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

[RainbowBriteUk]

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!

Probably when the volcano we were staying on the slopes of started to hurl lava bombs in the direction of the town where I was staying. Generally, I think volcanoes are really cool, but OMG that was terrifying!

I bought a headscarf after several nights of squirming away from these men in every crowd, and the groping stopped by magic

Yeah, I did the same in Istanbul as a 20-something with blonde hair and big tits - it was a fucking nightmare until I did. Then, suddenly, everyone was very polite! Actually, I didn't even buy one, I just put the wrap I usually wore at the pool round my head and voila!

My Dad and I were walking back to a hotel in Negombo, Sri Lanka when we saw a black military truck pull up next to the beach and a dozen heavily armed paramilitary wannabes piled out and started to sneak down an alleyway. They spotted us across the road, frozen, and trotted back into the truck and it drove off. Dad thinks we stopped some poor bugger from being spirited off that night just by being there. So many people "disappeared" in Sri Lanka during the Tamil War, mostly at the hands of the government....

Hurricane Irma - the biggest hurricane to hit the far East of the Caribbean in decades - hit Antigua on day 4 of our honeymoon.... We were fine, in a posh and well built resort and flew home early, but dear God the effect across the Caribbean on homes, livelihoods and the death toll - just awful. The sound alone was a bit scary and we weren't in a shanty 😢

[quote Auntienumber8]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[/quote]
I was there too, but we were at a friend’s flat watching the fireworks when the storm hit, and all the windows shattered — it was frightening enough indoors with glass flying and the entire contents of a fifth-floor flat blowing around, and I can only imagine what it was like in a crowd on the ground.

@faw2009 we were also followed home, in the dark late at night, by a huge pack of various stray dogs (Greece?). I was absolutely terrified.

Also, an ex and I got caught up in an armed robbery in Las Vegas. Just walking down the street and suddenly saw a man running at us with a gun pointing directly towards us. Luckily we were just in his way and he barged past to get to the shop he was targeting, which was right behind us. Absolutely terrifying before we realised though.

Waking up in my tent whilst camping in Zambia (on safari) to the armed guard of the campsite rummaging through my things right next to me (DP has gone to the loo). I pretended to be asleep, but I think me stirring scared him off and he left. Turns out he had nicked the poor girls' luggage from the next tent along as they had left it in the entrance of their tent.

Same safari - white water rafting on the Zambezi, was told on one of the lesser rapids that we could get in the water (had life jackets on) and float through. I was the only one who took up the offer, went through the rapid, floated around a bend and was welcomed by some crocodiles!

Thinking my DP and I had been kidnapped when we were in a taxi in Thailand (well more like the back of a van) which was supposed to be taking us from the harbour to the train station as it took about 2 hours (thought it was supposed to be around 30 minutes) and we seemed to be getting more and more remote. Don't know if I just misjudged or they changed their mind, but we were bricking it for a while.

Being confronted by an Oceanic White Tip shark on my final open water qualifying dive in the Cook Islands - it was fucking huuuuge (resembles a great white and apparently responsible for more fatalities ... fortunately didn't know that at the time!).

Travelling through Europe with my then boyfriend, now ex-husband in the mid 1970s.

Expensive car - Jaguar - with GB plates loaded with our all our stuff for the journey.

We were in Bulgaria on a completely deserted open road when from seemingly nowhere 2 men dressed in slightly tatty looking camouflage fatigues suddenly leaped from the side of the road with their hands raised for us to stop.

They claimed, in broken English, that we were speeding, we possibly were, the speed limit was ridiculously low, and demanded we paid a speeding fine in Leva (local currency) but we really didn't have much Bulgarian money as you were only allowed to change your currency for a very small amount of Lev while you were there.

My bf, who was a stubborn arse refused, claimed we weren't speeding, at which one of the men waved his hand vaguely in the air and said radar.

It was at this point I noticed that they were each carrying some sort of submachine gun.

Bf sad we had no Lev and so they demanded we pay the fine in American dollars or Deutschmarks or ££s and so on through various European currencies.

All the time I'm telling my bf to just pay the fine and lets be off and all the time he's arguing with them and telling them we had no money on us. And all the time they're waving these bloody great guns around.

He wouldn't give in though, and in the end they got bored with us and sent us on our way.

Have no idea who the hell they were, they could have been some sort of police, militia or just a couple of blokes trying to make a bit of spare cash, but it was bloody scary.

Hands down my then 2 yr old going missing in the south of France for 40 mins, I'm usually quite calm but she was so small, we were by a pool and lake, and it felt like days before a lovely couple wandered into the pool area holding her, apparently she had gone and sat on their porch and invited herself for lunch 🙄🤣 , another time, also in France, then 10 yr old decided to climb up the outside of a water slide, take the fast way down and opened up a huge cut under his chin, luckily we had driven to France so had our car, we headed off to the local hospital which was about 45 mins away, me and 6 kids including 5 month old, all in swimsuits, half holding his face together half steering 🙈 few checks and a lot of stitches later and we were back to a heros welcome on the campsite, he loved it 🤣🤣

Ran ahead of my mum and dad when I was around 7yrs old,jumped on a wall alongside the path.On the other side of the wall was a 50ft drop to the rocks and ocean.My mum still talks about that day now.

I thought I was being kidnapped in Egypt once (In my defence I was by myself, it was night time and I was 19).

My guide was meant to be taking me on a short drive from Cairo airport to the main bus station to catch a bus to Alexandria to meet my friends. We got in a taxi and drove for ages right into the outskirts of town...

