Gunnar and Kyle have already made fools of themselves with their most embarrassing travel mistakes. Now it’s your turn in the spotlight. After a deluge of emails, the guys share your big mishaps and goofs … plus a few more of their own, for good measure. What have we learned? Check your dates and reservations closely, don’t book a 10-hour bus ride in Cambodia, and definitely don’t eat nickels.
Gunnar and Kyle have already made fools of themselves with their most embarrassing travel mistakes. Now it’s your turn in the spotlight. After a deluge of emails, the guys share your big mishaps and goofs … plus a few more of their own, for good measure. What have we learned? Check your dates and reservations closely, don’t book a 10-hour bus ride in Cambodia, and definitely don’t eat nickels.
00:00 - Turning the mirror on your big, embarrassing travel mistakes
01:15 - But first, Gunnar has another one
04:20 - Kurt welcomes back the show from Emirates’ spa
05:18 - Watching Heated Rivalry at 35,000 feet
08:01 - Bryan’s booking blunder to Paris
09:28 - How Liz’s boyfriend won the hotel lottery in London
11:04 - Peter’s too-close connection in Madrid
13:29 - Gunnar coins “The Trojan Rule”
13:56 - Travis & his trash bag in Costa Rica
15:58 - Learn from Gauri’s husband: Double-check your wallet
18:03 - Claudia’s flipped dates & a miracle in Ireland
20:32 - Rick roasts his boneheaded son-in-law
21:47 - Gunnar’s big revelation
23:40 - Buy your tickets for The Thrifty Traveler Podcast … Live!
24:28 - Jon got too thrifty in Cambodia
26:17 - Jennifer forgot to check her schedule
29:40 - Dana goes full “sicko” after a booking error
31:45 - Ranking Rachel’s 6 mistakes
35:06 - Katie’s grueling & traumatic road trip
38:30 - Learn from Nita: Souvenir passport stamps are a no
40:48 - Melissa & her hubby doubled down
45:11 - On the spot: The mistakes Kyle fears most
48:01 - Dan shares his favorite Gunnar gem
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Video editing by Kyle Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunner, your sloppy, messy, mistake-prone travel friend. And with me, as always, is the man who doesn't make mistakes. He plans perfect trips only. He doesn't get his birthday wrong or disappoint his wife while he's traveling. It's Kyle Potter. Kyle, welcome in.
Thank you. You really owned yourself there.
I did. Uh, today we're doing a special bonus episode about your travel mistakes, listeners. In episode 57 about a month ago, we broke down some of our most embarrassing travel mistakes, to varying degrees you could say, of some of those mistakes. Um, and a ton of you submitted your own travel foibles, and some of them are so fun.
I think we got more emails from that episode alone than we've had in the entirety of the rest of the catalog of the podcast. Yeah. People were just, like, itching to share their big travel mistakes, which is fun, 'cause now we get to roast you.
Yeah, some of them are hilarious, some of them are really informative and cautionary, and some are, are stupid to the point where I felt really seen, Kyle.
I felt very protected. Like, people, people came around me and told me, "It's okay that you are the way that you are."
I've done it too.
Um, okay. First, before we get into everybody's travel mistakes, I have one more travel mistake I need to unload.
Only one?
Only one. Only one left. I've, I told the listeners all the rest of them, and this one, uh, is in the state of Florida.
Ever heard of
it? Was it going to Florida?
It was. That was the first mistake, was going to Florida. So I was in Florida for my friend Travis's bachelor party a few years ago. We were golfing a bunch, so we needed to get around. Uh, the only cars available for anything resembling a good price were EVs. Uh, it was like a $200 for five days, and the rest of the cars were, like, $600 or more.
So we're like, "All right, an EV. I've never driven one, but how hard could it be?" Drove around for a few days. Battery started to run low. Um, we skipped some easy opportunities to charge it along the way. Big mistakes all around. Um, I was just putting it off 'cause I didn't really know how to do it, and I knew I was gonna have to, like, figure it out or call a number to, to do it or whatever.
So the last day comes. We get off the golf course. It's time to head back to Orlando Airport. Uh, we pulled up to a fast EV charger, uh, which is behind a Comfort Inn in the middle of Central Florida. Um, I spent, like, 30 minutes trying to figure it out. I was on the helpline for 30 minutes, and at the end of that hour they said, "Oh, actually, this one's broken."
I was like, "Great, thanks. Can you point me to one that's not broken?" It was 10 minutes down the road We're in a big time crunch now. We're probably less than three hours to flight time, an hour and a half away from the airport, and the car is on, like, 2% battery. We pulled to this charger. It's at a gun range in, in the middle of Florida.
And it is a slow charger, so it... Every 10 minutes, you get, like, one percentage point of juice into the car. And so th- you know, you gotta imagine these, these central Florida dudes walking in and out of a gun range, and it's me and my buddy sitting in our little EV in the front row getting the electric charge on our car.
We got it up to, like, 6%, and we were like, "We're gonna miss the flight if we don't go." So we drove an hour and a half with, like, 6% battery. It was l- I... The car was shutting off. Like, the lights were getting dim as we pulled into the Hertz lot, and I just flipped someone the keys and like, "See you later. I'm done with this."
Uh, and we barely, barely made it. My buddy actually didn't have pre-check at the time, his travel mistake, and he missed the flight. So I got on, he missed it, and he had to go through Atlanta on the way home and overnight there. But that was, uh, one of my worst travel mistakes. Charge the vehicle when you get a chance or just don't get an EV if you're not comfortable
with it.
There's nothing not to be comfortable with. It's very fine and normal to have an EV and very easy to charge. So I think just n- having the confidence that, you know, the motor skills to plug a charger into a car is maybe also a mistake here.
I was scared. I was scared. W-
was it a mistake to not go into the gun range while you were charging the car?
Yeah, I mean, that, that would've exposed me to a culture I'm not, not super familiar with. Uh, but that was a... It was just hilarious pulling up to the gun range and seeing the one little EV charger there. I'm like, "Okay, this is where we're gonna be for the next few hours sitting in the car alone."
Travel, baby.
