Comments on: What Is Your Most Surreal Travel Experience?

By: marissa

marissa — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:38:37 +0000

now that sounds like something straight outta Fear and Loathing…
Excellent

By: barbie mcmurray

barbie mcmurray — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:40:54 +0000

Mount pisgah N.C. we drove to to parking spot that takes you to the trail, 31/2 miles straight up, we ate wild blueberrys and drank water from small springs. it took forever to get to the plat form at the top, we layed down on the plat form and watched the tower swaying back and forth, the clouds were flowing right over us, and then we heard the slight sound of a motor, we stood up and looked around and there was a small piper cub flying below us! the blueberrys,the spring to drink from , the clouds covering us and the towering swaying was awesome but the airplane below us was surreal. none of this was planned on and that made it unable to forget, who would want to?

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By: beth

beth — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:18:15 +0000

i went to london last halloween to see french and saunders and do some sightseeing/pub crawling. i used the underground to get places, and i knew that it’s taboo to talk to other people on the underground. i was trying to fit in and not be too touristy, but i had to use a tube map ’cause i’m not a native. i was studying my map trying to find out which was my stop when some people standing next to me asked me where i got my map in the the most beautiful upstate south carolina drawl… we talked for about 10 minutes about what wew were doing in london, where we were from, etc. turns out these people were from greenville, which is about 75 miles from my hometown, asheville,nc. i even went to the same university as this guy’s brother. and they were in town to see french and saunders too. talk about a small world….

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By: Rachael Taft

Rachael Taft — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:33:14 +0000

Scariest and most surreal experience:

Riding down the Amazon on a tiny boat in the middle of the night, where the only source of light is a flashlight the “captain” has–well, that and the lightning crashing around us. Oh, and there was one flickering lightbulb in the back of the boat. We were rocking all over the place and regularly getting the motor stuck in vegetation, turning a two hour ride into something much longer.

The impenetrable darkness and violent storms around us were pretty frightening, but I knew it was time to be scared when all the locals on the boat pulled the life jackets from the roof and put them on, leaving enough for each of the rest of us to share with another person. My friend and I clung to the shared vest and just sat praying we wouldn’t die. If all that wasn’t enough, I had also been ill before we got on the boat, thrown up over side, and drank so much water to rehydrate myself that I ended up having to pee in a bottle so that I wouldn’t explode before we reached our seemingly impossible-to-reach destination. It’s definitely one of those experience that I look back on and think, “Wow, did that really happen?”

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By: Cornelia

Cornelia — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:16:00 +0000

Surreal was taking the train to Berlin with my sister through what was then East Germany. We couldn’t figure out if the East German conductor was trying to extort money from us, or if we actually had to pay extra. We were in a compartment with a couple of Germans, and a Chinese guy. Although we looked German we couldn’t speak anything other than a couple of curses in German; luckily my sister was fluent in Mandarin, so she and the Chinese guy started chatting away. It sure weirded out the Germans though.

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By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:29:03 +0000

People who live around southern NJ and Philadelphia will understand this one…

Here I am in China on my break from work for Chinese New Year. I fix it so I’ll be in Hong Kong over the holiday itself. And who do i meet right in the middle of downtown Kowloon?

The Mummers of Philadelphia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummers_Parade)

It turns out one of the guys went to my high school when I was 2 and another one lives near where I have more family. The world is a very small place…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/solardrum/3683978675/

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By: Kaitlin Mills

Kaitlin Mills — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:29:51 +0000

Surreal was staring up at the pollution in Shanghai unable to see the stars, only the buildings lit up around us while we had a Chinese meal in an Australian resturant. Great article by the way.

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By: Christine Garvin

Christine Garvin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:03:32 +0000

No, Ryan, thanks for sharing! It was a great story, and I’m sure it’ll prompt some people’s stored memories of similar wild transport experiences in different parts of the world…

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By: Ian MacKenzie

Ian MacKenzie — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:37:57 +0000

Thanks for sharing your story! Don’t worry about the length… sounds like an amazing experience. I had a few similar ones in Southeast Asia myself, but nothing quite as eclectic. Gotta love non-conventional forms of travel.

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By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:34:03 +0000

My trip to a remote waterfall in Thailand that proved to be more interesting to travel TO than actually see (and that’s not so say the sight itself wasn’t spectacular). After an unsuccessful search for the bus station in a small border town, I was aided by a helpful Thai (as so many of them are) and driven to a spot on the side of the road where a sawngthiaw–pickup truck with benches in the bed–waited on the side of the road. No wonder the ‘bus station’ had been so elusive!
I was soon joined by one of the most diverse groups of passengers I had ever encountered. On my right sat an elderly couple on their way to their farm, lugging huge sacks of produce and clothes. To my left, a Burmese mother and her son of about 30 years lasted only until the first police checkpoint, where they were detained for not having any identification. A few locals ended up taking their seats and laughing about the whole ordeal as if it was a common occurrence. Crammed into the space across from me was a blend of one hill tribe family, a few [legal] Burmese refugees and an elderly Ahka (hill tribe) lady who, I later came to find out, was so freaking happy the whole time because she was snorting a mysterious powder I decided was some form of opium. Others came and went, finding a comfortable stop on the roof with the luggage. To top off this motley crew, three armed Thai soldiers hopped on the back, using the extended rear bumper as a platform to stand.
The highway, formerly nicknamed the “death highway” from a history of Thai-Burmese clashes, wound through the mountains with a plethora of switchbacks, dips and climbs. The drive was littered with breath-taking views…as well as breath-taking sharp curves! I can’t say for sure just how many languages were spoken between all of us, partially due to the fact that many of us were clinching our teeth and concentrating on keeping our breakfast down (some were not as successful as I was). Regardless, all that made the journey exchanged smiles and gasps throughout the four hour adventure.
While many of us remained on board for the entire ride, some of the hill tribesmen were let off in seemingly random places…far from any sign of life as they disappeared into the mountainous jungle. The Myanmar nationals were brought to a massive refugee camp that as far as I can tell, only exists in my camera. Eventually, we arrived in the sleepy town of Umphang alive and dazed, going our separate ways and to never meet again…until now.
I can’t say I exactly re-entered reality for the next part of the trip but that cliff-side drive will no doubt go down as one of the most bizarre and fantastic in-transit experiences I’ve undergone.
***Sorry to post such a long story but I really haven’t shared that story with anyone yet and I thought I’d write it down while it was still fresh in my mind! I hope you do not disapprove of my rambling!

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