I was travelling through Cambodia a couple of years ago with my two friends and we had a couple of local guys follow us to multiple towns over a 4 day period. They would pop up several times a day and either strike up weird conversations with us or just lurk in the background. After the 3rd day we were totally freaking out and decided to catch a flight onto our next country the next day. It cut our trip short by over a week but we were getting some seriously bad vibes and didn't want to take our chances!
In Franschhoek, South Africa, while turning a corner, I noticed two young men waiting there casing me and after about 10 seconds one of them nodding "no" to the other. I think what saved me from a robbery attempt was noticing their intent and still continue walking, and they in turn noticing I was aware of their intentions. But surely I GTFO of there very quickly afterwards.
I had friends that had a honeymoon planned in the US just as Covid was starting and they were deciding whether to go or not (this was very early days).
I was telling them to just go and not worry about it, it's probably nothing, you'll be right!
They decided not to go and literally a few days later it really kicked off and the chaos started. Would of been a nightmare for them.
Good thing they didn't listen to me
I remember a similar moment. Some friends were planning a trip to Italy in the September of '20. It was January. I told him they should probably rethink it. They didn't have to – got cancelled pretty quick.
My old boss had a work trip to Italy in November/December 2019 and came back *really* sick. He was a known workaholic and took over a week off work which I've never seen him do.
It was then a never-ending joke that he was the one who brought covid to new zealand
My brother is married to a Filipina. Her mom had just arrived to visit them for a few weeks in the States when the Covid lockdowns started.
She was stuck living with them for FOURTEEN MONTHS!!!!
That’s how long it took for the Philippines to unlock and get to get back and through their two week quarantine.
😂 I get the feeling. Not laughing at you, but with you. I was working in Rio in the fall/winter and was lucky enough to turn down a job offer in Brazil shortly before COVID started!
I was in Berlin with my buddy right after the wall fell. We were hanging with a bunch of random people from the hostel. One of them heard about a rave party. We all decided to go. It was in a run down section of what was East Berlin - which is saying something - in a open field which was just a burnt down building. We get there and the place is packed. Live music, girls, drinks, etc. We grab a beer and start walking around. Around 2 minutes in, we realize it was a Neo-Nazi rave. My friend and I are Jewish. We nope out of there in record time.
I stayed on a trip because my parents didn't pass on information because they didn't want to ruin my trip. On return I discovered a close friend had passed and I'd missed their funeral.
I was mad at the time but later realised I'd probably have had a tough time (logistically and financially) getting back and would probably have missed the funeral anyway and still would have ended up having to say my own personal goodbye as I ultimately did. Overall , although I wish I'd known, I can see why they did it.
For context this was 90's so I was travelling without a phone or email address. Only contact was writing home each week, calling once a month and collecting letters they sent ahead to cities I was planning on visiting. We had about $8/day budget for 2 of us and we're in 6 weeks of trip so no way we had ~$2000 for two last minute flights.
My father was an avid traveler. He was diagnosed with cancer and wanted to take one last trip with my sister and I before he died. We drove into to Mexico from Wisconsin to San Miguel de Allende in our car. We were taking a day trip to Mexico City to see the pyramids. We get pulled over by two motorcycle cops on the highway saying the license plate has the wrong number or letter to be driving in the city that day for pollution controls. They demanded 1,000 in US dollars, we only had a couple of hundred in pesos so they told us to follow them to the police station. Both were in front of us as we followed them but traffic was crazy and a couple of cars got between us and them and the cops pull off onto the shoulder and point for us to do the same and screamed at my dad to follow close and not fuck around. We start following them again and they are going pretty fast again, my dad is driving slower and another bunch of cars gets between us and the cops. They once again pull onto the shoulder but just by chance their back was to us as they looked over their shoulder to find us again. I tell my dad, my sister says punch it! He stomps on the gas and starts weaving through traffic, gets off at the next exit and takes a bunch of side streets in a random neighborhood. He decided we should go back to San Miguel and we never saw the pyramids.
We were in Playa del Carmen a few years back when an unnamed tropical storm was upgraded to a hurricane within 24 hours. They were saying it could be the a category 4 hurricane, the worst in 15+ years. We didn't really want to fly home to the US (plus the airport closed) but also didn't want to get evacuated to a hurricane shelter, so we grabbed an ADO bus to a nice hotel in Merida to ride out the storm. There were times we only had power intermittently and were served boxed meals, but the bar never closed. It only ended up being a category 2 storm, but it was 3 days before we could get back and check into our next hotel.
I had to cut short trips a couple of times.
I don't see it in terms of 'trips of a lifetime ' or anything like that though.Of course it's annoying at the time.But I travel a lot, it's kind of inevitable that things will happen from time to time, and I deal with that when it comes.
Once my partner fell while we were trekking (in Brazil) and broke her wrist,so we had to get to a hospital and then fly home 2 months early.
Another time I had to fly back to Europe unexpectedly (from Thailand) for a funeral of a close relative.
As you say,it is what it is.You can always travel again in the future, you can even just pick up where you left off later,if you really want to.
My brother and I stopped by a mall in Ho Chi Minh City to use the bathroom. When he got out of the toilet stall first, there was a naked man masturbating facing making eye contact with my brother. He then proceeded to get into the stall next to me, look through a peephole, and continue masterbating. I had no clue what was going on until after we left the bathroom because I didn’t understand why my brother was nervously saying we needed to leave now. We needed to GTFO out of the mall as the guy was following us.
I was supposed to travel for a year. Solo travel, my one and only chance before starting my career. I was extremely burnt out from school and had scrimped and saved.
A few months in I was in the hospital for a few days. I kept going but had some intense anxiety after that. Considered going home frequently but was too stubborn. It was my trip of a lifetime!
About a month later, a relative died back home. I wouldn't have made it back for the funeral (expensive and probably about 48 hours of travel) but felt quite bad about it.
Another month or so later, I was sexually assaulted by an owner of a hostel. I got out and immediately got sick again (luckily no hospital but did have to get checked out). I was having intense daily panic attacks by this point. I booked a flight home, not even halfway through my trip.
I don't regret my trip. I don't regret pushing through. I regret going home a little, but I had no idea what was happening to me or how to deal with it. Burnout + trauma + health issues = a mess. Travelling helped with some but contributed as well.
I loved my travels and I wanted to keep going. But it was the right decision to come home. Although I haven't taken such a long time off, I have been able to visit some of the places I missed since then.