Travel. It's always glorious. All right. Today on the show, you shared with us all the times you botched your travels, including some of you in epic fashion. All that and more.
Hey, everyone. I'm Kurt, and I'm about, uh, an hour and a half away from landing in Dubai, and I'm gonna take a nice shower in this first class trip to New Zealand.
Welcome to the Thrifty Traveler Podcast
Okay, welcoming us back to the show this week was someone who certainly did not make any mistakes. That was Kurt from the shower of the Emirates A380. Thank you for submitting and, uh, most of all, thank you for taking that video pre-shower while you were still covered up, Kurt. We all appreciate that.
We're not that kind of podcast.
It would've been a different kind of mistake.
All right, let's get into some mistakes. Uh, we had so many great submissions to this episode. Not all of them could be included. Uh, we had to leave some in the vault. Hopefully we can get to them next time. But thanks to everybody who took the time and sent them in.
We've also pared some of these down because some of you went into excruciating detail, and so we've tightened them up a little bit so that it makes them more, uh, listenable for you all. And, uh, I'm gonna start with a good story about Kim's mom. Kim O. submitted this one. Okay, this is Kim I have to share this story about headphones.
After a girls' trip, we had almost finished watching Heated Rivalry, and my mom wanted to finish it on the plane. Well, I get a text from my sister saying my mom had her headphones in, but they weren't connected. She kept turning up the phone volume because she thought her headphones were just being quiet.
So basically, she was watching Heated Rivalry on full blast for at least 10 minutes before realizing her headphones weren't connected. A great opening story from Kim.
Of, of all the shows and movies to, to be playing full blast from an iPhone or an iPad or something, Heated Rivalry is... That's a good one.
Heated Rivalry is a choice on a plane with headphones. That is w- like, there's more sex in that show than maybe any other show I've ever seen. It's only six episodes, so you're... No matter what episode you choose on a plane, that's, that's a pretty rowdy pick, and to just do it no headphones is, is wild.
Okay, so now it's my turn to share a- another one of my travel mistakes, and then I think you get to tell me, and the listeners get to tell us, who screwed up worse, me or, or Kim's mom?
So my, my brother-in-law and I were flying back from New York City a couple of summers ago. We sit down on the plane next to each other, and we're looking through the movies, and, and one of us turns to the other, is like, "Have you heard of this movie? It, it- I've heard good things. Um, I don't... Let's, let's watch it."
So we decided to watch it together. Um, it was the movie Challengers. Which, uh, for, for people who, who maybe haven't watched it, it's, it's about tennis an- and power dynamics and personal growth, and there's also an infamous scene in a hotel room on a bed. Well, lo and behold, uh, y- my brother-in-l- in-law and I start this movie at basically the exact same time, and guess who comes up to talk to us right during the hotel room scene?
The flight attendants with the beverage cart. So we have to pause the movie at the worst possible moment, and we're both sitting there with, like, identical scenes on our screen. It was... I didn't know that that was gonna happen in that movie. I wasn't online enough, uh, at that point, or at least about Challengers, to know that maybe that wasn't the right choice also for, for, um, an airplane.
You know, as, as long as you had your headphones in, you're still doing better than Kim's mom.
We did, yep, headphones were in. That's good. Always, always headphones.
That is always awkward on planes. Uh, the, it's kind of a... I mean, they used to screen some of those things out of the movies that were available on planes, and now they're just like, "Ah, whatever.
Let it rip."
You've all seen this stuff before, people. Yeah.
Oh, that's awesome. All right. Let's move on to a story from Brian. Okay, Brian says "My wife and I booked our first European vacation for this upcoming August, traveling business class through Air France KLM. I booked a one-way trip from Vegas to Paris for 60K points 'cause it's a great deal."
That is a great deal. Uh, "We made Barcelona the last city as we can get a flight back to the US from Barcelona for 60K points each, too. Score. Two weeks after we booked, Air France canceled our return leg and then rescheduled us for the same flight but two days later." I'm paraphrasing now. Uh, Brian says, "That wasn't gonna work, um, but they found the same 60K rate to Portland instead.
Uh, I called Air France to have them rebook it for that flight instead. They said they couldn't do it, so I canceled it, and when I went to book it on their website, it was another 44,000 miles each. Ugh. Lesson is to always confirm the actual amount of miles in the portal that you book before making any cancellations."
Good story, good cautionary tale from Brian. Always triple-check the availability.
Yeah, I, I mean, it, it really doesn't matter how, how recently you feel like you've looked at something. When you're ready to book, check it again. Uh, that's kind of the, my number one rule. Yeah, you just gotta triple, quadruple check even before you transfer any points and go to book something, and certainly before you cancel something that you already have to make sure you're getting, if not, uh, a better deal, then at least a, a comparable deal.
Yeah. Tough luck on that one, Brian. Thank you for sharing, and, uh, a reminder to everybody to check your availability. All right, let's move on to this story from Liz. Okay, so Liz booked a travel package to London that included race entry to the London Marathon. Sick brag.
Also, is it a mistake to run a marathon?
In my books, it is. So I'm sorry, Liz.
All right. Uh, Liz says, quote, "My boyfriend wanted to go as well to cheer for us, but booking through the travel agency was a lot more than we expected. Since my friend had booked the package, I didn't have all the details for where we were staying. I called the sports travel agency to pay my half of the trip, and they kept noting that I was staying at The Kensington.
I had our travel agent book his room at The Kensington, a very fancy hotel, since she was booking the second half of the trip. Two days before I was supposed to leave for the trip, my friend sent me the AI prompt that she used to pack, and the hotel she listed was the South Kensington Marriott. Turns out I booked him at a different hotel.
We were able to cancel the reservation if we wanted him to stay at the same hotel as us, but it would be $500 more, so we decided to have him stay at the bougie hotel. He loved it and keeps talking about going back." Thanks, Liz. Liz's boyfriend, luckiest guy in the world.
Yeah, just failing his way i- into the, uh, you know, a hotel that costs hundreds, if not $1,000 or more a night.
Good on you, man.
