Crazy Travel/Holiday Experiences

**93_750** · 04-17-2009, 02:04 PM

ANyone ever had any crazy poop go down when on holidays?

Ex:

I was in an Colombia a few years back walking to a friends house when I hear gunshots (turns out it was a party that got rowdy, shots fired into the air). 2 minutes later a military police paddywagon pulls up beside my friend and I, all with Galil assualt rifles pointed at us (one with the grenade launcher), and yell at us to put out hands on the wall and spread them. They continue to yell, asking for the gun. When no gun was found they ask for ID, i left my passport at my relative's place, turns out this was a mistake. Its law that you carry ID at all times, so they are politely escorting us to the paddywagon, and by politely i mean with a machinegun at my back.

Just as I'm stepping in, thankfully, the mystery gunman decides to fire a few more rounds, the MP's throw us aside, and make a run to the area where the shots were coming from.

Fun times.

Oh but the fun continued. On the way back to Toronto, I had a stopover in Miami. While waiting in line for my flight, a middle aged couple approach me. I'm thinking they're gonna ask for the time or some other question. Nope, they pull out FBI badges and ask me to follow them to and interrogation room. As it turns out, the authorities are suspicious of a single passenger traveling back from Colombia, they think you're a drug mule.

**mma01** · 04-17-2009, 02:32 PM

Not that crazy, but it was the first time I had a gun drawn on me. I was in La Cruz, Costa Rica, which is about 30 min from the border with Nicaragua. Along the pan american highway, there are police check points periodically where they ask for your passport (they seem to have a strong fear of nicaraguans getting in illegally). It was late at night, everyone was sleeping in the car and my friend who was driving blew by one of the check points without stopping by mistake b/c he was fiddling with the radio and didnt notice the officer waving him to stop with his flashlight. Instead of stopping and backing up, he had the bright idea of just continuing...

About couple km's later, we get stopped by a roadblock and forced out of the car and searched while facing the wrong end of a couple of M16's.... It was tense for a while b/c none of the officers spoke english, but after they saw the cdn passports (and determined that we werent smuggling in any nicaraguans), they let us on our way.

**Guy Fawkes** · 04-17-2009, 02:58 PM

LOL.

The only two stories so far involve guns.

**Andrew978** · 04-17-2009, 03:12 PM

this one time at band camp....

**toshison** · 04-17-2009, 03:21 PM

To continue with gun themes.

If you've ever been to Cambodia, you will probably know what I am talking about.

In Cambodia its very easy to go to makeshift shooting ranges and fire whatever gun or grenade you want to. One of the options is to fire an RPG (rocket launcher). Ammo was $250 per round. For another $250 (im sure its negotiable) you can purchase a cow to shoot. A little pricey for me but I met up with a New Zealander along the way who took up the offer.

So, it went a little something like this. Drive out to a ratty unkept field. Exit Jeep. Cow is maybe half a football field away, just hanging out. Rocket launcher is provided and assistance is given in correct way to hold it. Its loaded by cambodian hosts. FIRE! Shot misses the cow, hits ground and makes a big dust cloud. The unskillful Kiwi opts for another shot (brining the running tally to $750). FIRE! Misses the cow again and creates another dust cloud. Hosts suggest a change in weaponry. They pull out an M-16, prop it on stands low to the ground.

The kiwi lays on his belly, gets comfortable, lines up his sights and squeezes off a series of single shots. Thinks he might of tagged the cow once. He gets a tap on the shoulder and gets fully automatic and produces a rapid stream of shots for about 5-10 seconds. Dust settles, cow is down. Everybody walks over to cow and sees that its been clipped about 5-6 times and is still alive and wailing around on the ground.. Cambodian host gives kiwi a big heavy rock. Kiwi takes big rock and smashes the cows head with it til it passes.

His total tally for the day was near $1000. Immediately locals come to bucher the cow for food. They are very thankful for the business.

I personally thought it to be a little poor taste and inhumane, especially for a country that has gone through genocide. Still, the little immature boy within found entertainment. Sick, I know.

**mma01** · 04-17-2009, 03:33 PM

I know someone who paid to do the same thing while I was in Asia... he opted for the AK47 only. The kiwi paid way too much... if he was asian and haggled, he probably would have paid a tenth of what he did.

Originally Posted by toshison

If you've ever been to Cambodia, you will probably know what I am talking about.

**93_750** · 04-17-2009, 03:43 PM

Originally Posted by toshison

To continue with gun themes.

If you've ever been to Cambodia, you will probably know what I am talking about.

