Thai Coach Adventure
On holiday in Thailand, me and girlfriend decide to take the "VIP coach service" offered by the nice people at Bangkok station to the South to catch a boat. They seemed so very nice and respectable at the time.

Stage 1: Wait to be picked up by coach with fellow smelly backpackers, keep waiting ... wait a bit more. Coach arrives and drops us off at mystery location still in Bangkok, (suspicions are aroused at this point), another wait, and drop off later we are on the actual "VIP Coach" mentioned above. It is now midnight.

Stage 2: Coach departs. Begin to notice discrepency between descriptions of "VIP Coach" and actual coach. The air conditioning from hell, if hell were in antarctica, in space, with liquid nitrogen in your pants.

Stage 3: The journey begins in earnest. Fellow backpacker sitting behind seems to be having difficulty sleeping - this is expressed by placing legs over the top of our seats (one leg is covered with a bloody rag), he is a sleep-moaner. Thai clone of terminator movie comes on the "VIP Coach Entertainment System", there is no sound, movie contains sub Jean Claude Van Damme style acting, parts are clearly cut directly from Terminator.

Stage 4: Nearing completion. Coach stops unexpectedly in the middle of Thai motorway at another mystery location, dark figures run across the motorway and seem to disappear into luggage compartment, the coach drives on. Exploring the situation while on journey to the bathroom (oh god no), the author discovers Thai tramps sleeping on luggage, thwarting the authors attempt to obtain thermal protection from air-conditioning as frost bite is setting in.

Stage 5: There is no stage 5. We arrive at boat, and escape "VIP Coach" of Doom forever.
(Mr_Rigby, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 16:21, Reply)

what's that f##kin' smell ?
Spin back quite a few years to my dim and distant yoof...I live in central jockland with my folks, grandparents nerby but a lot of aunts/uncles and cousins my age live way the hell up north past the snowline !

Summer trips to visit them somewhere between buttf#ck and Peterhead (nice village as I recall) consisted of us all getting into my gran's mustard yellow austin allegro 1300 with a 8track tape deck and an apparently limitless supply of Jimmy Shand, The Alexander Brothers and Sydney FU#KIN' Devine cassettes. To top it off she (my old gran was lovely BTW) used to go collect her milk every day from the farm up the road from her house, fresh from the dairy, barely moments from the udder and return it to her house in a little alloy pail-thing with a loose fitting lid. End result = very fresh, creamy milk slopping out onto the footwell of the car. The stench rising from the carpet after 5hours driving north with the windows closed (it's Scotchland remember - it was invariably pissing down !) is something that still lives with me...to this day I cannot stand rank milk - strong cheese can give me the boak even !

Sorry - no buses, alocohol, foreign travel to funny countries, illicit substances (unless you count the smell of that lairy milk) Quite dull now I look back over it but it's obviously left an impression on me !

Length, girth...bah !
(afaguslae look out ! wide load...., Fri 8 Sep 2006, 16:11, Reply)

Do I smell ?
Hmm had a few bad journeys,

there was the time I was flying over to see the girlfrind in America, I got on my third and final connecting flight... a 1 hour jounery and immediatly the american chap sat next to me stated "Ewww... think you need a bath don't ya ?" with a roll of the eyes and a sigh I started a converstaion that went sort of

ME:" So where you off to today then sir ? just city hopping ? live here and just going there for the day ? wife just drop you at the airport ? "

HIM: "yeah ? what of it ? "

ME: "well thats nice, I myself have been travelling for 36 hours in hot aeroplanes and airports with no washing facilities so DO YOU THINK YOU COULD CUT ME SOME FUCKING SLACK its only an hour journey and then you never have to see me again you rude bastard"

I've spent plenty of time on uncomfortable trains and buses getting a numb arse and being bored.. I hate travelling now...

no apologies for length... you get what your given
(maxumus HEY!.... diddly dee, de de de de de de, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 16:01, Reply)

Antalya, Turkey, 1980
With my mum and sister, we get lost in the "old town". We screaming kids want to see the bones of father christmas in the museum. Mum can't find it anywhere.

