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Someone Asked “What Is The Dumbest Travel Mistake You’ve Made?”, 30 Folks Delivered
Some trips are more breathtaking than others, but he who knows the first thing about traveling would know it to be about movement and change - of landscape, people, sounds, light, and probably the traveler himself.
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the most probable and (usually) desired part of traveling is various adventures! And adventures wouldn’t be adventures without their essential element - unexpected circumstances and surprises!
That being said, honest travelers would admit that at least some of it springs right from the traveler’s own hilarious mistakes. (Even if it means being stuck in the exact same spot or paying for the room twice.) Dreadful at the moment, but still funny years later. These Redditors shared their experiences of making such a mistake while hitting the road, answering one Redditor’s question “What’s is the dumbest travel mistake you’ve made?”
More info: Reddit
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On a *very* drunken night out in Thailand I gave my wallet to a lovely couple we had spent the day with on a trip to keep safe as I had no pockets in my shorts.
Needless to say I woke up the next day and the doom hit me.
Kicked myself for the next few days and carried on with my trip with the help of my friends. Mostly transferring money to them online.
A few days later I logged in to a computer at the hostel and found an email from LinkedIn with a connection request and a short message from one of the couple! They had tried finding me on all my socials but the only one that they found me on was LinkedIn 🤣
They managed to post it to my next hostel and it was on my bed waiting for me!
Heroes. 🤩
Sydney, Australia and Sydney, Nova Scotia are not close to each other. I have no idea why I didn’t question why the ticket was so affordable !
Not me but my husband. The night before our first trip to Barcelona he noticed his passport had expired. Hotels were nonrefundable at that point so I waved goodbye and did the trip solo.
What sort of person doesn't check their passport before making travel plans? Some countries insist on at least 6 months before expiry to let you in.
My wife and I traveled to New Zealand for six weeks camping, then flew to Hawaii for a week to visit friends. I had a car and condo rented in Hawaii but in the plane to Hawaii I realized the day we lost going to New Zealand, we we’re gaining back going to Hawaii (International Date Line). So, we had to scramble as we had no car or housing for our first day there. We literally arrived in Hawaii hours before we left New Zealand. Oops.
Borrowed my dad's old truck to do some wilderness camping with a buddy across the Canadian border in Yukon (I'm from Alaska obviously). Told the border agent I had no guns, ammo, etc but they searched the vehicle anyways and lo an behold my dad had a hidden compartment under the back seat with a .357 and a box of ammo lol. They pulled us out and had us stuck in an interrogation room while they called my dad as it was his name on the registration. He confirmed it was his fault as he forgot it was in there and they actually let us go and they kept the gun. We camped for a week lol. My dad had to drive 250 miles to the border to pick up the gun.
Only Americans "forget" they have guns stashed somewhere...
My husband mixed up AM and PM for our flight from Amsterdam to London and I never bothered to double check. We were out happily sightseeing with what we thought were our last few hours in town when I get an email that said “How was your flight? Fill out this survey…”
Thankfully we booked some last minute train tickets. We lost the money on the airfare but at least it was a very cheap flight.
Grabbed my son's passoort, instead of mine, before driving 3 hrs to Chicago for a flight to Cuba early the next day. Thankfully I have an amazing friend who went and got mine from my house and met me halfway. Got back to Chicago at 2:00am, and made my 6:30 am flight. I gave my friend $100 for saving my a**e.
A very funny story from about 30 yrs ago. My grandparents managed to take there son and daughters passports instead of their own! They were driving to France and those days all you had to do was flash the passport and they didn't fully check. So, they kept away from the curve, not close enough for the pictures to be obvious! They got there and back
I booked a trip to Istanbul in December, assumed it would be warm because it was on the Mediterranean and in the Middle East, didn’t check the weather predictions, didn’t pack any warm clothes, and it was snowing when I arrived.
I wouldn't have thought Istanbul got any snow, either. The more you know.
