I’m a blonde, blue-eyed girl, and I look innocent and younger than my years.

I went to London for the Olympics. This random guy started hanging around me when I was out shopping.

Even though I was trying to ignore him, he kept talking about how I should go to this ‘party’ with him. He was very very handsome and charismatic.

If I hadn’t seen Taken, I probably would have taken him up on his offer. It was almost exactly that kind of situation.

I lived and worked in South Korea for a year.

Late one afternoon, a friend and I decided to go to the grocery store. We are both Americans and lived in a smaller city where foreigners were more of a rare sighting.

This will get you some stares and maybe some curious questions but not much else…usually…

The store we needed to get to was a bit far away, so we decided to take a cab (taxis in Korea are super cheap). Depending on the English proficiency of the taxi driver, sometimes they will strike up a conversation with you.

My friend, being a super friendly girl and better at the Korean language than I, happily chatted with him about where we were from and what we liked about living in Korea etc.

while I just gazed out the window. His English was broken but he seemed nice enough, nothing to cause alarm.

So about five minutes pass by when I begin to notice that we are driving in the exact opposite direction of the grocery store and heading out into the more remote villages that surround the city.

At first I thought I’d made a mistake in giving him directions (again, my Korean is just barely passable), so I repeated it to him.

He just smiles and replies in Korean, which my friend translates to: “I want to take you somewhere and show you something first”. We tell him no, we just want to go to the grocery store.

He refuses to turn around and insists that he needs to show us something first.

Needless to say, two Western women in a car with a strange man begin to freak out.

My friend repeatedly tells him, in Korean, to stop and let us out. He keeps insisting that he wants to show us something. Outside the sky is getting darker and the buildings are getting smaller and farther apart.

I begin rummaging through my bag to get my cell phone to call the police. Oh, goody! Dead battery. I look through my bag again and find a box cutter I had used for a work project the day before and forgot about.

At the same time, my friend finds her pepper spray.

She repeats again in Korean to STOP THE CAR and shows him the pepper spray.

Guy slams on the brakes. We all get out. She is brandishing her pepper spray and I my tiny box cutter. The cabbie puts his hands together and begins blubbering out an explanation.

Turns out, he and his friend had built a karaoke room in his house (karaoke is big in Korea) and he was so excited to be making friends with Americans that he wanted to show it to us.

The look on his face when he tried to explain…. you would think we had just murdered his puppy. We paid him for the ride out to nowhere, but insisted he call for another cab to come pick us up despite his protests that he would take us back into town for free.

A year and a half in Asia and that was the scariest thing to happen to me. HOWEVER, Korea in general is relatively safe and it’s an awesome country.

I would recommend it to anybody.

Probably my closest call was being in a yazkuza-owned hot spring as the only foreigner.

When I first entered the baths, I noticed every single person had a tattoo and/or missing pieces of fingers.

That was pretty startling, but they ended up being pretty chill and even complimented my half-sleeve.

I was studying abroad in Mexico in college. We had been told repeatedly as women not to cab alone, especially at night. Ordinarily myself and my housemate would cab with a girl who was staying down the street from us when we came home from the bar/club/discoteca but this particular time, my housemate had decided to stay later.

We asked the driver to drop her off first and, because it was only around the corner, I figured the cab ride would be okay.

After we dropped her off, I was practicing my conversational Spanish with the driver… that is, until he turned down an alley instead of onto my street.

I told him he was going the wrong way and he said the road was closed and we had to go this way.

He then asked me if I like “doing it”.

Alllllll my Spanish went out the window. I told him to pull over and he instead sped up and asked he again. He told me he was in the mood to hook up with someone right now.

So I opened the car door and tumbled out.

He followed me in the cab while I ran to the house I was staying in, and stayed outside on the street for several minutes after I was safe in the house.

Not a fun experience. But yes, it easily could have been avoided if I hadn’t taken the cab home, as my school and houseparents had repeatedly told us.

I visited Egypt during the overthrow of Morsi. My hotel was 3-4 blocks from Tahrir square. Eventually, tanks surrounded my hotel. You could hear gun shots and see smoke.

