re: having a stressful vacation...

When I travel, I always bring with me enough cash so that I won't feel stressed. I spend the days within my finance. If I do not have enough left, I will go back home. Sometimes I also bring with me my bank card if it is a trip for quite a few days in case I have enough to spend. What makes me feel the most stressed is the food and the hotel as they are expensive. So to find a cheap hotel, I usually go to those hotels in the back lanes.

I'm sorry to hear you had that stressful vacation. And, really, it was a case of when it rains, it pours thing for you. Well, you could think of it as part of your adventure. It's scary to run out of cash in a foreign land and then your cards aren't working. I wish I'd never encounter that. So far, all my trips have been pleasant. The worst thing that I've experienced was a delayed flight. A situation that would really stress me out is if I lost my passport! But, I hope that will never happen.

I am pleased that you had a week long birthday trip to Indonesia and Singapore. In 2009 I visited South Africa. I stayed for 5 nights in a guest house and I needed to pay the bill. I knew about crime so I didn't want to use an ATM machine in the street. So I used one in a department store. Money didn't come out but I got an advice slip saying 200 Rand. I told a shop assistant and he kindly took me to the bank. The bank had just closed and I was so worried because I had booked a coach to the Garden Route the next day. Amazingly they let the bank door open to help me. They phoned England and got my card working. The bank at home had thought it was fraud. I now let my banks know where I am traveling and when. My worst journey was in 2011 London to the Caribbean coast of Colombia via Madrid and Bogota. We stayed overnight in London due to the early departure. The plane sat on the ground for 2 hours at London with little word about what was going on. It suddenly took off and I was happy to be at last moving. Then it arrived in Madrid too late to get the connecting flight to Colombia. Luckily the Colombian airline felt sorry for us and got us on that. We had two seats right at the back of the economy class cabin. The plane arrived close to midnight and we had missed the flight to the coast. We got free accommodation in a flashy looking hotel for one night but I still had to pay for our booked accommodation by the coast. The next day we flew on to the coast but our hold luggage was nowhere to be seen. A man at the airport looked at a computer and said the luggage was still on the plane between Madrid and Bogota. We left the airport in the taxi with our hand luggage. Most of the luggage was delivered to the hotel but three items were missing. My kids got sick and ill in that destination. I had a poorly leg for the whole trip and limped around.

Hi Friend, For me if there is any disturbance or nothing is going according to plan then I will feel the total task or trip was collapse because I will like even for small outings like going to movie or to meet girl friend but if it was happened in long trip like your's then I won't, can't enjoy that.