Going from... I, I don't know what The Kensington is, but it sounds very nice. Going from thinking you're staying at The Kensington to the South Kensington Marriott is, is a big bummer.
Yeah, that is a rude awakening. I'm really sorry, Liz. Liz's boyfriend, you, you won the lottery on this one.
I just imagine Liz's boyfriend like the guys at Dumb and Dumber in the presidential suite, you know?
Just sitting in his bathrobe in this beautiful hotel suite while his girlfriend runs the London Marathon. All right, Kyle, you read this next one.
Yeah, so Peter from our team sent this one in. Uh, Peter said, "I had a business class award flight on Iberia from San Diego to Dallas to Madrid, booked using American Airlines miles, but my final destination was Valencia.
I found a super cheap redemption for 5,000 Flying Blue miles one-way from Madrid to Valencia in economy on Air Europa, but it involved a 55-minute unprote- protected connection." That's just when you book a connecting flight on two separate tickets, typically on two different airlines. "I wanted to burn some Flying Blue miles anyway, and I figured the risk was worth it since trains are frequent, and I've made similar transfers before without issues as long as everything was on time."
Spoiler alert, dear listeners . "However, I failed to research the travel time between certain terminals in Madrid, and this transfer was much longer than I expected. Even after informing immigration a- agents about my tight connection and arranging a pri- arranging a private bus transfer to the other terminal to bypass the line, I still reached the gate after they had closed the door and was out of luck.
I had to eat the miles and fees and bought a last-minute train to get to Valencia." Tough beat, Peter. Yeah. Uh, real tough beat. I've, I've been in this situation before, and what, what I tend to do is if it's the only way to make that connection work, you just go for it. So when we were in Southeast Asia, we had a, uh, literally an hour connection fr- flying from Hong Kong to Bangkok, so we needed to clear immigration in Thailand, and then an hour or an hour and change, um, to get to the flight f- to Thailand, um, you know, to fly onward to Koh Kood, the island where we were eventually going, and that is not enough time.
But it was also really the only way to get there that day. I think if you have other options to give yourself a little bit longer of a buffer, whether that's a train or a different flight, just give yourself a little bit more time, especially in big international airports like Madrid, London, Paris. I mean, sometimes these transfers can take a long, long time just to physically walk from one terminal to the ne- to the next.
Madrid, I also remember being kinda sneaky big. It does take a long time to get from one side of that airport to the other. Yeah, I mean, that's, there, there's so much value in these, in booking kind of the separate, you know, positioning flights or unprotected connections, but, um, you know, if something goes wrong, then you're out of luck and you're taking the train to Valencia and, and eating the cost.
Um, always use protection, you know? The Trojan rule.
Oh my God.
Kyle didn't like it.
No, I loved it. This podcast is gonna get canceled. All right. Anyway, uh, Travis wrote in about his trip to Costa Rica with his best friend, uh, way back in college, before the days of readily available cell service apparently, and that they only had a GPS in their rental vehicle as they were searching out the best beach around Fortuna in Costa Rica.
And so he said, "We left the hotel around 9:00 AM and didn't get back until closer to 10 or 11 PM. Upon returning to the hotel, we were hastily greeted by the front desk and made aware that I had booked our reservation to be checked out on that day. They had been calling and emailing us for the entire day Needless to say, I do th- I do think this is needed to say because this is the best part.
"The staff packed up all of our belongings in trash bags and handed them over to us and sent us on our way with no recourse. So we decided to exhaustingly make the three-hour trek to San Jose as that's where we were flying out of in two days' time. Fortunately, we found a hotel chain with availability in the larger city.
A s- very stressful end to what was a great trip." The trash bags.
The trash bags.
That's amaze- that's just the, the best little nugget in that story. Just having everything that you have with you on your trip handed over to you in trash bags and being told to get out.
And after, uh, what looks like a 12-hour day searching for beaches to stare down another three-hour overnight drive into San Jose to find a place to sleep, that's brutal.
I have, I've actually had a similar, uh, story to this where we y- my friends and I got a checkout date wrong on an Airbnb. And, uh, we were at the top of Whistler Blackcomb Mountain. Uh, and we get a call being like, "You need to get out of the Airbnb right now." And we were like, "What do you mean?" So we had to top to bottom fly down the mountain, race through the village.
And as we were there, the, the cleaning ladies were in there, like, cleaning up the place for the next people who were about to check in. And we were scrambling to pack all of our stuff. We, that place was a pigsty too. Not a good experience. Always double-check your ins and outs. That's what TripIt's for.
TripIt always has that de- Yeah ... those details for you so you don't have to worry about it. All right. Should we help out Gory? I- Actually, I don't know if we-
Can, can we help
Gory? I don't know if we can help Gory. Uh, but Gory has a story for us. "My husband showed up at the airport without any form of photo ID."
Great opening line to this story. "When he was removing his unwanted cards from his wallet in preparation for travel, he inadvertently removed his driver's license from his wallet which was stuck to one of those unwanted cards. Obviously, there's no time to return home to get the ID. We're traveling domestically, so no passports with us either.
Thankfully, the airline and TSA allowed him to get on the plane with two credit cards with his name on it which matched the name on his boarding pass. They searched him for about 20 minutes. I thought they were gonna do a full-on cavity check, but fortunate for him, that did not happen. The second hurdle was that we were renting a car in the name on, in his name on the other end.
Once again, catastrophe averted 'cause it was through Turo and at that time, Turo would have you scan your license into the app, and that was fine. When we arrived at our condo on Sanibel Island, we had our friend back home break into the house through all the alarms, find the ID, and next day mail it to us at the condo management office."
A wild story including admitting that your husband drove a Turo without an ID. Uh. But that's a great, great story. Uh, forgetting your ID is just one of those colossal travel mistakes that's, that is, makes me paranoid to my core.
This is, this is the dark side of what we both do, is we both have, like, travel wallets where before a trip you, like- Take a few things in or take a few things out, put a few things in, and you could very well inadvertently pull out something that you really need.