Sister spots a taxi parked outside a house. We approach just a bloke comes out shouting rude stuff in Turkish over his shoulder and slams the ancient wooden door. The whole house literally shakes - you can see the shockwave wobble up and down the structure.

Anyway, as soon as he spots tourists his mood improves greatly and he scoots us into his banged-up slashed-seat no-seatbelts taxi. In next to no time we are on a dual carriageway/divided highway heading out of town, he then leans round to ask us where we are going.

My mum mentions the museum and he goes "OK. No Problem. Must turn right". We are still on the main road at the point, which makes a right turn difficult, so he swings over the central reservation and drives the wrong way down the road till he gets to the junction he wants.

He then executes a skid right turn into a tiny alley which has a donkey cart coming the other way. Luckily for donkey, there's only buildings on the left side, so we go up the banked earth to the side of the alley to get around it.

We shoot out the end of the alley and screech to a halt in the square outside the museum.

I'd like to say he then looked round and went "Ta-dah!", but he didn't. He'd already spent the entire journey facing us in the back asking questions about the UK. So he didn't need to look round.
( chthonic, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 15:50, Reply)

The longest I've ever stayed awake
was when I came home from Kenya in 1993. It wasn't a bad trip, but sleep deprivation does something to a person. Here's the tale:

I was in Kenya on a safari with the college I was attending. I cannot sleep sitting up. Never have. On the way there, we spent the night in Frankfurt, so that made a nice two-day trip with a full night sleep. However, we didn't have that luxury on the way back.

7:30 am: wake up. Spend all day shopping, getting ready to go to the airport to go back to the good ole US of A.

10:30 pm: plane leaves Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi. I spend the 8-hour flight to Frankfurt reading, smoking (ah, the good old days!) and imagining the flight attendant in "crash position." Almost got the nerve to wank in the lavatory, but not quite. We land with 23 hours of no sleep.

6:30 am: Land in Frankfurt. Spent the next 8 hours people watching, looking at the shops and certainly not sleeping. I can't sleep unless things are dark and quiet. Yes, picky I know, but up to hour 31 now.

2:00 pm: Plane leaves for the 8 hour flight to Chicago. Again, not only am I sitting up, it is broad daylight out, and "Honeymoon in Vegas" is showing on the movie screen. No sleep, we touch down with 39 hours awake.

4:00 pm: Modern travel! 8 Hours of afternoon! We have to quickly catch a flight to Minneapolis, so no rest there.

5:30 pm: With about 41 hours of no sleep, the plane leaves Chicago for the one-hour flight to Minneapolis.

7:00 pm: After getting our bags, a van from the college picks us up for the 4-hour ride back to our college in Wisconsin.

8:30 pm: Finally pass out with exhaustion somewhere in the wild north woods between Minneapolis and Duluth.

Total count: 44 hours without sleep!
( setimret likes his metaphors mixed, not stirred, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 15:40, Reply)

Across Europe with no brake lights
When I was 7, my family drove to Switzerland on holiday. As you do.

Shortly after leaving, the brake lights and indicators blew a fuse. We tried to get to get this fixed several times between Edinburgh and Felixstowe, determined not to leave the country with faulty lights. Various mechanics and AA men had a go but every time they fixed it, the fuse blew again.

So there we were, driving several hundred miles across Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France and Switzerland using hand signals. In a British car, driving on the right - my mum's friend had to do the signals out of the passenger window whenever instructed.

At our campsite in Lauterbrunnen we met a Scottish mechanic who offered to fix it - but still it blew again.

So off we went again, hundreds of miles back to the ferry, flapping arms out of the passenger window again.

