balderdash111

I thought it might be educational and entertaining to share stories about the stupidest things you've done while traveling.

Please try to include a general lesson from your mishap.

Here's my story:

I was traveling in South Korea with my father. He and I spent a few days in Seoul - he was in business meetings during the day, and I schlepped around the city by myself.

After a few days, he went to China and I stayed in Korea by myself. I decided to take a bus to a city in the south called Kyong-Ju, which is full of old ruins and near a very large active temple (Hain-Sa, for the curious). I don't speak Korean. At all.

Surprisingly, taking a bus by myself to a strange city not known for tourism in a country where I don't speak the language was NOT the dumbest thing I did while traveling. It turned out to be great...

except....

Hain-Sa (the temple) is a few miles out of the city, so, rather than try to take a bus, I decided to walk it. I bought a 2 liter bottle of water for the trip.

This was also not the dumbest thing I did while traveling.

This was:

On the way to Hain-Sa, I came upon a small mountain, which according to my guidebook had some very old buddhist carvings at the top. It didn't look very big, so I decided to hike up since I was there anyway. It was a pretty well-traveled path, with lots of groups going up the mountain along with me.

It wasn't a hard climb, but I did start to get concerned about my water supply. About halfway up, there was a natural spring coming out the mountain. Most of the Koreans who walked past the spring stopped to take a couple of big drinks. There were plastic cups floating in a small pool that people were using.

So, I drank.

Not a good idea.

I made it up and down the mountain and over to Hain-Sa without any trouble. Also got all the way back to town with no ill effects. Got dinner and went to bed, feeling fine, if a little tired.

The next morning, however, was not good. Diarrhea like crazy, slight fever, the works. And lets not forget that this was a small city, with no drug stores (at least not like what you see in the bigger, more westernized cities), and which uses a language I didn't speak.

It was a long day, in which I didn't leave my hostel room very much.

The lesson: even if it comes straight out of the ground, don't drink the water in a strange country.

If you're curious how it came out, I eventually managed to get out of the hostel to wander the streets looking for something resembling a drug store (avoiding at all costs the place where I had dinner - the smell of which made me very nauseous). I was unable to find one, but finally sucked up the courage to approach a man on the street and try to explain my problem through sign language. He was very nice, seemed to understand and took me to a local pharmacists who gave me a powder to mix with some tea. The next day I felt well enough to move on to another city, though I was considerably weakened for the next few days.

basmoq

I can tell you from years of Boyscout experience and traveling that the only way to travel is with a personal water purifier, you never know when you won't be able to find bottled water...

Personally, the stupidest thing I did while traveling was to go hiking with a friend (we were both 15) in central Mexico (outside Toluca) to see some ruins that were on top of a mountain. the climb wasn't bad, but the guy who robbed us at the top was. I wasn't afraid of his $10 jim bouy knive, I had one on me much nicer, but unfortunately, the native I was traveling with was afraid, and wouldn't move. Rather than leave him, I let the guy have my watch and camera. He patted me down pretty well, but I had my cash Very well hidden (in my belt). It was a sad day to loose my brand new pulsar watch, but at least no one was hurt...

Oh, wait, did I mention that the guards at the bottom of the mountain patrolling the ruins we should have stayed at carried AK-47s. Hehe, we didn't get our stuff back, but they did get the guy, and I don't think he will be stealing from anyone in the future...

Unfortunately, we were told not to bother trying to get our stuff from the "policia" because they would likely keep it as a finders fee for catching the guy .

The funniest story I have from traveling was when I went into a restroom to wash my hands in a Canadian restaraunt. I can't read french, and only half of the sign was on the door, the other half broken off. When I came out, the one of the cooks laughed at me and said that I likely didn't speak french, or else I wouldn't have washed in the woman's restroom. Let's just say I was a little red in the face after that one...