What actually happened was he had helpfully got the taxi driver to drive to a small neighbourhood ticket kiosk so he could buy me a cheap bus ticket priced for locals rather than an overpriced one for tourists.

Oh gosh quit scary.
My story is tame. I fell and broke my arm badly in a couple of places in Tenerife.
Staff treated me like shite at the hospital because I had a British passport. I did not speak the language and mostly they spoke in Spanish and laughed at me even in theatre before the anesthetic kicked in . It was spotless, but I had no idea where I was and had a poor grasping of the language and it was in the days before the internet was used much and not everyone had mobiles.
Dd was at grammar school and had 1year learing Spanish and she really excelled herself and later went on to do a degree in it and French, partly as a result.
I still have screws which were inserted.

Minibus driver abandoned us in the middle of the snow in Mongolia. For fun. Caught up with him about half a mile later laughing. Same driver who drove us over a frozen lake.

Got literally chased out of town by an angry mob in Morocco.

Husband clung to the side of a bus in India with a man hanging off his rucksack. At night, on the side of a mountain.

Bus crash in Vietnam.

So many more!

Yeah.. I'm too old for that shit now!

I was in Vegas when the guy shot and killed 60 odd people September 2017.
Very scary.

Sat out a Force 10 typhoon in Chung King Mansions on my own (a really grotty building on the Kowloon side) in Hong Kong- wind gusting to 220km per hour, bamboo scaffolding flying all over the place. I thought the building would come down.
I had about 4 hours warning-the shops were stripped bare and nothing opened for days. I made a loaf of bread and 5 litres of water last a long time.

I was kidnapped in Tunisia as a toddler. I don’t remember much but I'm lucky I was found when I was or my life could have ended up very different

@faw2009

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!

I’ve told this so many times… Tweenie dd and I took pity on street dogs in India and bought them some food. Suddenly (but unsurprisingly) we were surrounded by dozens of scrapping hounds. We ran back to hotel saying ‘we must never tell anyone about this!’ 😳

Back when I was 19 I was on a coach holiday in Austria when the company went bust. The b&b's were reluctant to hand back everyone's passports but the coach drivers managed to get everyones documents back. However, the drivers then asked all the passengers for money to get us back to Calais and they were the ones holding our passports. I didn't have the money they were asking for as it was more than I'd paid for the trip, so the drivers starting being nasty and said I wasn't allowed on board the coach. I was sobbing at that point thinking I was walking home from Austria with no passport. The other passengers stood up for me and I was eventually allowed on board when I handed over all the money I had. We arrived in Calais to find the port in turmoil due to all the stranded holidaymakers. Luckily P&O took everyone home for free, but I remember not having any money for food or drink after many hours of travelling and waiting. We didn't have mobile phones back to contact my parents but they had seen the news on the tv so were very grateful when I rang up from the UK to say I was back... and could they collect me.

Mine's tame in comparison.
Egypt, on the beach in our swim wear, a man on a camel scooped up DSS and put him on the camel and started taking photos of him then wanted money, we had no money with us.
I could see it was going to go pear shaped so I started running towards the resort whilst shouting at oh to run, so I'm running, oh is running, 7yr old DSS is bringing up the rear, camel man has jumped on his camel and is in hot pursuit 😂
Moral of the story is you don't have to outrun the camel, you just have to outrun your oh 😂

@AllTheBooks neither do I lol

When I was in my 20s I went on an educational trip to croatia. We all went out one night and there was a big 'festival' going on in the centre with stalls and music. It quickly got very nasty with drunks, bottles smashing and fighting and rioting. We stood out like sore thumbs so started getting lots of jeering and abuse, it was frankly terrifying. We made a swift exit. What we later discovered was it was some kind of facist rally celebrating the Serbian genocide. Very disturbing!

Being cornered in an unlit area by 4 Israeli men in Tel Aviv - another tourist spotted it and came to my rescue and walked me back to my hotel (thank fuck), only to then try to follow me into my hotel lobby and declare he ‘deserved at least a blow job’ for saving me. The security guys physically threw him out. I hid in my room for the rest of the night.

The following night in Jerusalem, my tour guide locked me in the car, refused to drop me off where agreed, and kept repeating that my husband was stupid for letting me travel alone. As I’d booked him through a reputable agency, he knew my hotel and turned up that evening looking for me. The staff on the front desk told him I had no reservation and was at their sister property over the other side of the city. Then rang the other property to tell them to tell him I’d checked out. And only then rang me to tell me that a very persistent man had been trying to find out my room number, trying to convince them I’d agreed to meet him in my room.

Hated that trip.

Travelling alone with a child, we caught an overnight train in the Balkans and I was confronted by a pretty angry conductor in a fairly authentic uniform who demanded my passport (there was no need, we were nowhere near the border when passport control would normally board).

He claimed to work for the railway but my fight-or-flight kicked in enough to say "not in those fucking shoes you don't" so he backed down and legged it. I didn't sleep much though.

June 2015 in Port El Kantaoui Tunisia. I’d been ill the night before and we’d decided to spend the day in the room and on the balcony. When we heard the first bang we thought something had exploded but couldn’t see much, it sounded like a firework. Then we heard the screaming and realised it wasn’t fireworks.

We’ve had a few scary experiences over the years but the one in Tunisia finished my travelling abroad wanderlust.

Waking up to a pair of false teeth on the counter and none of us knew whose they were. On a girl's holiday.