Having a bad vacation sucks because it means you've spent your time, money, and brain power, then come back less relaxed and rejuvenated than before. However, I truly think no vacation is as bad as some of these stories below that were shared after u/kgaviation asked "What’s the Worst Thing to Happen to You on Vacation?"
1. "I got detained at a border crossing and then quarantined in an Ebola hospital in Tanzania on suspicion of having Ebola. Spoiler alert: I didn’t."
2. "Slipped in the shower in NYC. Broke a bunch of ribs, got a pneumothorax, and three nights in the hospital. Then, I wasn’t allowed to fly for six months, so we had to rent a car to drive home. I wasn’t the driver, thank goodness. They sent me on my way with a hefty supply of strong pain meds."
3. "I got the flu as a single traveler on a work trip. New job, didn’t know anyone in the city. Cried on the call to the front desk because I was so sick I couldn’t check out. My faith in humanity was restored when I woke up after my breakdown and a kind soul had left soda crackers and Seven-Up outside my door."
4. "Coming back from Greece, I started getting sick on the plane and barely made it off at my layover in Germany before I started throwing up. Somewhere in the airport, I also noticed my makeup bag was gone out of my carry-on. It had my luggage key in it. I struggled to the hotel, where I experienced a violent, 12-hour stomach flu. I still couldn't get into my luggage, but I did not honestly care because I wanted to die. The next day, I headed back to the airport in my only clean clothes, (which were my pjs), makeup free, looking exactly like I had been throwing my guts up. Then, security picked my luggage to search, which I still could not open, so I had to check it for a ridiculous additional price. I made it home in my pajamas, looking like hell, to find that my luggage did NOT arrive with me, and my car wouldn't start. Zero stars. Would not recommend."
5. "I got the chicken pox from my cousin on week one of a three-week European vacation when I was 10. By week two, we were visiting more relatives in another country when I came down with chicken pox. I was stuck in an apartment watching Hungarian sub-titled English horror movies (this was in the mid-'80s and the only English movies they had, and I really hated horror movies but was so bored) on VHS tapes with my non-English speaking teenaged cousin while the rest of the family toured around. Fun times."
6. "Stayed in a bed bug-infested hotel room. Apparently I am REALLY reactive to bites and I had hundreds of painful sores. Nobody else in my family ever showed a mark but I ended up looking like I had smallpox and people at the sights on our trip really gave me a wide berth."
7. "The worst was this June. I had tickets to see a concert I've wanted to see for 30 years. The flight was supposed to land 12 hours before showtime. I sat and watched two flights scheduled after mine leave while we were delayed every hour for 14 hours. I cried. A lot. I'm a 46-year-old man."
8. "I was backpacking in New Zealand with a friend right after college. We were staying in a little beach town, Kaikoura, which ended up being the epicenter of a 7.8 earthquake at 12 a.m. one night. It shook for what felt like two minutes straight. We had to haul ass to the top of a hill due to a tsunami warning. We were frantic and didn’t grab warm enough clothes, and we sat up there freezing for almost 12 hours. The roads had all cracked and we ended up stranded there for three days. There was no service, electricity, or running water. Our hostel owner happened to know someone with a spring, so we got fresh water. He also let us stay the three days for free, super nice dude."
"We ate food from Red Cross stands and called our families with wifi at the hospital. People were getting choppered out by priority (elderly, kids, health issues.) On the third day, our tour bus company coordinated a chopper out for us to a nearby town and then bussed to Christchurch. We immediately called the airlines and changed our tickets to go the hell home the next day."
9. "Got horrific food poisoning in Oaxaca. We flew to Mexico City the next day for my birthday. Neither my husband nor I could eat or keep anything down. In the middle of the night, I wake up to glass shattering. I reach for my husband and he’s not there. He was in the bathroom and fainted! Through! The! Glass! Door! Blood everywhere, throw up everywhere, it’s 3 a.m. More fainting follows. The young man working the reception that night at the hotel saved our lives and got a doctor there within 10 minutes. This is why I’m forever and ever loyal to hotels, the feeling of having someone there at all times is priceless. I have no idea what we would’ve done in an Airbnb solo."