On the way out of the country, a corrupt “general” handcuffed my friend because he had a laser pointer, and demanded a bribe or he’d go to jail.

It was cool to be the only one at the Pyramids though. Also bit depressing.

Also, when I was in Thailand and I went to a crocodile show, and bribed them $7 to let me play with the crocodiles (I hadn’t slept for a few days so I was an idiot).

I got a pretty awesome photo of myself kissing the crocodile, but in hindsight that was probably not a good idea, especially because the handler had scars all over his arms from being bitten.

[deleted]

Went to Sri Lanka. It’s awesome. Went walking on a nature trail with a guide and a translator. Showed us some wonderful insect species and birds, flowers and some cool snakes.

It was getting towards dusk at about 5pm and we were walking through some dense forest on a well worn path. I am plodding along and nearly run into the back of the guide who has stopped stock still, he is holding his fist up in a “halt” kind of manner.

He is absolutely motionless, eyes focused on something dead ahead.

I ask the translator what is going on. He only replies with one word.

“Elephants”.

The guide slowly steps back to us and speaks something in his language to the translator.

“Mother and baby, ahead in the bushes. We have to go back, no way around”.

And go back we did. I did a bit of a poo when he said “elephants” as I know how dangerous they can be, especially around their young.

In Sri Lanka, they kill people pretty routinely. If we had been alone, we would have been finished.

airwalkerdnbmusic

While visiting my friend abroad in Japan, her husband low key threatened me.

I was staying at their house on a military base and we were already on the base when it went down. (FYI to get on or off of a military base you need someone on base to vouch for you and be with you when you come or go, so no calling a cab from inside, at least not for me as a visitor).

We had stopped at a convenience store so my friend could grab cold medicine, while she was inside he was in the front (driving) and I was in the back seat, and he got really creepy.

Not even looking at me, he said my full name very slowly enunciating every syllable and then said some things about how I was poisoning his wife’s mind and they were better off alone without anyone to interfere and I better mind my own business and shut my mouth going forward. Then my friend got back in the car and he immediately switched back to faux cheerful and talking about his upcoming trip back to the US.

I was stunned and sat in silence in the back seat and went up to the spare room I was staying in as soon as we got back.

I didn’t want to stay there but I knew that I would need a ride to a hotel and I didn’t really have money to stay at a hotel anyways, and my friend wouldn’t hear of me staying at a hotel without a real reason which I didn’t exactly feel comfortable sharing with her at the time. The most unnerving part of it all— her husband collects handguns and the room I was staying in was his gym/ target practice room. Earlier in the week my friend had told me that he was having trouble not getting his aggression out because I was staying in that room, so he was extra on edge.

So yeah, didn’t sleep well that night at all with a threat from an aggression filled marine with a gun hobby. Thankfully left the next morning.

Later, I tried to voice my concerns which she brushed off entirely until I told her about the above interaction; she then at least admitted something was off and he shouldn’t have done that, but that was it. They’re back in the US now which I think is better for them, but I still don’t like him. I’m just hoping she comes to her senses sooner rather than later.

xoxo-A

Went hiking in the Himalayas in Nepal when I was 18 with a friend.

We were the only girls on the hike. The entire time on the first day our Nepalese guide (probably early 30’s married man) told us we were going to have a ‘chicken’ party when we got to our first night stay in a village in the mountains. Not knowing what this was, we were very hesitant.

Turns out ‘chicken party’ meant that all the guys on the trek (guides and male trekkers alike) got hideously hammered and started ramming on our super thin, wooden door with a cheap, flimsy lock, clucking like idiots.

We spent the whole night sitting with our backs pressing against the door to stop them coming in and doing god knows what to us.

It was seriously creepy.

My hair is a very unique shade of strawberry blonde.

Anyway…when I was a teenager my parents and I lived in Singapore for a little while and we visited parts of Malaysia for a few weeks for a holiday.

I had weird men wherever I went make comments on my hair. They would touch it and stroke it, but that wasn’t so bad.

