I’ve already done my annual ‘year in pictures’ post but let’s be real, the highlights reel is just a fraction of what actually goes on in our lives, travel or otherwise. Some years I find myself blessed with very few travel dramas and other years are absolutely laden with them. 2024 was a year with a number of travel mishaps ranging from the minor to those that had the potential to be absolutely catastrophic.
These are the travel mishaps from 2024 that were undeniably noteworthy.
Never being more thankful for a delayed flight
My first international flight of the year was meant to be from Sydney to Haneda airport in Tokyo but alas, that is not what happened. Our flight ended up being delayed by almost an hour which at the time was unbelievably frustrating but ended up being a true blessing in disguise.
As we neared the end of our flight, I noticed that the ‘time to destination’ on the flight map seemed to keep getting stuck and not reducing over time as it should do. After about 30 minutes of us seeming to just circle Haneda airport the captain made an announcement that there had been an ‘incident’ at Haneda airport and that we would be getting diverted to Narita.
Once on the ground I was bombarded with notifications asking me if we were okay – I quickly discovered that there had been a collision between two planes on the runway at Haneda airport! After reading the news articles it quickly became apparent that if we had departed on time we would have been scheduled to land within just a few minutes of that collision…
We were quite rattled by the whole thing and I remember thinking that I’d never been so happy to have a delayed flight in all my life.
Volcanic eruptions in Iceland
It was when we spent two weeks self driving around Iceland that the volcanic eruptions near Grindavik began. We were fortunate that other than not being able to go to the Blue Lagoon it didn’t have an enormous impact on our travels but it did cast a sheen of uncertainty over our trip. We kept waiting for news that air travel would be impacted or that the roads we needed to travel via were closed etc. Again, we were super fortunate that it didn’t end up being as bad as people feared, but it certainly made for an uncertain few days!
Getting bumped to standby for an unmissable flight
We flew via Sydney and Nadi to get to Tonga this year. I booked my flights as one ticket through Qantas with a Fiji Airways codeshare and from the moment we went to check in in Sydney, I had a funny feeling that things weren’t going to go super smoothly.
When we landed in Nadi we had a very long layover and we intended to head to a nearby airport hotel to kill time drinking poolside cocktails, but as we were in the (long) line waiting for immigration, I couldn’t shake the Bad Feeling™ that something wasn’t right.
We gave up our spot in the line for immigration and headed to the transfer desk just to check on the status of our next flight and wouldn’t you believe it, I had bloody been bumped to standby. After about twenty minutes of polite but very stern words with the woman working at the transfer desk I had been taken off standby and issued my boarding pass with a guaranteed seat. That flight ended up being completely full and I am convinced that had I not listened to my gut, I would not have made it to Tonga and ultimately probably wouldn’t have gotten to my destination for another few days.
No access to our guesthouse in Tonga and a night of zero sleep in the rain
Oh man, god this was a long travel day. After the standby drama we arrived into Tonga around midnight. Our driver picked us up without a fuss and we were both exhausted and so ready to sleep. So of course when we arrived to our guesthouse and found it empty with nobody available to check us in, we were so bloody over it.
We tried calling the host without success and our driver even drove us to her house in case she had fallen asleep. Her car was gone so clearly she just couldn’t be bothered. We ended up driving straight back to the airport to spend a long, rainy and sleepless night waiting until our domestic flight in the morning.
The host eventually called back at around 5am and we had quite the heated discussion over the phone. I called her an incompetent and careless imbecile and she tried to tell us that we still needed to pay the driver while I insisted that she would be paying and that if she didn’t it was going to become a big problem. The owner of the guesthouse replied to my review by saying that this host had been fired, but there has been another person review the property since who had the exact same experience, so clearly its just the kinda place that should be avoided.
Having a bad feeling just before domestic travel in Madagascar came to a screeching halt
After we left Nosy Be and headed to Antsiranana in northern Madagascar, we seemed to face problem after problem. The whole experience was exhausting and I couldn’t shake this funny feeling that it was in our best interests to cut our losses and head back to the capital of Antananarivo.
The tipping point was when our domestic flight got moved from a morning departure to an afternoon departure – if for any reason that flight then was cancelled (which is not an uncommon occurrence on Air Maybe, oh sorry, Air Madagascar) we would miss all of our international connections to Europe. I just had a really bad feeling about things and thus called my lovely wife in the middle of the night to ask her to book us on the next domestic flight (our cards didn’t work at most places in Madagascar, joy) out the following morning.
We spent a few days just relaxing in Tana before we headed onwards and I later found out that it was around this time that two of Air Madagascars planes that service domestic flights (these two planes comprise of almost the entire fleet) became grounded in separate ‘incidents’ and weren’t flying for ages! I heard of people paying tens of thousands of euros to charter private flights because it was such a disaster – once again my gut seemed to sense that something was up!
A potential rabies exposure in Thailand
Honestly, given the rather carefree attitude I have when it comes to meeting and greeting animals, I am kinda surprised this one didn’t come up much earlier in my life. Long story short, I got scratched by a cat and despite the fact that the cat was exhibiting no signs of rabies – I still ended up requiring a full course of jabs.
Thailand is an extremely high risk country from a rabies point of view and although the animal itself may have been low risk, if you do contract rabies you are pretty much guaranteed to have a seriously unpleasant and untimely death – so erring on the side of caution seemed like the only safe choice.