10. "I went on a four-day cruise to celebrate my mom’s birthday. Got excellent rates out of Galveston. It was cheaper than a B&B in Fredericksburg! The trip was great until we awoke on the last day at sea to weird announcements over the intercom system. Turns out, there was a fire in the engine room, which ended up disabling our ship, leaving only emergency power. So we’re on a floating barge in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. It took the cruise line so long to figure out what to do that we ended up drifting so far east that their plans had to change. They sent two tugboats from Mexico and started pushing our cruise liner to the US. Other cruise ships would stop and give us supplies, and we could get wifi signals from them to contact everyone back home. But it was too dangerous to get us off the ship in the middle of the Gulf, so we just waited to get back to shore."
11. "A stupid accident on the M-4 to Heathrow airport made me miss my flight, and my boss threatened to fire me if I didn't make it to work at 8 a.m. on Monday. I had to get very creative with the routing, bought a new ticket with a connection in Newark to LAX, then the flight came in late, making me miss my connection. Flying out the next day was absolutely out of the question. I managed to find a late flight to Vegas that left at 9 p.m. and arrived in Vegas around midnight. The only car they had was an overpriced and tiny Geo Metro convertible. $129 a day. A compact would have been $25 a day, luxury for maybe $60, but Geo Metro? C'mon. I left Vegas at around two in the morning, made it to work at 8:00 a.m. wearing the same clothes from London, and didn't get fired."
12. "I broke my nose and got a concussion while zip-lining in Costa Rica. I sprained both ankles on day one of a 14-day hiking trip to Guatemala. I got swimmers ear, pink eye, and the flu all at the same time in Panama. On my most recent trip (November), I broke every bone in my wrist on day two of my Jordan trip, and had to fly home early to get emergency surgery and spend months in rehab/PT."
13. "A scorpion stung me while I was in Mexico when I was nine. We were in a remote area with no hospital nearby. I almost died. I didn’t even know what stung me at first, just reached my hand into a couch cushion and felt a sharp pain. A few minutes later, I was having trouble breathing. Someone from the resort drove us to the nearest town about 30 minutes away. The clinic was closed, so they knocked on doors until they found out where the doctor lived and woke him up. He opened the clinic and hooked me up to an IV. I was unconscious by then. That was the first night of the vacation. I recovered, but it definitely put a damper on the rest of the trip."
14. "I got kicked out from the border trying to enter Canada. Nicest I have ever been rejected by anyone let alone a country."
15. "I woke up with mildly crusty eyes, a telltale sign of pink eye. I thought to myself, 'I only have a couple days left in Spain, I can probably wait it out until I’m stateside.' Boy, was that stupid. Over the next couple days and the flight back, it got so much worse. Both eyes were puffy, red, and crusty. The infection had spread into my upper cheek, so they were starting to puff up, too. At its worst, I could barely open my eyes because it looked like I had been attacked by a swarm of bees. I looked absolutely horrible and felt just as bad. Once I got back home, I went straight to an emergency clinic at 1 a.m. to get some meds to start treating it. It’s kinda remarkable how quickly I started to feel better. This all being said, I still had an awesome trip, but I do not recommend a transatlantic flight with severe pink eye."
16. "I got into an argument with a family member and they cancelled my flight back home (we had the same confirmation code). I didn’t find out until I got to the gate and my ticket wouldn’t scan anymore. I didn’t even know you could cancel a ticket after checking in."
17. Finally, "This year I took my mother on a cruise for her birthday. She got a sunburn Day 1, caught a stomach bug on Day 2 that lasted through Day 3. Day 4, she slipped on the ladder in the pool and hurt her foot but it was still so sunburned that she didn't realize it was injured until it started turning purple and green on Day 5. Day 6 we went through a storm and she ended up seasick. Day 7, we flew home. She swears it was an amazing vacation and she wants to go again next year."
