Worlds Unluckiest Traveler: Student Travel Stories

	36 kids and a crappy hotel I am the president of a high school orchestra in Milwaukee, WI. Every other year, we either travel abroad or nationally. Three years ago we decided to take a trip to Nashville to show the students where music really began in the south. We hired the same travel company that we had used in the past for our international trips. Well, this trip turned out to be horrible. We checked in to a hotel that was in a terrible part of town. The hotel was under constuction, so the pool and nice facilities they showed in the photos did not exist. In each room was a new surprise for the kids. In one room it was a million ants, in another, it was cockroaches, in the chaperone's room, it was blood on the sheets. To top it off, there was puke outside the main lobby doors. Every time the bus came to pick us up for a performance, the kids had to step over the same pile of vomit. Needless to say, none of us would ever use that travel company again, and we laugh every time we pass that certain hotel.
	TSA nightmare! On my way to St. Petersburg, Russia to deliver Kodak film to students, emerging master photographers and established masters, the TSA took my medication in its original prescription bottles. They took it right out of my check-through luggage and never mentioned it! I arrived to find it gone and no Russian equivalent! I called the airlines, but there was no luck. I was stuck for three weeks in agony! I suffer from chronic pain and because I didn't have my medication, had an accident getting on a bus that required an ambulance trip to a western care clinic. Fortunately, I had Travel Guard! My doctor there said my medication was very special there, hard to get. When I returned there was a message from the TSA saying they had my medication and I'd have to pay return FedEx charges to receive it! When I called them, they denied taking it until I played their message for them. Then the nightmare really began! The TSA is designed for fatal airline crashes, not for handling medical incompetence! They don't just take your grooming supplies, they may take the medication that keeps you alive!
	And then, and then... My Thailand trip last summer was a bit more eventful than I'd have liked. In addition to tuk tuk scams and international break ups (my boyfriend broke up with me via Facebook on the second day of our trip), my friend Kristin and I had some unexpected medical run-ins. Kristin, a 2nd year med student, thought she might have appendicitis on the train heading south from Chiang Mai three weeks into our trip and was right, getting her appendix taken out in Bangkok 10 hours after we got off the train. She healed well and dove in Koh Samui but, a week later, was struck with the eye infection from hell, ending up back in the hospital less than 10 days after leaving it. By the end she'd spent more nights in the hospital than anywhere else and the nurses knew us by name. Oh, and on my way home weeks later my train broke down in Brisbane, I had my phone cut off, missed another train in Singapore, double-booked a flight home, landed in Canada, watched my plane home take off while I waited to check in, all in about 36 hours. So that was fun.
	24 hours in China As a Canadian student working as an intern in Singapore, I prepared a 5-day visit to a friend in Hainan, China. When I hand over my passport, the agent says "where is your visa?" I reply: "I will be applying for a landing visa upon arrival." They state that this is not an option, refuse boarding, and say I need to go to the Chinese Embassy [which is closed that day and the next] for a visa. In addition, I will have to a pay a fee for changing my flight. My airplane leaves without me. I return 2 days later to show the attendant that a landing visa in Hainan is indeed an option - I even let her speak to the Chinese airport visa administrator on my phone, but again I was denied. On the fourth day, I return with luggage. This time they said they will "take a chance" and let me board. I arrive in China, and receive my visa without problems. Because I was unable to change my return flight, my visit dissolved into an expensive 24 hours in China... without an apology.
	Sailing in Paradise - Not! It was supposed to be a week-long sailing lesson in St Thomas. First day, one of the students woke up so ill we had to delay departure so she could arrange for a flight home. 4 hours later, we were motoring out of the marina when the engine died and we couldn't get it started again. We put up a staysail but the wind died and left us losing speed in front of a large container ship bearing down on us. Barely getting out of the channel, we struck a submerged rock. Trying to anchor, our anchor would not release. After getting the anchor to finally release, we arranged for a tow back to the marina. Once the tow boat arrived, we found out the anchor chain had gotten tangled with our other anchor and then the winch to raise the anchor wouldn't work. Once back at the marina, a diver told us we had holed the keel and the boat needed to be dry docked. My weeklong sailing vacation lasted all of 3 hours! And on top of that I had to change flight and hotel reservations to get home.

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