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"There's someone out there for everyone - even if you need
a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them."

cj2112

17ish, drinking tequila w/ my best friend. We lived in Southern California and decided to go to tijuana. We go to this bar off the beaten path. We are the only Americans in the place and very very drunk by this time. He gets in an argument w/ one of the locals and proceeds to tell the guy that he had paid 20 bucks to spend the night with his mother the night before. We got a ride back to the border from the Federales' and were told "Do NOT come back" (only time i've ever been kicked out of an entire country)

mercury-hg

the setup: i had a eurail pass which was good for nearly any train in switzerland, italy, germany, and france. i was in venice during carnivale, which meant that hotels/hostels were filled. i couldn't get a room on saturday night, but had hostels booked for friday, sunday, and monday nights.

my solution to this problem was to take a train saturday night and sleep on that, taking another train back to venice in the morning. i picked a train that went into switzerland which i thought would be a long enough ride for me to get a decent night's sleep. that all was fine, but unfortunately for me the train split up in the middle of the night. i woke up at 5:30 in the morning in austria and had to pay for the ride into austria and the ride back out of austria.

on the bright side, my stop in austria was innsbruck which happens to be in the middle of the alps -- ridiculously cool.

onetime2

Travelling with my family from Germany to Switzerland by train. The voice over the speakers said we were entering Zurich and then the rest of the message was incoherent due to static. The train comes to a complete stop, just about everyone in the car gathers up their belongings and I am the first off the train onto the platform. A line of people right behind me, I turn to wait for the rest of my family only to see the train pulling away. Carrying about four bags, I'm running along side the train but I can't get back on because there's some idiot woman just standing in the door. I'm at full speed now just as the train is getting out of reach when my sister grabs the woman and drags her out of the way. I grabbed the railing and pulled myself in right as the platform ended. Turned out the stop was an old factory complex and the train had just stopped to let the tracks ahead clear. To tell you the truth, it would have been a better story if I had to wander the city trying to find my family.

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Strive to be more curious than ignorant.

irateplatypus

coincidentally my boneheaded move was also made in a train in switzerland...

i was traveling from paris to rome a couple years ago... going via zurich. i'd been traveling for a while and was dying for thirst... so when the little cart lady came by with overpriced snacks, i decided to get some bottled water.

forgetting that i was on a swiss train, in switzerland... i offered to pay in euros. it didn't even occur to me that i should have had some swiss francs on me. so, there i am clueless... with the nice cart lady mumbling something unintelligible to me. i could feel other passengers glancing over to me... though i didn't know what about.

she was nice enough to accept my euros, going to some other car even to find me correct change. i have a feeling she did it out of her own pocket. it wasn't until a while later that i realized what a fool i had made of myself, that she was gently trying to communicate to me that i was making a silly mistake.

just one of those things where you think you understand what is going on, but everyone is really embarrassed for you. at least everyone involved was patient and gracious to this ignorant American.

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

bundy

19, alone in a western Kenyan town a few years ago.

i took a photo of an average street scene... not realising that there was a bank in that street, and not realising that photographing public buildings and structures was illegal (since the year earlier Al-Qaeda had bombed the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam)...

i was being followed by some undercover policeman, who immediately told a uniformed policeman to confront me.

he had a massive gun on his shoulder... i think it was an AK-47, but i couldn't be sure, not being an expert on weapons. i was shitscared, and my grasp on Swahili was minimal.

we started arguing for about 20mins because initially he wanted to arrest me straight away.

but, after a while he changed tactic... he then wanted to take my camera... i realised that when he said that he was openning the door for a bribe, but hey, i wasn't going to give up my camera with my African photos on it, and i didn't have much USD on me at that point... so i kept arguing.

i kept arguing, and he began to lose interest in me when he figured i wasn't good for a bribe.

so, eventually we agreed to go together and get my film developed right there and then with some dodgy shed of a photo shop.

i spent the next few hours absolutely shitscared because i realised that if there really was a bank in the offending photo... and if he was pissed off... he could totally arrest me, and have incriminating evidence straight away.

kenyan jail wasn't, and still isn't, inviting.

anyway, turned out that the only bit of the bank that was in the photo was a tiny little bit of the door.

LESSON: Read up on the local laws that concern tourists.
i found out later that this particular law that i came VERY close to breaking was advertised all over certain tourist pamphlets.

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Ohayo!!!

Tempboy

In Geneva, I had left my backpack (I was backpacking, so EVERYTHING I was travelling with was in there) minus my camera and some day-travel things, in a locker at the train station. It was one of those lockers where you stick in a coin and you get the key.

Anyway, I put the key in my change pouch and went out with my buddies to take a walk around the city.

About 15 minutes after I left the train station, I realized I didn't have my pouch anymore.

