Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask what the scariest thing ever to happen to you abroad was?

221 replies

RainbowBriteUk · 13/09/2021 16:49

Mine was unknowingly walking in to a cafe where only men where allowed in the Balkans and they just all stared. Some quite icily. I just turned on my heel and walked out!

OP posts:
thetaleunfolds · 13/09/2021 16:52

A few weeks after I moved to the US at 18 I walked into a gas station, alone, at 1am to pay and found the attendant tied up at gunpoint while the store was robbed.

Mommabear20 · 13/09/2021 16:52

Being on a beach in Egypt when someone shouted 'SHARK' good job I hate swimming in the sea or I think I'd have died of fright!
There was a shark, and damn close to shore too, luckily no one was injured!

Iamnotminterested · 13/09/2021 16:52

Being eaten overnight by mosquitoes in Corfu. I was literally covered in bites, and some of the ones on my legs had swollen to the size of plates Shock it was agony to walk. I had to get a taxi to the hospital to have steroids injected into my bum cheeks.

katscamel · 13/09/2021 16:54

Being mugged in Tanzania on my way home from work. My OH at the time was about 30m away but didn't see it happen

DressBitch · 13/09/2021 16:55

My then boyfriend and i got lost in Tenerife. It was late, and dark, and we'd been drinking. We ask someone for directions and he took us down a dark alleyway and pointed that the hotel was up the alley. He gave my boyfriend a hug. He then gave me one and put his hand down my top and into my bra. He then ran off.

I was only 17 and I know it wasn't that bad, but it was scary realising how much worse it could have been. We were really fucking stupid.

SarahAndQuack · 13/09/2021 16:58

A (male) friend of mine invited me and another female friend to come stay with him in Paris for a long weekend when we were about 20. We arrived to radio silence from him; it got very late as we wandered around trying to find him at the place he'd described and calling his switched-off phone. We had very little money on us. Eventually, at about midnight, I managed to remember his mum's number (we were schoolfriends) and called her; she had no idea where he was but said she didn't think he was in Paris. So we walked around the dodgy bits of Paris until we found a very cheap place to stay.

It didn't occur to me until much later how dangerous a lot of what we were doing was - we were having conversations in public, in really dodgy places, about how we had nowhere to sleep and we split up a few times to cover more ground looking for a hotel. Very stupid.

I was fucking livid with the bloke, though.

faw2009 · 13/09/2021 16:59

Walking up a dirt path to our hotel in almost complete darkness with a pack of street dogs growling threateningly behind us. Maybe it wasn't a pack but it was too dark to see!

SarahAndQuack · 13/09/2021 16:59

(Oh, and we later found out the reason he never showed up was he'd decided to go off for a weekend elsewhere, with other friends, and said he 'just assumed' we'd happily find a hotel on our own.)

MedusasBadHairDay · 13/09/2021 17:01

We were on a college trip to Paris, tutors had managed to book us into a hotel in what was clearly a fairly dodgy area, and through a series of fuck ups (Inc. tutors deciding to go get drunk) it ended up with us 3 girls (all under 18) having to make our own way back to the hotel, past the strip club with missing girls posters outside, only to find ourselves being followed by a man trying to get us to get in his car.

Sparklesocks · 13/09/2021 17:03

Driving on the freeway in the US and a big truck in front of us had its load doors slightly open. Suddenly a bucket flew out, bounced off the front of the hire car and rolled under the wheel before getting stuck between the front tyre and the wheel arch. My dad was driving and fortunately was very calm (said fuck a lot though!!) and managed to pull over safely and pull it out. It made the worst noise when it got caught.

AllTheBooks · 13/09/2021 17:06

Going for a 4 month trip round South America with my friend, full of excitement and adventure, we went out for an early sober dinner 4 nights in, in a Peruvian border town. On the way home to our guest house, we were both jumped, strangled til we passed out and all of our belongings stolen. Luckily the guesthouse owner found us and helped us but police werent at all interested, didnt even look up from the TV when we tried to report it. Our passports were stolen too so we had to sneak across the border into Bolivia so we could get them replaced. Doesn't really seem real now but I still hate dark alleyways and corners.

Auntienumber8 · 13/09/2021 17:07

In a huge storm in Budapest, it was St Stephens day and there was a huge firework display so thousands of people were in the centre. We had to wade through flood water up to our knees. Chairs and roof tiles were flying about and at least three people died. Link below to the BBC news report

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5269642.stm

allofthecheese · 13/09/2021 17:09

In Turkey with female friends we got a yellow cab to take us somewhere. The driver was driving really dangerously and he seemed so angry. When it came to paying we all chipped in and made sure we had the correct amount. He did some counting and started flipping out at us saying we hadn't given him the right amount. Pretty sure he did some slight of hand movement and hid one of the notes. Friend in passenger seat gave him another note and we legged it. So we ended up paying double. Pretty sure he wouldn't have done it if we weren't a group of women. Ugh!