We called the AA again the moment we were back on British soil. We had relay membership and my mum, being totally fed up of driving anyway, decided we would exploit that and get a free tow back from Felixtowe to Edinburgh. She argued it wasn't safe to drive without our lights, and nobody could fix them.

The plan was scuppered when the AA man fixed them. Just like that. Two weeks worth of other mechanics hadn't managed when we really wanted them to, and he did it when we really didn't want him to.

I think my mum spent most of the drive back to edinburgh cursing every time she saw an AA van.

For the record, if anyone cares, the problem was caused by a new reverse light which had been wired the wrong way round. Bet you're glad you asked...
(Eldred, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 15:38, Reply)

Trying to get home from Birmingham is more difficult than it at first may seem...
It was a warm summer's evening in the Midlands, and a few mates and I had been on a pub crawl in Birmingham for my birthday. Most of us being a little the worse for wear after the 8 million or so units of alcohol we had collectively consumed, around 10.30 we decide that perhaps it might be an idea to find out when the last train back to Worcester leaves, so we despatch a team to find out the train times, while we go and buy some beer to make the train journey back more enjoyable (from Marks and Spencers no less, as it was the only place selling beer to take away we could find).

On their return our recon team have two lots of bad news - firstly that we have to walk to Moor Street station to get the train (and no-one knows where the fuck that is), and also that we have to get a bus at Stourbridge back to Worcester. It wasn't necessarily going to ruin the evening, but these were the first warning signs that a journey that is supposed to take a maximum of 45 minutes could take rather longer.

After being accosted by a drunken port-swilling tramp who quizzed us on Geography ("What's the capital of London??") and actually as it turns out losing this quiz (our drunken minds thought the capital of Israel was Tel-Aviv, kudos to tramp for setting us straight on that one) we got on the train. Most of this journey was spent drinking the aforementioned beer, and calling our other friend to keep him awake and give him a mission to find out where we could buy more alcohol when we finally got back. This continued on the bus.

All was well until the bus stopped and dropped us off. now we were fairly drunk by this point but even our alcohol-soaked brains could tell that we were not in Worcester, no, the bastards had dropped us off in Droitwich of all places as "they had used all their driving hours up" - they didn't tell us how they were managing to drive themselves home without using any hours, some sort of time machine rigged up in the luggage section i imagine, but they assured us a taxi would pick us up.

20 minutes later and a taxi picks up some of the people from the bus, another 20 minutes and another taxi turns up. There are 6 of us, and only 5 spaces in the taxi, so we send off half our party (with my other half, and instructions to get in supplies in time for our return), and gallantly wait in the cold for the nxt taxi to arrive.

And wait some more.
And some more.

After entertaining ourselves for a while by drawing a mural of the two towers getting hit by a plane in the condensation on a nearby car, i decide to find out where our taxi is as it is now approaching 2 in the morning. I won't go into details but I'll just say I'm sorry to the people working the late shift at National Rail Enquiries, while not the most helpful of call centre staff, they probably didn't deserve the abuse hurled their way that night and we did eventually get our taxi.

At almost 3am we rounded off the evening by drinking half a bottle of rum and pretending to be Pirates by shouting "aaargh" before downing each shot.

Apologies for length, but i wanted to make the story as pointlessly long-winded as our 4-hour train, bus and taxi journey of approximately 30 miles...
(caitlinbree, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 15:30, Reply)

'nuff said
falkland isles ...
16hrs cattle class...
( wierdo was bored @, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 15:16, Reply)

Warrington to Oxenholme
At the tender age of 15 I had to catch a train from the magical town of Warrington to Oxenholme.
I borded the train and found myself a comfy seat and sat down.

At this point i'm joined by an ex smackhead who spends the next hour regailing me with stories of how he has been cold turkey for the last two weeks and the living hell that it is, but he confessed he doesn't feel the need to stab people anymore.