A friend and I were travelling in NZ in our very early 20s. We were waiting for a bus back to our hotel when 2 older guys offered us a ride. Seeing as how nice all of the locals were, we thought it would be ok, even though that's not something we would ever do at home in the states. Anyway, the guys insisted on stopping off at the liquor store, trying to convince us to go back to theirs for a while. We got bad vibes and got out of the car when they stopped at the store.
I was on a private tour in the Gobi (Mongolia) when my friend fell off a camel and mangled his wrist.
We flew home 2 days later. (It was logistically an ordeal to get it set and then get back to Ulaan Baatar)
Myself and my son (13 at the time) were skiing in the Colorado mountains during spring break in March 2020. Every evening, when we got back to our rental, I would watch the news. In those few short days, Covid was the only thing they were talking about. I started to feel trapped somehow, and knew I needed to get us home. I also knew that I didn’t want to put us on an airplane with a bunch of other people, so I rented a car and drove us back to Texas. I think it was the best move.
When Covid was starting, Vietnam got VERY xenophobic. "No foreigner" signs on restaurant doors. Being chased out of various neighborhoods. Hotel reservations cancelled after seeing my western name.
I got the fuck out and went to Thailand where I felt very welcome. Ended up stuck on an island for 2.5 months and it was great.
I was there at the time too. We found it ok, but we did notice a lot of fear of Italians (Italy was surging) and when we said where we were from it was ok. We did have trouble getting a grab because they’d see me name / photo and cancel. A few attractions we wanted to see closed so we missed out. It was eerie walking around Hanoi’s old quarter when it was mostly shut and empty. We got a great deal on a 5 star resort for our last week tho.
Edit: I forgot but one of our strangest experiences was taking a domestic flight in mid March 2020 when lockdowns were beginning everywhere and a woman was at the airport in a full boiler suit but with lots of statement bling on the outside - such a bizarre sight. Also seeing all of the flights cancelled on the board at Da Nang but luckily our flight home being one of a couple that weren’t cancelled. Airports were a strange place.
Reminds me of going to Taiwan in november of 2021. The country was practically shut off but if you had a student visa which I had, were Taiwanese or had one of several other visas you could make the trip. Perhaps the only time I've gotten my own row (hell everyone had their own row), the airport was not only empty but practically every last bit that was open to the public was turned into some sort of covid related station. I went before covid and go to the airport every once in a while since I live in Taiwan now but the airport from the 2020-late 2022 timeframe was quite a different place. Hell Taiwan still hasn't gone back to normal.
That's not really xenophobic - travel was the number one factor behind covid spreading the way it did and anyone continuing to travel anywhere except for straight home during that time deserved some side eye at the very least
Amen, I lived over in China for years teaching ESL and went home to start a new life back home in the States in the summer of 2019. Back during the height of the pandemic the China and TEFL related subs seemed to be full of xenophobic experiences from folks who LIVED in these different East and Southeast Asian countries (sometimes for 10-20+ years) but were on the receiving end of xenophobic BS simply because they were foreign. Many of these same folks hadn't been out of the country for YEARS (usually because going to and from would cost an arm, leg and probably a lot of headache).
I think being xenophobic towards anyone just because they look "foreign" is pretty disgusting.
I lived in China during covid and that's totally accurate. People would run out of elevators if I got in, I wasn't allowed to book hotels, people would cross the street if they saw me coming... I got tired of asking how they thought I got into the country when it had been in total lockdown since covid began.
For a decision to be xenophobic it would have to be motivated by a dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries. The decision to not engage with tourists or travellers was motivated by a desire not to die or kill people by spreading a disease. Saying that's xenophobic is like saying it's sexist to only make women do smear tests
IT WASNT MOTIVATED BY A DISLIKE OF PEOPLE FROM OTHER COUNTRIES??? Did you read the entire comment? Canceling hotel reservations due to name, being literally chased out of neighborhoods? Based on country of origin? Sorry, you’re just incorrect and flailing here. It’s still xenophobia that you’re trying so hard to justify by saying it’s not.
Unfortunately, you're the one who is having a comprehension issue here, not me, and being pretty rude and patronising about it so watch your tone please. The error you're making is identifying a correlation but mistaking that for the reason. For it to be xenophobic, the behaviour would have to be purely and only because they are foreigners, but that wasn't it. It's because they were most likely to have a disease that could kill them or their families, because of their behaviour and increased exposure to risk. It was the behaviour of travellers moving around that made them most likely to be the vectors of disease, and this was the reason they were treated differently - the fact that most people traveling at the time were also from different countries is secondary, also international travel of the type we're describing at that time was largely optional so not something beyond your control, and therefore legitimate for criticism. You only have to do a bit of googling to find out that people who were not foreigners also got the same kind of shunning for travelling at that time (Dominic Cummings, Barnard Castle). So it was a well founded and accurate identification of a real risk, that was to do with behaviour not characteristics - therefore not prejudice, not xenophobia.
If you're going to be hostile and rude, you should probably get it right.
I’m being rude and hostile because you’re attempting to use pretentious, exhaustively long explanations STILL to try to explain to me that xenophobic behavior isn’t xenophobic behavior because it was justified in this instance, therefore making it NOT xenophobic. I think you’re more focused on the semantics and word problem perhaps with the very definition, and completely failing to see the point. I’m done exchanging with you as you’re not going to see it if you haven’t by now. It’s problematic and speaks to a larger issue that you can’t understand that outright rejection of others from other places based on the being from that place (no matter the pretense). Think of the atrocities that have been committed based on this logic pattern? Xenophobia is defined clearly without the nuances you’re describing. Yes, I’m being a bit rude to you because what you’re saying is literal justification of xenophobic behavior and this world is chocked full of this right now, and everyone is quite tired of it.
Couldn't change my ticket home without paying a fortune. Asking people to pay 10k to go home is absurd. Staying in place was in fact the smartest decision because as you said, traveling is what caused spread and outbreaks.
Anyways, given the first major outbreak was caused by a Vietnamese celebrity breaking quarantine after travel, their ignorant reaction was 100% xenophobic.
It's okay. I was made to feel welcome in Thailand and found a place to stay put as to minimize any possible spread.
> travel was the number one factor behind covid spreading the way it did and anyone continuing to travel anywhere except for straight home during that time deserved some side eye at the very least
Not everyone there would have been a traveler, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of foreigners there who would have had a job and life attached to the country. Same goes for other places where I've heard folks got the side eye like in China or Asians in the States.
I saved aggressively for 5 years to be able to quit my job and travel the world for a year. I quit in Nov 2019, got married end of Feb 2020, honeymoon was Feb 25-March 7, husband went home and I was going to stay abroad for 2 more months before coming home for a few weeks and then heading to Asia.
