13 Trip Stories That Prove Happy Memories Is the Best Souvenir

I was a kid on holiday with my parents in Cyprus. We got a taxi and the guy was driving like a crazy, speeding, overtaking, undertaking, mashing his horn, the tires were squealing and we were getting bounced around.
We get to the destination and my dad tries to complain but he says he doesn’t speak English and just tells us how much to pay. As we get out my mum says, “See what his name is” so my dad leans back in and checks the name on the license. The guy’s name is Mario.

In a restaurant in Brno in the Czech Republic, we didn’t speak much Czech, the staff didn’t speak much English. So they resorted to making animal noises so we knew which meats we were ordering. By the time the waiter had got to the grilled lamb, half of the other guests in the restaurant were joining in.

Way back when I was 20 I went to Thailand with a friend. We had not planned to be in Bangkok for long. But due to a giant storm/monsoon that destroyed the island we were staying on we had plenty of time there. We decided to go to a zoo, but instead of a zoo in Bangkok or the surrounding area we found more of a conservation effort place further out.
I applied to be picked up by bus from our hotel the next day. And what turned up was the fanciest car I have ever sat in which was driven by the owner of the zoo and his wife.
They were wonderful, took us for lunch on the way there, and wouldn’t let us pay, spent some time with us in the zoo (lovely zoo, huuuuuge amounts of land for each of the species which could come and go as they pleased) and then left us to ourselves.
And then at the end of the day when we were finished they also took us back to the city.

Spent a week in Albir, Spain a few years ago with my Mother. On the flight back Mum kept glancing over at a young family across the aisle from us. Eventually, she said, “Excuse me, you look very familiar, do you live around Dorking?”
The lady gave a pained smile, then asked if Mum watched a certain TV programme that featured English holidaymakers ending up in A&E abroad. Mum said, “Yes, loom bands!”
Their son had featured in an episode when, during their last holiday, he’d managed to stuff both nostrils with loom bands. I really felt for the family because apparently my Mum wasn’t the first person to recognize them.

Was peacefully lying on a beach when I heard a man in a panic screaming, “Whoa! Whoa!” I sat bolt upright on my sun-lounger to see a local man waving his arms in distress at someone seemingly unresponsive floating in the shoreline.
Now, weeks earlier I had completed another of many courses in first-aid, so I ran over to help…and to my horror, when I got there, it was my boyfriend drifting into shore. My heart sank but I managed to utter his name and at which point he opened his eyes, perfectly fine, innocently unaware yet bemused and surprised as to what was going on.
The little Greek guy started doing the cross symbol across his chest and I was so shaken but managed to ask: “What were you doing?” He replied, “Just seeing what it was like to drift in like a dead weight.”

Not exactly funny but definitely “unusual”. We spent a week in Lanzarote in 2019. At Leeds Airport my wife pointed out a little girl, a similar age to our daughter, getting on the same plane as us. Well we landed in Lanzarote, arrived at the hotel we were staying at and happened to see the same girl staying in the hotel with us.
Ended up talking to the family a little and it turns out they live two streets down from us. We live in a quiet market town not far from the Dales. Our daughters are gonna be going to the same school in September but randomly met each other 3,000 miles away.
What are the chances that two families from the exact same area booking the exact same holiday at the exact same time? We booked online too so it’s not like there was a special offer at a local travel agents either.

In Spain, bumped into someone who hadn’t seen me since when I was barely a month old. She recognized me as I look a lot like my Dad, and sound exactly like him.
Also, a conversation heard by the pool, a middle-aged couple. Husband is walking back from the bar with two drinks. Wife is looking for something under the sun bed. Wife: “Have you seen my goggles?”
Husband: “No, I always walk like this.”

I’m pretty sure I almost got my entire family kicked out of a hotel in Tokyo. I accidentally set off the fire alarm trying to make instant noodles in the room kettle. Within minutes there were staff knocking and people standing in the hallway looking annoyed.
I was ready to apologize about fifty times and possibly pay a fine. Instead, the manager just asked if we were hungry. He ended up showing us a tiny ramen shop around the corner that tourists usually miss. We still joke that my mistake led us to the best meal of the whole trip.

I thought I’d lost my phone somewhere in Barcelona after a long night out. It had all my photos from the trip and my boarding pass for the flight home. I spent the whole morning retracing my steps and feeling like an idiot.
Eventually I went back to this small bar we stopped at around midnight. The bartender saw me walk in and just held up my phone before I even said anything. Apparently I left it on the counter while trying to pay, and he’d been charging it behind the bar all morning.
I expected a disaster, but it ended with him telling me stories about the neighborhood for an hour.

I accidentally left my backpack on a bus in Prague. It had my passport, camera, everything important. I got off the bus and realized it about five seconds too late as the doors shut. I stood there imagining the nightmare of dealing with an embassy.
After about ten minutes of panic, the same bus pulled back into the stop. The driver stepped out holding my backpack and just said, “You looked like you needed this.” Apparently he noticed it in the mirror and looped the route early to bring it back.

In an elevator in Menorca, I’d spent the whole holiday and before learning as much Spanish as possible. In the lift a couple tell me they like my tattoos, in a foreign accent and they use a couple of Spanish words. So I try to reply fully in Spanish and we have a back and forth of random Spanish and forced accents and then everyone awkwardly smiles and stays silent.
Get to the bottom floor and the couple start talking between themselves and I’m talking to my partner and they’re in full on English, strong London accent and so is mine. So we spent the descent thinking each other was Spanish and awfully attempting a conversation.

Drove to the south of France one year. Halfway through France we stop at this farm restaurant. I said to my then girlfriend that I fancied chicken and chips. “I’ll get them,” she said, “because I did O-level French at school.”
So we walked into the restaurant and in her best French the girlfriend said “Deux poulet et frites.” Impressed, I sat back and waited. 10 minutes later the waitress came out with two massive round plates, and on each plate was the biggest whole roast chicken you’ve ever seen (more like turkeys than chickens). And each chicken was surrounded by a deep circle of at least 100 thick hand cut chips. You can probably guess what we ate for the next three days :)
(I never dared let her order anything in French again.) Obviously “chicken and chips” is a different menu item in the UK compared to France.

We as a couple of families were driving out to Austria for a ski holiday and basically had decided to drive through Luxembourg as cheaper fuel or something. Anyway in Luxembourg we got lost at night and eventually like 20-30 mins lost we pulled over to try and ask for directions even though none of us speak French that well.
So the first person we approached on the street and talked to turned out to be a Brit from Stoke and lived like within a mile of where the other family lives, got great directions and got back on the way.