Funny Stories From Our Travels
Story 1 – I remember a trip to Romania some years ago, we were staying with the Iancu family.
It was my sixth overland trip and every visit we always had problems at customs, getting into Romania, fortunately Radu Iancu (their son and a good friend) was a Romanian customs officer, he very often helped with things. When we were leaving he gave me an official looking letter and said next time if you have any problems give this to the senior duty customs officer. I thought this is great!
Anyway as we were leaving Romania we got to customs and were stopped, this was a first for us – we thought it unusual getting stopped getting out of the country…. The guard was aggressive and scary with his gun and uniform – other guards came and asked us about drug smuggling. We said we didn’t know anything about this and were promptly marched us out of the car. After some aggresive questioning we gave them Radu’s letter thinking this would help get us out of trouble. In fact it made thing worse. The guard said is this some sort of joke? It says you have 20 kilos of herion in your car? I was mystified? and very scared.
Eventually the guard started laughing at our distress and said he couldn’t take the joke any further – he introduced himself as Radu’s best friend and said this joke was from Radu for supporting such a bad football team!!!
The moral of the story is if you enjoy playing practical jokes – beware of how they might come back at you!
Even today I still get scared at customs !
Story 2 – Travelling on my own in South Korea – I didn’t speak the language and had no idea what I was doing half the time. Ordering food could be a quite… “interesting” experience.. On one occasion I was in a restaurant and just pointed to stuff on the menu, with no idea what it all was. I ended up with around 30 different dishes in front of me, and the whole restaurant laughing 
Story 3 – Here is another great story about a great friend Slagana (from the Macedonian Cre8ive Film Crew).
We had been making a film for the Youth Sport Action programme, this was a project involving 150 young people from 10 countries and Slagana had stayed up late at the night club. The following day was a cultural visit to the beautiful city of Ohrid in Macedonia. We travelled on a bus and Slagana who is normally very loud fell asleep on the bus. Nobody thought to wake her up and two hours later she woke up on an empty bus at a bus depot many miles away from us very confused. She said three men were staring down at her asking her what she was doing?
Eventually she worked out what happened and we got a call from the bus depot to go and retrieve her! She was so embarrassed and recieved a special award for sleepiness. Needless to say she is very scared to sleep on any form on transport bus since this event.
Story 4 – You might not think this was funny , and its possibly a ” you had to be there ” story , but i think its hysterical.
I was sat in a wonderful restaurant on a balcony in Santa Monica , my friend went outside for a smoke, as i looked down i could see him directly below us , and in a childish moment i decided to throw our wine cork at his head. As i did the waitress came over and said ” would you like it if … OWCHHHH ” he had thrown the cork back and it had hit her directly on the head, and bounced off so she didn’t know what is was, at this point i burst into uncontrollable laughter…. we had to leave soon after as everyone stared at me, I laugh for several hours and gave myself a massive headache ……i know this is a story that could have happened anywhere and so not a great travel story but i still think its so funny.
