Triphap - Funny Travel Stories and Travel Horror Stories

When most people travel, they take the time to book hotel reservations. However, my friend Ashley and I were not most people many years ago, when we decided that backpacking through Ireland would be more fun if we "winged it."

Winging it, of course, meant that we'd each buy a one-way ticket to Dublin, and give ourselves ten days to get back to Bath, England, where we were enrolled in a study-abroad program. The plan was to visit Dublin, Galway, Cong (where they filmed “The Quiet Man” with John Wayne) and finally end things in Belfast, where we figured we could catch a flight back to England.

Unfortunately, Ireland had other plans for us, as nothing worked out the way we thought it would.

After getting stuck in Galway and Cong for about seven days (thanks to an erratic bus schedule that we couldn't figure out), we finally managed to nab a bus trip from Cong to Belfast via Dublin. The twelve hour bus ride started at ten in the morning, which means that we’d arrive in the heart of Belfast around ten at night.

Of course, like with all transport, the bus ran late, and we ended... read more >>

My freshman year of college took me overseas to England. I had never been away from home before alone, to another city or state, much less to another country. Here I was, 18 years old, leaving home for the first time, going on a plane for the first time, excited to be legal to drink alcohol en route "across the pond." I talked to my first New Zealander whom I couldn't understand although he spoke English. I expected the clouds and the grass to somehow be different, but they weren't. But it didn't stop me from taking pictures with my first camera.

I rode the London underground tube for the first time. Nearly lost my luggage en route to King's Cross in London for the first time. Rode my first train. Of course, I sat by some cute businessmen, and a beautiful lady; and for the first time since my trip began, I fell asleep. When I woke up, the men were gone. The beautiful lady and those sitting next to her were smiling.

I knew it instantly. Here I was on my first passenger train, snoring away like a freight train with my mouth hanging open (which I knew because... read more >>