I love Warrington.
(A bit Manchester, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 15:16, Reply)

Laos Air
Internal flight on a Laos Air Plane; A Chinese copy of a Russian plane no less. Scared? Damn Right!
(set_phasers_to_alkie, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 15:13, Reply)

I knew we should have walked
Bound for Spain for a week of hedonism on something like Sleazyjet before it was invented. Boarded the plane to find our seats were directly in front of a group of dangerously refreshed Scousers one of whom had a frigging guitar. Fantastic! Two hours of musical comedy from this bunch of tossers. Sure enough the poor cow who was doing the “if we crash you’re fucked speech” was heckled with witty one liners like “please extinguish your drinks” and couldn’t get sat down quick enough. It was going to be a long flight.

A bit into the flight just as I was wondering how many of them I’d have to kill to make a jail sentence worthwhile (I decided on 5) there’s a tug on my sleeve and my mate points to floor level smoke working it’s way down the plane towards the pointy end. Cue frantic attempts to get stewardess’ attention to point out a very bad thing without sending the plane into a Airplane movie style frenzy. Stewardess spots it before we get chance to tell her. Runs to the back and then to the front, presumably to tell the driver. We’re quite worried as are those around us but at least it’s shut the Scousers up.

Captain informs us that there is a “technical issue” with the plane and we are going to make an “unscheduled stop”. Plane returns groundwards at a speed akin to an anvil being dropped out of a window. We land at a Portugese military base who were really pleased to see us and remain there for the next 20 hours with fuck all to do apart from be stared at by swarthy looking psychos with uniforms and automatic weapons.

Eventually another plane comes to pick us up and it turns out that the smoke was because someone burnt the lunch in one of the ovens!! I still hold the Scousers responsible and have never been to Spain since. Or Liverpool for that matter. Nothing to do with the plane fire just one of those things.

Apologies for the length but I am rather excited and pleased to see you.
(Opus_O_Rama, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 15:06, Reply)

School transport
Worst journey, every week day morning, to school, with my emo tainted daughter -it's me that needs the fookin razor blades not her.
(DebbiedoesdowntownDerby DDDTD last time was paid for sex 2 minutes ago, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 14:43, Reply)

Flying from Birmingham to Tunisia
Plane takes off, we were in the air for about twenty minutes, when the captains voice came over the intercom.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have to announce that there is a problem with the plane"

Cue increase in heart rates, worried glances and whispers throughout the passengers. I put my arm around my girlfriend, frantically preparing my last words - all the things I had wanted to tell her before we plummeted to our death.

"There is no hot water in the galley and therefore tea and coffee will not be available on this flight."
( prem1um is full of life, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 14:38, Reply)

*props to thatblokeoverthere*
I feel your pain - your story made me weep like a bitch.

I travelled to the Emerald Isle with my girlfriend of the time some years ago. We thought we would take the scenic route from Birmingham to Holyhead by train and cross the Irish Sea from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire via the super-speed-of-light-ferry-on-stilts-catamaran.

Train was pretty cool on the way, apart from stopping at one hundred million small coastal villages in Wales to let all the old people off. Got to Holyhead and the Irish Sea looked rough. "Nippy" as one of the ferry staff put it. When I was a kid, I would travel on the Portsmouth - Caen ferry all the time and absolutely loved every minute, so was kinda looking forward to the crossing.

Dreams.
Childhood.
Shattered.

While the catamaran negotiated its way out of the port, we had a quick look around. The boat was non smoking apart from a small 10ft by 10ft caged balcony at the rear. We both had a cigarette and were joined by thirty Irish truck drivers/farmers all smokin' the bejaysus out of their fags. Out of port and into the sea my stomach suddenly looped the loop and the blood drained from my face.

"I'll be back in a sec" I mumbled to my girlfriend and ran for the gents.