I figured I just dropped it, but I didn't want to go back to try and get the situatoin resolved (for some stupid reason).

I should have, because a few hours later when we went back, my stuff was gone.

All of it.


My pack had two parts: the main bag, and a small day-pack attached to it.
Luckily, some guy found my daypack, which had all my used, undeveloped film rolls in it, so he mailed those back home for me.

So I ended up buying a small backpack (not much bigger than a large purse) and I used that as my main bag for the rest of the trip. It was pretty ghetto.. I was even carrying my stuff around in plastic bags. Hah.

quadro2000

I went to Italy for a week with my family a few years ago.

That's the dumbest thing I ever did.

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You have to laugh at yourself...because you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't. - Emily Saliers

WarWagon

Keys/phone/wallet locked in the trunk. Mostly everything was closed as it was early on a Sunday. Ended up taking a clothes hanger from the motel and making a makeshift slim jim to break in.

canucker

Went down to Cancun to a buddy of mines wedding. He wanted to go deep sea fishing with the buds. I told him that there was a hurricane off the coast about to land in Cozumel. He didn't care and still wanted to go. silly me agreed. Well there we were the four of us, payed like $700 u.s. or something stupid to go out onto a hurricane front to deep sea fish. We were in like 14ft swells if not taller. That had to be the sickest I have ever been on a boat.

Part deux:

Go back to the resort and drink my face off with Pina Colodas. Forgetting that coconut juice is a natural laxative I spent the next 12 hours on the toilet.

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Go hard or go home;
Just don't go home hard.

EskimoDave

How do you get drunk off of Pina Colodas?

canucker

It's not too hard when you order doubles..........

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Go hard or go home;
Just don't go home hard.

Blackthorn

One word story: VEGAS.

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What are you willing to give up in order to get what you want?

Bigwahzoo

I was traveling with one friend in the upper peninsula of Michigan and we missed our turn by about 30 miles due to faulty directions from mapquest. We end up running into Lake Superior and need to head due west to get back on track. We get directions from locals informing us of a national park road that will head right where we want to go.

It turns out that this is an un-maintained road that is muddy and very slick. It is now past midnight, raining, cold and extremely dark outside. We can not drive more than 20mph because of how slick the mud is. Next we run into water covering the entire road after more than an hour of driving. We decide to use four wheel drive and ford the water. We eventually make it out okay but I was never more scared than crashing into a tree or breaking down.

happyraul

On a trip to southern France near the Italian border with my family, we stopped in Italy and my parents and brother parked the car to walk around looking for the flat we had booked. I was tired so I elected to stay in the car, and it was kind of hot so the windows were open. I took a nap, and when my family came back my brother found that his CD player/CDs were gone. It appears someone reached into the back windows, as I napped in the back seat, and snached the stuff. Luckily my CD player/CDs were still there

I guess the bad karma caught up to me a year later when I left my CD binder in a Monaco train station while traveling with a friend.

quadro2000

My story is similar to the first one that Balderdash shared. I had just arrived in Belgium and was cruising the local scene with friends until about 2 in the morning, when I stopped at a late-night corner shop to get a lamb kebab on a stick.

I was unbelievably sick with diarrhea, a fever and nausea for the entire day. The only way I was able to stay away from the toilet was by downing enough dramamine to knock me out.

I was eventually okay by the next day, but my stomach reacted poorly to food for the next week. I think the moral of the story is not to buy sketchy meat in the middle of the night. Or to at least have good stomach medicine on me at all times.

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You have to laugh at yourself...because you'd cry your eyes out if you didn't. - Emily Saliers

tkkfan

HAHAHAHAHAHA

micah67

Post 9/11:

On a solo weekend trip to Chicago (one carry-on bag), I stop at the Frank Lloyd Wright museum and buy many gifts for my wife, a huge Wright fan.

I get stopped at the airport screening with the request to look through my bag as a particular object peaked their curiosity. They get to the bag of gifts and I'm still oblivious... Until they get to the double-edged, 12 inch, pewter letter opener. "Sir, this isn't going to work." I'm embarassed as hell, face is beat red. I opt to check through the bag and grab my book out of it to read on the plane. I neglected to grab my car keys, though. I make it back to California, the bag doesn't. It was the last flight of the day so I had to call my wife to come get me.