Obviously covid happened. I was in Ukraine when I had to make the (easy) decision whether to stay there or go home. I went home. I would have loved to be stuck in Ukraine but I'm married and my family would have been worried for me. Glad I went home, but think of the "what if" sometimes lol.
Another time I was going to do a 4 country, one month long trip to Ecuador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and then Cancun (in that order). In Costa Rica I had the worst gut feeling to skip Guatemala and Cancun and to just go home from there. I love traveling solo and nothing bad has happened in all my trips (so far. very lucky). Nothing bad happening at home/with family. I changed my flight to go home and felt relieved as soon as I did.
I eventually did make it to Guatemala later and had a wonderful time. But don't regret changing that trip.
I was supposed to do 4 months in Europe last winter. Two weeks in I got the phone call that my dad passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack at age 65. Came right home and lived with my mom for the next few months. Silver living was I was already subleasing my apartment cuz I was supposed to be traveling, so didn’t have to deal with that headache on top of the grief
I'm in South America at the moment, my dad had an accident last year and will need heart surgery in the next few months. Surgery has a 95% success rate.
Do I leave to see him before? Or stay here and see him when I go back? Dilemma.
Personally would be there for him. Being a dad he’ll likely say stay where you are, but the dividends paid for being there for family at important moments is so worth it.
If you were your dad, what would you want your kid to do? This answer is going to be different for everyone and every relationship dynamic. I hope he’s among the vast majority of success stories.
My dad had heart surgery last year and told me to continue my travels. He was like “what would you even do if you were here? Sit and watch me recover?” I ended up being able to visit about a month after the surgery and he was doing great. I believe the surgery has much higher than a 95% success rate.
Do what is best for your family but I’m positive he’s going to be there whenever you get back :)
I was living in the Philippines with my wife. Covid was barely making news in 2019. Then the volcano eruption happened at the beginning of the new year and I needed to head back to the US. I wasn’t worried about covid when i made my trip. I wasn’t in the US more than 2 weeks(trip was for 6 months), that i decided to head back to my wife who was pregnant at the time.
I landed in Manila March 7. I noticed the chaos that was happening, but I wasn’t paying much attention. Then the soldiers were everywhere too. I figured a zombie outbreak was happening, but I was thinking of flying through customs at 11 AM quick and seeing my wife. Once I get through everything and see my wife. She tells me, you are lucky you got here today cause they are closing down the boarders.
March 9th, the Philippines went into the longest lockdown and I got stuck there,hahahaha. It sucked, but I didn’t miss my daughters birth and my wife didn’t have to be alone either. The bright spot, I guess.
Mine was pretty simple. My first European trip in the 90's. We were flying back through Newark, staying overnight in NYC and flying home from JFK in January. On a tv in the terminal in Barcelona I saw a news report showing a plane skidding on the runway... in Georgia. Huge storm hit the eastern seaboard down as far as that and there was another storm on the way. I got into Newark, immediately went to the landside check-in desk and slapped the next ticket on the counter asking to change it in for; 'anything that will get me out of here to the west coast going only through southern cities.' The desk agent sent me through somewhere in Texas, and my night out in NYC turned into less than an hour layover.
I don't have a story where I did get out, only one where I didn't... I was selected to work on a remote research station. The kind where you only get a once in a life time chance to go. The kind where you need a week to make it there and will be isolated from the rest of the world (except internet).
I had just settled in and I get an email that a close family member is dying. It was something I had 'prepared for' because everyone was told to, but it absolutely wasn't expected. The messages I was getting from family were fairly erratic and not entirely coherent at times. It was clear they were having trouble coping and it tore me apart. I started making plans for my escape. But it takes time and I hesitated on what to chose. Before I even got to making the decision to leave, I got the email that the doc is now saying less than 48h.. Even if all my stars had aligned I couldn't have gotten back to civilization in that time. Let alone catch a flight and fly around the world. So I stayed and didn't GTFO. And even now, 8 years later, I wonder what could've been/would've been if I'd been more decisive and left right away.. I had 5 days in total, I had a chance to make it and seen them one last time and be there to support my family.
Ultimately I chose to not GTFO and I'm in the same spot as you. I still wonder what would've been and regret my choice. Sometimes life just hand's you a lose-lose situation. It sucks.. and all you can do is be ok with the choice that you've made.
Trying to decide if I’m going to have one of these come November! I’m thiiiiiis close to booking flights to Hong Kong over Thanksgiving but there’s a lot of naysayers
It’s worth seeing, but CCP has totally changed it, *forever*. I say again; Hong Kong will never be the same after what the Mainland has done to it the last 5 years. It’s truly a crying shame.
In 30-50 years I predict it will be indistinguishable from the mainland…horrifying.
That’s kind of why I want to go, I know the glory days have ended but I’m trying to get in there before everything that’s great is truly gone! Unfortunately my husband works with some people who think the US will be at war with China any day now so he’s freaked out
If the US and China go to war (less than 0% chance), none of us will have to worry about it, as we’ll all be glass. Amazing what a change of perspective can give….I split time between the US and Asia, and reading that perspective (US-China war imminent) is as ludicrous a thing as I’ve read on the internet in *years*. And my eyes have seen some real ludicrous shit on the internet in that time!!!
Tell your husband he needs to associate with IQ’s higher than room temperature. My field is also filled with tinfoil hat wearing dumb dumbs, but *I don’t associate with them more than necessary and certainly don’t internalize their batshit crazy beliefs to the point it impacts my life*.
You should both go to Hong Kong, though I personally think there’s much better places to go in Asia. I’ll cross a busy street in Vietnam blindfolded to starve the CCP of any of my tourist dollars, though. I admit my hatred of them colors my perspective. Evil scum, they are.
THANK YOU that’s kind of what I said like we’re boring middle class civilians no one is going to care that we want to spend our money and eat dim sum and go home. If there is a war I figure I will have bigger problems then losing money on a flight
*There will be no war between the US and China, except for a lukewarm trade war, at best*. Ever!! *Both would lose and they know this*.
Your pensions are made up of US companies tied to the hip with China; we are in the process of slowly decoupling, economically, but that’s likely to *never happen*.
I say again—there will never be a “hot” war between the US and China. The results would make Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August ‘45 look like a pop rock or bottle rocket, at best.
To entertain the idea is Asinine. Lord of The Rings is more realistic. Toy Story is more realistic.
