Travel is unpredictable, and sometimes the worst does happen.
Send me your travel horror stories when something’s gone wrong…
For me I think it was being held at machine gun point by Mexican police as they went through my stuff looking for what they could take (luckily I only had about $11 dollars on me so they didn’t get too much!).
I had visions of me spending the rest of my days in a Mexican jail cell.
Reply with your horror stories to michael@mobalphone.com or leave a comment below
Does anyone know of any company issuing international telephone card for calls originating in the US that does NOT have a surcharge to call a UK cell phone? My cursory inquiries reveal a 24 cents per minute surcharge to connect to a UK cell phone.
Thank you.
George E. “Skip” Oldham, III CTC
Oldham Travel
206 Princeton Rd, NE. #41
Johnson City, Tennessee 37601-2025
423.282.1111
In our 78th year of service
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My worst experience was when I arrived in Russia in 1997 at age 19. I had been awake for 30 hours, had a horrible migrane, and it was 2 a.m. local time. I didn’t speak the language or have any local currency and all shops in the airport were closed. I had a mountain of baggage since I was taking things to the people I was meeting. The worst bit: no one met me at the airport! I had to fend off men who kept trying to carry off my bags while saying “taxi to good hotel, yes?” while I fought the headache and tried to figure out what to do! Luckily a nice guy I met on the plane figured out how to get cash for me and how to call someone back home to get a number in Russia for me to call and have someone pick me up!
Hi, my daughter and I just got back from Rome Italy and was very disappointed with Rome as so many Italians act very unhappy and reflect it in their attitude to visitors. From store clerks who argue and fight with each other and then we could hardly get a smile cracked at us when waited on or asking a question. They must be soured by the many tourists who are asking questions all the time as most of us do not know Italian. Many other tourists we talked to sensed the same thing and were very disappointed in visiting there and felt our money could be spent elsewhere where the people appreciated our business. When we asked some Italians why they thought their people were so disgruntled, they blamed it on the economy. We said in America if we acted that way to customers our boss would rightly fire us as we reflect their business efforts for good or bad. The Italians said Americans smiles are fake. Maybe some are but it is nice to see a smile of good will and that is why I love America.
The worst non-wartime country I have visited is Chad. Four drunk soldiers stopped me while jogging, brandished automatic weapons and tried to make me hand over the bulge in my pants pocket (my wallet). Two weeks later I was jumped by 6 young muggers who in the ensuing struggle dropped a serrated knife big enough to kill a cow. Vigilantes made them scatter and nearly killed one. The guy with my cell phone tried to escape by swimming the Chari River to Cameroon. He dropped my cell on the way. The police virtually kidnapped me for two hours until finally, as if in a Graham Greene novel, I met the Big Man–the chief of police in N’Djamena. He gave me his business card in case I ran into trouble again. I didn’t have to use it, and wondered what good it would have done. The police try to trace stolen cell phones (a big business) by calling the number in case a witless thief answers. Sometimes I imagine my cell ringing in the silt in the Chari River, startling the hippos and crocs.