Felt like a dumb-shit.

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~micah

tkkfan

I was in Germany with my family when I was 12. I was being rambunctious and was tearing up the hotel room, and my mom threw me outside and told me to learn German...btw did I mention that I was in my underwear?

Needless to say, I behaved the rest of the trip.

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I can't believe I ate the whole thing!

matteo101

When I was about 12 I was on a trip to Europe with some relatives. I had bought a cheap non-disposable camera back in canada. Anyways on the second or third day I was eating an icecream cone in one hand, holding my camera in the other hand and I was sitting on some rocks looking out on the Ocean in a small town in Holland (I forget the name). A bee comes around my icecream, and I am afraid of bees so I panic, I try to run away but I drop my camera into the ocean. I kept my icecream though!

Averett

I forgot my money when I went on a weekend trip to the beach in college. Luckly my friends had enough cash to spot me.

I also didn't have my ID..... Yay for guys buying me drinks!

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Absence is to love what wind is to fire. It extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

jarsh

i went to a road trip from baton rouge to colorado last summer with my now ex-girlfriend. she's quite the emotional one, and unable to control it to boot. well, most of the time she spent yelling at me or generally being the meanest i've ever experienced anyone being to me.
Lesson: choose your travel partners VERY carefully!

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Blackthorn

I'd have to say taking along an ex-GF who turned out to be psychotic. She ended up getting herself loaded and pretty much attacking me in a hotel room. Left her there (in Knottingham) by herself and I returned to the states to live a happy normal seemingly well adjusted life.

Hey...this may be a story for a different thread but you did ask!!

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What are you willing to give up in order to get what you want?

metalgeek

mmm
I'm in Southern China, (yunnan specifically)
On a bus, get out of bus, realize I no longer had my wallet on me.
Now, since I live in china, I have a bank account here. and my bank card was in my wallet. Only had about 200 yuan left on me, and it would cost me at least 500 to get home.
So I went to my bank, had my bank book still, they basically told to go away. finally got some help from someone I knew who knows more Chinese than me (a local turns out, you can only get your bank card replaced in the province you are from.
So I'm stuck in a different province, had forgotten my credit card at home, lost my bank card, and had enough money to live on for aboout 3 days, but not enough to go home.
So eventually get my friend to send me down some cash to get home with.
Started going home.
(there is another story in here as well, but due to the fact that I'm in China I won't tell it at this time)
So I'm going home and am in Kunming, and need to catch a train home at 12:15. I take the bus down to the train station, and get off at the stop called "train station"
Look, no train station.
Run around trying to find it., (the whole area is under construction, so my map doesn't help)
Finally find it, again, the train station is under construction, and is hard to find your way around. (has nothing to do with everything being in Chinese)
Finally get to my gate, only to look out the window and see the train leaving, it is 12:16.
I'm stuck, needing to take a train to Chengdu (closest big city to where I live) that costs 200 yuan, and I have 150) go back to hostel, run into someone I know, borrow 60 yuan, and get a train,) get to Chengdu with no money, walk to a friend, borrow 100 yuan, and get the bus home.
Was a bad coupla days.

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The truth is, wherever you choose to be, it's the wrong place.
Chuck Palahniuk , Diary

irateplatypus

wow

i don't think this is the dumbest thing so far in this thread, but i do think it is the most dangerous/frustrating. sounds like you kept your cool and patience as well as anybody could. gosh, watching that train leave would probably have been the last straw in the patience pile for me.

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

metalgeek

Yeah I was suprised, I stayed pretty calm..
I guess part of it is the view that, everything that happens happens.

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The truth is, wherever you choose to be, it's the wrong place.
Chuck Palahniuk , Diary

Slauncha Man

I was in France, Paris specifically. Two separate incidents: at the Louvre, we were checking out the Mona Lisa. The original. Big crowd. This photographer is at the front taking pictures! Obviously, that's not allowed, but the guard isn't doing anything. So, I say to myself, what the hell. I pull out my camera and take a picture. Oops. Forgot about the flash. Decided to run from the guard, pretending I don't know French. Got away.




