Sometimes travel just doesn’t go to plan.
We』ve all been faced with bumps in the road – and often they become the moments that make your trip. On other occasions, there’s nothing you can do but sit back, laugh and go with the flow.
Here are ten people who had to do just that this year…
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1. I had the Worst Coffee of my life in Ramallah, Palestine
I love to think back and getting reminded about my travels in Palestine. It was highly interesting to experience both Israel and Palestine by my own, to talk to people, and see the daily life outside the news.
We left Jerusalem in the morning, and when we arrived in Ramallah, I felt like a coffee. So we looked around, and walked into an old café: heart-warming people, Arabic music, and the worst coffee of my life!
The coffee had caraway in it which is a great spice but not within a mix for coffee. However, as a caffeine-lover I drunk it all, and now I can say for sure: it was the worst coffee of my life!
2. What’s not to like about Texas? I laughed
I stared out the window as the bus crossed the state that had the most pride. I tried to like Texas. I wanted to see why Texans were so proud of Texas. But I saw nothing but empty, parched land.
I headed to the Backpacker Hostel in Irving. I saw an overweight girl with Texas stars dangling from her ears, wearing a Texas T-shirt that clung to her spare tires.
At the hostel, I talked about it with my new friend Gabrielle, from Holland. She pointed to signs on the walls of the kitchen: 「American by birth, Texan by the grace of God,」 and 「Texas, it just feels right,」 and 「Don’t mess with Texas.」 I marveled at the attitude: it just didn’t add up with what I had seen of the state.
Gabrielle said, 「You have to laugh at the Texans because they take such a militaristic pride in their state.」
So I did.
3. Sharing a room with glass walls to the bathroom with strangers!
When I came for the first time to teach English in China, I crossed the border on a bus from Vietnam. My journey took around 8 hours and I met two people there, a French guy and a Chinese girl. Once we got of in Nanning, we realized that there were no tickets available for any trains that night, we had to wait till the morning to carry on to our destinations.
We decided to share the cost of this night’s accommodation and reserved a hotel room with two beds. Nothing would have been strange about the experience if we knew that it is very common in China for the hotel rooms to have glass walls in the bathroom.
Now, three strangers of different genders had to share a room with transparent walls in the restroom. After the first shock, we just decided to in turns leave one person in the room to shower.
Well, that was the first experience I had with China, and I learned way more strange customs over the years. I highly recommend you visit China too and discover something mind-blowing yourself!
4. Taxi driver need 3 things: good breaks, good horn, good luck!
One of my all-time favorite countries to travel in is India. If you have ever been you know that this is one of the craziest countries in the world to drive in. The streets are crowded, the cars share the road with cows, camels, horses, dogs, bicycles, huge trailers, tuk-tuks, buses and pretty much everything that moves.
The rules: there are no rules. They use their horn for pretty much everything and if you want to drive past someone you just honk your horn and drive around. When we took taxis in the northern parts of the country I saw my life flash before my eyes every five minutes.
In New Delhi we had an awesome taxi-driver that drove us around the city for a couple of days. In the world’s second most populous city you have to be pretty crazy to become a taxi driver. At least that is what we thought sitting in the backseat of his taxi listening to AR Rahman, the Mozart of Madras blasting threw the broken speakers whilst dodging cars and cows.
I ask him: 「so what makes a good taxi driver in Delhi?」
He says: 「a good taxi driver needs three things; good breaks, good horn and good luck!」
Laughing and smiling after he gave us his words of wisdom he continued to drive us safely through the streets of New Delhi.
5. Creepy Then Heartwarming! My Sweetest Compliment in London
London is full of surprises – and so are fast-moving big cities in general.
During my year in England’s capital, there was one situation that totally overwhelmed me. I was on a train to London Bridge and a guy was looking at me. I felt uncomfortable at first but what happened next blew my mind.
He stood up to get off at the next station, looked back at me, gave me the sweetest smile and said:
「I know this might sound a bit random but I just wanted to let you know you look stunning. Have a lovely day.「
He didn’t say it in a weird, creepy way, he was just speaking his mind – obviously – and made my day by doing so. Moments like this let fast-moving cities freeze for a while.
6. The monk who didn’t want money but silence
We were visiting Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, surrounded by hundreds of pilgrims all dressed in white. Suddenly we noticed a buddhist monk staying silently close to a Stupa: he was still, his eyes to the sacred monument in front of him, at his feet a handwritten sign:
「Do not give me money, it’s no use for me. If you want you can take a picture, I don’t mind. But please do not speak to me「.
We had the camera in our hands but decided to turn it off and respect this monk, his silence and his faith. His message made us think about the vacuity of our lives and the depth of the message he was trying to convey.
7. The value of being spontaneous – Christmas Serendipity in York
Visiting a medieval town over the holidays should be a magical and postcard-like experience. However, the mad rush to buy all those gifts before it starts raining again is what I found in a recent visit to York in the northern United Kingdom.
The retail stores have lines, the streets look like swarms of something scary, the restaurants are all packed to the windows, folks are dressed up like Vikings, and you can barely find a place for a nice scone and a hot tea.
But, on our way to get a cab home after dinner at Drake’s, a local fish and chips place, my daughter said, 「Let’s just stop by the Minster」 – York’s famous cathedral.
We walked in and found yet one more crowd of people, filling the vast and vaulted space. We were handed programs and we sat down, neither of us knowing what was happening to draw such a crowd, but happy just to follow where our feet took us. And we spent the next hour and a half enjoying a serenely glorious Christmas carol service with some lovely prayers and liturgical dancing – when we thought we were on our way to get a cab home.
8. Coffee Experience With A Cute Sense Of Humor
As a coffee addict, wherever I go and travel I would love to taste local coffee and it has become one of my obsessions, to taste different coffee from around the world, enjoying the aroma, acidity, flavor and the packaging. Yes, I mean I love the way they serve the coffee. Some places have a uniqueness and brilliant way on their coffee culture.
One day in Krabi, Thailand,- while waiting for the rain stopped, I sat at the café facing to the sea and ordered a cup of coffee milk. Some minutes later, what they served on my table, really.. really crack me up. Coffee with milk means coffee plus milk, even funnier, attendant milk in a baby bottle. Well, okay, I』ll take this as a humor as long as it doesn’t serve with human milk.. ha ha, Oh please NO !!!
9. We visited the old witch bath house – Miyazaki’s Animated Film
We were walking in the narrow streets of Shibu Onsen, a Japanese village in the mountains near Nagano. A lot of people going around after having thermal baths. We stopped in front of a big old hotel, with a few people taking pictures. We looked at the hotel, illuminated in the incoming night, and it was that bath house from Spirited Away anime (a famous 2001 Japanese animated fantasy film)!
Actually, in Japan it is recognized as the inspiration for Miyazaki, the director, to create the old witch bath house of the anime and you must visit it if you are a Miyazaki fan!
10. Chasing Koalas on the Great Ocean Road
We were quietly eating breakfast in the morning sunshine at a picnic table at our Great Ocean Road campsite. We』d hired a campervan for a few days, and it had been our first night on the road. All of a sudden a fluffy ash-coloured koala walked across the grass in front of us without a care in the world. It was our first sighting of a wild koala, so we left our brekkie and followed the cute creature across the woods, where it decided on a new tree to climb. He loved the attention!
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