To ask for your holiday from hell stories

[QuitChewingMyPlectrum]

Just back from 2 weeks away

Food poisoning x 2
Concussion x 1
Attempted abduction of teenager x 1
Mosquito bites x around 22

I could do with another holiday to get over it!

Please share your funny/awful holiday tales for solidarity and so I can continue to see the funny side of the 2 weeks we've just endured 🤦🏻‍♀️😂

I was run over in France when I was 12. The caravan they were towing went over my leg and broke it so the bone was sticking out nicely. He also drove off without stopping. Spent the end of my holiday in hospital having my leg put together whilst the French police tracked the driver down.

Good holiday that.

The taxi driver from the airport in Hellville Madagascar conned us by driving to our hotel getting the reception to say the hotel was full and taking us instead to a utter cesspit of a hotel- no running water, buckets of water for the toilet flush, hose pipe for the shower, red light district below our cracked window. Literally stayed in that place 8 hours and contracted the worst viral infection of my life, next 8 days spent in paradise in our gorgeous beach hut but spent them over the toilet- ruined our holiday of a lifetime.

Oh that sounds AWFUL. So sorry you had to put up with that

New boyfriend of 6ish months, away with his friends at a festival abroad (no english). I went into anaphylaxis for the first time - he had to call an ambulance, carry me to the toilet covered in my own vomit (I'd blacked out and covered myself after feeling a little funny...) so that I didn't shit myself on the street, and then translate my medications to paramedics via translate while they gave repeated rounds of epi before I was stable enough for the ride to hospital. Dramatic and embarrassing 😳

We have 2 kids now so he's used to seeing me covered in (other people's) vomit these days...

Caravan park in the pouring rain, absolute shit hole. The place was dirty and the caravan next door used adult incontinence products and just flung the used ones out the window, didn't even bag them up. They were strewn everywhere 🤢. We had a 9month old active, crawling ds who we couldn't put down as everything was so dirty and there was nothing to do in the surrounding area. It was so miserable.

Returning from a wonderful tour of India we had to change at Amman, flying Royal Jordanian, when we got there we were told they'd massively over-booked because of the Hajj and would get away until tomorrow, Sunday. We were told we would be accommodated at the Queen Alia Hotel and could order dinner and breakfast on the airline. The hotel was a shambles when we got there and we were told we had a very tiny budget for dinner and breakfast from the airline. On the Sunday we were amazed at the huge containers of holy water being taken onto the flight, big 5 gallon things under every seat.
Some of our party had real problems arriving back on the Sunday, one couple missed their grandchild's baptism, another had FA Cup semi final tickets and so on.
On our return we complained as a group to Royal Jordanian who eventually capitulated and gave us a big enough compensation to pay for a cheap Teletext trip to Greece later in the year!

We got a really good deal to Mauritius a few years ago, 5*, 2 bed apartment with living room., AI, business seats at premium economy rates. Minor issue on the flight out, as someone was sitting in my seat, apart from that, nice relaxing journey. Kids were 5,7 and 10 (ish)

In contact with hotel a few weeks before to book transfers and check we didn't need to book restaurants/activities in advance. Told to find someone at the airport holding a card for the hotel.

Arrived at airport (after 12 hour flight) - no sign of our taxi, eventually find a rep from an associated hotel, he calls our hotel who deny all knowledge of the booking, we show the rep the booking and 50 minutes later the transfer arrives. Basically a decrepit bus with no seat belts. Being knackered we get in said bus, which 10 minutes later has a blown tyre. DH and the bus driver change the tyre and eventually we get to the hotel.

Hotel looks nice, get to the room to find it's basically only one room with one double bed. I leave the rest of the family in the room, go back to reception to be told that they actually haven't finished building the room type we've booked, none of the rooms have interconnecting doors and to fit us all in, we'd need to split the two adults between two rooms in different parts of the resort. Oh and all the a la carte restaurants were fully booked all week, you had to do that in advance.

DH then texted to say that DD had stepped on a wasp!

Anyway, by that point it was late, the duty manager couldn't do anything. BA holidays weren't picking up so we had a (very nice) buffet dinner and went to bed. DD's wasp sting was looking a bit raised, so I gave her some piriton. A couple of hours later, her foot had ballooned, her breathing rate had gone up and she was a bit clammy - so we had to get a taxi to the local hospital.

DH then called to say that DS1 had also been stung and there seemed to be several wasps in the room they were in, so they were moving to ours.

The next morning (with everyone in one bed), BA holidays called really early on to apologise and then the general manager came, apologised profusely, ushered us down to breakfast. All our things were packed up an moved to a lovely 3 bed villa in the next hotel along (which we would have never normally have paid for).