I booked a ticket to the Anne Frank museum tour and stood inline. Ticket was for the following year
Mine was being an inexperienced 19 year old traveler bringing lots of German beer to Liverpool in a duffel bag. About 10 or 12 bottles broke and the bags on the conveyor belt were soaked in beer and the people were angrily mumbling over it. Then mine came, the whole bottom was drenched, and eyes were all over me as I quietly snuck out.
My parents lived in Haiti and would bring vanilla back to us in the USA. At that time the vanilla was in glass 5th bottles. Once trip at least one of the bottles broke. All the luggage coming off the plane smelled strongly of vanilla. It was the best vanilla to use in cooking.
I booked a train from Venice at the trenitalia site. When the train never arrived I discovered I'd booked a bus. We missed it.
I am italian but I would expected booking from trenitalia that would have been a train. BUT there is a possibility is called "servizio sostitutivo" it means that if a very important train connection is not avaliable (there are fixings on the line or other stuff) they change it temporarily with a bus
I forgot underwear on a three week trip to South America. No offense to the Brazilians here but let’s say their men’s style of underwear was not my idea of comfortable.
Not me, but my friends recently were visiting EU (they’re not EU citizens and require a visa to be there) and decided to go on a day-trip from Munich (Germany) to Salzburg (Austria). Never came to their mind to grab their passports as it’s their first time in Europe and they’ve thought “there’s no state borders inside the EU”. They got lucky at the way there, but at the way back there was a police check on travel documents 🙈 they were taken off the train and spent couple of hours at the police station trying to contact hotel so the staff would get into their room and take photos of visas. Ended well though - the police released them once the photos were sent.
Similar happened to me in Dusseldorf! 2019, travelling back to South Africa from UK. Didn't know the travel rules there are different and I spend 5 hours in the airport police station while they tried everything they could to get me on a plane out. Was very scary, but they did help and I made it home 19 hours later, very tired and broke.
We were traveling to two different cities for a week. We needed two accommodations, one for each city, right? Well my dumbass booked not just one air bnb for the one city, but also booked the other for the same city with the exact same dates. Didn’t notice until a week before our trip. I cried when I realize what I did lol. It was an extremely expensive (no refund) lesson to learn to pay more attention when I book more than 1 accommodation at once :/
I have to book a hotel for the night before you leave for the country you arrive the next day, when crossing the dateline west to east. Eg. First flight depts 6:00am on 17th April connecting flight arrives at destination 16th April 12:30am. Due to time zones and date line Both Hotel bookings (one for predeparture and one for arrival) are for the night of the 16th in two countries.
Arriving at 1:00 pm for a 1:00 am flight...12hrs too late. The flight was from India to US so it was a very expensive mistake.
I see a lot of this on this list. Which company does not issue tickets with a 24h clock? I was working as a ground hostess for years and never saw one!
I was travelling in Belfast and then taking a flight to Paris from the Belfast airport. When I get to the bus station, I ask for a ticket “to the airport”. I get my ticket and get on the bus. 30 mins into the trip where we should be getting close to the airport, I check my Google maps and see we’re headed the wrong direction. I ask someone if the bus is going to the Belfast airport. He looks horrified and tells me it’s going to the Dublin airport. Missed my flight, had to get a new, way more expensive flight from the Dublin airport.
Something similar happened to us when we were in Istanbul last February. Twenty minutes into the taxi ride I realized we were going in the wrong direction (Havalimaı instead of Sabiha Gokcen). Luckily we had planned with a time margin large enough to make up for the mistake, but the 40 Euro ride became a 80 Euro trip.
I mentally earmark a few hundred dollars per trip for "mistakes" since I plan my own trips. No one is perfect, and expecting to make a few errors helps me deal with it when it happens.
Recently went to Japan and must have been extremely jet lagged my first night because I threw my envelope of 40000 yen (like 280 USD) into the trash can in the bathroom of the floor of the hostel I was staying in. Was checking the bathroom as a last ditch effort, moved a few pieces of tissue and there it was untouched 😂
Went to the wrong airport in berlin and missed my flight
Backcountry backpacking, had those convertible pants, but left the pant legs at a high elevation lake and had to just wear shorts the remainder of the route. Very cold at night!