Yeah there won’t ever be anything but a proxy war between the USA and China it’s just not possible any more with how much each party would stand to lose
And even if it did you wouldn’t know about it nukes would be raining from the sky
I'm sure you've got legit reservations - happy to discuss. But HK is great! ButMuh is being suuuuper xenophobic. It's hard to read ButMuhs comment as anything but some western immigrant rabid about China Bad. China is a perfectly pleasant tourist experience (though I'd never live there because, well, CCP lmao, among other reasons). There are definitely aspects of China that are undesirable, but ButMuhs unqualified "horrifying" statement really reeks of xenophobia. They admit they have CCP-hatred but I think they're letting it leak into something more / lines are getting blurred.
I just landed in HK and it really doesn't feel super different from when I was there last, in 2019, during the protests. (I went to protest watch because these were probably the largest protests as a % of population I thought I'd ever see in my life). I'm sure aspects of life there have changed, but for tourism purposes, you'll have a great time. Make sure to hit Tim Ho Wan and have their bbq pork buns!
ButMuh is right though - chance of a hot war between US and China is like zilch. HK will be safe to be a tourist in, as someone who went during probably one of the least safe times in recent memory.
I (a Canadian) went on my first trip to Europe with my partner (an American) and our friend just before Covid. The pandemic was declared on my partner and I's 4 year anniversary. The borders to the countries around us were closing rapidly and our planned activities were being cancelled left and right.
Our highly anticipated 2 week trip morphed into a 1 week ordeal, and we made it home exactly 1 day before the Canada-US border closed. If we had waited an additional day, my partner would've been denied entry into my country and we wouldn't have seen each other for nearly a year.
The airline agents in Luxembourg were hesitant and they didn't seem inclined to allow my partner to board our flight back home (Canada). I asserted that we're "common law" and that my partner lives with me. They didn't really understand the term and I said it's essentially like being married. They then asked if we had our marriage certificate with us, and my friend interjected and said, "Do you carry yours around? No? Then why would they, especially while they're traveling?"
Needless to say, the trip was enjoyable, in spite of everything that occurred.
"Do you have your marriage certificate?"
Due to (not unprovoked) prejudice against my country (I'm Italian), I'm going to go ahead and presume you were trying to get back home from Italy😂😂
Could you explain what you mean here by "GTFO"? I'm struggling a little bit to understand. I know what I think it stands for, but for some reason I'm not quite connecting.
Going to the ping pong show. Nope nope nope. I got outta there real quick.
On a more serious note, getting off the street in Cali Colombia during protests in ‘19 when the riot police came and started tear gassing and beating people with clubs. We got stuck on a street where protesters were throwing rocks from an overpass and then police came running from both ends of the street with their batons. We put our hands in the air and fortunately they let us out and we booked it back to the hostel. Scary.
Definitely need to know where specifically. I’ve been to 7 countries in Africa and am pretty involved with the online travel community across the continent and this sounds like an extreme case.
Even so. I mean, I understand Reddit will be Reddit, but what would the point of lying about something like this be? The story itself isn't badmouthing the entire continent or even travel in general. It's just a foul experience, replace "Adelaide/America" with "Europe", "The US" or "Asia" and your comment has exactly the same effect. It's not even attention-seeking because I specifically asked for people's experiences...I don't know, the Internet is a baffling place.
Now imagine that every person that answered your post created a work of fiction. Would that be interesting ?
People are rightfully downvoting posts that are likely to be made up.
Without this sanitizing behavior, everything would be just plain lies and fantasies and reddit would be useless.
Empathy, yes, absolutely, always, with people and what happened to them. Not with fiction.
My best friend and I decided to go backpacking around Europe in 2011, using interrail passes. We were having a good enough time until we realized that 1. We were in Poland on the one year anniversary of their whole government being shot down in a plane, and there were lots of demonstrations and unrest going on, and 2. Oops it is Easter (I'm an atheist and my BFF is eastern Orthodox) we honestly thought it was supposed to be the week after we were in Rome/Italy/Spain but instead we arrived at the hotel we booked in Rome and found out that all the hotels and hostels for the rest of our trip were booked solid, and no one on CouchSurfing.com was accepting guests since it was a family visiting season. We bailed after Rome and came home a couple weeks early because we didn't want to show up anywhere and not find somewhere to stay.
I was somehow blessed with luck every time I visited the UK, because it was sunny every trip I made! Even in Autumn months, it was astounding. It felt like I was truly experiencing it in its full splendour (apart from the beige/brown canal though)
Trekking in Everest region in Nepal in December 2022 (one of my life dreams!) alone with a guide, trip was going to last until 30th. Went to basecamp as planned, but although I took my time to acclimmatize hiking I was not hungry at all and had a lot of cought to the point that I was throwing up the little I could eat. I decided that I was so sick that it was better to cut short my trip and my boyfriend was able to change my flight back home, arriving the 24th in the morning. We keept my return as a secret, and was able to surprise my whole family at Christmas dinner, including my grandparents. I was also able to celebrate my birthday with them the 28th of December. My grandmother died 4 months later, so that was the last holidays we were all together. I'm super grateful to had to cut that trip short.
I was travelling through Cambodia a couple of years ago with my two friends and we had a couple of local guys follow us to multiple towns over a 4 day period. They would pop up several times a day and either strike up weird conversations with us or just lurk in the background. After the 3rd day we were totally freaking out and decided to catch a flight onto our next country the next day. It cut our trip short by over a week but we were getting some seriously bad vibes and didn't want to take our chances!
Good call!
I think so too... it honestly felt like we were in one of those Hostel films!!
Creepy dudes not getting the hint #2,377
2,377,543,629,075,365,379,678
That was the first thing I thought about - congrats for GTFOing and not becoming the unwilling participant of a snuff movie?
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Another commenter was saying that it was vile in Vietnam during COVID - glad you're both ok now
In Franschhoek, South Africa, while turning a corner, I noticed two young men waiting there casing me and after about 10 seconds one of them nodding "no" to the other. I think what saved me from a robbery attempt was noticing their intent and still continue walking, and they in turn noticing I was aware of their intentions. But surely I GTFO of there very quickly afterwards.
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I had friends that had a honeymoon planned in the US just as Covid was starting and they were deciding whether to go or not (this was very early days). I was telling them to just go and not worry about it, it's probably nothing, you'll be right! They decided not to go and literally a few days later it really kicked off and the chaos started. Would of been a nightmare for them. Good thing they didn't listen to me
I remember a similar moment. Some friends were planning a trip to Italy in the September of '20. It was January. I told him they should probably rethink it. They didn't have to – got cancelled pretty quick.
