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Most of us go on vacation to relax, but as it often happens when you are in a place where you don’t speak the lingo, things can go south in more ways than one. Someone asked “Travelers, what are some of the creepiest/scariest experiences you've had abroad?” and people shared their eeriest stories.
We got in touch with solo traveler Lavina Dsouza to learn some tips to avoid the sort of stories here. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote the most interesting posts, and be sure to comment your own thoughts below.
More info: Continenthop.com
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Hiking in Huaraz Peru, has been told to watch our gear as locals (and apparently foxes) might make off with items left around the campsite. So we made sure to clean the campsite extra well, packing all our gear in the tent and inside the fly. And after a long day hiking, off to bed. Middle of the night our tent starts shaking like crazy, I wake up freaking out thinking we were getting robbed, I started yelling and screaming. Part of the tent pushes in real far. I manage to get outside to start swinging and come face to face with the cow that had wandered into the tent ropes and got startled. Pretty lucky that it didn’t step down into the tent and hit us.
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#2
On a train in Athens traveling alone, a group of men tried to push me off the train with them at a stop. Three women started yelling at them and pulled me back. It happened to fast I didn't know until the one that spoke English explained they were trying to take me. They made sure I made it back to the hostel and told me not to wear what I was wearing ( shorts and a tank) while alone.
#3
I witnessed a creepy old man groping a teenager on a crowded train in Osaka. The girl was just enduring it and you can tell that she was holding back her tears. I whipped my phone out and started filming the guy which made him use his other hand which was blocked from my view so I asked my guy friend to switch places with the girl. After that, on the next stop, the creepy guy got off. I asked the girl if she was ok. She thanked us and her friends also expressed their gratitude. I think all of them (all teenage girls) were aware of the groping but I read somewhere that it is not the Japanese culture to make a scene. I was aware that this kind of thing was prevalent in Japan but I'm still shocked to see it in person. That creepy man and the poor girl's face will be forever etched in my mind.
Bored Panda got in touch with Lavina Dsouza, a veteran traveler, journalist, and photographer from Continenthop.com and she was kind enough to answer some of our questions. Given the dour nature of many of these stories, we wanted to, instead, explore some of the positives while still staying safe. So we asked Lavina what travel advice she would give her younger self.
“Never be afraid to travel solo! But irrespective of whether you travel solo or not, always do research and have backup plans ready and have some breathing space if and when things go wrong so that you're not caught off guard and don't end up spending a fortune when you panic!”
#4
I was traveling in Nicaragua several years ago when I got lost and ended up having to take a taxi at 9:30pm back to my hostel. When the taxi pulled up to the curb, the taxi driver locked the taxi doors and told me that I had misunderstood the fare. He claimed I owed him $100 USD which was several times more than we had agreed upon. I tried to pry the doors open from the inside but was completely trapped. Thankfully, he let me out of the taxi after taking all the money I had on me.
The hostel workers told me I was incredibly lucky. A few days earlier, a taxi driver had kidnapped another young female, assaulted her, then dumped her barely conscious body in a field outside town thinking that she was dead. A few local schoolchildren found her on their way to school in the morning.
#5
In India our bus rounded a corner in the mountains and another bus was on the other side of the curve. Both busses skid to a stop about 1 foot from one another. Both drivers started laughing and poking fun at each other. We saw a bus from the '80s that fell down the mountain about 15 minutes later. Hella intense.
#6
1992 I was walking up the stairs to the ticket booths in the Warsaw, Poland central train station. All of a sudden this dude is falling down the stairs coming to rest a few stairs above where I was standing. Dude had a long screw driver sticking out of his abdomen.
Generally, more extreme experiences come when a person actually goes somewhere off the beaten path, but sometimes it’s simply a result of wanting to save some money at the cost of time and convenience, so we wanted to hear Lavina’s take on balancing the two. “I have been sharing travel tips and tricks on Continenthop.com for almost a decade mainly for professionals and yes, they value time over money!”