I had one man put his arm around me and start guiding me towards a taxi where a bunch of other grinning men were waiting.

I shoved him off and bolted.

But that’s not the really scary one.

The really scary one is when I was walking down a fairly busy street in Kuala Lumpur and suddenly my head was jerked backwards.

I thought my hair had caught on something but I was wrong, a man had roughly grabbed a fistful of my hair. I saw something metal in his other hand and my first thought was “I’m going to die”!

So I started thrashing about like crazy and screamed. Like I said, it was a busy street and people were turning to look at us and so he bolted.

He dropped the shiny thing as he left and I saw it: it was a pair of scissors. He was going to chop off some of my hair!

I went back to where we were staying and told my mum. She forbade me from leaving the house without her after that. I was fine with that because I have never felt so vulnerable in my life.

I was grateful to return to New Zealand (where I grew up) a few weeks later.

I was in the Amazon with my husband. As we went, I kept complaining that I felt something moving in my upper back.

I suspect my husband thought I was going insane until he saw a little little head poking out of my shoulder blade. We went to the hospital and they saw the head thing too.

They said something had likely laid eggs inside me, but they had never seen anything quite like it; it was kind of like a botfly but bigger.

I left after they started to cut me with a scalpel and couldn’t quite remove it. We had been in a fairly remote part of amazon and have to admit we climbed a couple of trees that we probably shouldn’t have.

I think that’s when it happened, as we obviously disturbed the canopy. In hindsight, I remember getting stung a couple of times by something.

it must have been laying their eggs in me. I sound like Indiana Jones, but I’m really just someone who’s too dumb for the jungle.

I was in Christchurch, New Zealand in February 2011 when the earthquake hit.

In the morning, I went into the city centre because it was a nice day and the buskers festival was on. Naturally, I wanted to watch.

About 20 minutes before the earthquake happened I felt sick to my stomach. I just had this feeling like I might have left the oven on at my flat, so I went to catch the bus back.

As soon as I got back home, the earthquake hit. Where I was standing at that buskers festival downtown… that is exactly where the cathedral tower fell.

It turns out I didn’t leave the oven on.

In Cambodia, it’s a common thing for army guys to offer tourists the opportunity to fire “surplus” (i.e. stolen from the army) AK-47s and RPGs out deep in the middle of nowhere outside of Phnom Penh.

My buddy really wanted to do this so I said sure, why not. $400 cash was exchanged and we all piled into a 40-year-old truck to head out to the “range”.

Whole thing was super sketchy… these guys spoke practically no English and were half in the bag, but whatever, we were down for a good time.

We get there after an hour or so driving into the absolute middle of nowhere and they hand my buddy an RPG launcher and show him how to hold it on his shoulder and where to aim.

None of us are sure exactly what happened next, but somehow he had aimed his RPG too low – so when he pulled the trigger, the thing flew on a downward trajectory only about 25-30 feet before blowing up almost instantly.

Debris was flying everywhere. One of the Cambodian dudes dove on top of me and pushed me to the ground, and we were all just kind of laying there in complete shock.

All of us were okay, but I remember thinking that if any of us had been injured, I was pretty sure they weren’t the type of dudes to call 911 and wait for an ambulance to arrive.

My guess is we would have each been double-tapped in the back of the head and dumped in the jungle.

My wife’s appendix decided to burst while we were in Hanoi, about 4 hours before we were due to catch an overnight train to the middle of nowhere.

Being unable to speak Vietnamese was a nightmare, but luckily the people working at our hotel were amazing and got us to a hospital that catered to upper government officials, meaning the gear and training was better than the standard public health care in Australia.

The ladies from the hotel even came by every day to check on my wife and speak to the staff for us (there were only two English speakers working in the entire hospital), and refused money for their help.

It was amazing, as was the level of care she received. Paying cash for medical expenses was a weird experience, but the travel insurance reimbursed us and we got credit for the cancelled half of our tour.

Plus the hospital had an amazing restaurant and bar and kept me full and happy in our private suite until we could fly back to Sydney.

10/10 would rupture my wife’s appendix again.