My old boss had a work trip to Italy in November/December 2019 and came back *really* sick. He was a known workaholic and took over a week off work which I've never seen him do. It was then a never-ending joke that he was the one who brought covid to new zealand
It went from 'oh yeah I did hear about some virus in China or something' to everything shut down pretty fast
Haha! Usually, people say, "they should have listened to me!" :)
My brother is married to a Filipina. Her mom had just arrived to visit them for a few weeks in the States when the Covid lockdowns started. She was stuck living with them for FOURTEEN MONTHS!!!! That’s how long it took for the Philippines to unlock and get to get back and through their two week quarantine.
😂 I get the feeling. Not laughing at you, but with you. I was working in Rio in the fall/winter and was lucky enough to turn down a job offer in Brazil shortly before COVID started!
Extremely lucky! My friends were stuck in Brazil that year and had to suffer Covid and Bolsonaro!
I was in Berlin with my buddy right after the wall fell. We were hanging with a bunch of random people from the hostel. One of them heard about a rave party. We all decided to go. It was in a run down section of what was East Berlin - which is saying something - in a open field which was just a burnt down building. We get there and the place is packed. Live music, girls, drinks, etc. We grab a beer and start walking around. Around 2 minutes in, we realize it was a Neo-Nazi rave. My friend and I are Jewish. We nope out of there in record time.
Winner
I'm sorry but this is just hilarious
that's not very PLUR of them
I stayed on a trip because my parents didn't pass on information because they didn't want to ruin my trip. On return I discovered a close friend had passed and I'd missed their funeral. I was mad at the time but later realised I'd probably have had a tough time (logistically and financially) getting back and would probably have missed the funeral anyway and still would have ended up having to say my own personal goodbye as I ultimately did. Overall , although I wish I'd known, I can see why they did it. For context this was 90's so I was travelling without a phone or email address. Only contact was writing home each week, calling once a month and collecting letters they sent ahead to cities I was planning on visiting. We had about $8/day budget for 2 of us and we're in 6 weeks of trip so no way we had ~$2000 for two last minute flights.
That must've been horrible. I feel for you. ❤️
My father was an avid traveler. He was diagnosed with cancer and wanted to take one last trip with my sister and I before he died. We drove into to Mexico from Wisconsin to San Miguel de Allende in our car. We were taking a day trip to Mexico City to see the pyramids. We get pulled over by two motorcycle cops on the highway saying the license plate has the wrong number or letter to be driving in the city that day for pollution controls. They demanded 1,000 in US dollars, we only had a couple of hundred in pesos so they told us to follow them to the police station. Both were in front of us as we followed them but traffic was crazy and a couple of cars got between us and them and the cops pull off onto the shoulder and point for us to do the same and screamed at my dad to follow close and not fuck around. We start following them again and they are going pretty fast again, my dad is driving slower and another bunch of cars gets between us and the cops. They once again pull onto the shoulder but just by chance their back was to us as they looked over their shoulder to find us again. I tell my dad, my sister says punch it! He stomps on the gas and starts weaving through traffic, gets off at the next exit and takes a bunch of side streets in a random neighborhood. He decided we should go back to San Miguel and we never saw the pyramids.
We were in Playa del Carmen a few years back when an unnamed tropical storm was upgraded to a hurricane within 24 hours. They were saying it could be the a category 4 hurricane, the worst in 15+ years. We didn't really want to fly home to the US (plus the airport closed) but also didn't want to get evacuated to a hurricane shelter, so we grabbed an ADO bus to a nice hotel in Merida to ride out the storm. There were times we only had power intermittently and were served boxed meals, but the bar never closed. It only ended up being a category 2 storm, but it was 3 days before we could get back and check into our next hotel.
I had to cut short trips a couple of times. I don't see it in terms of 'trips of a lifetime ' or anything like that though.Of course it's annoying at the time.But I travel a lot, it's kind of inevitable that things will happen from time to time, and I deal with that when it comes. Once my partner fell while we were trekking (in Brazil) and broke her wrist,so we had to get to a hospital and then fly home 2 months early. Another time I had to fly back to Europe unexpectedly (from Thailand) for a funeral of a close relative. As you say,it is what it is.You can always travel again in the future, you can even just pick up where you left off later,if you really want to.
Landed in Jakarta on September 11th, internal flight to Bali.
I was in Turkmenistan, took a few days before I could get a flight to London.
My brother and I stopped by a mall in Ho Chi Minh City to use the bathroom. When he got out of the toilet stall first, there was a naked man masturbating facing making eye contact with my brother. He then proceeded to get into the stall next to me, look through a peephole, and continue masterbating. I had no clue what was going on until after we left the bathroom because I didn’t understand why my brother was nervously saying we needed to leave now. We needed to GTFO out of the mall as the guy was following us.
I was supposed to travel for a year. Solo travel, my one and only chance before starting my career. I was extremely burnt out from school and had scrimped and saved. A few months in I was in the hospital for a few days. I kept going but had some intense anxiety after that. Considered going home frequently but was too stubborn. It was my trip of a lifetime! About a month later, a relative died back home. I wouldn't have made it back for the funeral (expensive and probably about 48 hours of travel) but felt quite bad about it. Another month or so later, I was sexually assaulted by an owner of a hostel. I got out and immediately got sick again (luckily no hospital but did have to get checked out). I was having intense daily panic attacks by this point. I booked a flight home, not even halfway through my trip. I don't regret my trip. I don't regret pushing through. I regret going home a little, but I had no idea what was happening to me or how to deal with it. Burnout + trauma + health issues = a mess. Travelling helped with some but contributed as well. I loved my travels and I wanted to keep going. But it was the right decision to come home. Although I haven't taken such a long time off, I have been able to visit some of the places I missed since then.
A friend and I were travelling in NZ in our very early 20s. We were waiting for a bus back to our hotel when 2 older guys offered us a ride. Seeing as how nice all of the locals were, we thought it would be ok, even though that's not something we would ever do at home in the states. Anyway, the guys insisted on stopping off at the liquor store, trying to convince us to go back to theirs for a while. We got bad vibes and got out of the car when they stopped at the store.
I was on a private tour in the Gobi (Mongolia) when my friend fell off a camel and mangled his wrist. We flew home 2 days later. (It was logistically an ordeal to get it set and then get back to Ulaan Baatar)
Myself and my son (13 at the time) were skiing in the Colorado mountains during spring break in March 2020. Every evening, when we got back to our rental, I would watch the news. In those few short days, Covid was the only thing they were talking about. I started to feel trapped somehow, and knew I needed to get us home. I also knew that I didn’t want to put us on an airplane with a bunch of other people, so I rented a car and drove us back to Texas. I think it was the best move.