Lately, I have been, w- whether I'm traveling or not, I just always have both my driver's license and my Global Entry card because now with real ID requirements in place, the driver's license isn't gonna be enough. I don't have a real ID driver's license. So just so I don't have to remember that or I don't have to worry, "Wait, did I take it out?"
Having both in place is, uh, is a good, good call. But yeah, you could very easily inadvertently remove that stuff. Gotta, gotta double-check.
Yeah. Glad the trip went off without a hitch though anyway. Um, all right. Claudia We were traveling to Ireland for the first time, and my husband being the big Star Wars fan that he is wanted to go to Skellig Michael.
Is that how you pronounce that?
There's no way.
There's no way. You're gonna look up the pronunciation, I'm gonna keep going. No,
I'm just looking up Skellig Michael- Okay ... so I can see what it looks like.
Uh, I'll paraphrase here. So this place only allows a few visitors a day, and has a extremely tight reservation system.
Uh, long story short, she got the date she wanted nine months in advance. So I'm, I'm quoting Claudia here. "Fast-forward nine months and we were in Ireland. The day before I was looking at my itinerary for what was scheduled for the next day, and looked at the confirmation email for our boat trip to Skellig Michael.
I suddenly felt literally sick when I saw it was booked for July 6th, not June 7th. Well, like Gunner, I failed to remember that in Europe the day and month are flipped, so instead of June 7th, which in Europe would be 7/6, I booked July 6th or 6/7. I was so sad for my husband I started crying. I quickly called the number they gave me and told them my story, and they obviously told me, 'I'm so sorry, we're booked up, but let me take your number in case someone cancels.'
Well, the Skellig Michael gods were looking out for me because two hours later as we drove along the Dingle Peninsula my phone rings, and I'm not even kidding, that same lady said, 'A group of four just canceled. Do you want them?' I cried again, but happy tears this time. Skellig Michael was amazing, turned out to be the highlight of the trip, but my family still likes to bring it up just to humble me."
Saved by the grace of the people at Skellig Michael, which it, I don't know if that's how you pronounce it. I do know that this is the place where, uh, they filmed parts of The Last Jedi and the end of The Force Awakens. Uh, it's the place where the fish people live and where Luke Skywalker drinks blue milk.
Good context.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good, good content too.
Uh, always remember those European dates. Uh, I know that's rich coming from me, but double-check.
I have a, I have a friend, uh, Jeff, I don't, I don't know if he listens to this show or not, who told me when I saw him, um, months ago in Phoenix that he was going to see Rush in Finland.
Um, and that he booked, booked his tickets. He, he did it kinda last minute. Um, made his way over there a couple of weeks after. Uh, he was talking to me about it. Then got there and then I saw on his Instagram, "Well, I'm in Finland, uh, but Rush isn't because the Rush concert is next year." Oh, no. So it's one thing to miss it by a month by splicing the date and the month.
To miss it by an entire calendar year is another level. So both Gunner and Claudia, it can be worse.
All right. You've got this next one.
All right, so Rick shared an amazing trip that, uh, he and his family took to Lapland. Gunner, this is very Gunner-coded. Uh, including a full day planned by his son-in-law with hiking, relaxing, going to a museum, and all capped off with what Rick calls, uh, a great multi-course meal at the Wilderness Resort restaurant.
Are you familiar?
Yeah.
Yeah? Okay. Love it. "We were early, and there was almost no one else there, which was the first clue that something was amiss," Rick said. "It was more like a dinner hall than a restaurant. Our waiter came by and said, 'The buffet will start in about 20 minutes.'" So they... He, he... Rick said that they all kinda looked at each other and were ready to say, like, "Well, apparently we just misunderstood this."
And then he said, "So our son-in-law checked the reservation and discovered there was more than one Wilderness Resort location. We got up and apologized for leaving and quickly made our way to the other location. Fortunately, it was only 15 minutes away. It was a nice recovery for my son-in-law." They have never let this guy forget this.
"A day and a meal we will not soon forget." I do love that we asked everybody to to share their own travel mistakes, and Rick writes in, "Hey, check out my dipshit son-in-law." That is, that is amazing.
The best part about this is that Rick's dipshit son-in-law is me. Um, this is my father-in-law, Rick. Who wrote in, uh, yes, it is true.
I, I booked us this incredibly nice, uh, multi-course meal, and, uh, we, we sit down, and the guy's like, "Yeah, buffet doesn't start for 20 minutes. I don't know what you're doing here yet." And I was like, "Buffet?" And everyone looked really disappointed. And it was li- and I looked it up. I was like, "Oh my God, there are, like, seven wilderness resorts in this town."
And, uh, so I had to find what the right one was, and luckily they were close enough by, and we were able to get our, uh, our amazing meal across the finish line. But, uh, I had everyone really thinking I was a moron there for a little bit. Thanks for sending this in, Rick.
Lucky for you, there are not one, but two dipshits at this table.
Because I got through this whole thing not realizing it was just about you. I was just like, "Oh, well, that's funny. Somebody went to Lapland this year, too. Gunner will really like this story."
Yeah, you started out with- Kind of- "Oh, this is very Gunner-coded," I'm like-
It is. "This is-" It is the most Gunner-coded.
Oh man, that's amazing. Hey, Rick, you know what? I appreciate you for sending this in and giving us yet another reason to roast Gunner.
Uh, no, they do not let me live it down. Um, the rest of that trip went off pretty well, but I did screw up that reservation. And luckily, luckily, uh, when you have an infant and your reservation's at 5:00 PM, there's not a ton of competition for that seat, so we were able to get down at our table anyway.
Yeah.
Gotta get that blue plate special.
Have an excellent, excellent meal, including, uh, some wines from a, uh, Finnish, uh, winemaker, and the, it translates to The Only One 'cause it's the only Finnish winemaker. Very funny, uh, our guy explaining to us, he was like, "So, um, this wine is called The Only One." We're like, "Why is it called that?"
He's like, "'Cause it's, it's the only one in Finland." Oh,
that
tracks All right. We have so many more mistakes, including a really funny one from our coworker, John. But first we're gonna take a quick break.
There's just three weeks left until we take the stage at the Parkway Theater in Minneapolis for the first ever Thrifty Traveler
podcast live show.
