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Do we have.a thread like this? I feel like this one full day of solo walking Beijing (on my way to aus, 15h layover ) has generated some stories. I wrote this in the whatever thread but figured there might be way more fun stories to hear, so here is the copy-pasted version of that post (because I'm tired as f)

I'm on my 12th hour of layover in China, only 3 to go. On my 29th hour of no sleep, as soon as the next plane boards I'm gonna pass out. Walked the streets of Beijing for 7 hours today, and felt like the dude in lost in translation except with less money. A seemingly normal dude got all excited to meet an English talker and wanted to get coffee to practice his English. At this point I had literally nothing else but walking around to do so I went with it. Ended up with the dude getting drunk of two glasses of wine (he wanted to toast in something red because it's Chinese tradition and he said it was very rude to decline) and I couldn't sort out anything he was saying. I eventually said I had to go to the bathroom with all my stuff and jumped into a cab instead. I think he thinks it was a date.

Also, this airport (in the country where my cab driver gave me cigs in the airport bathroom) has no smokers area in the terminal. All in all a good day

Also pricing in China seems to be at complete and utter random. Cab driver 1 wanted 1000yuan for driving me somewhere (central?) and then to chill in his own car waiting for me for 5 hours and then drive me back, and a different one wanted 150yuan? Coffee is anywhere between 8 and 40 yuan too, which means that two cups of coffee is more expensive then a liter of Smirnoff vodka, which is 79?? It makes absolutely no sense? I got a free child statue that pees when you pour hot water on it, for buying half a pack of tea, which wasn't even an official option, it just kinda happened.

EDIT: I hope this doesn't come across as "look at these weird people" kinda thing, I guess I just haven't figured stuff out. There just seems to be a much wider range of prices that is quite rare to me. Another thing was a 17yuan pack of cigs vs a 128yuan pack in the same store, with equal amount. Must be true bypass mojo gooped cigarettes or something

Got into a fight with a monkey in Malaysia one time. It stole my food and refused to give it back, and threw a bit of crust at me. Monkeys are wankers and I'll never forgive them.

fuck monkeys man....for real... you just triggered some memory overload....lol just sat here for a good 10 min...all i know is if you ride greyhound ''storys'' are just so normal after a while....my favorite from my last hound ride was a lady ahead across from me was taping the air, she had a pen and paper...so i thought she was like writing music, it seemed she was seeing/hearing notes, but after a while she started to talk to her right side with no one there and then its like oh shes just ill... then like 5, 6 other things will happen on the one bus that would take up pages for detail on how fucking crazy it is, had to give a black girl my jacket for a seat last time,and by seat i mean her left hip basicly....
..nyc had like 10 storys a day...''man with assless chaps lays head down in street as people pass by/..homeless man wanders screaming fuck twisting violently randomly puts hand in a random trash receptacle, finds half eatin cheeseburger!.../boy goes out for a cig...ends up with a drunk man wanting to trade me shirts while his drunk wife is rubbing me saying oh how young./...boys give girl victory sign with tongue as their passing in car which triggers a cosmic surge as her front bumper comes loose and pops her tire flying her into sand dune..it was like we did it with our minds!''..friend gets drunk on plane, decides to throw a 60 buck bill your way, has a hissy fit when I say no, and storms into airplane bathroom and somhow smokes a cig'...those are some recent little things....last trip was to lake tahoe couple months back...where everyone grows pot and bears are like racoons...traveling is where its at.... shuved a legal brownie in my gut jumped on the plane and now im back sitting in this room, ugh.

lucky that dude didnt drug ya...

I drove 14k miles across the US in a 20 year old car with a leakng head gasket and had no major mechanical problems the whole way (although the potholes in New Orleans did crack the exhaust pipe). Colorado wasnt easy to traverse in that thing. The Eisenhower Tunnel was closed when I left Denver and the detour meant a lot of vertical climbing. I had to pull off to the side mutilple times on that route because the engine was smoking quite a bit... a pretty beautiful landscape for waiting at the very least.

I can't think of any other good stories from that trip at the moment

Once upon a time I was traveling the 5 hour journey between Thailand and Cambodia for a service trip. The two countries hate each other, so there are issues traveling between the two. You can't easily drive cars across the border, so we chartered a van at both sides to take us to and from the border. That was great and all, but the Thai van took us to the wrong border, and drove off quickly. By the time we realized their mistake, it was too late. The van on the Cambodian side rightfully refused to make the 2 hour journey to the other border, so we were kind of stranded there. Eventually, we decide to make the cross and see if we can get someone else to take us.

Once across the border, we eventually find someone who speaks English, and they help us charter a bus to the town we were headed to. The bus itself was a piece of crap. As we were driving along what would barely pass as a road, parts of the bus like hubcaps would frequently fall off and run alongside us. The assistant would jump out the door, grab the part, and run to catch up and hop back in.

Way past schedule, driving in pitch darkness along roads sometimes lined with landmines left over from the Khmer Rouge, the bus broke down. We all got out of he bus trapped in the middle of nowhere, and stuck to the road to stretch our legs. After several hours in the cloudy night, with only the light of a couple flashlights, we start to notice noises around us. Straining our eyes, we notice the local farmers had gathered, silently brought chairs out to observe us and we had become tonight's entertainment.

Eventually we got the bus working again, got back on the road, and made the rest of the trip alright.