As the scratch was deep enough to draw blood (rude) it meant that a simple course of vaccinations wouldn’t be enough, oh no, this girl also needed immunoglobulin – which is a blood product and both expensive and difficult to source. Luckily, we were due to arrive home in Australia within a week of this exposure which meant I could land back in Australia and have my immunoglobulin that same day.
I had one rabies vax and a tetanus shot in Thailand, another rabies vax in Bali and then another two rabies vaccinations and three immunoglobulin injections back in Australia. Usually just one immunoglobulin injection is required but it needs to be injected around the exposure site – as my scratch was on my finger, injecting 10ml (!!! if you are a healthcare worker you will be well aware how big this is) into a finger wasn’t feasible, so I got 3mls in my finger, 3 in my deltoid and 4 in my thigh – talk about being a pin cushion!
However, I must say, the Australian team who organise and manage all this follow up were AMAZING and all of these jabs were completely free of charge! Not to mention that the nurse I spoke to over the phone to report my exposure was so sweet and reassuring. Also – now that I am fully vaccinated, any future exposure only needs to be treated with a single booster vaccination – no immunoglobulin required.
I guess the moral of the story is, if you want to pat wildlife, get your rabies vaccinations ahead of time.
Being forgetful and needing a satellite phone to avoid a fire
Oh man, sometimes I am just plain stupid. When we left Ilulissat to head to the Igloo Lodge we were told only to pack small overnight bags and thus it made sense to just keep our apartment in Ilulissat for an extra night and keep all of our stuff there.
We left at around 9am and had an amazing day (although now that I think about it, Ella lost her phone in the snow on this day and then somehow we got it back – yet another travel related mishap) and in the evening spent some time drinking warm drinks and playing Monopoly Deal by the fireplace.
At around 4pm it suddenly struck me – I didn’t think that we had turned off the coffee pot in the apartment.
A wave of horror washed over me. It was one of those American style coffee pots that sits on a kind of hot plate to keep it warm – I figured that if enough of the fluid evaporated off it would all dry out and then become a fire hazard. Normally I would’ve just called the owner of the apartment, but as we were in the middle of nowhere phone service was completely out of the question. I ended up pleading for the workers at Igloo Lodge to let me use the satellite phone to call and alert the owners.
Crisis averted, but after they’d already heard about the lost phone debacle and now the coffee pot issue, pretty sure the workers thought I was the dumbest girl alive… at least there wasn’t a fire!
The delight of getting bed bugs
After an incredibly long travel day we arrived into Diego Suarez exhausted, hungry and in desperate need of a shower. Checking in was a nightmare – the hotel stated they had never received payment for our booking (they 1000% had) and were demanding we pay again. Staff were rude and clearly disinterested and it took almost an hour to sort out. We finally got into our room and of course, no hot water and the wifi was completely useless, however, it was what came next that was the worst…
Bloody bedbugs.
I woke up with many a bite on my back and thighs and at this point was just absolutely fuming.
The hotel then took HOURS to move us to a new room and were just generally completely unhelpful and dismissive. It’s not often that I find a hotel that has literally zero redeeming qualities… but the Hotel De La Poste in Antsiranana is definitely one of them.
Flying low for an entire flight due to a medical emergency on board
Oh man, our travel day from Tunisia to Oslo was a stressful one! Our flight from Tunis to Paris was delayed (of course) but I had built in a reasonably decent connection time so I wasn’t too stressed at first. After we had been in the air for around 20 minutes there was an announcement made asking passengers if anyone was carrying the medication ‘lasix’ which is the brand name of the medication furosemide.
I turned to look down the aisle and saw two men attending to an elderly woman and looking very concerned. Now, furosemide is essentially a diuretic medication that is used to treat fluid retention – this may not sound super serious but if someone is significantly fluid overloaded for whatever reason this can have serious cardiac, renal or hepatic implications.
What followed was two hours of hushed conversations between the doctors assisting the woman, the flight attendants and the captain while we flew much lower than normal. I honestly was thinking that us making an emergency landing elsewhere was a real likelihood. We ended up making it to Paris and you’d think that there would be an ambulance waiting for us on the tarmac… you’d be wrong.
We sat on the tarmac for at least 10 minutes waiting for medical assistance and then another 15 minutes for them plus border police to actually get the poor woman and her son off the plane. Our poor seatmate only ended up having 30 minutes to connect and change terminals in CDG (which if you know the horror that is CDG you will know how little time that is) and most people ended up literally sprinting off the plane to try and make various connections.
Luckily we made our connection (despite the e-gates literally dying as soon as I put my passport into one of the machines, seriously, what the heck) as did our lovely seatmate who I exchanged whatsapp numbers with as we waited to clear security. I hope the poor woman having the medical emergency got good and fast treatment in Paris and that she’s okay now!
An unexpectedly long camel ride
When I was planning our trip to Tunisia I booked our incredible guide Jamel, told him our general interests and kinda let him plan the rest. There was one night on the trip where he said we would have the opportunity to sleep in the desert and possibly do a camel ride. What I envisioned was a short 10-15 minute ride around the dunes at sunset… however what actually eventuated was a ride over two hours long, through the Sahara desert in the blistering afternoon sun!
Riding a camel is a far cry from riding a horse and it is not at all comfortable… Dad and I couldn’t walk straight for a good few days afterwards, but hey, we look back now on it and are so glad we had the experience, even if it was uncomfy af.
That’s a wrap on my most noteworthy travel mishaps of 2024 – hopefully my 2025 travel mishap post is a bit shorter! Stay tuned for more posts from an incredible end of year adventure!