#7
Got pickpocketed by a group of 3 on a Paris metro. I'm paranoid of losing my wallet, so I'm always checking myself. When I realized it was missing, I made a bigger scene than the pickpockets were making (they shoved me into their friend and were trying to convince people I knocked him down). I stopped the train from leaving the station. One of the other passengers left to get got conductor and security. I guess that didn't sit well with the pickpockets, so they gave me back my wallet and took off running.
Edit: This event still freaks my wife out.
#8
We went on a family trip to croatia and on our way to the Beach we pulled over to the side of a road for a pee break. So we opened the car door and like always our dog jumps out first. He ran into the field right next to the Street. Then suddenly my mother starts screaming the name of our dog, because 10meters away from our car was sign that said: Stay Away, old minefield. Thankfully nothing happened
Zaphod 10 months ago
Old landmines pose a threat long after wars end. I do not understand having royalty, but Princess Diana was a good person. In 1997, she walked through a minefield in Angola to support the HALO Trust. The HALO Trust is a NGO which works to clear landmines left behind by conflicts
#9
I had a pack of wild dogs chase me from my bus stop to my hotel at 3 am in Kosovo. I also had a old woman yell at me in Russian about not making my bed right on the train and then watched over my shoulder til it was to her satisfaction when I was on my way back to Bucharest from Moldova
“Travelers, especially from countries like the USA, tend to have limited holidays and prefer to see as much as possible within the limited time they have. While slow travel is the trend currently unfortunately not everyone can afford that in terms of time and for many countries who depend on tourism, as long as this is done in the most sustainable way possible it still helps provide innumerable locals with income! So in short, there's no right way to travel!”
#10
A good friend of mine in Zimbabwe was grabbed at gunpoint and forced into a van, thankfully they only took her to an ATM and made her drain her account then they left her somewhere outside town. Could've been so much worse
Zaphod 10 months ago
This is a 100,000,000,000,000 Zimbabwe dollar bill. Zimbabwe had hyper-inflation in 2007-8. One month, the inflation rate was 79,600,000,000% Resized_10...3-jpeg.jpg 
#11
Was on a flight once going into Orlando that hit some unexpected turbulence. This was no ordinary turbulence. We went from 0 to 100 in an instant. People literally flew out of their seats, luggage fell from the overhead bins, people screamed like they were going to die. There were several sudden drops in elevation strong enough that people's arms flew up in the air and my butt came out of the seat. I've flown quite a bit and sometimes it gets bumpy. This was the first time I seriously thought something bad was going to happen.
Tobias Reaper 10 months ago (edited)
and that is why you wear seatbelts on a plane so any sudden drop in altitude u dont fly out your seat and hit the ceiling
#12
It was my first time visiting New York City. My aunt and uncle who both work in FiDi (Financial District) took the whole week off to show me and my family around Manhattan. It was a beautiful Tuesday morning and we just had our photos taken around Wall Street when the first plane crashed into the WTC
She is absolutely right here, as slow travel has become a pretty significant movement over the last few years. In short, the idea is to be as sustainable as possible, which often means traveling shorter distances, using up less carbon, walking often, only eating locally, and, generally, staying in a place for a longer period of time. But, as Lavina mentioned, this does tend to come at a cost. Slow-travel enthusiasts still need to work out a framework to make this concept actually applicable to the average person.
#13
Met a guy in Munich on the street who had lived in the same house as I did... in Cincinnati... 40 years ago...
Charles Greenough 10 months ago
How is that scary? Was he still living in the attic or something?
#14
I was traveling by van through the mountains in the Philippines with a friend that is a really big guy. We came up on a checkpoint with soldiers searching cars. The guys we’re all wearing mismatched clothes and did not have any insignias on their uniforms or trucks. They searched all of our bags and we’re asking questions of the driver in Tagalog, which we did not speak. We heard them say American and we we’re the only two Americans on the bus. They talked for a little while and finally waved us through. Later we told the story to another American and he said we had gone through a Guerrilla controlled area where Americans had been kidnapped for ransom lately. They all agreed they did not take us because of the size of my friend. I think we got really lucky that day.