Tickets are on sale now at thriftytraveler.com/live. You can vote for what you want us to talk about at thriftytraveler.com/vote. Kyle, it, it dawned on me this week that because our podcasts are so one-sided, I have nobody- no idea if anybody actually thinks I'm funny. What if we bomb? What if nobody laughs?
It's a real possibility. We cannot rule it out. But you know what? Cringe content works.
Yeah. Wouldn't you wanna be there to see it- Ju- ... if it goes off the rails?
Just total crickets. Now, we're... We'll, we'll have something. You know, a blind squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while.
Join us for the Thrifty Traveler podcast live show on June 12th in Minneapolis.
Get your tickets at thriftytraveler.com/live. I hope to see you there. Okay, welcome back. The pain continues. Let's get into some more travel mistakes. This one is from our coworker, John. Uh, John says, "Many years ago I was traveling solo around Southeast Asia and trying to save every penny possible. While in Cambodia, I decided it would be smart to save about $20 by taking a bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh and then onward to Sihanoukville.
Nailed it.
I rehearsed this all morning.
Dear listener, I watched Gunner practice Sihanoukville about 20 times right next to me- Oh ... and still he fumbles it.
And then onward to Sihanoukville.
There you go ...
instead of just flying directly there. What was supposed to be a five-hour bus ride for the first leg ended up taking nearly 10 hours 'cause we kept making random stops to pick up more passengers along the way.
The bus was completely packed, had no air conditioning, and to make matters worse, the kid sitting next to me got sick and threw up in my lap. It was a very stinky, sweaty, painful ride around the countryside of Cambodia. Safe to say it would've been well worth the extra $20 to fly. John.
Oh, John. I feel like everybody who has lived the backpacking travel life had a moment like this.
They have some version of getting puked on a 10-hour bus ride where they're like, "All right, that's it. I'm done. This is not worth it." Uh, I think everybody should have a rule about what, what the dollar figure number is where you just say yes. And clearly for John, it was probably, like, $10 at the time It should have been 20.
It now is clearly 20 or more
It- but you need those moments in order to make that dollar figure go up.
You do. It's
important.
So
now, now John's number is $21. It always has been. Uh, but extra 20, he's flying next time, no doubt. All right, you got the next one from Jennifer.
Yeah, Jennifer wrote in, and let me just say, Jennifer understands how to craft a story and build tension.
So Jennifer wrote, uh, "A good mistake and one I sincerely hope to never repeat, that ki- the kind that starts without a care in the world and ends in a full-blown cardio workout I definitely did not sign up for. I consider myself a pretty experienced traveler. This did not reflect that." So Jennifer explains that, um, she and her husband were flying from Kerry in Ireland over to Frankfurt, uh, and she was 100% sure that her flight, that flight was departing at 4:00 PM.
You can guess where this goes, but let's let Jennifer tell the story. "I had simply decided this was true and did not verify it with anyone, not even myself. Apparently, past me thought future me needed some excitement." So they spend the morning, uh, driving around Ireland, walking on the beach, having a slow lunch, and then eventually around 1:00 PM, Jennifer decides, "You know what?
Let's check on the flight, make sure everything's okay." And she looks at it, and it is not at 4:00 PM. It is at 2:00 PM, in exactly 60 minutes. At that moment, Jennifer says, "Time stopped and panic took over. We were 40 minutes from the airport and still had to return the rental car." Doesn't sound like it was an EV.
Didn't make your mistake. "This was a Ryanair flight from the very small Kerry Airport. It was Tuesday, and the next flight was not until Thursday. There were no backup options, no later flights, just consequences. My husband somehow stayed totally cool and collected on our drive while I willed every other driver on the road to move out of our way."
They, uh, as they're on their drive, they watch the incoming plane come to land. Uh, fortunately, it wound up being delayed. They had got some help from the rental car agency to basically throw the keys over the counter and run. Got a very stern look and a, "You know you're really late, right?" from, uh, the Ryanair check-in agents, which I, I think they knew.
Um, so then Jennifer says, "Security let us rush through. We made it outside the boarding line. We even stood in line for about five minutes. Like we planned it. We absolutely did not. Honestly, I'm pretty sure my heart rate didn't return to normal until we landed back in Germany." "Moral of the story," Jennifer says, "Do not trust what's in your head when it comes to flight times.
Double-check, triple-check, maybe have a second human confirm it too. Don't be me unless you enjoy turning your relaxing vacation into an Olympic sprint event I think Jennifer shared all of the advice here. I'll just add, again, I think this is why something like TripIt or just the app TripIt is so good because it just lays it out so clearly.
Also, you know, we talk a lot about TripIt as well as Flighty. Flighty starts giving you push notifications, um, when your flight is coming up. Many airline apps do this too, I think now more than ever, but having several layers of protection to make sure you get these reminders, really, really smart.
The detail of your inbound plane landing over your head as you're still in the car driving in is just so stressful.
It's like, "Oh man, there, there she goes. I'm toast." But, uh, yeah, luckily you're at the Kerry Airport and you weren't at Dublin, uh, and you were able to, to push through there. Um, that's just such a good story. That's, uh, well-written, Jennifer. I, I was reading it just gripped the whole time. Nicely done.
Jennifer gets it.
All right. You've got Dana's story.
Yeah. So Dana shared about her worst travel mistake. She said, "I was all excited for the high point earning hotel I found on Rove." Rove is a travel booking and shopping portal where you can earn transferable miles. Uh, and this was in Paris. So she booked two nights at non-refundable dates in February.
Not in March, which is when she was actually going to Paris. She says, "In my defense, the calender d- calendar days of the week in February and March were the same because of February having exactly four weeks." So this must have been earlier this year- Yeah ... 'cause I think it was a, the perfect month.
Mm-hmm.
So Dana says, quote, "Anyway, using girl math, I had the option to, one, lose $650, or two, spend more money and book an additional trip and use those two nights in Paris. I took advantage of the Rove transfer bonus to Finnair at the time and transferred the points that I earned from the Paris hotel that I'd booked in error.