It was all very odd, there were a spate of awful reviews during the month we were there and then everything went back to being faultless. I still wouldn't go back to Mauritius.

I was 19 and spending four weeks in a camper van with a boyfriend I was desperate to break up with, and his overbearing parents in the middle of America. I’d been sobbing the night before the flight as I hadn’t wanted to go, but they’d paid for me and I knew it would ruin their holiday if I dumped him right beforehand, so I decided to try and make the best of it.

We spent the first night in a hotel and hadn’t eaten. I was desperate for a bath so bf said he’d wander over to a burger place next to the hotel. He came back and was very pleased with himself for getting there just in time to order before they closed. I got out of the bath to find he’d only got himself food because he wasn’t sure what I’d want. I’d been with him for 3 years at that point.

We were in a sleeping compartment above the drivers seat and there was about 4 inches clearance between my nose and the roof of the van. His parents were in a bed at the other end of the van and every time one of us rolled over, they’d shout at us to behave ourselves and stop being so disrespectful.

His DF had told me to give him my spending money and he’d get it changed with theirs, to save paying two lots of commission. He then told me that he’d be keeping hold of it and had worked out a daily budget for me and bf, so I had to ask him every time I wanted to buy something and justify whether or not I really needed it and whether it would be cheaper to buy it at home.

I spent an hour in a small boat in the middle of a lake being screamed at by BF because I couldn’t swim and was a bit scared of the water, so while it was funny for him to rock the boat from side to side, it wasn’t so funny when I grabbed the sides of the boat in sheer panic and nearly toppled us both into the water.

We arrived at one camp site and all went for showers. It was spotlessly clean and plenty of female staff around (so no safety concerns) and I just wanted some time to myself, so I kept feeding coins into the shower. I got told off by BF’s mum for wasting my own money (it was equivalent to something like 50p) because I should have been able to be in and out in 2 minutes and didn’t need to spend longer than that getting washed.

I went to the loo (just to have a cry by myself) and BF’s mum came and got me because I was taking too long and they wanted to play cards.

I got told off for not being sufficiently excited about some kind of duck (they were bird watchers).

And when we finally got home and I did break up with him, his dad accused me of only being with him so I could get a free holiday. That was what made me more annoyed than anything else.

Less dramatic than it sounds (or maybe not)
One of the hotel buggy (think large resort) drivers took my 17 year old and her friend to the (dark, secluded) arse end of the resort instead of the amphitheatre for the evening show, whereupon he google translated a load of inappropriate messages about taking them to a nightclub. He was refusing to drive them back when they said no. Luckily, the group of teens they were with earlier got them on Snapmap and went to go get them.
The concussion was a buggy driver who I think thought he was playing Mario kart.

Yikes that sounds horrendous. A machete? I thought you'd struggle to top that but I get the scariness of having no way to get help for your children. Hope there were no long term effects

Turkey. I was a teenager. Mum had booked a cheap hotel, said that ah we just sleep there anyway, doesn't matter, let's save money.
It was a 40+ heatwave. Hotel had no AC. It was not on the beach but city centre and the tiny pool was greenish brown. Breakfast was included but consisted of 2 slices of cucumber and 3 slices of tomato. The sleezy hotel owner kept agressively hitting on me - would just tell him to piss off now, but as a shy teenager, it was quite terrifying.
I've been to Turkey a few times since then, much more luxurious hotels and all, but still not a fan.

A bit mild compared to some but holiday to Corfu a few years ago:
Went to Gatwick instead of Heathrow by mistake and missed our flight. Had to get a coach to Heathrow and catch next flight 6 hours later to the tune of an extra 2k (4 of us).
Next day at resort someone stole our beach towels off the veranda.
Following day son had electric shock from the plug in his room.
After that it got better!

Another holiday, our first with youngest age 2 to Fuerteventura.
Up very early for flight so knackered when we arrived. Went for a nap but toddler woke up and decided to helpfully change her own nappy, wiping her arse on a pillow case. Not her own but MY pillowcase.
Then when I woke up and tried to deal with the detritus she managed to smash a glass in the bathroom and then crawled in it cutting both her knees.

Our friends just had a similar experience with their 17 year old DD in Turkey. I would never go.

Anyway, we went to Spain a few weeks back. It was okay other than the food poisoning. Trying not to shit myself on the looooooong coach trip back to Barcelona was fun.

Actually can’t wait to stay at home next year.

My friend came back from Turkey this year with dysentery. She’s not sure if it was from the AI buffet or the pool.