#15
I was walking around in a town in Algeria. I wandered in to a neighborhood, and noticed there were hardly any people out. A little further, and there were literally no people out. I started to feel a little uneasy. And then I see an extremely tall man walking towards me, straight towards me, obviously with intent. He gets closer, and I see an older gentleman with a long grey beard and wearing a grey tunic. I stop. He comes right up to me and says, in pretty good English, “you’re not safe here, we need to get you off the street”. I say “OK”, and he says “follow me”.
We walk a few blocks and we come to a door, he says “wait here a minute”, and he goes inside. He opens the door again and invites me in. When I get inside, there are maybe a dozen men. They are all dressed in black, and they are staring absolute daggers at me. Grey-beard lays in to them, starts shaking his fists at them, gets really worked up. Then one of the younger guys goes in to the kitchen and brings out some tea and cookies, and offfers them to me.
So, I’m drinking tea, and trying to smile, and one of the young guys asks where I’m from and I say “The States” and he starts talking about the CIA and stuff... and then I say “you think the CIA is bad here? Let me tell you about Central America”, and then pretty soon everybody is warming up to me and we’re laughing and talking s**t about American foreign policy and drinking tea.
After a bit of that the older man invites me back to his apartment. He has a huge library. I gift him a book that I had finished. And then he tells me what had just happened. His little brother, who was one of the younger men, was the leader of a radical group, all the other men I had met. He had overheard them getting ready to kidnap me. But he had shamed them for not being good hosts, and for disrespecting him because it was his house. He said that I would be safe from then on.
TLDR: Gandalf saves my life and got a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for his trouble.
However, slow or “fast,” many of these trips still ended up scaring the people who took them, so we wanted to finish with some general advice from Lavina that anyone could benefit from. “Research! If planning a trip by yourself try to check which localities are safe, pick tours and companies that are local give back to the community, and make sure you keep family and friends informed of your whereabouts. Always make sure you carry a power bank and any medications needed and keep track of the cultural rules in a country so that you're not caught off guard due to random arguments.” You can find more of her work at Continenthop.com and Instagram.
#16
A friend and I were waiting for a night train in Naples and after someone tried to steal our bags decided to go everywhere together. It was a good thing because a man who had been whistling at us for an hour tried to follow us into the bathroom.
#17
I have mostly traveled through Europe, and the only time I've ever really felt uncomfortable was when I was groped on the metro in Rome. We were packed into the car, and I felt a hand against my back...no big deal, I live in New York City, it happens. But then the hand slipped between me and the next person and around to near my stomach. Oh, maybe a pickpocket? Well I had a money belt, so I was okay there. The hand grabbed my breast. We were so tightly packed that I couldn't turn around, and I just...froze. I wanted to say, "stop" or "don't" or anything at all but in the moment every word of my Italian fled from my brain and I felt like a bucket of scalding water had been dumped over my head. The ride felt like it lasted forever. At the next stop I forced my way out of the car and out into the fresh air. Rome is so beautiful, but it felt pretty damn ugly that day.
#18
A handful of men in Thailand were vehemently trying to haggle with my friends to purchase me. They kept pulling my arms to try and seperate us and asking "how much" and offering different amount of money.
Edit: Jesus this blew up! Thailand is a very beautiful place and very safe for travel, guys! The place I was at, Pattaya Beach, is the central location where we are allowed to stay when the ship pulls into port. It's basically nothing but bars and brothels. Don't go there. I don't know why they even let *us* go there. Even if you did go, you'd most likely not be in any danger, the people are very helpful and kind but every place has bad people and we happened to run into them. I'm not even sure if these men were Thai. Don't let this freak you out from going. SEA does have a dark underbelly of human trafficking but it's pretty unlikely you will be involved in it as a tourist.