A few days later, as this was during August 2003's heat wave, our group of 12 girls and 2 guys (nice ratio) decides to go to a pool. John, the other guy, and myself had bathing suits. The girls, after paying admission, get in fine. But us, on the other hand, pay and are then told that swimsuits are banned; speedos are the only acceptable form of male swimwear. Turns out it's a French law. The problem is that guys who wear swimsuits, apparently, bring down the hygeine. So, we wait for the girls. And guess what? According to them, there were topless chicks at the pool. Lots of them. I was less than happy.

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-Slauncha

gonadman

Was in Rio for Carnival with a freind. We decide to walk to one of the Balls instead of taking a taxi. Bad move. The Ball is in the middle of crime ridden slums. As we walk, we notice how run down everything is looking. Then we start hearing whistles from a rooftop. We got really scared, the hair was literally standing on my neck. We see a group of about twenty suddenly emerge down the street from us, walking toward us. We cross the street. They cross the street. As they draw close, I realize they are mostly children, with a dark hungry look on their face.

Suddenly they were upon us. You figure you can fight off children right? But there were dozens of hands on us at once, going through every pocket, tearing at our clothes. I really could have done some damage if I wanted, but the kids were only robbing, not hurting. I was also afraid that if I really started swinging, they would pull out blades- I heard some nasty stories about these gangs.

Anyway, they left as quickly as they came. Got a few bills from my pockets but didn't get the stash we kept in our shoes. Strangest thing was that our clothes were all grimy from their hands.

That was just dumb- we failed to keep our wits about us and could have been much worse off. Acted like we were strolling in suburbia- duh.

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For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel, looking, looking, ...breathlessly.
-Carlos Castaneda

maleficent

My fair skin gets me into trouble A LOT. A few years back I had gone on a diving trip to a place that Americans aren't allowed to travel to. Only if you go thru Canada, you are. Well, rather than deal with renting diving gear, we took it with us.

Got to our destination and had a blast, spent a week and 1/2 diving in perfect waters. The people were amazing, everything about this trip was great. We flew back to Canada, then back to the US, customs wanted to know why I was so sunburned, and why I had diving gear when all i went to was Canada, and me, miss grace under pressure, all I could do was laugh. Thank god my friends came to my rescue.

Next time, we're taking a raft, it's easier.

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metalgeek

So are Americans not allowed to go to Cuba at all?
wow...

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The truth is, wherever you choose to be, it's the wrong place.
Chuck Palahniuk , Diary

Hondasport19

when my friend and I were travelling to Ireland, we had to stop in Toronto to switch airlines, and my friend forgot her passport on the plane, and they had to go back and comb the plane for it before it was to take off to head elsewhere.....luckily they found it otherwise we would have been heading nowhere fast.

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yakimushi

When I was living in Japan my folks decided to take us all to Bangkok, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

The trip was great but while in Hong Kong I goofed pretty bad. We wre riding an escalator in an outdoor plaza and I thought it would be fun to hop up and sit on the rail, ride it up.

I set off some kind of alarm and the escalator stopped and all these people were looking at me, which was pretty bad. Then all these cops carrying MP5's started swarming the place and I freaked out. Luckily I had already hopped down so I just pretended that I didn't do it and walked quickly away from the plaza with my family.

That was a great trip though... those three cities in 12 days, my digestive system was in complete shock for a month after that

-Ever-

Spent a semester studying in London. Everyone left at the end, I went to Spain for a week of traveling alone. Got back to England and the Underground to get to the heart of London. Realized I had no cash on me and had left my ATM card at a Zara in Barcelona (I left my credit card at a hotel in Birmingham two weeks before). I was totally stuck at the Underground, needing to get back to London to pick up my luggage I had stored and to make it to an airport the next day. I had travelers checks on me, but no reciepts. I finally realized that I could use them without the stubs. This was after I spent 30 minutes digging up all the pence (English cents) I could find for the fare...