In Cambodia its very easy to go to makeshift shooting ranges and fire whatever gun or grenade you want to. One of the options is to fire an RPG (rocket launcher). Ammo was $250 per round. For another $250 (im sure its negotiable) you can purchase a cow to shoot. A little pricey for me but I met up with a New Zealander along the way who took up the offer.

So, it went a little something like this. Drive out to a ratty unkept field. Exit Jeep. Cow is maybe half a football field away, just hanging out. Rocket launcher is provided and assistance is given in correct way to hold it. Its loaded by cambodian hosts. FIRE! Shot misses the cow, hits ground and makes a big dust cloud. The unskillful Kiwi opts for another shot (brining the running tally to $750). FIRE! Misses the cow again and creates another dust cloud. Hosts suggest a change in weaponry. They pull out an M-16, prop it on stands low to the ground.

The kiwi lays on his belly, gets comfortable, lines up his sights and squeezes off a series of single shots. Thinks he might of tagged the cow once. He gets a tap on the shoulder and gets fully automatic and produces a rapid stream of shots for about 5-10 seconds. Dust settles, cow is down. Everybody walks over to cow and sees that its been clipped about 5-6 times and is still alive and wailing around on the ground.. Cambodian host gives kiwi a big heavy rock. Kiwi takes big rock and smashes the cows head with it til it passes.

His total tally for the day was near $1000. Immediately locals come to bucher the cow for food. They are very thankful for the business.

I personally thought it to be a little poor taste and inhumane, especially for a country that has gone through genocide. Still, the little immature boy within found entertainment. Sick, I know.

Sucked hard to be the cow

**R6_rocket** · 04-17-2009, 03:52 PM

I got laid in Cancun. My buddy got head from 2 girls in the same club at different times

**toshison** · 04-17-2009, 04:15 PM

Originally Posted by mma01

I know someone who paid to do the same thing while I was in Asia... he opted for the AK47 only. The kiwi paid way too much... if he was asian and haggled, he probably would have paid a tenth of what he did.

Half? Possibly. But a tenth ($100) probably not. Only tourists do that sort of stuff. Even if you are asian looking, it doesnt matter, they will know you are a foreigner. Unless you got hookups or you're cambodian, you are paying. They know they can charge a lot for that sort of thing because typically the type of people who do this sort of thing dont really care about the cost too much. Plus, a whole cow is worth quite a bit.

When I was in Vietnam, the norm was anywhere from around $0.60-$1.00 per bullet of an M-16 or AK47.

Pricing can be bizarre. Like I can get a decent room in the capital Phnom Penh for $5 bucks a night but if I want to use the air conditioner on the wall its an extra $7 dollars.

**Guy Fawkes** · 04-17-2009, 04:24 PM

When I went to Seoul to visit a friend, it fell on his birthday weekend, so being on the other side of the world, in a place where last call was 7am, we were definitely looking to party. We ended up meeting friends of friends, and a couple girls that someone at work connected me with. And we had a nice group of about 10-12 people hanging out in an area called "hong-dae" which is a popular university area. We came across this poster for a DJ named Rank 1, who happens to be world renkonwned Trance DJ. I'm not much into Trance as much as house, but my friend, the Birthday boy, loves him. And it said "Free". We were a little surprised about it, so we asked some cabbies if they knew where it was. It took a while to figure it out, but it happened to be across town, and it would cost us around $25 to get there. We were apprehensive, and didn't really believe it was free, but the night was still young, and we decided to keep it in our plans for later on.

My friend's cousin was leading us around, since he had the most experience exploring Seoul, and he took us into an office building. We went up the elevator a couple floors, to see this narrow hallway, which white concrete lining the ceiling, floor, walls, etc. There was nylon bags at the front, and he told us to put our shoes in it. It was a little weird at first, but we thought, "when in rome". We entered the room to see one of the weirdest, and coolest places i've ever seen in my life. And it looked like this:

So we chilled there for a while, and it was about 2:30am, and someone asked if we were gonna check out that party with Rank 1. Everyone seemed tired, but a few of us figured, "why not?" So the rest followed. Half of us fell asleep in the cab, cuz it took almost a half hour. But we finally got there. We got out of the cab at their Swanky Sheraton Hotel, and it didn't seem like a party was happening. We asked the doorman, and he said the party was over. We thought that was really weird, and didn't understand how 8 DJ's could have played in 3 hours, so we decided to look around. In the process, 2 people got fed up and took off.