And everyone who is freaking out about the Sailors "buying" underage girls; they're just stupid kids who want to get their d**k wet. They have literally no idea that these girls are underage and just think they're paying a prostitue. Most of these idiots can't even fathom that child trafficking is a thing. We make every effort possible to keep this from happening and inform our Sailors about what is really going on. Your average US servicemember is just as disgusted as you are that this happes to children.
MaxMi 10 months ago
Unfortunately is the most tipped route for sex tourism where minors of all age are available. This is so radicated to escape poverty parents will sell their kids for a bounch of dollars and eat six months. The problem are the travellers from all over the world, not the sailors where at least an istitution can watch over them.
#19
Visiting Chicago from Seattle for a week. I booked an Airbnb with a gentleman understanding that I would be in a household with maybe 5 other people as he did bunk beds in the room. The Airbnb was marketed as close to trains, decent area, and the house looked clean with many useful amenities.
Upon arriving at the house, I find that it's run down, unclean, with only the sheets being changed by the maid. On top of that, many appliances were broken and there was no potable water. That was the first strike. Next, there were upwards of 15 people staying in the house. That bunk bed situation? He had 5-6 rooms with varying amounts of bunk beds squeezed in and no room to walk. No one in the house knew about the other rooms from the listing.
I dropped my things off to explore the city and noticed the neighborhood was a bit sketchy but thought nothing of it. When I can back there was one of the other guests sitting waiting for an uber eats because he was too terrified to walk down the street and get food.
Apparently, the night before I arrived, 3 people in the house were mugged while walking 5 minutes from the train to the house. That night, 8 of us sat on the floor of the "living room" (seemed like a small dining area but a lovers couch was place in there with a broken TV) and heard 2 separate occasions of 8-10 gunshots a block away.
I immediately moved to a hostel and argued with airbnb and himself until I received a refund.
Mike, screw you.
Tl;dr: Ended up in an Airbnb in a bad part of Chicago were three housemates were mugged and two people on the street were shot. Didn't stay another night.
Alicia M 10 months ago
I live close to Chicago and I have been there a million times. It's a great city, but has bad areas, like any other big city. I've been to places in Chicago where I feel completely safe and I've been to places that feel sketchy . I always move through the bad areas quickly. I've always had a good time there. Very multicultural city. A lot to do. They have the best museums in my area. I don't think you can beat the Field Museum.
#21
My buddy and I were flying into Malaysia from Vietnam on the day that MH370 went missing. We were at the gate watching the whole thing unfold about it going missing. It was playing on virtually all the TV's in the airport. We were flying Malaysia Airlines. The tickets were expensive (for a backpacker's budget) and they weren't offering any refunds. Told ourselves that maybe they'd be extra cautious now so we're actually more safe. Definitely puckered up for 2 hours until we touched down.
#22
I was in Barbados walking on a main road back to where I was sleeping. Not far from a main beach, on the south side. It was late and dark.
I come across this man carrying a white bucket.
"Hi, I'm Bush"
Bush has plants in the bucket. He also has a machete.
"Do you have any food for me? Some rice?"
I tell him I do not have any food, but that I do have weed that I could share --I had bought some from a bunch of kids at the beach the night before.
"Follow me", says Bush.
So I follow this man with a machete off the road, into a empty lot. At the back of the lot is a back alley heading to the side.
We take this alley -- a man is sitting, sleeping on a wall, a few broken down cars are parked. It is a dead end.
I was wondering earlier whether all this was a good idea, and my mind was beginning to form an opinion along the lines of "no".
So we get to the end of the alley. He enters a door, and brings out two chairs.
Turns out this is his mom's place. I begin to notice a small garden all around -- made from the plants that Bush picks up and brings back in his bucket.
We light up. He tokes first. He coughs.
"Ugh, this stuff is s**t! You feed this to the sheep!"