Ihaventgottimeforthis · 13/09/2021 17:10

Held up at gunpoint three times during my gap year in Kenya & Swaziland.
Once on a coach stopped crossing the border, once on a group trip and marched out of a hostel, once just me and my friend travelling solo back from safari.
Dunno how we sailed through unharmed really, I'm having a heart attack thinking about my DD going through the same in 6 years time.
The other thing was being stuck on a boat in a tropical storm, thought we might sink and die as I floundered round on a rickety boat where literally everyone was puking on the carpet for hours.

Endeavormorse · 13/09/2021 17:12

Three 17 year olds in Lanzarote robbed while we slept!

lockdownmadnessdotcom · 13/09/2021 17:14

Driving up the road to the Slieve League cliffs in Donegal. No barrier to stop the car falling into the sea! It was terrifying. And then we got to the top and there were loads of people milling around as if there was nothing wrong. And a BUS. I don't know what we would have done if we'd met that on the way up. At least on the way down we were on the side of the road away from the sheer drop.

Should be a candidate for the World's Most Dangerous Roads programme.

Harlequin1088 · 13/09/2021 17:15

Held up at gun point by armed militia in Ethiopia when I was 18.

Grabbed by several blokes in India when I was 25 and they tried to bundle me into a tuktuk while my then husband stood there gormlessly and did absolutely nothing about it. He's an ex-husband for a reason!

fuzzymoomin · 13/09/2021 17:20
  1. Found a huntsman spider in my bed, literally the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to me ever, not just abroad.
  2. Got held up at gunpoint and shouted at in a language I didn't understand. He was wearing a uniform so I didn't think it was a mugging and didn't know what to do so just stood there listening/not understanding and was eventually shooed away. I still don't understand what had happened except perhaps I'd wandered somewhere I shouldn't have.
  3. Became seriously ill overseas and wandered out to find a chemist or doctor but struggled for breath and collapsed. I genuinely thought I would die and no one would know who I was (left passport in bedroom). Luckily a stranger scooped me up and got help and I eventually recovered.
DillonPanthersTexas · 13/09/2021 17:21

Got pulled over by the military police in Nigeria who then tried to extract money from me for all sorts of made up bullshit fines. They were drunk and getting increasingly angry as I refused to hand over money. A few of them started to kick the side of my car while others pointed their AK-47s at me. They settled for some cigarettes.

AllTheBooks · 13/09/2021 17:21

@Harlequin1088

Held up at gun point by armed militia in Ethiopia when I was 18.

Grabbed by several blokes in India when I was 25 and they tried to bundle me into a tuktuk while my then husband stood there gormlessly and did absolutely nothing about it. He's an ex-husband for a reason!

blimey I dont know which one is more terrifying!
Thebookswereherfriends · 13/09/2021 17:26

Getting lost while driving in the city with my charges as an au pair in America. I ended up in a very scary looking part of the city and it was getting dark. I kept driving whilst being overly cheerful to the kids and eventually I found a road I was slightly familiar with and was able to drive home.

rooarsome · 13/09/2021 17:30

Morocco-
-Assaulted by a man in a store as I did not wish to buy a lantern. He pressed it into my hands and when I politely declined he slapped me across the face. My husband moved to intervene but the shop keeper and another in the stall opposite brought out knives. Luckily we were with a tour guide who got us away safely.

-We were walking back from a restaurant (after witnessing a man being battered with a metal menu stand and the police taking a bribe to walk away), when a man approached us with a little girl, no more than 8. He offered her to my husband for the night.

Safe to say I will never return to that country.

fuzzymoomin · 13/09/2021 17:32

@rooarsome

Morocco- -Assaulted by a man in a store as I did not wish to buy a lantern. He pressed it into my hands and when I politely declined he slapped me across the face. My husband moved to intervene but the shop keeper and another in the stall opposite brought out knives. Luckily we were with a tour guide who got us away safely.

-We were walking back from a restaurant (after witnessing a man being battered with a metal menu stand and the police taking a bribe to walk away), when a man approached us with a little girl, no more than 8. He offered her to my husband for the night.

Safe to say I will never return to that country.

ShockSad horrible!
AuntieMarys · 13/09/2021 17:35

In my early 20s in 1983, I was attacked by a family man....I was on holiday alone and his wife started chatted to me in the hotel bar. After an hour I announced I was going back to my apartment...she insisted her dh walked me back " as it wasn't safe"
He tried it on..I punched him in the face and broke his nose. Upshot was, the police deported him and his family.

flashpaper · 13/09/2021 17:36

This isn't half as bad as some of the others but I was about 7 when I was walking on a high street in Spain with my family. They turned and went into a shop but I had carried on walking in my own little world. I turned around and they weren't there, so I panicked, turned around a couple more times, and then became really disorientated and couldn't remember which way I'd come from. Eventually, I worked it out and managed to get to my grandfather who was sat down instead of walking round. The rest of my family came back eventually, with massive relief on their face that they'd managed to find me. Well, except maybe my sister...