Worst in Travel 2017

Good news guys: I’ve ended 2017 with as many teeth as I began the year with! Unlike 2016… Also no trainwrecks, no fainting in filthy Peruvian bus stations, no motorbike wrecks, no stitches, no times spent in Carib sewers, and no broken camera lenses. Here are the stupid things that happened to me in Travel this year.

Sick in Antarctica

The Ortelius crud struck hard. I don’t get sick often, but when I do.. it’s bad. Like man-flu bad. Everyone knows that no illness has stricken anyone harder or more painfully than the man-flu. I don’t know how I managed to get myself out of bed long enough to do a zombie-like lap around Scott Hut. But I couldn’t be fucked to crawl out of bed for the epic sunset with hundreds of orca all around.

On the Hike to Hell

This one took place at home, in Alaska. What I’ll say is, don’t try to do the Kesugi Ridge hike in two days, unless you’re superhuman or some crazy trail runner. It was brutal. My left foot still isn’t back to normal after that.

Alaska Travel Guide, Kesugi Ridge, Alaska, Kesugi, K'esugi, K'esugi Ridge, worst travel 2017

The shawarma in question

I sat there in Panjakent eating shawarma with an American tourist when on what would be my second to last bite when an undercooked piece of chicken fell into my lap. Attempting optimism for the first time in my life, I threw that last bite and a raw chunk of chicken away and hoped it was the only raw piece.

It clearly wasn’t as I terrified the entire village of Mogiyon the next day by exploding out of a shared taxi mid-day screaming toilet!!!!! That would be the last time I whipped up chocolate soft serve into a squat toilet for the next 36 hours. 25 miles up and over a 10,000 foot pass puking and shitting the entire way. Fuckin beautiful.

Tajik Mountain Love

This isn’t my first run in with amorous men in the mountains. I hired a porter to help carry my gear on my hike in the Fann Mountains this year. Take some weight off my back, help put money into the local economy I told myself… Well, I ended up with a 23 year old madly in love with me, wanting to sleep in my tent with me. Hell to the fuck no. Thankfully it stopped there.

Panjakent, Penjakent, Penjikent, Tajikistan, Lenin, Lenin Statue — What’s up Lenin?

8 hour Afghan colon cleanse

The day I had to spend all day in the car traveling from Qazideh to Wuzed was spent frantically looking for nice boulders to shit behind between the bumps along the track. Never have I ever clinched my buttcheeks so tightly in my life.

Being a smart ass will land you hitchhiking

I was aware that a taxi from Arkit to Sary-Chelek would be absurdly expensive, but laughing at the ludicrous price written in dust in the windshield will not lower the price and will likely severely piss off the macho-Kyrgyz driver. Luckily hitchhiking proved easy.

No balloon over Bagan for you

We rearranged the entire Myanmar trip as soon as we arrived to accommodate a balloon ride in Bagan as we were in the country 23 September to 7 October. Well due to bad luck with weather, it didn’t happen. Although it wasn’t the end of the world- I didn’t even pack my telephoto lens as I had no intent on going to Myanmar when I left home.

Myanmar, Myanmar Itinerary, 2 week Myanmar Itinerary, Myanmar 2 weeks, Myanmar 2 week itinerary, 2 weeks in Myanmar, Myanmar 2 week, Burma, Asia, Southeast Asia, Bagan, Bagan temple — Bagan

Flakey tourism boards and shit PR companies

I was invited to a press trip covering the breakaway region of Abkhazia between Georgia and Russia. I wouldn’t usually do a press trip that required me to pay for my own transport there unless I had already booked tickets there for a personal trip and the stars aligned.

The thing was I needed to get from Myanmar to Cyprus, and Abkhazia being kinda smack between the two seemed like a logical stop off in between. Well, after agreeing to the press trip, and booking tickets, sitting and haggling out the itinerary I was nearing the trip and not receiving straight answers as the PR company, AMW PR, and the Abkhaz tourism board were supposed to be arranging my Abkhaz visa to visit from the Georgian “border” and I hadn’t gotten any clearance yet.

Well, finally not 24 hours before I was departing Myanmar to Tbilisi I received an email stating that Abkhazia had canceled the press trip.

Are you fucking kidding me?!

In reality, I did want to visit the Caucasus, however not this late in the year. The real kicker is that I was pretty much offered no compensation for a gigantic waste of my time and money. AMW did state they would compensate 3 nights in a hotel, however, that came long after I had left the backpacker hostel I’d stayed in.

I highly doubt that them picking up the $55 bill (which they never honored anyways) would make up for the cost of plane tickets (that drove up my cost as it would have been cheaper to fly from Myanmar to Cyprus without stopping). Also, I never had contact with the Abkhaz board as AMW was “handling” everything, so who knows if it was ever to actually happen in the first place.

I wouldn’t normally link to the PR company that wasted my time, but I think it would be irresponsible to not share it in case another blogger out there gets an offer from them and they weren’t aware of what they pulled on me. Also, you’ll probably get a kick out of the quote on the homepage about ‘doing the right thing’. Oh, the irony!

The handsy horseman

One day I got up to take photos of the sunrise while in Armenia, next thing I know I’m on a horse, and then the horseman jumps on with me and begins to fondle me. What in the actual fuck?!? You can read my full rant on my October roundup.