#23
I was walking to a pharmacy down a busy avenue in Rabat, Morocco. It was the Feast of the King so most people had off work and school, meaning the avenue was empty. Myself and two volunteers (all three young, white females) are walking and chatting when two guys on a motorbike pass us the opposite way. They drove over the median and pulled up beside us. The guy on the back gets off and walks toward us then pulls a machete out from underneath his flannel. Girl 1 throws her purse, Girl 2 throws her phone, and both go running. Guy comes after me and I wrap my hand around my purse (had my passport, wallet, phone, etc.) and he holds the machete up to my neck. I say a few choice words to him in Arabic (essentially “Shame on you by Allah”, which is something I was taught by locals to keep the kids I was working with at an orphanage in line). Machete man promptly appears to s**t his pants. He goes after the dropped phone and purse and I start running the rest of the way to the pharmacy.
I wind up there crying and the other two girls meet me. People are starting to congregate. Some witnessed it while driving by while others are trying to translate for us. A woman says she will drive us home after speaking with the security guard at the pharmacy. We agree and get into a minivan. I provide directions in Arabic and the woman drives right past the house, blowing stop signs and ignoring traffic lights. It’s then we realize we’re about to get kidnapped. One of the two girls reached forward, opened the door of the van, and we jumped out while it was moving.
TLDR: Held up at machete-point then almost trafficked in Morocco during my first international travel experience.
#24
I was traveling in Costa Rica with two flashy businessmen who were there to possibly purchase a gentleman’s club. We were staying at the Radisson and asked the concierge to get us a cab to the club. We got in the cab and made sure that the driver knew where we were going. We were told it was a 10 min drive. About 7 min in I realized that we were not in a touristy part of town. At all. The driver is whispering into his phone in Spanish, staring at us in the rear view mirror. I get uneasy and look at my companions, who are clearly feeling the same way. We ask “are we almost there?” Oh si! Uno momento. More whispering. Not good. We are being set up. It’s been 10 minutes and we are in a sketchy residential area.
I’m sitting in the middle and my partner opens his briefcase and hands me a pen and tells me to stab someone if I need to. What?! He passes another pen to the other man. He’s sitting directly behind the driver and takes his own gold pen and holds it to the drivers jugular and screams “TAKE US BACK TO THE RADISSON RIGHT F*****G NOW”, the partner snatched the drivers phone and hangs up. I’m just clutching the pen.
We did make it back to the Radisson. The jewelry was deposited into the safe in the room for the rest of the trip and we eventually made it safely to the club. I was young and naive, I had had my passport for 3 days at this point and didn’t really get that we shouldn’t have been traveling there with that amount of flashy jewelry.
Zaphod 10 months ago (edited)
I had a high school friend that lived in Costa Rica. He was a DJ at a gentleman's club. He said it was like the Wild West. Gangsters, hookers and coke were the norm. They had a shoot out in the bar, one night. People were not fazed by it. Edit: I meant the bar, not Costa Rica itself. He loved living there.
#25
When I was a kid, my dad used to lead groups of college kids to Central and South America to build houses. One year he decided that we should ride the chicken but from Guatemala City to Mexico City. Long trip.
We got to the border and a soldier with a hell of a big machine gun got on the bus and looked around. Saw that we had about 15 college girls on the bus, and then went and talked to someone on the phone. About two minutes later, a bunch of guys with machine guns got on the bus and informed us that all the males had to get off the bus and line up in front of it.
I remember that we did it, but there was a hell of a lot of tension in the air as we did.
Soldiers crammed into the bus. We waited.
Finally, they got off the bus and we got back on and away we went. It was a whole lot of nothing, really, but I remember my dad, the leader of the group, looking very pale and sweating bullets.
Edit 1: this was in the late 80s. We'd heard lots of tales of bad stuff.
Edit 2: chicken BUS. We didn't ride the chicken, we rode the chicken bus.
Edit 3: okay, they might not have been machine guns. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. They still were large caliber guns, I was 12 and I was unarmed. I'm sure if it had gone differently and I'd have been shot to death, it would have given me great comfort to know that my death was caused by a semi-automatic.
