of touch during our first years of college but came back together with the promise of this wonderful trip. Amanda had been to NYC twice already but it was to be my first time. We had to drive the two hours to Cleveland to catch our flight (tickets were cheaper). The ride was fairly uneventful but for our excitement. We were there early and had fun milling about the airport. Finally our gate opened. We boarded and all was well. We landed happily in Philadelphia for our connecting flight to NYC. That’s when we saw it. The Wright Brothers plane. The thing was small and looked like it had seen many long winters. Once inside the tin can we began to really get scared. I could literally see through the back wall. The seats were crappy and it was extremely loud. Amanda grabbed my arm with a look of terror I have only seen twice (the other time on a state fair swinging boat ride). And we were off into the sky.... read more >>

There are nine children in my family, and we traveled frequently. Besides a bus, a conversion van was just about the only vehicle that could fit all of us. My parents had a beat up, old, brown dodge, with the words "Miracle Van" stenciled on the side. That van was a miracle, it had made it through several cross-country trips, and safely carried all us precious occupants. On vacation in Canada, we got to add 'monkey attack' to the list of things the Miracle Van had survived.

My parents decided to take us through the African Lion Safari in Ontario. The Safari was impressive. The animals meandered around their natural environment, and we were explorers caged in our car. We followed a dirt road through the park. There were big metal fences and gates that separated the predators from the prey, while still allowing safari traffic to flow through. There was a sign outside the monkey area that told us to close all of our windows to keep the monkeys from climbing in. It also warned that the monkeys would remove any loose objects from our cars. There was a road around the monkey area for motorist that were worried about... read more >>

It was a regular Sunday morning. Mani and I had returned to the camp after seeing off a bunch of friends at the airport. Two new guests had checked into our white water river rafting camp at Rishikesh (India) meanwhile, while we were busy doing our run over the Ganges river.

We slumped down at the campsite to unwind after doing two hectic days of river, beach and the rapids. Then, sooner than we had expected, it started drizzling. About half an hour later, an eerie silence prevailed, and the wind started to blow again --- gaining horsepower, every passing minute. I recalled having read somewhere, that a strange calm always precedes, a mighty storm.

The strong wind swept the sand from the beach and began to create weird, swirling patterns on the calmly flowing river. I had never witnessed anything like this before; a squall of this magnitude in all three years that I'd been going to the mountains. I surveyed the campsite and saw tent poles clutching at the strings. Most tents lay in a collapsed state, and before we could assess the full damage, the wind returned with brutal force, making us scamper for cover under the... read more >>

My husband and I are originally from the Pacific Northwest, but moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, when I finished college. I had a teaching job lined up that I was very excited about, so we agreed to move to the Midwest for a couple of years, and then move home to Oregon.

When we moved to Saint Louis, we had one cat, and she moved with us. We returned to Oregon frequently for short visits, and stayed longer a couple of times a year, around the holidays and in the summer. As a teacher, I had a couple of weeks off in the winter and a couple of months in the summer.

While our cat was fine alone in the apartment for a few days, she couldn't be left unattended for weeks or months on end. As such, twice a year, we took her with us back to Oregon. We had to pay the airlines a fee, and her pet carrier was considered my carry on piece of luggage. We had to take her out of her carrier at security, and walk with her through the metal detectors. After a few times at this,... read more >>

Since I have distant family members living in Scotland, I had always wanted to go and meet my cousins living across the pond. One summer when I was 23, I finally managed to save up the money for a two-week trip to Inverness, which is largely where my relatives were located. Now, let me preface this story by saying that I am a city girl through and through. There's no subway system that I can't navigate, no apartment too small and I’ve never eaten a burger under six dollars (yup, even fast food restaurants are more expensive in the city).

When I finally got to Scotland, I was a little disconcerted to discover that my relatives lived on a sheep farm - I could already tell that my strappy sandals were going to be of no use here. And Inverness - which is right in the heart of the Highlands - is quite a hilly and muddy place. My grand Scottish adventure was quickly turning into a disappointment.

However, the sheep on my cousin's farm had different plans for me - and they were ready to give me all of the adventure that I could handle.

One drizzly... read more >>

I couldn't help but feel a twinge of disappointment when I saw the itinerary for our journey home to New Zealand after three years of missionary service in South America. This time, we were not doing the long haul flight from Buenos Aires to Auckland –all fifteen hours of it, broken only by a brief halt in Patagonia. Instead of heading to Argentina after leaving Bolivia, we would spend the night in Santiago, Chile, then fly via Easter Island to Tahiti, where we would spend a few hours before catching the connecting flight to Auckland. If we'd timed our flight for another day, we would have spent an extra day in Tahiti. Oh well. At least stopping to refuel Easter Island would be interesting.

The flights from La Paz to Arica to Santiago were pretty uneventful, with no dramas over passports or visas... unless you count the aftershave my father had stowed in my cabin baggage (his was full) leaking and a small child in a seat near mine throwing up and getting some on the pink straw hat I had put on the floor temporarily. So we boarded the Lan Chile flight out of... read more >>

When you're away on travel in college, you can do some very stupid things, although when I look back on some of them, they were weirdly funny. My friend and I were goofing off on Tottenham Court Road in London when we noticed that there was a Scientology office there. I had written about Scientology for my school newspaper around 1981. Wow, a chance to see what some considered a cult in action from within their own office.

We planned for about ten minutes to go in and give fake names and go undercover to see what in the heck it was all about. We thought about all the spy movies we ever saw and what we'd do if we got separated. How we would run out and meet up at the Tottenham movie theatre and go see a movie.

I walked in the doors first and my friend walked in a minute or so after me. A young, tall man approached me and began asking all sorts of personal questions, directing to literature. Finally, he asked my name. He must have thought that I was a total wack job, because I totally couldn't remember the name I planned on giving to... read more >>