I got a pound of… let’s just say illegal stuff… shoved into my hands right before police arrived.

I was on holiday in France (with my parents), hanging out with some local dudes, and we were going to smoke it. We were in the process of crumbling it up when a police car came up.

The locals stuffed the stuff into my hands and dashed off into the nearby cornfield.

The thought of being in a foreign jail cell, having to explain this to my parents was quite the horror.

As soon as I realized what was going on, I tossed all of the stuff over a small garden wall and also dashed into the cornfield.

The police car stopped, since our bikes were just beside the road. They probably figured what was going on and after a bunch of shouting the locals decided to give it up and stepped out of the field.

I did the same.

The police asked them a bunch of questions, tried to ask me a bunch of questions (my French was as bad as their English) and then they just left.

Explaining to the locals that their pound of fun was now scattered in someone’s backyard didn’t fly well either, but I guess it beats going to French jail…

I got chased around a Portuguese mountain by a bunch of stray dogs.

Basically the Portuguese equivalent of Versailles is called Sintra; it’s a bunch of crazy-huge castles and palaces, but they built them all up a mountain to keep them cool in the summer.

The rest of the mountain they turned into amazing parks and gardens with a crazy amount of verticality. 200% recommend it despite this; I’m told the dog thing was pretty rare.

Anyway, was wandering around one of the hillside parks, heard a bunch of growling, looked around and saw three or four stray dogs looking a bit annoyed.

Started walking away slowly but apparently not slowly enough because one of them went for me and the rest started chasing me too. They weren’t huge but getting dog bites treated is never fun; never gone down a hillside faster.

They stopped after a bit, guess I must have gotten out of their territory. In hindsight they probably weren’t especially dangerous but I guess there’s something inherently scary about getting chased through woods by animals.

I was walking through the bush in West Africa and we were tracking an Elephant to a watering hole, I noticed a set of tracks in the dirt in front of me that looked distinctly feline.

I pointed it out to the ranger and he confirmed it was a lion and that it was close by. It was four of us and one man with a gun on foot with tall grass and bushes everywhere, we were basically in its hunting grounds.

Needless to say I was much more vigilant for the rest of the afternoon.

We had this guy invite us to go smoke some stuff in Morocco.

He takes us to the backroom of a closed restaurant, and in walks the police. They start screaming at us, and one pulls out a gun and slams it on the table….

they then started laughing hysterically and told us they wanted to join in.

I went on a trip with some coworkers to Western Australia. We drove a camper van around a few towns up north.

Anyone familiar with the northwestern corner of Australia knows that “town” is a generous term for most of these places, and there’s a whole lot of absolutely nothing in between them.

One night, we pull over in the middle of some of that absolutely nothing to camp out in a rest spot. We’re the only ones there, and the only traffic is the occasional road train.

We’re set, though – we’ve got food, drinks, herb, and a place to sleep. We do the usual “sit around a campfire and get messed up” for a few hours before one of us decides there are too many trees and we need to go for a walk to get a better look at the sky.

It wasn’t hard to find a good spot — the only trees around were nestled between the hills, hiding from the sun and sucking up any water that flowed their way.

Go a few feet uphill, and you can see for miles. The first hill was nice and wide open, but it gave us a great view of some better ones.

Hammered and optimistic as hell, we headed for the next peak over.

It was glorious. The milky way was so bright and deep it felt like you were falling into it.

We sat and drank in the galaxy and told whatever stories came to mind. We were tiny specks in an immense universe and everything was perfect.

And then it was time to go. We all stood up, and as one, the four dudes I’m with start walking.

In the wrong direction.

It’s not hard to understand why. Every hill looked the same from up on top of our glorious mound of rocks and dirt. Every little valley was choked with brush.

The road was obscured from view, and it curved gently away from us in both directions anyway. There were no landmarks. And we were all out of our gourds.

So there’s me, 5 foot nothing and foreign, pointing back the way we came while the guys gently mocked my lack of directional senses. Me insisting, while they brush it off and walk away.