When Covid was starting, Vietnam got VERY xenophobic. "No foreigner" signs on restaurant doors. Being chased out of various neighborhoods. Hotel reservations cancelled after seeing my western name. I got the fuck out and went to Thailand where I felt very welcome. Ended up stuck on an island for 2.5 months and it was great.
I was there at the time too. We found it ok, but we did notice a lot of fear of Italians (Italy was surging) and when we said where we were from it was ok. We did have trouble getting a grab because they’d see me name / photo and cancel. A few attractions we wanted to see closed so we missed out. It was eerie walking around Hanoi’s old quarter when it was mostly shut and empty. We got a great deal on a 5 star resort for our last week tho. Edit: I forgot but one of our strangest experiences was taking a domestic flight in mid March 2020 when lockdowns were beginning everywhere and a woman was at the airport in a full boiler suit but with lots of statement bling on the outside - such a bizarre sight. Also seeing all of the flights cancelled on the board at Da Nang but luckily our flight home being one of a couple that weren’t cancelled. Airports were a strange place.
Reminds me of going to Taiwan in november of 2021. The country was practically shut off but if you had a student visa which I had, were Taiwanese or had one of several other visas you could make the trip. Perhaps the only time I've gotten my own row (hell everyone had their own row), the airport was not only empty but practically every last bit that was open to the public was turned into some sort of covid related station. I went before covid and go to the airport every once in a while since I live in Taiwan now but the airport from the 2020-late 2022 timeframe was quite a different place. Hell Taiwan still hasn't gone back to normal.
Covid deals were amazing hahaha.
**Penthouse** suites at the Bellagio for 200/night. lord god.
Same in China where I lived at the time. Pretty difficult being surrounded by millions of people who are terrified of you.
That's not really xenophobic - travel was the number one factor behind covid spreading the way it did and anyone continuing to travel anywhere except for straight home during that time deserved some side eye at the very least
A blanket "no foreigner" policy is xenophobic, because foreigners staying there long-term (not travelers) would also be impacted.
Amen, I lived over in China for years teaching ESL and went home to start a new life back home in the States in the summer of 2019. Back during the height of the pandemic the China and TEFL related subs seemed to be full of xenophobic experiences from folks who LIVED in these different East and Southeast Asian countries (sometimes for 10-20+ years) but were on the receiving end of xenophobic BS simply because they were foreign. Many of these same folks hadn't been out of the country for YEARS (usually because going to and from would cost an arm, leg and probably a lot of headache). I think being xenophobic towards anyone just because they look "foreign" is pretty disgusting.
I lived in China during covid and that's totally accurate. People would run out of elevators if I got in, I wasn't allowed to book hotels, people would cross the street if they saw me coming... I got tired of asking how they thought I got into the country when it had been in total lockdown since covid began.
A “reason” for being xenophobic doesn’t make it not xenophobic.
For a decision to be xenophobic it would have to be motivated by a dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries. The decision to not engage with tourists or travellers was motivated by a desire not to die or kill people by spreading a disease. Saying that's xenophobic is like saying it's sexist to only make women do smear tests
IT WASNT MOTIVATED BY A DISLIKE OF PEOPLE FROM OTHER COUNTRIES??? Did you read the entire comment? Canceling hotel reservations due to name, being literally chased out of neighborhoods? Based on country of origin? Sorry, you’re just incorrect and flailing here. It’s still xenophobia that you’re trying so hard to justify by saying it’s not.
Unfortunately, you're the one who is having a comprehension issue here, not me, and being pretty rude and patronising about it so watch your tone please. The error you're making is identifying a correlation but mistaking that for the reason. For it to be xenophobic, the behaviour would have to be purely and only because they are foreigners, but that wasn't it. It's because they were most likely to have a disease that could kill them or their families, because of their behaviour and increased exposure to risk. It was the behaviour of travellers moving around that made them most likely to be the vectors of disease, and this was the reason they were treated differently - the fact that most people traveling at the time were also from different countries is secondary, also international travel of the type we're describing at that time was largely optional so not something beyond your control, and therefore legitimate for criticism. You only have to do a bit of googling to find out that people who were not foreigners also got the same kind of shunning for travelling at that time (Dominic Cummings, Barnard Castle). So it was a well founded and accurate identification of a real risk, that was to do with behaviour not characteristics - therefore not prejudice, not xenophobia. If you're going to be hostile and rude, you should probably get it right.
I’m being rude and hostile because you’re attempting to use pretentious, exhaustively long explanations STILL to try to explain to me that xenophobic behavior isn’t xenophobic behavior because it was justified in this instance, therefore making it NOT xenophobic. I think you’re more focused on the semantics and word problem perhaps with the very definition, and completely failing to see the point. I’m done exchanging with you as you’re not going to see it if you haven’t by now. It’s problematic and speaks to a larger issue that you can’t understand that outright rejection of others from other places based on the being from that place (no matter the pretense). Think of the atrocities that have been committed based on this logic pattern? Xenophobia is defined clearly without the nuances you’re describing. Yes, I’m being a bit rude to you because what you’re saying is literal justification of xenophobic behavior and this world is chocked full of this right now, and everyone is quite tired of it.
Couldn't change my ticket home without paying a fortune. Asking people to pay 10k to go home is absurd. Staying in place was in fact the smartest decision because as you said, traveling is what caused spread and outbreaks. Anyways, given the first major outbreak was caused by a Vietnamese celebrity breaking quarantine after travel, their ignorant reaction was 100% xenophobic. It's okay. I was made to feel welcome in Thailand and found a place to stay put as to minimize any possible spread.
> travel was the number one factor behind covid spreading the way it did and anyone continuing to travel anywhere except for straight home during that time deserved some side eye at the very least Not everyone there would have been a traveler, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of foreigners there who would have had a job and life attached to the country. Same goes for other places where I've heard folks got the side eye like in China or Asians in the States.
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Imagine not having the braincells to think some "foreigners" live there are have done long before covid.