When I was 16, my mum booked a coach holiday touring eastern Europe for herself & me. I always got coach sick, but I was looking forward to some of the historic cities. It was 1986: after we booked, the Chernobyl disaster happened, and lots of the other passengers cancelled, so when we went in August, there were about 20 of us on the coach (which at least meant we could spread out).

As was normal in those days, entry to each of the communist countries was at the whim of the local guards, so we spent 6-8hrs waiting at each border to be let in. Halfway through East Germany, something went wrong with the suspension on our coach, which couldn't be fixed locally, so we all had to sit on one side of the coach for the rest of the trip.

Somewhere I got food poisoning (probably the really grim/ basic dining options in the East German hotels), and spent the 2 days we stayed in Prague sweating and hallucinating in the hotel room (mum went out sightseeing, but helpfully provided me with a small bottle of brandy 'to kill the germs').

I was still feeling rough as we got to Poland, so skipped some of the excursions. At that point I found out that the tour guides were smuggling dollars in, to buy vodka and cigarettes to smuggle back out to the west. The coach driver was an old letch who kept trying to hit on me as well, which was horrible.

I'm glad I got to see so much of the communist east before it changed, but that trip was not in the least enjoyable!

I just got back from one. FIL has been so unbelievably rude to each and every waiting staff that nobody would serve us, and then he kicked off about that.
And MIL has nit picked fights with me repeatedly, and caused major drama if we wanted to go and do anything other than lie by the pool.

@Showdogworkingdog can I ask which area?

This was years ago, 2005. Holiday is Egypt. Armed guards surrounding hotel walls. The room had no air conditioning that worked, it leaked all over the floor. My sister and I in a room together age 17 and 16, about 2 miles away from my parents room across massive hotel gardens. 3 baby birds were nesting near the pool in the rafters above sun beds. Found dead in pool one morning. The hotel staff tried to poison some cats in the hotel that they didn’t want there. A light fitting above my bed fell off the wall and gave me concussion. I got severe heat stroke. Then middle of the night a massive earthquake felt in the hotel. The hotel not far from us had been bombed. It was the Sharm El Sheikh bombings. Horrific. Many guests were crowding reception to try find out what was happening.

Antalya

I’m impressed you kept track of the mosquito bites lol.

Jokes aside that sounds like a very horrific experience.

Reading these I realise I’ve never had an awful holiday really but I did have a bit of a rubbish time in Amsterdam because of the people I went with. It was myself, my ex BF, his best friend (who we will call Tom) and his his girlfriend (who we will call Jane). They were always a bit odd but had asked to go on holiday with us and we said yes as we thought- how bad can it be?

On the way there, Jane told me that I couldn’t post any pictures online that might show that myself and my BF were sharing a room as she had only been given permission to go on holiday by her mum, on the grounds that she shared a room with me and not Tom. She was about 23/24 at the time. She was also very keen to make sure there were no pictures where anything like alcohol was visible.

Once there we did all the usual touristy things and decided to visit one the “cafes”. Jane didn’t smoke anything but Tom did. This led to her having a full on nervous breakdown outside the cafe where she was convinced her family would somehow find out about this and break them up. She needed to go back to the hotel to calm down.

We visited the red light area and she started to become really irate and accused Tom of being some sort of deviant purely for being there. She went on to explain that her Aunt once caught her Uncle watching porn, so her Aunt fled to Ireland to live with their son. Not any weird sort of porn. Just porn.

They would only eat in the Hard Rock Cafe every night as it was “safe”. We asked for an evening on our own as a sort of date night, thinking they would appreciate a night on their own too. The next day they told us they just sat in the hotel not talking for the full evening after we left them.

They weren’t bad people or anything- just strange and it made the holiday have a weird vibe.

Why were they throwing wet loo roll round the shower block?!

Omg! This sounds absolutely awful and terrifying! You didn't speak to your cousin for years? I don't think I'd have spoken to them again EVER!

Jane needs help 🤦🏻‍♀️

Greece early 2000’s - Hired a cheap minibus, and when we arrived the hire company said the car was unlocked and the key was under the pedal - bad sign. We drove to our mountain top villa which was totally decrepit and borderline uninhabitable. It didn’t look anything like the photo’s; dirty bedlinen, broken furniture, mouldy kitchen. We decided to leave and whilst heading down the mountain the clutch gave in. Every time we reversed, the car shuddered forward. We were cm’s from driving off the edge of a sheer cliff. The villa owned refused us a refund so I sued her. She was a relative of someone famous and constantly name dropped and belittled me outside the court waiting room. I won and she was apoplectic with rage and screamed.