Me shouting, while the four of them are baffled as to why I’m so upset about this because they all KNOW where they’re going.

I looked up this rest area later on Google Earth. Had we gone in any direction other than directly back to the road, it would have been over 120 miles before we hit any signs of civilization — if we were very, very lucky.

120 miles of Australian outback, with no water, food, or tools.

My certainty meant nothing to them in the face of their own. So I stopped fighting.

Instead, I turned around and headed back for camp. They panicked, pleaded, and finally decided to “humor” me. Every step of the way, they pointed out how unfamiliar everything was, how it couldn’t possibly be the way we came.

They laughed at me, right up until we stepped out of a ditch and into the parking lot with our camper.

And that’s the story of why I don’t hike with people who have been drinking anymore.

Summer 2011. I was on a Scouting project with 4 friends in Dakar, Senegal. I was 19 at the time. After 2 years’ preparation, we went there for a month to help with the building of new classrooms for the local church’s school, along with providing free animations for the local kids.

A few weeks in, the big event arrives. End of the construction ? Nope. A wrestling match between the two most famous wrestler sof the country (who happen to come from two neighbouring… neighbourhoods of Dakar).

After 5 hours ()! of pre-fight rituals and wrestling matches between the protégés, the big fight comes. It lasts a whole 15 seconds before our neighbourhood’s champion wins.

Fast-forward a couple hours. We’re sitting in a taxi to go to a party, or “bégué” as they call it. Our group of 8 (3 Senegalese and 5 French) is separated in two taxis.

While theirs drop them off in front of the place we were headed to, ours drops us off at the gas station about 300 yards  down the road. In our group:

3 French (A, F and me), one Senegalese (B).

Two guys appeared out of nowhere and tackled B. A and I immediately react and try to get them off when I hear A tell me to stop, sounding quite panicked.

I stop, only to realize one of the two guys had pulled out a machete.

A third guy then comes out and starts searching us.

He takes my bag (which contained a bit of medication, the key to our room, and some water. That’s it). A isn’t carrying anything of value.

They take B’s wallet. F has been laying low the whole time and they somehow completely forget to search him, which was extremely lucky.

He was carrying our two credit cards, a cheque book and his passport. In his wallet, B was carrying a month’s worth of salary for a local.

Out of all of us, he’s the one that had the least, and lost the most.

All of this happened in a street where a lot of people were passing by.

Not one soul to help.

Needless to say, the mood wasn’t quite there for the party, and we didn’t stay long.

Me (male) and my husband were on holiday in Turkey not too long ago.

He had never been but I had visited a few times and so I was aware of how locals would try to get you into their shops in an attempt to sell you 20 pairs of counterfeit Gucci sunglasses.

Well, such a local approaches my husband and in his kind, somewhat naive nature, he took to browsing his wares as if the guy was a merchant selling legendary relics.

As I pulled my husband away, the guy starts shouting, “GAY”! at the top of his lungs. Only a few days earlier a transgender man had been attacked and burned not too far away and there has been a lot of violence against the LGBT community in Turkey.

We walked away but he continued to follow and shout. I started to become aware of the attention he was drawing and the spectacle the whole thing had become.

All the possible scenarios began to play out in my head, so we quickened our pace and tried to stay calm.

Luckily, we lost him before the situation escalated any further.

Needless to say, we avoided that part of town for a while.

I had to deal with very eager immigration officer at JFK. She was somehow convinced I had come to the US to do something bad, so she latched on to every word I said and tried to spin every answer to make me sound somehow nefarious.

Every time I denied what she asked me, she gave me this very long, disapproving look. I started getting nervous as I expected they’d probably pull me into some kind of a questioning room.

But eventually she let me go without saying anything, just handed me my passport back.

We were visiting my husband’s family in Rio de Janeiro.

My brother in law was driving us to a mall. We were in the left lane on a three lane street when suddenly traffic slows down a lot.

My brother in law switches to the far right hand lane without apparent reason and this probably saved our butts. A group of favelados (criminals from the slums) on motorcycles had blocked the left lane and robbed every passing car in the middle lane while sticking guns through the windows of the cars.