I then moved those to Qatar and combined with some of the other Avios I had from a canceled Iberia flight, found cheap point business class flights on Royal Air Moroc- Maroc to Casablanca. Ended up adding a six-night trip to Morocco, booking hotels mostly with points. Paid cash for cheap flight to Paris and got to use those two nights that I booked by mistake, and still had my trip to Paris the following month.
I turned my travel mistake into travel lemonade." This is next level sicko stuff. You, you screw up booking a hotel room by a full month, and you're, and mo- most normal people would just be like, "Well, there goes that." Dana says, "Yeah, I could go to Paris, uh, again for a second time in 30 days." Yeah. Well done.
Hard one to explain to your boss. It's like, "So, so you're going to Paris next month too? When is, when is this Paris trip?" It's both.
It's both. Yeah. Yes. The answer is yes.
Um, yeah, you call it girl math, I call it being a total sicko. Either way, huge respect, Dana. This is an awesome, awesome way to pull off a double trip.
Uh, there are no mistakes in travel. You could just book your way out of something, you know?
Uh, can you?
No, I can't. My mistakes are always crushing. Um, all right, Rachel sent us, uh, an email where she listed six different travel mistakes she made, but she was very short and pithy with all of them, so I'm gonna read them off.
Number one, Rachel says, "After-
Hang, hang on. Is this first to worst or worst to first?
This is just how she listed them out, so.
Maybe we'll decide.
We'll decide. All right. Uh, number one, "After a long international flight, I forgot my backpack with my passport, et cetera, on the Uber ride home. Luckily, we were able to contact the Uber driver and he came back to drop it off.
Gave him a good tip." Not bad. Happens, you know. Uber's luckily helpful with that sometimes. Number two, "Arrived in Germany only to discover that one of the main attractions we'd wanted to see wasn't open on Tuesday. We could have seen it on Wednesday, but it would have cost us an amazing hotel redemption, plus a few additional hundred dollars to change plans.
Next time." You had a similar story from our travel mistakes episode with, uh, that market in London. Mm-hmm. What was it called?
Borough Market.
Borough Market.
Yep.
Uh, number three, "Excited to try the San Diego Sapphire Lounge, my husband and I saved up our appetite only to discover that we didn't have access to that terminal, and there were no Priority Pass lounges in the terminal we were departing from.
Had to settle for overpriced airport food." A bummer. Not devastating, though, as far as travel mistakes go. We've all
been there
Number four, super excited for our first lounge experience. We arrived at JFK four-plus hours early, but then had to wait around until we could drop off our bags three hours before departure time.
I've been hit with this before.
That's a, that's a rough one. Another, another vote for the carry-on only when you can get a digital boarding pass and just walk through with your carry-on.
Yeah, we did this for, uh, when we flew ANA to Rome, we, I booked us, like, a six-hour layover at O'Hare so we could spend that whole time in the Polaris lounge, and then the ANA check-in desk opened, uh, very Japanese, exactly three hours before check-in.
Yeah. And we had to sit, uh, uh, on the What is it? The non-airside. What i-, what is that word? I'm gonna take that again.
Landside.
Landside. Whatever. We can keep- You nailed
it ...
we can keep it in. Uh, number five, not independently verifying our resort booking after using an OTA. We arrived in the Dominican Republic almost to be turned away.
That's a bummer.
Depending on how bad this, this went, this could be the worst one. So I, I tend to think we're going from, uh, least to worst here.
And then the last one, maybe the worst one, not realizing there would be an additional mileage fee for car rentals returned to a different location. That surprise added about 500 more to our rental car cost.
That's rough.
That's rough.
Yeah.
Probably should've known that one, not gonna lie.
But- Yeah. Rachel, everybody, read the fine print, especially for rental cars. I think you gotta read the fine print for everything, um, your flights, travel insurance. Rental cars, I don't know. I, I just feel like there are so many gotcha items in these policies and in these rental agreements that you really gotta read this, especially any time you're doing a one-way rental.
Uh, you just gotta check. So we, we've done a handful of one-way rentals and, you know, fortunately I had heard stories like Rachel and have just become, you know, pretty, pretty vigilant about reading through it and making sure, am I gonna get hit with some additional fee because I'm driving from Edinburgh down to Newcastle?
And that hasn't been the case so far, but it could've been.
Yeah, definitely. I just love that Rachel decided to write us with a travel mistake, and then she's like, "Oh yeah, and another thing." And then she went six more times with all of her travel mistakes.
You inspired people, I
think. I did. I did. Um, all right, this is, uh, this is a, a nice long story from Katie.
I'm gonna paraphrase lots of it because Katie went into lots of detail on this. But in spring 2014, Katie and her husband decided to take a last-minute road trip from Minnesota to California with a one and four-year-old. That's super aggressive. I
was gonna say, is that the mistake?
The plan was to drive through the night, Katie driving in the day and her husband overnight.
That is also... That is... I cannot imagine doing that. I've, I've done some overnight drives where we take, like, four-hour shifts and things like that, but just doing a full 12-hour overnight and a full 12-hou- I mean, that's, that's a lot of driving. In Colorado on a mountain pass, their brakes went out, as did the power to the car.
They had to pay double to fix it that afternoon and evening. During the fix, uh, the crews broke their AC unit, making for a very hot rest of the trip. Then as they left Colorado, they ignored a fill up with gas now sign 'cause they had two-thirds of a tank of gas. Well, in the middle of the night they nearly ran out of gas in the middle of the desert.
They had to call 911 and made it with inches to spare to the, the nearest gas station with 911 guiding them there Uh, finally, they arrived in California and their one-year-old started acting strangely. He had a loss in appetite, couldn't keep food down, was drooling a lot. He was also increasingly lethargic.
They went to the ER, and they waited a long time. Once they got into the room, the one-year-old all of a sudden got all of his energy back and started acting fine. The doctors told them to kick rocks and go home 'cause the kid was obviously okay. Katie begged the doctor to take an X-ray to see what was going on, and I'll let Katie's own words do the rest.
