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I flew with Jetstar multiple times. I accidentally kicked a sea urchin and got spines in my toe when snorkelling. The situation could have been much worse, to be honest, a wave was pushing me into a rock covered in them that was right below the surface in water with practically no visibility, I managed to turn away at the last second and thankfully only my foot hit the rock. I get really nauseous from hunger sometimes and once it happened on a saltwater croc feeding tour near Darwin. We were on a small boat and the guide was getting the crocs to jump out of the water to bite meat on a stick. I didn't eat enough for breakfast and started getting hungry, then the nausea kicked in. No one on board had snacks of any kind, so I told the guide "I think I'm going to throw up" and he instructed me to lean over the edge of the boat but not on this side or I'll get my head bitten off. Ran to the other side and hurled what little breakfast I had into the river. I learned to make sure I always have at least a granola bar on me at all times just in case. A bus I was on going through the Mexican countryside ran over a full-grown male iguana. You could feel the bump  There was some sort of freak winter storm in New Zealand when I was there and none of the buses were willing to drive for a couple days and I ended up having to cancel a ton of plans and ended up stuck in Queenstown for the last 10 days of my trip. I could have tried to reschedule but at that point I had been moving from place to place almost daily for 2 months in 5 countries and I was tired so I just accepted my fate. Last year I got a pretty nasty case of Montezuma's Revenge that put me out of commission for a week. And this happened last Saturday.  We knew the whale was there and was about to come up for a breach. This other boat cut in front of ours at the worst moment. I've gone whale watching in Mexico at least 12 times now and this was the first time I'd encountered such an active breacher. Realistically though, I have yet to have any real travel horrors happen. I've been very lucky, and I'm grateful for that.
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Feb 27, 2016 01:01
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Sounds like you actually didn't.
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Mar 4, 2016 08:07
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Geriatric Pirate posted:Hmm.. got so sunburned that I nearly fainted in Havana. Almost lost my phone there as well (luckily, the taxi was able to bring it to the airport before my plane left). A few cases of being overcharged. Dealing with locals in some countries, with Nepal, India and Ethiopia being near the top of the list (just generally unpleasant). Really bad sunburns are the worst. One year my husband and I both burned our backs really bad we looked purple, and we ended up soaking towels in cold water and just draping them over ourselves in an attempt to draw out the heat that was causing excruciating pain. We hardly slept at all that week.
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Mar 7, 2016 06:43
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Montreal is the only airport I've been that did not have people staffing security scanning overnight. I had to wait outside customs with at least 100 other people one morning between 4 and 5 because no one was staffed to scan people through security. That reminds me of a funny one: I flew from Calgary to Vancouver and the plane ended up at the wrong gate. There was no one in that entire wing of the airport and all the lights were off but apparently that's where we were directed to go. My sister was in the airport waiting for me, and managed to call me on my cell asking if I had landed. I totally had, but we were literally locked out, just sitting and waiting, hoping someone would show up. The pilot had admitted over the intercom that he had no idea how this screw up occurred but all we could do was sit and wait until we were let inside. It took nearly an hour for us to deplane because they had to rush a bunch of staff over to this part of the airport we ended up at.
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Mar 10, 2016 09:18
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I am currently going through my worst and best travel experience. Strap yourselves in. 24 hours ago, I was panicking at the check-in for my flight to Belize from Toronto because it was taking the 3 agents no less than 15 minutes to check each person or group. After over an hour with no more than 15 sets of people in front of me, I get to the front of the line with 50 minutes to get on my plane to Chicago, which included security and customs. They decided to open a new priority check-in line, because there were 3 families waiting there, so gently caress the other 100+ people waiting over an hour. I decide to be a poo poo and walk to the next empty counter before being summoned, but so did the guy in the new line. We start arguing, and the agent asks when my flight boards. I told her 50 minutes. The man stepped back because his didn't leave for 3 and a half hours. I'm shaking with rage at this point but I decide to be a proper Canadian and I apologize for freaking out and wished him a nice flight. I get to security and find out I've been randomly selected for special screening, so I get all my stuff swabbed, and then get put in the scanner. Had to do it 3 times because I was shaking and the image was blurry. Customs was a little slow because the guy was actually friendly and chatty for once. I run to my gate to find that it's been delayed 2 hours. It's now due to arrive 15 minutes after my connection leaves. I get a drink and hope they'll hold the plane. I arrive in Chicago, hoping to get my connection to Newark, which would result in a 6 hour overnight layover, but whatever, it was only $400CAD to Belize so that's fine. But it didn't. It's listing had disappeared from the board. I went to the customer service counter and said "I think I missed my connection." The man said, "You're going to Belize, right? We've been working on getting you sorted out." I was thrilled, to be honest. It was nice that they were being so pre-emptive about it. He managed to get me onto a flight to Miami early in the morning, and then on to Belize. I was starting to look up the "Sleeping in Airports" site for O'Hare when he handed me a hotel voucher complete with free shuttle service and complimentary meals. loving sweet! That's so much better than pissing around Newark overnight. So again, super thrilled. Got to my hotel just in time for the restaurant to close. Ended up buying a bag of chips for dinner. I had to catch the 5:30 a.m. shuttle to catch