We were incredibly lucky that he switched lanes right away, but I have still never felt more helpless in my life.

I was inter-railing last year in Europe and I nearly got mugged by someone posing as a Syrian refugee.

On the train from Vienna to Budapest, I didn’t have a seat booked and I was travelling by myself, so I was seated on a kind of short staircase down to platform level between two seating areas on two separate carriages.

Therefore I was completely out of sight of anyone else on the train.

This guy came up to me, explained that he was a Syrian refugee, and asked if I had any money for food or whatever.

I genuinely didn’t so I said no, and then he suddenly became really aggressive. He basically cornered me in this staircase, raised his fists to me and asked again.

At this point I was crapping myself because had been a lot of attacks on trains in Europe, particularly around Germany, where criminals had pretended to be Syrian refugees and then used weapons on passengers.

So remembering that, at this point I was pretty scared.

Luckily, I managed to move past him despite the fact I was cornered on the staircase.

I just kind of ran off down the carriage before explaining to a member of staff what had happened. The train was immediately stopped at the next station and he was kicked off.

I once found myself in a cave, along with eight or nine other people.

It was the middle of the Pennsylvania wilderness, and the only entrance was a small hole in the ground. To enter, you had to sit on your butt, grab a tree root, and drop about seven feet down a steep wall to the floor.

We all dropped in, and spent at least half an hour exploring this cave.

Then my friend Dan taps me on the shoulder and whispers, “Dude, don’t panic.

Just look at the ceiling”. The ceiling was just high enough above our heads to hide the thousands of spiders crawling around on it. We tried to keep quiet about it, because we didn’t want anyone to flip out, but there was no stopping it.

Just seconds later the whole group noticed them. Everyone wet silent, and you could actually hear the spiders crawling on the surface of the stone.

It was an extra nerve-wracking situation… because the only way to exit the cave… was to basically jump up and pull yourself out of a hole surrounded by spiders.

Two of the girls with us were terrified, and refused to climb out. They just couldn’t muster the courage to put their faces next to a giant spider nest.

They came around though, and everyone got out safe.

I had the honor of being the last one to exit. Alone in a dark cave filled with spiders, and nobody around to give me a boost.

Fortunately, Dan was brave enough to reach down in and give me a hand.

When we first discovered that cave, we were all like, “I can’t believe we’ve never heard of this place”.

Now I know why. That cave sucks. A few months later, I found out the cave is off limits in the fall… because of the rattle snakes.

I went to visit Ukraine with my parents because they wanted to see the small villages where their parents were born. We have no family in the area so we hired a guide to take us around since the country can be a bit corrupt.

As we were driving around on a highway we suddenly were stopped in traffic (literally middle of nowhere). The guide gets out of the car and takes a look, then quickly jumps back into the car, does a U-Turn and drives off telling my mom we can’t go to her mom’s village.

We ask why and he says that was some kind of Russian military roadblock. This was during the whole Crimea invasion.

I was traveling across Europe with my girlfriend and snapping lots of pictures along the drive as we went through various EU borderless countries.

While entering Italy, my girlfriend noticed the “Welcome to Italy” sign and wanted a cliche couples photo. Naturally, I agreed and we got out of the vehicle, took our cringe selfie, and drove into Italy.

20 minutes into the drive we noticed that my girlfriends purse was missing. To contextualize the story, we had been carrying every important legal document we had while we were traveling in case something went wrong and we were stopped by police/TSA.

This included our passports, citizenship cards, birth certificates, and drivers licenses. Essentially, this was everything that proved we were who we said we were and there were absolutely no other records of our existence elsewhere.

All of these documents were in my girlfriend’s purse that was now lost.

We realized we had left them at the “Welcome to Italy” sign and I quickly turned the car around and drove as fast as I legally could (I had no drivers license) back to the border.

By some miracle, nobody had grabbed the purse and we got al our documents back.

I traveled by bus across Java solo when I was 21.

At night time, driving in heavy traffic, the bus pulled onto a railroad crossing in gridlock. You guessed it: the lights start flashing and the barriers come down in front and behind the bus.