A. Starhawk Hunt 10 months ago
OP, I like your style. Edit 3 was an ode to deserved, appropriate, intelligent piece of snark, with silver stars for sheer effect on my day!👏👏👏
#26
I was stalked by a guy while walking through the Tiergarten in Berlin.
I was walking a path, enjoying the park alone. I saw this guy standing on the edge of the walkway just looking off into the distance. I passed him and when I was about twenty feet away, he turned and followed after me, keeping pace. I started to take a very meandering path, even leaving the park and entering again. The guy stuck with me the whole way. Eventually I got to a place with some sharp turns and heavy greenery. I was able to lose the line of sight and put myself up against a corner. I'd just been in Switzerland and had bought a pocket knife, so I opened the blade and held it inside my jacket pocket. I stood there, waiting, and then this guy comes walking out of the path confused and obviously trying to see where I went. When he finally spotted me, he jolted and since I had the drop on him, he played it cool and continued walking as if he hadn't followed me there.
He stopped a little ways ahead, and I kept watching him. I wanted to confront him to find out why he'd followed me, but since I was a visitor in the country, I thought better of it. Instead, I waited until I saw a big group of people leaving and fell in with them. He started to follow me, but I finally lost him outside the garden.
It unsettled me because to this day I have no idea why he was following me. I'm a guy and at the time I was in my early twenties, pretty fit, and had a sour disposition, so I didn't seem like a prime mugging target. But, maybe he thought otherwise.
EDIT: Half the reason I posted this story was because I hoped someone on Reddit would know what the guy was doing. You didn't fail me.
#27
Went to Honduras. Nearly drowned in a sea of children begging for money. Also the wife and I went out into the ocean. She was on a paddle board and I on a canoe. She couldn’t paddle back in and it was taking her out so she had to hold onto me while I paddles us in. Good thing I was in really great shape at the time.
Zaphod 10 months ago
In 1999, I went to a baseball game in Havana, Cuba. I gave some cute kids some nickels ($0.05 coins). I was immediately swarmed and I could not see the rest of the game. Here is a picture from that game. Picture-04...269647.jpg 
#28
The first day in the Philippines when I landed in Manila, a white Canadian tourist was [unalived] by people who align with IS. So there was that.
#29
The first time I ever visited the London Bridge was the day the terrorist attack happened where they drove a van through the crowd.
Huddo's sister 10 months ago
That period (I feel like it was a couple of months but I don't remember) where there were people in multiple countries carrying out attack by driving cars into crowds was terrifying! I was in the city not long after the one in Melbourne and was scared every time I had to walk along stretches without bollards next to the road.
#30
after being sexually harassed for a good half hour by a guy at Roma termini I boarded my overnight train just to wake up to the sight of a lovely red eyed man in my door with the words "IM FROM MAROCCO DO YOU WANT ME" eloquently leaving his lips as he proceeded to point to all the beds in the coupe and sitting next to me in the bed..............
What do you think ?
David Paterson 10 months ago
Have you ever been camping in a tent when it was hit by a tornado, at night? I don't recommend it.
Xenon 10 months ago
How about a non scary one? Flew into Tokyo in the middle of the night. Lone white female. Place was pretty much deserted believe it or not. Stood there confused as to what to do next. Group of Japanese men talking and gesturing for me to get into a small bus type thing with them. I did. It went to the nearest hotel and dropped us all off. I thanked them and we all went our separate ways. Thanks guys!
David Paterson 10 months ago
Have you ever been camping in a tent when it was hit by a tornado, at night? I don't recommend it.
Xenon 10 months ago
How about a non scary one? Flew into Tokyo in the middle of the night. Lone white female. Place was pretty much deserted believe it or not. Stood there confused as to what to do next. Group of Japanese men talking and gesturing for me to get into a small bus type thing with them. I did. It went to the nearest hotel and dropped us all off. I thanked them and we all went our separate ways. Thanks guys!
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