Some of us were persistent, so we decided to keep looking. We went around the back, into the casino, and took the escalator down, and started hearing the thumping bass. All of us got hyped, checked out coats, and entered to see this:

Flashing lights, pyrotechnics, and the best part was that it actually was free. We had some drinks, but for some reason, they stopped serving, even though the party was still going on. I was on the dancefloor when this caucasian girl (the only white person in there that didn't arrive with us), came up to me and asked "where are you from?" so I said "Toronto. Is it obvious I'm not from around here?" She said "You don't dance like anyone from around here". I realized it was stupid for me to ask that question since I was wearing a shirt that said "once you go Asian, you don't want caucasian". Turns out she was from Toronto too. We chilled for a bit, and realized my friends had snuck their way into the VIP booths, so we joined them. We were welcomed by some REALLY friendly locals, who introduced themselves, invited us into their booth, and told us to help ourselves to their drinks, and of course we did. The one guy was really friendly, told me he rode...His eyes bugged out when I told him I had a 1000. He was very evasive when I asked him what he did and where he was from. Some strange girl came up to my friend and told him that we were hanging out with a Korean rockstar. I still haven't been able to confirm that...But we drank our faces off, until the party was over, and the cleaning staff was cleaning around our booth, without even bothering to ask us to leave.

It was 7am, and we had to make our way back to a hotel. The cheap places in Korea are the love hotels, where for $50 a night, you can get a nice room, with a huge LCD screen, karaoke, and a vending machine that sells you TV dinners, canned pop, and sex toys. The crappy thing was that we showed up at the time all the bars were closed, so nobody had vacancy. Except for this one room, that look dodgy. I was going to share the bed with one guy while another guy slept on the floor...Except I went into the washroom, and came out to see disgusted faces. I asked what happened and my buddy told me he took the pillow case off and found blood spots on the pillow.

I put on my jacket and said "I'm outta here guys. I'm gonna go to my aunts place" I had no clue where it was but I started walking, and 5 blocks later, there I was! My aunt and uncle were in the car with their chauffer, just leaving as I was walking up the street (they were clearly going to church)...And I made up some story about how I slept at a friend's place, cuz I don't know what they'd think if I told them the truth.

The next day, we met up with that girl again, and the 4 of us hung out (my buddy, his cousin, and that girl)...We made a day out of going out and looking for poorly translated English t-shirts. We were in this mall, and we wandered into an Apple store. Of course, everyone gets on facebook. We were looking at that girls page, when we realized we all knew the same people back home. My friend started chuckling, then he pulled me aside and said "remember how I asked ----- to come here, and I told you all he said was that he didn't want to bother coming here, but that if he did, he knew a girl he could bone, but would be ****** off if he didn't?" I said "yeah..." and he pointed to the girl we had just met the night before. We contemplated telling her but decided not to, as our loyalties weren't with her.

Probably one of the more interesting and random nights i've had since I was 20 something.

Not really crazy, but definitely a blast.

Most of my crazy stories happened in Toronto, when I was young and dumb...And like the aforementioned, involved cops pulling guns, and threatening to kill us. Didn't really get the chance to travel until I was at least 25...

**FiReSTaRT** · 04-17-2009, 04:27 PM

Continuing with the gun theme...

Wtf moment in Deutcheland - When I approached two security guards at the Frankfurt airport to ask them where Gate ?? was (at the time, I was 17, skinny, clean-cut), they had their assault rifles pointed at me and fingers over the muzzles. Didn't comfort me too much. And that was WAY pre-911.

Better one in Serbia - I was at a buddy's place, just doing some preemptive drinking before going out.. While the neighborhood is fairly peaceful, quite a few "honest businessmen" reside in it. All of a sudden, a whole bunch of guys in dark uniforms, assault rifles, the works, busted into the house, threw us onto the ground, handcuffed us, searched us and they started searching the house when one of them had a forehead-slap moment and said "ooops wrong house.. sorry boys" (MUP's version of the SWAT team)

**Scissorman** · 04-17-2009, 11:41 PM

Unfortunately it doesn't involve firearms, but it was still pretty bizarre.
I was in Mexico about 4 years ago, and for fun my dad and I went off the resort to explore the area. We were in the cab, and suddenly saw a whole bunch of people (mainly tourists) staring over a small bridge. Needless to say, we stopped to see what all the commotion was about.

When we looked over the bridge, we saw a local man with a huge trashbag of fish guts, feeting some BIGASS crocodiles (It was a swampy area). When I say big, I'm talking Discovery Channel big (some pushing about 12 feet).
Not only was this man clearly insane (he almost slipped, and one of the crocodiles was ready to chomp him), but while the larger crocs were pigging out, he actually grabbed one of their babies and brought it out to the tourists. For about 5 bucks he'd pass it to you and let you take a picture with it.
I'm sure he probably made decent money at it, but I really wouldn't be surpised if he's been eaten by now