A month after the girlfriend and I started dating, or whatever that was called, we decided to take a few days off to go camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Left way later than expected, got lost a few times on some winding gravel roads, and finally got to our campsite at like 11.
Then we go to experience the fun of setting up a 10-person tent for the first time in the dark!

Woke up at 5 as it rained inside, forming a pool all around our bed, but we were both like "scoot over" and fell back asleep until 7, when everything was totally soaked through. Threw it all in the trunk and took a shower.

Oh, apparently a rainy September weekend means nobody else is gonna be at the campground. It was great! Infinite hot water! We had the place totally to ourselves save for a creepy-ass park ranger who kept following us and initiating painfully awkward conversations.
The area near the campground was beautiful and we walked the trails around this lake (Cave Mountain Lake, sounds like a location in an RPG) in total peace. The water itself was an orgy of newts in the middle of mating season.

We left at 11 or so and took a wrong turn at the first crossroads, sending us down yet another gravel road, but by the time we realized "hey maybe we should turn around", there was no where to go but up.
Up a spiraling one-lane gravel road. On the side of a fucking mountain. No guardrails, but there was a deep ditch on one side. In heavy rain, in the fog, in pitch darkness, in a Crown Vic rolling on dry-rotted tires. You could just barely make out treetops past the edge, and later, nothing but black. Oh my fuck.
Plus, the road was full of fallen tree branches and stones. The only signs were for increasingly high weight limits. There were a few hairpin turns along the way and the hood seemed to almost reach the edge of the cliff.
At the 7 mile point there was an area to turn around in. A good stopping point for uncomfortable emergency probably-gonna-die car sex.

But we made it back down fairly uneventfully compared to the trip up. We were apparently near a path that leads to some hiking place called "devil's marble yard", and a site about it mentioned that the road is extremely treacherous. Yay.
Got some shitty gas station cheese sticks and pizza and slept in the car at a truck stop on the way back.

I have a long post to type about Belgian airlines, Belgian passengers, Belgian airports, Belgians at the Belgian airports.

Belgian airlines: had 3 flights with them on my way and back and forth to Oslo. Not a single one on time. The last two just didn't happen because grossly idiotic company (delays three flights on the same night - yes night) for no apparent reason (later proven to be true because I got DAMAGES). Arrived home with about 20 hours of delay.

Belgian passengers: first flight going to Brussels from France, I had a dick in front of me who made it a point to recline his seat well into my knees. After me asking the flight attendent 3 times to ask him to at least set it above my knees, and flight attendent being fed up with him because every time he would recline back into my knees immediately after the flight attendant walked away. I also want to point that flight is just slightly longer than an hour. Also, the flight attendent was excellent, so you know that airline wasn't Belgian but British.

Belgian airports: anyone who has ever set a foot in Brussels airport knows.

Belgians and the Brussels airports: clerk at Travelex said to me when I tried negotiating a better rate "if you can't afford it, don't travel"; clerk at cheapest food place (which was still expensive as fuck, I had a long layover because cheaper so I didn't want to carry my food with me) adressed me like you would a child or a mentally challenged person (and it would still have been extremely impolite in those circumstances). I asked for directions to a passenger who pointed to a sign and said in French "it's written there". It was written in Dutch. That's why I was asking.

So yeah, Belgium and I are Donzo. Unless I have time to lose and want me some more damages again.

Speaking of that, Norweigan sent me a refund for like $9 for that flight the other day for no discernible reason (almost enough to buy one of the world's best 9volts!)

I have fun stories but they're pretty run of the mill/standard issue, I feel (i.e. spent a fun bus ride with a porn actress once. We bonded over doom and good books. That was nice.) More important is to stress that traveling cheaply is a good thing and people who are evangelical about travel are often annoying as fuck, which is difficult to balance sometimes.

I would agree that Chinese pricing is all over the map, has never made a ton of sense to me.

As far as travel stories, I am going to have to think a bit as I generally travel for work and not for fun, I am sure something interesting has happened...........

Achtane you're my hero ♡

During my last night in New Delhi a few years ago, my friend and I were determined to go out to a night club. The one we decided on was roughly 40 minutes away via metro. My friend seemed fine when we boarded the metro, but got more and more nauseous as we went along. At a stop a few stops before we were supposed to get off, my friend bolts off the train, so I follow her, and she proceeds to vomit all over the platform. She looked kind of miserable, but went to the bathroom then came back and said "alright lets do this." So we got back on the train and made it to our stop, found the club (its called Shroom lol), and found out we were the only two people who felt like going there that night. The DJ blasted terrible techno music as we ate some food, then I danced like nothing mattered all by myself.

In Tarifa. Spanish vacation town for Brits? So I'm told. We were planning on going across the straights into Africa but then my wife got sick.

Went to pharmacy. My Spanish is subpar.l but passable for most things we need. Nonetheless I practice my Spanish a bit, preparing what to tell the clerks. Get there, give them my spiel. Woman says something and I glaze over. I have no idea.

That's when she puts her hands just below her breasts, at the top her her belly, extends them out and around her belly, going over it. Is she pregnant. Got it. Universal sign language.

Not all that interesting, I guess.

Olin wrote:Got into a fight with a monkey in Malaysia one time. It stole my food and refused to give it back, and threw a bit of crust at me. Monkeys are wankers and I'll never forgive them.

Fucking monkeys. Monkeys chased me out of a restaurant in India once.

Monkeys are the best. You guys are just silly.