We can’t go forwards or backwards and we can see the light from a fast approaching train coming towards us.

Everyone started screaming and ran to the front door, banging on the glass and begging the driver to open the door.

He either couldn’t or wouldn’t, and the train was closing in on us. It was the longest couple of minutes of my life.

I decided the front of the bus was certain death, so I went right to the back instead. I was contemplating at which moment I should start kicking the window out when someone said, “The train is on the other track”.

There was a moment where we all held our breath… and then the train passed inches from the driver’s window in front of us on the other set of tracks.

Afterwards, everyone sat down and started laughing like it was totally normal and we drove on. I was sitting in my seat with eyes the size of saucers no doubt!

Stayed with me, that one.

MassiveApricot

I was on a flight from Atlanta to Pensacola. As we made our final approach, the pilot announced that we may have to turn back because of fog.

Apparently he changed his mind and decided to try landing anyway. I was sitting there by the window watching the when the fog finally broke.

We were barely above the tree tops and I could see the runway was about 500 yards to the right side. The plane suddenly starting climbing HARD and we turned around and flew back to Atlanta.

That was a close one.

I was staying in Tayrona, Colombia. I am a wildlife buff and decided to get up really early and see if I could find any wildlife to photograph.

My friends were still asleep so I left on my own. I was having a great time walking through the jungle, I saw cotton top tamarins, howler monkeys, an anteater and leaf cutter ants.

I heard something rustle behind some leaves and went closer to investigate. A man emerges, full camouflage, face paint and a grenade launcher and just stares at me.

Then about 20 other men the same emerged from behind the vegetation. I froze and for what seemed like forever we just stared at each other.

All sorts of thoughts ran through my head: “I am getting kidnapped”, “I didn’t tell anyone where I am going”, “I am so stupid”, “I am dead”.

Then the one closest to me started walking towards me. He said “buenos dias” and kept walking. The others followed and also greeted me. When I was closer, I noticed the word “Ejercito” (Army) on their uniforms.

I greeted them back and then went on my way.

I was so lucky that they were the good guys. Later, I found that there had been a number of kidnappings near there which is why the army was patrolling.

A couple of friends and I rented a house in the south of Spain which turned out to be in a neighborhood of super friendly people.

We became friendly with a group of locals and within a week were tied into the local scene waaaaaaaay too much. We got taken into peoples’ homes for lunches, shown cool local fresh water springs, taught how to make awesome gaspacho, invited to a wedding, you name it.

It was cool for a while and then suddenly it all got weird.

Without going in to a huge story, we had a guy creeping outside our window in the middle of the night.

We mentioned it to another person who then threatened the suspected creeper’s with a knife. Turns out there was beef there anyhow. Because apparently, the neighborhood we were in was some sort of nexus for…smuggling!

That wedding I mentioned was thrown by a local cartel family.

Then a local girl who had a crush on my friend kept getting weepy because he politely declined her.

He was in an eight-year relationship, so we figured she’d understand. Then four of her ten brothers swing by and remind us that it was inadvisable to mess with their family, the Gitanas. “You don’t mess a Gitana and then leave town,” was the statement I best remember.

Now, none of us had so much as kissed a Gitana, but at this point we figured we were about 24 hours away from seeing our buddy get shotgun married in the middle of a gang war we had inadvertently provoked.

So we packed up and split in the middle of the night, and drove to the coast.

I was travelling around Zambia on a three-month holiday on my own when I suddenly fell deathly ill while at a backpacker’s joint out in the bush.

I was throwing up bile and could barely move until someone found me after almost a day and got me to the hospital in Lusaka which was an hour’s drive.

Apparently, I was severely dehydrated to the point that my skin was malleable like clay. The doctor had to hydrate me through a drip because I’d throw up anything I tried to drink or eat.

Honestly it’s incredible how much I’ve appreciated water since that event. The memories are all a little hazy from the event but I recall being in my hospital bed and all I could think about was a tall glass of frosty water.

Moral of the story is when travelling alone, be careful.