Why am I not surprised?
Why am I not surprised?
Hitchhiking's more of a challenge on the road less travelled.
Yeah as much a I joke about it now I did t realise it at the start of the situation but did get as it went on that it WAS a serious issue and that both he and I were at risk of arrest and imprisonment, the poor taxi driver was beside himself with worry as he'd said stop there's an undercover police car watching / following us which I more or less just laughed at / off but when I too seem said car stop, follow us, drive past us twice breaking they necks trying to look in and various other things even I conceded he was right.
I then thought cowardice was the better part of valour and said bigger this get me to the airport and quick - which he was now than keen to do too where in the remain 10 minute journey I watched him sweating blood looking in his rear view mirror as they sat behind us the whole way and he told me of another driver just a few months before who has been caught at the same thing at got locked up for two years for it. I can tell you I've never been as relieved to have gotten on a plane and I still worried as to what happened him as he drove off after leaving me at departures with them still behind him ! So yes a lesson learned there for sure. ( although mainly the lesson would be don't get caught just I have to say :-)
Nothing similar to report. All delays in flights caused by airlines, I never missed a flight.
How can you end up with someone else's passport, and does that mean someone else had your passport?
But I had trips that were not-so-optimal. In Feb 2011, return from Luang Prabang (Lao) to Bangkok took me 34 hours, but it only cost an equivalent of 34 Euro. Night bus from LP to Vientiane, a nightmare. Then a few hours in Udon Thani, finally train to Bangkok. An experience I do not want to repeat.
I once had an early morning flight from Paris Orly to Berlin, before public transport starts running. Taxi would have cost a fortune, so I took the last bus to the airport and tried to sleep in the Muslim prayer room (couldn't sleep because light was on and had to take off shoes and got cold feet) until my early morning flight. I demand a Christian sleeping room!
Christian, on the passport issue its very simple - it was maybe 20 years ago and I was travelling with 2 friends from Scotland to Prague via London as there were no direct flights at that time.
The check-in, boarding, and first leg from GLA>STN went without a hitch.
Then, standing in line to check-in for the GO (yes, it was that long ago) flight, i just happened to be browsing through my passport, got to the last page, and there was my father looking at me on the photo page! I later remembered having bought new passport covers some weeks ago including one for him and when putting them on, i'd obviously made a switch.
Of course, in those days security at airports was nothing like as stringent as now and and did not require a passport to be shown for internal flights (strictly speaking still the case) - so even though I HAD shown the wrong passport at check-in and boarding on the first leg, scrutiny was obviously somewhat lacking in that it was not noticed even though there's a 30 year age difference!
However, I was clearly not going to get to Prague on someone else's passport, and my flight option to get back to Glasgow from Stansted was in the region of 200 quid (a lot of money then) - so i had to get a return train ticket from London-Glasgow back home and start all over again at 5am the next day.
I lost 24 hours of that holiday, and my friends have never let me hear the last of it.
In circumstances like yours, scotty, a travel companion from among the Forum members might have eased the burden. Next time send me a PM and I'll suggest a name for you that I've found very entertaining on past trips.
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