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Original poster

Where's the furthest you been on holiday and bumped into someone you know?

209 replies

WatermelonSugarLow · 01/08/2024 22:12

Just wondered how common this is and could prove an interesting thread. Have you ever been away, especially abroad, and bumped into someone you know? We are away abroad at the moment, busy kids pool and it got me thinking wouldnt it be funny if someone from DCs school appeared in the pool. It's never happened to me for the record...

OP posts:
OptimisticMermaid · 01/08/2024 22:53

a hotel pool in the outback Australia. The only other person there turned out to be the grandson of the dr who was there when I was born.

ScoobyG · 01/08/2024 22:54

In France when I was about 6, walked to the top of a water slide queue and the person we knew was in front of us in the queue.

BeautyPageantDropout · 01/08/2024 22:55

Bumped into an ex up Machu Picchu. Totally killed my vibe.

also bumped into him on the Eiffel Tower.

doomed to bump into this bloody man at every famous landmark.

CloudWanderer · 01/08/2024 22:55

Borneo - in the middle of the rainforest. Not a touristy bit either - really remote!

Cattenberg · 01/08/2024 22:55

When I was at secondary school, my family and I went to Brittany for two weeks. We got a good deal, but had to move holiday cottages halfway through.

In the second week, we walked past holiday cottage no. 1 and one of my teachers was staying there with her family. My mum went and chatted to her for a while. Big coincidence? I have to confess it wasn’t really, as the cottage was owned by an ex-pat couple from our home town.

SeeSeeRider · 01/08/2024 22:55

I read about a couple who broke down in Israel in the desert, and were at the side of the road, and a car came along and stopped for them, and in it were their next door neighbours in Camberley or somewhere like that, and neither couple knew that the others were going to Israel.

Teenagehorrorbag · 01/08/2024 22:57

Never, but I met up with friends in Corfu years ago and they said George Best had been on their plane. We went to a bar - and there he was! (He wasn't drinking but I was very hungover and looking grim so didn't ask for a selfie, always regretted that.....).

Also went to St Lucia years ago and my college tutor was at the airport when we were all waiting to fly home. Hadn't seen her out there though.

OB1Kenobi · 01/08/2024 22:58

When I was a teenager, I bumped into my English teacher in a remote village in the Dordogne, France.
Last year met an ex-pupil and his family in Disney World, Orlando.

Cattenberg · 01/08/2024 22:58

BeautyPageantDropout · 01/08/2024 22:55

Bumped into an ex up Machu Picchu. Totally killed my vibe.

also bumped into him on the Eiffel Tower.

doomed to bump into this bloody man at every famous landmark.

😆😆😆😆

AxolotlEars · 01/08/2024 22:59

Disneyland Paris

SurpriseOzzy · 01/08/2024 23:00

This is prob outing but literally my DH and went to Ayers Rock and it was a coach trip from our hotel to Ayers Rock, we’d flown out there. On the coach bumped into an old school friend!! This was 12 years after leaving school. We’re all from England.

Galliano · 01/08/2024 23:01

New York - took my daughter to Sephora in Time Square and there were the members of a trip from her senior school; they were sixth formers and she was about 13.
I met one of my sister's uni friends in Calcutta.

When I was growing up I thought it was totally normal to see a ton of people you knew as you set off on holiday as we'd go to Ireland on the ferry from Holyhead every summer and see loads of other children from our Catholic school plus often teachers and once even the parish priest. It's a funny memory as something that seems quite inconceivable now.

KnickerlessParsons · 01/08/2024 23:01

Bordeaux.

showeringthisaft · 01/08/2024 23:01

Saw someone I knew in Orlando.

DS also met a kid on holiday abroad and they played together all week. The following year met him again on holiday in a different country.

Saisong · 01/08/2024 23:05

1st in New York, while walking across a square at Colombia university, bumped into an old classmate.

2nd was at a random, very remote train station (more an uncovered platform) in the middle of nowhere in Brittany - bumped into an ex-housemate from university.

winstinsandgins · 01/08/2024 23:06

Got in a taxi in LA. Driver was from New York. He was married to a girl I went to school with in the North of Scotland. Not a big school and she was in my registration class.
I still can't believe that happened. He stopped and FaceTimed her then we bamboozled him by talking in Doric!

tac10 · 01/08/2024 23:08

NZ - Rotorua (at the luge) my Kiwi friend who I had last seen in London about 10/12 years previously. She moved back to NZ and I was on a business trip/holiday and we had gone to the luge and as I was walking with my son I heard someone shouting my name! She was a teacher and her geography class had come to rotorua for the day!!

jazzyfazzy766 · 01/08/2024 23:09

When I was a child we went on holiday to Portugal and met a lovely family 2 years later we went to ibiza and this family were at the same hotel as us with an extra child this time as they had had another baby. We joked we would see them in a few years time - and lo and behold 5 yrs later we ran into them in Disney world!!!. After the 3rd encounter my parents and them exchanged numbers and are now really good friends.

Coldia · 01/08/2024 23:12

I spent a summer on an island off the Dalmatian coast. Couple of years later I was travelling around South America and bumped into a guy I'd hung out with on the island, in a small town in the north of Venezuela that wasn't even a place you'd go to, but I was there because friends had family with a house there, and he had friends who did too.

MooseBeTimeForSnow · 01/08/2024 23:16

Singapore - getting off a courtesy bus from our hotel on Sentosa on to Orchard Drive. Waiting to get on was someone I used to work with.

Buzzsaw · 01/08/2024 23:18

Longleat. Bumped into my old flatmate’s ex girlfriend. I hadn’t come far, but she now lives in Australia.

iwfja · 01/08/2024 23:18

I met a former university lecturer of mine about 15 years after graduation in a mountain hut in the Austrian Alps. He just randomly walked into the dormitory (one of the ones where everyone sleeps in a massive big bed).

honeylulu · 01/08/2024 23:22

As a student in the uni holidays I was travelling across the US on Greyhound buses. In the coach station toilets in Austin, Texas my travelling companion (different uni) was chatting to some other girls. Turned out they were from my uni and moving into the student house next to mine a month later!

My husband's ex wife bumped into someone she knew from home (small rural English village) coming out of the sea in Thailand.

Not people we knew before but met a couple in a boat trip in Antigua who lived near us and their son went to the tiny private boys school in our road.
First time in Disney World at Hollywood Studios - in the queue for the Rock n Roller Coaster, noticed the lad in front of its wearing the football strip of our home town. Struck up a conversation with his parents and found they lived in the next road to us.

Teacherprebaby · 01/08/2024 23:22

Colombia, a hostel in Medillian, bumped into someone I did teacher training with in London years before. Very random.

Cornishpasty342 · 01/08/2024 23:25

I’m from a very small town in Scotland but you can’t really go anywhere without meeting someone you know. I’ve met several people on holiday over the years, as have my friends/family. My DP finds it strange as he’s from a much bigger city and we never seen people he knows, they’re always from my wee town!

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