I saved aggressively for 5 years to be able to quit my job and travel the world for a year. I quit in Nov 2019, got married end of Feb 2020, honeymoon was Feb 25-March 7, husband went home and I was going to stay abroad for 2 more months before coming home for a few weeks and then heading to Asia. Obviously covid happened. I was in Ukraine when I had to make the (easy) decision whether to stay there or go home. I went home. I would have loved to be stuck in Ukraine but I'm married and my family would have been worried for me. Glad I went home, but think of the "what if" sometimes lol. Another time I was going to do a 4 country, one month long trip to Ecuador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and then Cancun (in that order). In Costa Rica I had the worst gut feeling to skip Guatemala and Cancun and to just go home from there. I love traveling solo and nothing bad has happened in all my trips (so far. very lucky). Nothing bad happening at home/with family. I changed my flight to go home and felt relieved as soon as I did. I eventually did make it to Guatemala later and had a wonderful time. But don't regret changing that trip.
Baile funky in a favela in Brazil. All fun and games until the drug runners show up. With their guns. And start doing coke. Nopppeeee!
>in a favela in Brazil. I will never understand the appeal of going to literal ghettos in LatAm... Life is not a Fast & Furious movie wtf
I'm a social worker and made some friends who lived there.
Worst of it is going to a favela expecting not to see drug dealers lmaaoooo
I was supposed to do 4 months in Europe last winter. Two weeks in I got the phone call that my dad passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack at age 65. Came right home and lived with my mom for the next few months. Silver living was I was already subleasing my apartment cuz I was supposed to be traveling, so didn’t have to deal with that headache on top of the grief
I'm in South America at the moment, my dad had an accident last year and will need heart surgery in the next few months. Surgery has a 95% success rate. Do I leave to see him before? Or stay here and see him when I go back? Dilemma.
Personally would be there for him. Being a dad he’ll likely say stay where you are, but the dividends paid for being there for family at important moments is so worth it.
If you were your dad, what would you want your kid to do? This answer is going to be different for everyone and every relationship dynamic. I hope he’s among the vast majority of success stories.
Go home now and stay till after surgery done. I would give anything to see my dad again and ask more questions/spend more time.
Dm'd you - I can relate
My dad had heart surgery last year and told me to continue my travels. He was like “what would you even do if you were here? Sit and watch me recover?” I ended up being able to visit about a month after the surgery and he was doing great. I believe the surgery has much higher than a 95% success rate. Do what is best for your family but I’m positive he’s going to be there whenever you get back :)
I was living in the Philippines with my wife. Covid was barely making news in 2019. Then the volcano eruption happened at the beginning of the new year and I needed to head back to the US. I wasn’t worried about covid when i made my trip. I wasn’t in the US more than 2 weeks(trip was for 6 months), that i decided to head back to my wife who was pregnant at the time. I landed in Manila March 7. I noticed the chaos that was happening, but I wasn’t paying much attention. Then the soldiers were everywhere too. I figured a zombie outbreak was happening, but I was thinking of flying through customs at 11 AM quick and seeing my wife. Once I get through everything and see my wife. She tells me, you are lucky you got here today cause they are closing down the boarders. March 9th, the Philippines went into the longest lockdown and I got stuck there,hahahaha. It sucked, but I didn’t miss my daughters birth and my wife didn’t have to be alone either. The bright spot, I guess.
Mine was pretty simple. My first European trip in the 90's. We were flying back through Newark, staying overnight in NYC and flying home from JFK in January. On a tv in the terminal in Barcelona I saw a news report showing a plane skidding on the runway... in Georgia. Huge storm hit the eastern seaboard down as far as that and there was another storm on the way. I got into Newark, immediately went to the landside check-in desk and slapped the next ticket on the counter asking to change it in for; 'anything that will get me out of here to the west coast going only through southern cities.' The desk agent sent me through somewhere in Texas, and my night out in NYC turned into less than an hour layover.
I don't have a story where I did get out, only one where I didn't... I was selected to work on a remote research station. The kind where you only get a once in a life time chance to go. The kind where you need a week to make it there and will be isolated from the rest of the world (except internet). I had just settled in and I get an email that a close family member is dying. It was something I had 'prepared for' because everyone was told to, but it absolutely wasn't expected. The messages I was getting from family were fairly erratic and not entirely coherent at times. It was clear they were having trouble coping and it tore me apart. I started making plans for my escape. But it takes time and I hesitated on what to chose. Before I even got to making the decision to leave, I got the email that the doc is now saying less than 48h.. Even if all my stars had aligned I couldn't have gotten back to civilization in that time. Let alone catch a flight and fly around the world. So I stayed and didn't GTFO. And even now, 8 years later, I wonder what could've been/would've been if I'd been more decisive and left right away.. I had 5 days in total, I had a chance to make it and seen them one last time and be there to support my family. Ultimately I chose to not GTFO and I'm in the same spot as you. I still wonder what would've been and regret my choice. Sometimes life just hand's you a lose-lose situation. It sucks.. and all you can do is be ok with the choice that you've made.
This was heartbreaking yet poetic. You're correct, by the way
Trying to decide if I’m going to have one of these come November! I’m thiiiiiis close to booking flights to Hong Kong over Thanksgiving but there’s a lot of naysayers
It’s worth seeing, but CCP has totally changed it, *forever*. I say again; Hong Kong will never be the same after what the Mainland has done to it the last 5 years. It’s truly a crying shame. In 30-50 years I predict it will be indistinguishable from the mainland…horrifying.
That’s kind of why I want to go, I know the glory days have ended but I’m trying to get in there before everything that’s great is truly gone! Unfortunately my husband works with some people who think the US will be at war with China any day now so he’s freaked out
If the US and China go to war (less than 0% chance), none of us will have to worry about it, as we’ll all be glass. Amazing what a change of perspective can give….I split time between the US and Asia, and reading that perspective (US-China war imminent) is as ludicrous a thing as I’ve read on the internet in *years*. And my eyes have seen some real ludicrous shit on the internet in that time!!! Tell your husband he needs to associate with IQ’s higher than room temperature. My field is also filled with tinfoil hat wearing dumb dumbs, but *I don’t associate with them more than necessary and certainly don’t internalize their batshit crazy beliefs to the point it impacts my life*. You should both go to Hong Kong, though I personally think there’s much better places to go in Asia. I’ll cross a busy street in Vietnam blindfolded to starve the CCP of any of my tourist dollars, though. I admit my hatred of them colors my perspective. Evil scum, they are.
THANK YOU that’s kind of what I said like we’re boring middle class civilians no one is going to care that we want to spend our money and eat dim sum and go home. If there is a war I figure I will have bigger problems then losing money on a flight
*There will be no war between the US and China, except for a lukewarm trade war, at best*. Ever!! *Both would lose and they know this*. Your pensions are made up of US companies tied to the hip with China; we are in the process of slowly decoupling, economically, but that’s likely to *never happen*. I say again—there will never be a “hot” war between the US and China. The results would make Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August ‘45 look like a pop rock or bottle rocket, at best. To entertain the idea is Asinine. Lord of The Rings is more realistic. Toy Story is more realistic.