Quote, "When the X-ray tech came in and took my son and I back, techs are not supposed to reveal anything until they are read, but he says, 'Oh, wow, you gotta see this,' and calls me back to look at the unread scan that had just been taken. Yep, he swallowed something. My son had swallowed a nickel, we think, from the floor of the hotel room when we arrived.
Thankfully, it hadn't fully blocked his esophagus, so he could still breathe and, breathe and drink fine, but foods got caught and made him reflux. He had to be transferred to UCLA Hospital to have emergency surgery to remove the coin. We spent the night at the hospital, discharged the next day, and the next day was supposed to be our Disneyland birthday trip for my daughter's fifth birthday.
We left the hospital, went to a Target two blocks away, and purchased clean clothes, deodorant, and toothbrushes and went straight to Disney, spent the day there, and returned to ho- our hotel. We left the next day to return home to Minnesota. To this day, every time I tell this story, I cannot believe we ever thought of doing that trip again.
We have since done it twice." This was all about knowing bef- this was all before knowing about points and miles. A great ending to the story too.
Oh my go- Katie, that was a real journey. Such a journey. I, I c- I have to think, so this, this whole gauntlet of a trip happened in 2014. I don't f- I... If it were me, I wouldn't have been ready to share this story until a full decade and a half later, just to get over the emotional trauma of every twist and turn in this.
This is a lot.
The kid's 12 now
Hope he's not eating nickels
Yeah. Hope he got over his nickels thing. But the fact, going straight from an overnight at the hospital into Disney just warps my brain too. Just, that's, that's a lot of stress, a lot of tension.
A lot of, a lot of choices were made. Most of all, Katie, I'm really glad that your son is okay.
Yeah.
Please- That
was
a great story, Katie. Thank you ...
the, the moral of the story is don't eat nickels, I think.
All right, we have two more stories left. I'm gonna read one, you're gonna read one. Um, I've got Nita's here. Nita says, "My biggest travel mistake was getting what turned out to be a souvenir stamp in my and P2's passport from a cruise port, and then forgetting about it until five days before our TT Unicorn Alert flight to Brisbane, Australia, and then on to New Zealand."
If you don't know what a, a souvenir stamps are, like, non-official government stamps that sometimes for some reason can get into your passport that technically null and void your document. So if you get a souvenir stamp in your passport, by the letter of the law, it is now, now void. Like, it is an unofficial document.
Why is this a thing?
I don't know. I, it does not surprise me at all that someone at a cruise port just willy-nilly stamped in their passport. But if, i- unless it's an official government person, do not let anybody touch your passport. Um, so th- she says, "This caused a series of decisions. Do we get an emergency passport?
Would we get it in time? Would we have to get new visas with those new passports for Australia and New Zealand? Would we get those in time? Uh, would they be questioning why we're getting new visas so close before our trip? Would they take us into the back room for questioning if they saw it? Would we be denied entry?
How does that even work?" Um, she says, "OMG, the stress. We decided it was less risky and less costly to go with the, quote, 'damaged passports.' Spoiler alert, no human ever looked at our passports the whole trip, but yes, we're getting new passports ASAP." So they got really lucky that nobody flipped through their passport books, 'cause that does happen.
It, it does. I would say it's increasingly more common that everything is just digital and nobody's actually ... I mean, even the people who are, you know, at, at the border of certain countries that haven't digitized everything, many of them are not actually flipping through passport pages to see where you've been.
Obviously in areas of major conflict, um, like, uh, many places throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa, there's still a lot of that. But by and large, I think you could get away with this. Moral of the story, don't get your passport stamped at a cruise port. That's just, that's a, a, yeah, I, I ... Why is that a thing?
I honestly- That's, that's the big thing here for me. Yeah.
I honestly didn't know about it. I had to look it up, but, um, apparently it is a thing, and it causes people to have, like, null and void documents all the time because of these, like, souvenir stamps. Just don't do that. Don't do that.
Just get another fake passport if you want your fake stamps.
That's right. All right, Kyle, you've got Melissa's.
All right. Melissa and her husband are rounding this out. Uh, she wrote in saying, "We were lucky to spend six weeks driving around New Zealand, which lends itself to bouncing around to different accommodations every few nights. We stayed in at least 12 different places."
This sounds like one of our Amazing Race style trips, Gunnar. "But I have forgotten some." As we were driving into Rotorua-
Nailed
it. You think so?
I think so.
Okay. Well, w- Melissa, let us know. Uh, it was my job as navigator to put the exact address of our vacation rental into whatever navigation app we used back in the Stone Ages.
I said to my husband, "This one's on Airbnb, right?" And then he said, "No, it's on Booking." Not a good sign. Since full-time travel is an all-hands-on-deck operation, it turns out we had both booked a place for our four nights in Rotorua. Neither owner was willing to cancel entirely, but after many messages, we m- convinced one host to only charge us for the first night.
First of all, that's great. Glad that they only got charged for one night instead of four on this double booking. The moral of the story of a lot of these is TripIt is amazing. Yeah.
It actually is.
Because then you get to look through the trip. I mean, e- every single time we book something, I do two things.
One, I forward it to plans@tripit.com, whatever confirmation email I get, and two, I forward it to my wife so that she can do the same thing or I can just invite her to my ongoing trip on TripIt, whichever, whichever path you wanna take. Either way, after that, you get to pull up TripIt and go through the entire itinerary of your entire trip and see what you have booked, and it can kinda highlight gaps or it can say, "Do we have this place booked for Rotorua?
No, we don't. We need to go and book that. Yes, we do. We're good." Uh, yeah, it's just such a good app, and, uh, a lot of the logistics of planning travel and the mistakes that people can and do make, this solves a lot of them.
Yeah, it does. This, this is not a sponsored episode by TripIt, but it very well should be.
Uh, we should probably reach out to them, see if they'd like
it. They should really start, like, a na- nationwide advertising campaign about how to save you from yourself.
Yeah, right.
You could be the spokesman.
I could. I could. TripIt has saved me many ti- I mean, my travel mistakes episode could've been three and a half hours if it weren't for TripIt, so.