my flight, and the restaurant didn't re-open until an hour after that. So no free food. But oh well, free hotel. I had just spent 10 days in a house full of people fighting so the solitude was magical. Flight out of Chicago in the morning is delayed. Not severely, but it got me to Miami International with only 1/2 hour to cross the entire airport and go through security. I ran. It was hot. I have chronic pain in my legs. I felt like I was going to collapse, but I just made my connection. I ended up next to a crazy guy who was fidgeting, scratching dandruff off his scalp, and snotting snot droplets on my bare arm the entire flight. At least it was less than 2 hours, and once I was flying over Belize and seeing the reefs, it was amazing. I get to Belize and my luggage was nowhere to be found. I expected this, considering the changed flights and seriously close connection times. I talk to an agent and she sees my bag is in Miami, waiting for hte late night Belize flight. I already knew which hostel I was staying at so it's going to be sent here. 'Here' is San Pedro on Ambergris Caye, a small island off the coast of Belize. To get here, I booked a flight on TropicAir, which flies a few different types of Cessna aircraft. I positioned myself close to the counter because it was open seating and I wanted to be directly behind the pilot. I was expecting a plane like this:  They called our flight number and I was first in line. I waited patiently but excitedly, because I'm planning on making a film about my experience here and I wanted the best footage I could get. Then a man comes up to me and asks "Miss Princess?" Me: "Yes". "We're going to put you on a private plane, it will be about 5 minutes. WHAT. I don't know how it happened, but it did. I ended up sitting in the front seat of this and fly to a tiny tropical island in the middle of a barrier reef:  Which is just about one of the coolest things to ever happen to me! The footage I shot was amazing! I had picked up a sim card with data and was snapchatting like crazy! There was one other person on the plane, and we got to chatting a bunch and ended up exchanging info, so I already have a friend here. All that poo poo I went through was worth it just for that experience! Except that in all my excitement I managed to lose my passport. It's probably on the floor of the plane. I'm currently waiting for word on if it's been found, and hopefully my luggage will arrive before I'm set to head to my next destination about 18 hours from now. That's been the last 24 hours of my life. It's been quite an adventure.
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Jan 6, 2017 02:03
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I LIKE COOKIE posted:you go girl! Intense poo poo like that is what I live for. I'm jealous I like having interesting stories to tell! I do have all my possessions now except for a coat I forgot in the hostel. But it turns out I'm allergic to noseeums and have like 300 disgusting burning bites on my feet.
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Jan 11, 2017 04:31
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I have a new one! I was away from home or three months this year: 10 days in Toronto, 2 months and a week in Belize working at a wildlife rescue facility as a practicum for school, then a week and half in Mexico to visit with friends and family. My last day at work in Belize, I came down with a severe fever, fatigue, and loss of appetite rather suddenly. I had that itch in the ears and a minor light cough indicating a cold for a couple days prior. By the next morning I was coughing uncontrollably. I had given myself 3 days to see the tourist sights in Belize before heading for Mexico, and I spent the entire time in bed coughing myself to death. At one point I coughed so hard I triggered my gag reflex and ended up throwing up several times. When I travelled to Chetumal, Mexico, it was by boat then I walked to my hotel which was only a block and a half away. I was so fatigued it took about an hour. I spent the night in the hotel and developed severe pain around my lungs like I had cracked a rib or seized up all the muscles or something. The next day I flew to Mexico City to visit with some friends for 2 days. I think if I stayed any longer I would have been hospitalized. A city as polluted as that combined with that elevation after being at sea level for 2 months is not where you want to go when you have severe respiratory illness. I did manage to drag myself out to do a driving tour downtown with a stop to see the big cathedral downtown. I also made it to Teotihuacan but only listlessly wandered around. I then moved on to Manzanillo, which was back at sea level and relatively clean air. I started to feel a bit better, but couldn't do much a=of anything due to the insane amount of pain I was in. Coughing was excruciating. I had to sleep sitting up because laying out flat pulled on the muscles/ribs too hard and I would cry out from the pain. My favourite thing to do there is just go out for a swim in the ocean, but I never did it at all. I was so exhausted from the pain. I got home over 3 weeks after getting sick. I didn't seek medical attention until then for one major reason: I'd have to report the incident to my university since I was on an official international out-trip. I know from experience they are ridiculously overreactive to students having medical problems on out-trips to the point of banning people from going to that location ever again. I didn't want to blacklist the facility I worked at or the entire country of Belize, so I kept it to myself. I tried to make an appointment with my regular doctor, but after describing some symptoms to the receptionist, she told me call our Healthlink number and get into an emergency clinic. I saw someone that day and it turned out I had bacterial pneumonia which was triggering an asthma attack that likely lasted all 3 weeks. My blood oxygen saturation level was 73 at rest. I was put on emergency asthma medication and antibiotics and my cough went away in 3 days. The rib pain persisted, though, and only finally went away last week. It's been a bit of an ordeal.
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Jun 11, 2017 02:37
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| # ¿ Apr 30, 2024 12:31 |
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I kind of just assumed it was a really bad case of bronchitis, which I'm prone to. I really started to worry when I got home and got worse due to going back up in elevation and the air being cold. In hindsight I totally agree it was pretty stupid.
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Jun 13, 2017 03:56
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