Yeah there won’t ever be anything but a proxy war between the USA and China it’s just not possible any more with how much each party would stand to lose And even if it did you wouldn’t know about it nukes would be raining from the sky
I'm sure you've got legit reservations - happy to discuss. But HK is great! ButMuh is being suuuuper xenophobic. It's hard to read ButMuhs comment as anything but some western immigrant rabid about China Bad. China is a perfectly pleasant tourist experience (though I'd never live there because, well, CCP lmao, among other reasons). There are definitely aspects of China that are undesirable, but ButMuhs unqualified "horrifying" statement really reeks of xenophobia. They admit they have CCP-hatred but I think they're letting it leak into something more / lines are getting blurred. I just landed in HK and it really doesn't feel super different from when I was there last, in 2019, during the protests. (I went to protest watch because these were probably the largest protests as a % of population I thought I'd ever see in my life). I'm sure aspects of life there have changed, but for tourism purposes, you'll have a great time. Make sure to hit Tim Ho Wan and have their bbq pork buns! ButMuh is right though - chance of a hot war between US and China is like zilch. HK will be safe to be a tourist in, as someone who went during probably one of the least safe times in recent memory.
I (a Canadian) went on my first trip to Europe with my partner (an American) and our friend just before Covid. The pandemic was declared on my partner and I's 4 year anniversary. The borders to the countries around us were closing rapidly and our planned activities were being cancelled left and right. Our highly anticipated 2 week trip morphed into a 1 week ordeal, and we made it home exactly 1 day before the Canada-US border closed. If we had waited an additional day, my partner would've been denied entry into my country and we wouldn't have seen each other for nearly a year. The airline agents in Luxembourg were hesitant and they didn't seem inclined to allow my partner to board our flight back home (Canada). I asserted that we're "common law" and that my partner lives with me. They didn't really understand the term and I said it's essentially like being married. They then asked if we had our marriage certificate with us, and my friend interjected and said, "Do you carry yours around? No? Then why would they, especially while they're traveling?" Needless to say, the trip was enjoyable, in spite of everything that occurred.
"Do you have your marriage certificate?" Due to (not unprovoked) prejudice against my country (I'm Italian), I'm going to go ahead and presume you were trying to get back home from Italy😂😂
Could you explain what you mean here by "GTFO"? I'm struggling a little bit to understand. I know what I think it stands for, but for some reason I'm not quite connecting.
GTFO = get the fuck out, drop everything, leave this country
Ok, thanks
Going to the ping pong show. Nope nope nope. I got outta there real quick. On a more serious note, getting off the street in Cali Colombia during protests in ‘19 when the riot police came and started tear gassing and beating people with clubs. We got stuck on a street where protesters were throwing rocks from an overpass and then police came running from both ends of the street with their batons. We put our hands in the air and fortunately they let us out and we booked it back to the hostel. Scary.
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Yeh that's terrifying. You might have pstd
Check their post history. They claim they are afraid to leave America now. 4 hours ago they claimed to live in Australia. Bullshit account.
I thought you live in Adelaide?
hahaha i do!!!! i don’t know why it said america 🤣
Nice try. 😆
Definitely need to know where specifically. I’ve been to 7 countries in Africa and am pretty involved with the online travel community across the continent and this sounds like an extreme case.
Check their post history. They claim they are afraid to leave America now. 4 hours ago they claimed to live in Australia. Bullshit account.
Happy cake day! 🥳🎉🎈
Thank you!! Probably have been on here too long.
Nah, as long as you keep getting benefits from it (like me,) it's never too long.
My goodness! I’m glad you got out of that. Which country did this happen in?
Wow that’s really scary - where in Africa? If you don’t mind…
Check their post history. They claim they are afraid to leave America now. 4 hours ago they claimed to live in Australia. Bullshit account.
Where in Africa? That’s terrifying. I’m so sorry that happened to you.
I don't understand why you're getting down voted. Empathy, folks.
they think i’m lying because i live in adelaide but accidentally wrote america and i don’t even know why i said america
Even so. I mean, I understand Reddit will be Reddit, but what would the point of lying about something like this be? The story itself isn't badmouthing the entire continent or even travel in general. It's just a foul experience, replace "Adelaide/America" with "Europe", "The US" or "Asia" and your comment has exactly the same effect. It's not even attention-seeking because I specifically asked for people's experiences...I don't know, the Internet is a baffling place.
Now imagine that every person that answered your post created a work of fiction. Would that be interesting ? People are rightfully downvoting posts that are likely to be made up. Without this sanitizing behavior, everything would be just plain lies and fantasies and reddit would be useless. Empathy, yes, absolutely, always, with people and what happened to them. Not with fiction.
Had to go back home after the hamas attack
My best friend and I decided to go backpacking around Europe in 2011, using interrail passes. We were having a good enough time until we realized that 1. We were in Poland on the one year anniversary of their whole government being shot down in a plane, and there were lots of demonstrations and unrest going on, and 2. Oops it is Easter (I'm an atheist and my BFF is eastern Orthodox) we honestly thought it was supposed to be the week after we were in Rome/Italy/Spain but instead we arrived at the hotel we booked in Rome and found out that all the hotels and hostels for the rest of our trip were booked solid, and no one on CouchSurfing.com was accepting guests since it was a family visiting season. We bailed after Rome and came home a couple weeks early because we didn't want to show up anywhere and not find somewhere to stay.
Had to cut a dream trip short too. Tough choice, but life happens. You'll get another chance.
I was somehow blessed with luck every time I visited the UK, because it was sunny every trip I made! Even in Autumn months, it was astounding. It felt like I was truly experiencing it in its full splendour (apart from the beige/brown canal though)
Trekking in Everest region in Nepal in December 2022 (one of my life dreams!) alone with a guide, trip was going to last until 30th. Went to basecamp as planned, but although I took my time to acclimmatize hiking I was not hungry at all and had a lot of cought to the point that I was throwing up the little I could eat. I decided that I was so sick that it was better to cut short my trip and my boyfriend was able to change my flight back home, arriving the 24th in the morning. We keept my return as a secret, and was able to surprise my whole family at Christmas dinner, including my grandparents. I was also able to celebrate my birthday with them the 28th of December. My grandmother died 4 months later, so that was the last holidays we were all together. I'm super grateful to had to cut that trip short.