Showed up for my flight exactly 24 hours before departure. Luckily they got me on or I would’ve have to go home and repeat the whole process the next day.
Extra vacation day I guess so that was cool.
1990’s. Took a redeye charter to the greek islands. Opened the duty free on the plane and got drunk and wasted, as good 19year olds do on a boys-trip.
Arrived. We saw our two bags on the luggage band. Grabbed them, took the chartered bus to the hotel. Crashed in bed after checking in to the hotel.
After 1 hour got woken up by the tour guide knocking on our door. He had two identical bags in his hand. He informed us we took some other guests bags at the airport. Opps 🙄
Why would they want his organs Kitten? He's already admitted he was pickling in alcohol.
Booked my rental car for the wrong day (flight landed at 1am and I booked for the previous day). The rental company was completely inflexible, so I ended up shelling out $500+ *twice* for a 4-day rental. Then I discovered a cab to and from my destination (where I didn't need a car anyway) would've only cost like $150 😩
For some reason I had us flying out of St Louis a day earlier than we were. Didn't find out till we tried to check in at our day before flight hotel. Called our travel agent to tell Bush's screwed up in booking the hotel as they didn't have our room. She checked and said you're not flying out till 2 more days. So we had to spend the time and more money for the extra day.
"How hard can it be to get from Heathrow to Gatwick ... *very late at night*? It's still the same city."
Gatwick is part of the London network of airports but it's not actually in London. It's in Sussex. Stansted and Southend are in Essex. Luton is in Bedfordshire. Heathrow is in Greater London. City airport is in central London. Basically Heathrow and Gatwick are not in the same city.
Spent an entire month in London and never once ventured outside of the city. I was a dumb 20 year old American who didn't realize the ease of train travel there. I remember the only day trip I had looked into was a coach tour bus to Stonehenge and it was super expensive so I didn't do it.
When you live in a country that requires a personal car to just get out of the city at home, it's hard to get out of that restrictive thinking and realize how much freedom you have when you're somewhere with ample public transportation that goes all sorts of places outside of the cities. My last trip to UK, I regret not going other places.
I left my passport in the Uber in Rio luckily I have family there so I just said “hey again it’s me” I got my passport within 2 days from the driver!
Listened to my mom and a poorly worded/outdated travel site convincing me I can fly to the Bahamas with a passport card. On the way to the airport I felt a sense of doom and found out they were very wrong.
Mom and dad continued on to the airport and I caught the next Amtrak home. Lesson learned the hard way.
Everyone get your Passport book!!!
Before I knew skiplagging was a thing I had a flight to Budapest with a connection in Frankfurt. Found out some friends were in Nuremburg so I decided get off in Frankfurt and take the train to meet them. Luckily I had planned to check my bag so I asked ticket agent to just tag my bag through Frankfurt. That’s when I got educated on what happens when you intentionally miss a leg on your ticket. My return tickets would’ve been canceled and I would’ve been none the wiser until two weeks later on my way home. I ended up paying $300 in change fees to modify the ticket.
Note: this post originally had 47 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
I'm NOT a travel advisor. This list gave me horrible anxiety 🤣😂🤣
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When I was at university in Nottingham, UK, I went to get a train back home to London. I had the correct ticket but I misread the departures board and accidentally got on the train to Lincoln. Fortunately the train conductor was very understanding and let me get the train back to Nottingham without having to pay for a Lincoln ticket.
I'm NOT a travel advisor. This list gave me horrible anxiety 🤣😂🤣
Load More Replies... When I was at university in Nottingham, UK, I went to get a train back home to London. I had the correct ticket but I misread the departures board and accidentally got on the train to Lincoln. Fortunately the train conductor was very understanding and let me get the train back to Nottingham without having to pay for a Lincoln ticket.