But yeah, a lot of the... I mean, this is, this is also funny that, that both people in the relationship are so committed to, uh, being the travel booker that they're double booking things. I just, I w- I laughed out loud when I thought of the idea of my wife booking a hotel for us while we're traveling.
Yeah, I, it is a, uh, a different dynamic.
I feel like e- everybody I know, including, you know, myself and my wife, I, I book the stuff. Or, or if she, she plans a trip for us, she books everything. It's, it's kind of one or the other. Having, like, both sides of that Venn diagram overlap a little bit in who's booking stuff is an interesting dynamic.
It is.
I don't know if it's easy... I, I don't know if it's easier to share the workload or if it's easier for just someone to take it so you don't end up with, uh, duplicates like this, but, uh, Melissa, thank you for sharing your story there. Uh, Kyle, overall thoughts on our list of travel mistakes. Are these, are these people better or worse travelers than I am?
Do I have to answer? Is this my on the spot for this week?
No, it's not on
the spot.
Okay. I have a different on the spot for you.
No, y- you know what? I, with the, with the exception of, like, some scary circumstances where you have to bring somebody to the hospital on a gauntlet of a road trip, I think all of these are innocent.
And, you know, what we talked about on that episode is you just gotta take these things and learn from them. And I think everybody here is, is at least at a point where they're ready to, A, cop to this stuff, as we both were a couple of weeks ago, and B, have figured out what to do to make sure s- something like this doesn't happen again, especially if it ended up costing you a lot of money.
Yeah. And a lot of these had, had good, uh, silver linings at the end, um, like our friend, I, I believe it was... Was it Dana who just booked a second trip, uh, when she accidentally booked the wrong trip and-
N- nobody won more than the boyfriend who got put up at the Kensington- Kensington ... while his, his marathon-running girlfriend was at a Marriott in South Kensington.
That's, that's an amazing... That's the big winner of this show.
Yeah, it is. It's really, really good. And of course, my father-in-law, Rick, who got the dinner that he wanted in the end anyway.
And still got to roast you for a second time on the podcast.
That's right. That's, that's, uh, thanks for picking up the check on that dinner, Rick, and your payment in return is you getting to roast me on my own podcast.
That's a pretty good trade.
Yeah, it's a good trade for me.
Yeah.
I'll tell you what. All right, let's do on the spot to close the show, as always, and I'm putting Kyle on the spot. Kyle, is there a travel mistake that you fear the most? Is there anything you're hypervigilant about or terrified of happening?
Like, what is the travel mistake that looms large over you when you plan things and are executing travel?
There, there are two that come to mind immediately. The first and one that I triple, quadruple check for is booking flights on the right date. And I do that just by checking the dates, remembering that Europeans display dates a little bit differently.
But then also, again, loading everything into TripIt and then seeing if I, if I screwed something up, if I booked something on, you know, June 4th instead of April 6th, for example, it's gonna show that immediately because it's just not gonna show up in the queue or it's gonna show that there's a conflict with this.
So that's one of the big ones. The other one is just forgetting to bring the right travel credit cards that I need based upon what flights I booked and what cards I booked them on because if something goes wrong, I, I really want to have those with, or if I, you know, booked a hotel through Fine Hotels & Resorts on an Amex Platinum card, I do need to have that card or at least another Amex card with me at check-in.
And you know, the system where, you know, we both have slim wallets and it fits, you know, six to eight cards, it does take some juggling, and I, I am a little bit, I know it's only a matter of time before I screw that one up. Yeah. Hopefully that doesn't involve leaving my ID.
Yeah. Hopefully not. The, the ID getting stuck to the back of the credit card is also such a crazy detail from that one.
It's like I've, I've been there, that paranoia of swapping cards out.
My, my wife saved me from a huge mistake when we went to England a c- uh, last year when we rented a car. And, you know, as I was doing this wallet dance of taking things out and putting things back in, I was like, "Well, I've got my passport so I don't need an ID."
She's like, "We're renting a car. You do need to show that you're licensed to operate a vehicle." I was saying, "Oh yeah, good one. Thanks, honey."
Good call. Oh, that's a good one. Those are both really good. I think mine, uh, I'm, I book extremely long layovers. I'm terrified of missing flights, especially when I'm unprotected, um, when I'm not following the Trojan rule.
Uh, I, I did the same thing for like bus to plane transfers for this Italy trip. Like we have some really, really long layovers, and my wife and I are good at killing time together. We're, we're just fine, uh, bellying up to some bar and, and enjoying each other's company. But, uh, we, I really just the idea of missing a flight terrifies me.
I don't, I don't wanna mess with that. So that one is usually what I hyper protect myself against. Um-
I th- I think I'm irrationally confident about breaking the Trojan rule and still being okay.
You are, you are, and it hasn't burned you yet.
It hasn't. It is also only a matter of time, but I'm just not, not concerned about it.
Well, this ties into what Dan wrote us. Uh, and Dan sent us a message, uh, right after the, the Travel Mistakes podcast, and he said, "I love the show. I just finished listening to the Biggest Mistakes podcast, and it reminded me of my now favorite Gunnar Olsen quote," which is a wild thing to hear out in the wild.
Uh, it wasn't from this show, but it was from sometime earlier. The quote was, now I'm quoting myself I like to think that my biggest mistakes are ahead of me. Dan said he loves that mindset, and it's similar to what you just said, Kyle. All of our biggest travel mistakes are ahead.
You know what? At the end of the day, we are both dipshits, so it's gonna happen.
There's gonna be more mistakes, and we'll talk about them into these microphones.
Uh, and that's it for, uh, Rick's dipshit son-in-law and dipshit Kyle. Thank you so much for listening to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Rate us five stars in your podcast platform of choice. Like and subscribe to the show on YouTube, and send this episode to someone you know who has made worse travel mistakes than you have.
If you have feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com. We'd love to hear from you there. Kyle, tell us about the team.
This episode was produced by your favorite host and Rick's favorite or least favorite son-in-law. Rick, hit me up, kyle@thriftytraveler.com. I need to know. Gunnar Olsen.
It was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas and edited by Kyle Thomas. Our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot. See you next time.
See ya.