It’s pretty safe to say that about 99 percent of people in the world are good, honest, well-meaning folk. So that means you’d have to be pretty unlucky to stumble upon unsavoury characters on your travels.
Well, that’s assuming you don’t push your luck and travel through countries, regions or cities that are renowned for their dangerous conditions.
For example, please, please do not go to Syria, South Sudan, Iraq or Afghanistan for the time being. According to a Global Peace Index (GPI) report, these countries are the least peaceful (read: most dangerous) countries to visit in 2016.
But even still, sometimes $hit just happens, and if you’re fortunate enough to walk away from scary experiences unscathed – but perhaps a little frightened and a little poorer – what do you do besides thanking your lucky stars?
You jump on Reddit of course, and relay your scary travel experiences for the whole world to read on a thread appropriately titled, “[Serious] Travellers of Reddit, what was the moment that you were most scared of your safety on your travels?”
That’s what Redditer yoboyobo did, recounting this hairy situation from El Salvador:
“In El Salvador with my wife and two boys (10 & 14 at the time) and my best friend who is from there. We were hiking this jagged & black volcanic rock field along an open stretch of the highway. We knew we shouldn’t really be there as we had to crawl through barbed wire to get in. We are about 200 yards from the road when two men with machetes start to approach us. My friend doesn’t notice them until they are about 20 yards away. As they get closer, my friend is using our camcorder and spins around and starts interviewing them like they are on CNN. They straighten themselves up and provide us with the entire history of the area and are very nice as they wanted to appear good on TV. They warned us this was government property and not to go there again. Whew!”
Another user, borisdiebestie, recalls a more harrowing experience from the Democratic Republic of Congo:
“Due to my work for an aid agency in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I often stay in the very unstable and violent East of the country.
The day to day life as a person from a Western country who works there is dominated by security checks and negotiations with the UN Peacekeeping soldiers as well as the military and the various local rebel groups.
Without wanting to give further details, two persons including me were kidnapped by the FDLR rebel group (an organisation that exists since the Rwandan genocide) when we entered a region which is located outside the governmental and the UN jurisdiction in the deep deep bush to provide medical help after a rebel attack on a village in that region.
Despite having worked under similar conditions and experienced other life threatening events like bombardments, the situation in the Congo was the single most dangerous event in my life, which also made me overthink my lifestyle of ‘just hoping for the best’ all the time.”
Getting kidnapped by rebels whilst working in a foreign country certainly isn’t fun, but imagine getting kidnapped on your own honeymoon? Yep, that’s what happened to [user name offensive] whilst he and his newly wed were in Tanzania:
“I also don’t want to say a whole lot, but was kidnapped by Tanzanian border guards during my honeymoon tour of Ethiopia/Kenya. My bride and I were held for ransom for 2-3 days. This wasn’t a ‘pay us or we behead them’ scenario, just the usual bribery situation, like when a traffic cop stops you in Vietnam and will make you go through bureaucratic hell and maybe lose your motorbike if you don’t have some drinking money for him. The confinement ended when my wife’s family made it known exactly who they were – Ethiopian government officials with marital ties to Kenyan power/money.
Glad you made it through alright – sounds like your situation was a LOT worse than mine.”
And from kidnappings to Guitar Hero (what!?). Reddit user ImWithTheIdiotPilot may have slightly over reacted here:
“I had some Yakuza members ask me to teach them Guitar Hero in a video game bar in Osaka after I showed off on the Xbox. They’d give me a shot of tequila after each song. I was scared I would go wrong after a few so slipped out as inconspicuously as I could.”
Ooo! Maybe if you slipped up on the axe they’d stop giving you shots of tequila?! That would be pretty scarrrry!!
Pffft… Gamers…
Here are some other scary travel experiences recounted by Reddit users:
“I got caught in a riot in a Korean city in the 90’s. It went okay. I shared a train berth with a drunken russian off-duty soldier who waved his derringer and sidearm around for 10-15 minutes before passing out.”
“A few years back, I took a month-long trip across Asia. When I was in China, my friend and I got mugged by two dudes with knives. Luckily, I only lost a couple of bucks, my shitty watch, and a cheap flip-phone but that was a pretty scary experience.”
“A few years back I canoed the Rio Grande. For those of you unfamiliar, the Rio Grande separates Texas and Mexico, so when you’re in the river…one side is the US and one side is Mexico. So we’re just canoeing right along, and come upon a group of men on the Mexican side of the border holding big-scary guns, like military rifles. We were out in the middle of nowhere and basically sitting ducks in the middle of the water. And they were just standing there. On the border. With guns. Nothing happened, but at the time I was thinking “the only reason they could be standing on the border with guns is to kidnap us.” A few hours later one of my friends pointed out that they were fishing. With guns. I’m still so confused about it, but it was definitely a this-guy-could-kill-me-and-they’d-probably-never-find-my-body type of thing.”
Last but not least, in a tribute to our story a couple of days ago on the scariest slides in the world, we have this terrifying, almost fatal tale of a young kid on a ride in a Sri Lankan theme park from Reddit user Lamplock:
“More my dads story but it happened to me I was just too young to remember.
So when I was about 5 we were on a trip to Sri Lanka (I think) and my dad took me on a big water theme park ride. Looking back not the smartest move by my dad considering they don’t have the same regulations we have in Britain regarding health and safety – specifically height restrictions.
Turns out I was way too short for the ride and as my dad tells it we were about 60ft in the air when all he saw was me fly out of my seat and go over the side of the ride but he caught me by the ankle just in time and pulled me back in.
He says it was the single most scariest moment of his life because it was only by a fluke that he managed to save me.
Talk about being saved in the nick of time…”