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Embracing the goddess energy within yourselves will bring all of you to a new understanding and valuing of life. A vision that inspires you to live and love on planet Earth. Like a priceless jewel buried in dark layers of soil and stone, Earth radiates her brilliant beauty into the caverns of space and time. Perhaps you are aware of those who watch over your home And experience of this place to visit and play with reality. You are becoming aware of yourself as a gamemaster...
--Acknowledge your weaknesses--

dirtyrascal7

one of the dumbest things i've done while travelling goes hand in hand with one of the smartest things i've done while travelling. the story goes something like this:

my freshman year of college, i decided to take a trip to canada to visit a friend for her birthday. on the way into canada, i stopped at the duty free and bought a few bottles of alcohol. i was only 19 at the time, but since that is the legal drinking age in canada, it was allowed. they took down all my info, including my license plate, i believe. i didn't plan to drink them all while in canada... i was going to bring them back with me to school. so when the time came to go through the checkpoint from canada to the US, the guard ran my license plate and i assume that he saw i bought something at the duty free because he asked if i was bringing back anything that i shouldn't be. i said i wasn't and he asked me to open my trunk... luckily for me, i had stopped about a half-mile before the checkpoint and moved the bottles to the space underneath my trunk where my spare tire was, so all he saw was the stockpile of ketchup-flavored potato chips i was bringing back (why they don't sell these bags of delicious goodness has always baffled me). anyway, he waved me on through and i breathed out a sigh of relief as i drove off. i'm kinda curious as to what would've happened if he had caught me, but i'm perfectly content with how things turned out.

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"Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him."

PulpMind

I made the mistake of being a white boy walking alone at 1am through the a non-tourist area of Marrakech.. an area where everyone was watching me, and footsteps from getting mugged... once I realized where I'd wandered into, I next to ran back to my hotel =P

spaceman spiff

Long story but here is the short version?..Trip to Vegas back in ?99. Usually book my entire trip on the Internet but I used a travel agent for the flight. We were going for 6 days, Friday to Thursday. Somewhere along the process the travel agent just put us into the system for a full week, Friday to Friday. No one ever looked at our airline tickets to check the dates. Trip was awesome, great time had by all, no one wanted to go home. Went to Vegas airport and stood in line at check-in counter for an hour. Got up to counter and ticket agent says to me, ?Did you switch the day of your return with the airline?? I looked at the ticket and saw that we were a day early. Not a good thing. It?s 1:00am at home and I had some calls to make, bosses, family, etc. How stupid could we have been? Something so simple but when you tell a travel agent dates you would think they would be right. No more flights leaving Vegas that night. We could have been put on stand-by for early a.m. flights but decided against it. The travel agent had just given us an extra night in Vegas, awesome! Scare us up a hotel room and a car for the night and we are good to go. Bosses were not real happy with us but WTH, it was an honest(stupid yes) mistake.

Bobaphat

When I was a Sophmore in highschool, I went to Jamaica on a mission trip with my youth group (not to preach, just to do good works). One day when we were there, we decided to go to some hot springs up in the mountains, far from any touristy areas. When we got there, there was this neat little system that the locals had set up where they had made a kind of shower out of some downed wood and a hot spring that was coming out of the side of a hill. Well I thought it would be fun to climb up the hill a bit and take a look around, but on my way up, I slipped on a wet rock and grabbed on to a peice of this shower to keep myself from falling. When I did this it caused the whole shower system to come crashing down and I also kicked out a large rock which almost fell on a native who was using the shower at the time. We were able to fix the shower no problem (it was pretty low tech) but I was so embarrassed it nearly ruined the rest of the trip for me.

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skinnymofo

a few years ago i went on a road trip with my family. well we stopped at one of those truck stops and went inline for coffee. as i was standing there with my brother in front of me a casually grab his neck and shake him gently. The gentleman in front of me turns around gives me a semi pissed/confused look and says, "why are you strangling my son?"
i kind of laughed and looked down, it wasnt my brother. I went back to the car after that laughing my ass off.

portwineboy

This is pretty embarassing.

3 years ago I flew from NYC to Hong Kong to visit a friend. My el-cheapo flight arrived about 1am Sunday morning in HK. I wasn't able to sleep after I arrived and stayed up all night. I finally got about 4 hours of sleep in the early morning. We went out that afternoon and started drinking. By midnight I was totally sloshed and managed to lose my friends somewhere in the touristy Wan Chai district. I met some new friends and they took me to a strip bar. At some point my new friend leaned over and told me that the bar was run by Triad (Chinese mobsters) members. In my blotto state I said very loudly "the Triads ain't nothin' but a bunch of wanna be gangstas and if they wanna be gangstas they should move to NY"

Moments later I was being propelled up the flight of stairs to the street level by a very large Chinese bouncer.

I was probably lucky to escape without any serious physical damage.

Boy was I hung over the next day.

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