Venetian blindsiding

Husband took me to Venice for a long weekend, for an overdue anniversary celebration. On the second evening of four, in a restaurant overlooking St Mark’s Square, he told me he wanted a divorce!
Kirkstall28

Tenerife horror hotel

Hairs, and stains of a questionable nature on the sheets, mould and leaking orange God-knows-what in the kitchen, outlets that sparked flames, food from the 1930s caked on the stove, cockroaches, ants, beer cans in the pool, doors hanging off, blood on the patio, pubes in the shower and to top it off the hotel was not even in the town advertised. That was a 45-minute walk away. At the top of a mountain. You’ve seen The Inbetweeners movie: that place was like the Ritz on steroids compared to this place. We escaped after three days to somewhere that cost more. In truth, I would have sold my own mother to get out. Yours too.
Catchytitled

Military coup: not on adventure holiday itinerary

Twenty years ago I decided to go with my parents on a two-week adventure to the Gambia. We took off from Gatwick at stupid o’clock in the morning and, six hours later, attempted to land in Banjul. Our plane was greeted by the army pointing their rather large guns at the plane, and the pilot made the swift decision to fly us along the coast to Dakar where it would be safer. Upon landing, we were told that we were in the middle of a military coup, due to non-payment of wages, and would not be allowed to stay in the Gambia. The pilot attempted to refuel the plane but there was a heated discussion about whether or not the airport would accept a credit card payment. There was talk of a passenger whip round at one point.

Six uncomfortable hours later (no refreshments left and the toilets were overflowing), we arrived back in ... Luton. After our very long and stressful journey, we’d been diverted as it was the only airport with low traffic on a Friday night.
Bowledover

One too many

On holiday in France, I got slightly inebriated and found myself enlisting in the Foreign Legion for five years.
carstenh176

Breakfast of Champions: cigarette, coffee, Xanax

Before she died (of lung cancer, which should have surprised no one, but somehow did), I took a series of trips around Europe and North Africa with my chain-smoking mother. I learned that to survive these excursions, I needed to make sure she was sustained with the trifecta of what I’ve dubbed The Breakfast of Champions: a cigarette, a cup of coffee and a Xanax. I learned how to say “I’m sorry, my mother is difficult” in four languages.

One day, her wrath was directed toward the perfectly affable Australian manager of a riad in Fez. Because my mother collected cigarette butts in her handbag and deposited them in our room’s waste paper bin, the manager reasonably but incorrectly assumed she had been smoking in the room, and politely reminded her that she was welcome to smoke on the terrace. I tried to dive in front of the manager in slow motion to take the bullet of outrage-infused verbal abuse my mother unleashed, but it was too late. Even after he departed, I still endured hours of profanity-laden huffing.

I finally got another Xanax down her neck, and things were calming down, when I plugged in the reading lamp next to the bed, and its dodgy wiring gave me a pretty nasty shock that knocked me to the ground. My mother whirled around and asked what happened. I saw a renewed storm of riad-manager-targeted wrath brewing in her narrowed eyes. I stammered: “Nothing, I tripped,” and tried to mask the racing of my heart with nonchalant guidebook browsing. I actually endured electrocution rather than risk upsetting the delicate peace wrought by the Breakfast of Champions.
HBall

Locals torched our bungalow

Last month, six of us went on an epic holiday to Vanuatu. Yep, that’s the place in the South Pacific that got hammered by Hurricane Pam in March. And no, we didn’t cancel our holiday – I mean, these things always look worse than they are, don’t they? And you have to help these places get back on your feet, right? And after all, Vanuatu was recently rated as the “happiest country in the world”, so what could possibly go wrong?

Well, anyway, we ended up staying at a lodge on Tanna, one of the southernmost islands in the Vanuatu archipelago – famous for its accessible volcano. We had a family bungalow right on the beach, lovely place, owned by a New Zealand businessman. Then – after a horrendous incident allegedly involving the businessman’s son – one of the local lads on the island is stabbed, run over and killed. This prompted an understandably volcanic reaction from the Tanna islanders. The only warning we got was a fellow guest telling us that men with machetes and petrol cans were on their way, and we had 10 minutes to get out, maybe less. A world-record-breaking packing frenzy later, we watched brown smoke rise into the air from the back of a Toyota pick-up: us, our tearful kids, a few other ex-guests, and one shaken, utterly bewildered Kiwi.
jimbomcnulty

Cuban crisis

Three standout fails from my Latin adventure a few years ago. After deciding on taking a mixture of cash and debit cards, I got rolled for all my money and left skint in Havana. There was a hurricane approaching. Then I contracted salmonella. As I was wearily boarding the flight home after 10 days – significantly lighter and poorer – a man died at my feet after heart failure.
Johnny Latham

Drunk woman in my hotel bed

When I came to my room in the hotel in Salou, Spain, I discovered an unknown drunk woman sleeping in my bed. The guard couldn’t do anything about it, so I woke her up by myself and she left. I met her in the restaurant the next day, but she didn’t recognise me ... I wouldn’t recommend this hotel to anybody. And I think it was their mistake to serve cava for breakfast.
Oypavlova

Greek catastrophe

On the second day of a two-week trip to Greece, my partner began to get toothache. We found a dentist who said it looked like an abscess. We had hired a scooter, though I had no idea how to drive. The accelerator got the better of me on the way to the pharmacy and I skidded, landing on my ankle and, of course, damaging the bike. The next day our baggage finally arrived, minus the camera. We tried to go to the beach but the wind was too strong, stopping all ferries for the next two days. My ankle took a turn for the worse. We finally got to Naxos and then Paros, my partner with a face the size of a football, me hobbling around barely able to walk. To add to the experience I developed an allergic rash that covered most of my body.
Ian Moore

Thai headbutt

Stuck in a nine-seater minibus with six mates, the driver and his wife, going from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, which took two days. I had a newly broken foot and an incessantly moaning friend seated directly behind me. I ended up reverse headbutting him and then enforcing a rule whereby he was only allowed to complain for five minutes every two hours.
Cathdud