Most ferry toilets arent four star W.C.s at the best of times but I really didnt give a shit at that moment, booted open a cubicle door and fell to my knees. My projectile vomiting lasted for a good 20 minutes or so. Its all over, I thought. My head spinning, I stood up gingerly and my stomach and legs just gave way again. I spent the whole two and a half hours of the journey with my head pressed against the cool inside of the toilet bowl, sweating, willing it all to stop, going through all three stages of vomiting: food, liquid, stomach lining.

I think I may have even started believing in God at some point. It was like a time lapse film, me stuck in the same position while people came in and out of the toilets quickly.

We finally docked and I came out a broken man, three stone lighter. The experience gave me a traumatic fear of ferries (edit: another story to come) and my travel sickness lasted a long time. A couple of recent Dover-Calais trips have since helped overcome that, but by God, I wont ever travel to Ireland by boat again.

Not quite seven and a half hours, I know, but one fucking bad journey
( prem1um is full of life, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 14:27, Reply)

Talk about bad timing ...
MeColleagues and I were going on a work outing to IBC in Amsterdam. Sadly, our company (now bankrupt) were tightass Barstewards, so we had to buy our travel tickets and claim them back 'cos the company wouldn't pay up front.

One of MeColleagues said he'd buy all our tickets on his credit card as he had a high limit and got bonus points. We agreed.

Then someone parked a pair of airliners in the World Trade Centre.

MeColleague happens to be from Afghanistan. I have never seen so many pairs of Marigolds in one simple journey there and back. I was walking like John Wayne and re-packed my bags a good dozen times though Customs.

Girth, etc.
(Dionysian Aut viam inveniam aut faciam, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 14:06, Reply)

Worst Journey
Trying to insert a tampon on a train from Rotherham to someplace whilst the toilet door swung open to the busiest train you've ever seen.
(DebbiedoesdowntownDerby DDDTD last time was paid for sex 2 minutes ago, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 14:01, Reply)

Aeroflot's inflight gourmet meal
Back in the day, a friend and his missus travelled to Bulgaria on Aeroflot for a spot of skiing. Their inflight meal consisted of a lump of bread, a hunk of cheese and a nice big bottle of red wine. His wife wasn't a big fan of wine, so he drank both bottles in 2 hours, passed out and came to as the plane was taxiing into the airport. He had a great time, but his wife was a bit pissed off about the whole thing.
(ShockerMocker, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 13:58, Reply)

and the little one said roll over....
Worst ever has to be when I flew to Cancun, Mexico from Manchester.

We asked for 2 seats together and one aisle seat as my fella has freakishly long legs, but got two aisle seats next to each other.

So, Fella got to sit quite comfortably next to some little skinny ladies for the ten hour flight and I get stuck next to the biggest man in the world and his wife. He must have been 6ft 4ish and about 20 odd stone and the missus was a chubster too.

lovely couple just not the best to sit next to considering for 10 hours i sat leaning into the isle cuz I have no room especially when he fell asleep and lolled in my direction.

horrible back pain for a couple of days after mixed with sunstroke on the first day is not the best way to start off your hols!!!
(bectoria, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 13:49, Reply)

Looooong journey home
After our three months trip around India, we (me and my girlfriend) thought it would be nice to travel in a little luxury to get back to Mumbai from Udaipur (14 hour journey).
So, we chose to get ourselves an air-conditioned coach with free blankets. This sounded great becuase all the other coaches had been dry, sweaty, stinky, vomity and such... So at the very beginning of the Monsoon season we were already pissed through and wet and just wanting to get to Mumbai were we could change our tickets at the airport.

Turns out,the coach was shit, the air conditioning was shit - it was fookin freezing and the vents kept dripping freezing water onto us.
We didn't even get the blankets! So we were sat, damp and freezing in India!
The driver was driving like a maniac through the clouds of intense rain (he couldn't see five yards in front of him and was still driving at about 60mph)...

We finally arrive in Mumbai (to be greeted by even heavier, warmer rains...)

As we jumped off the Coach (cold and wet), we stepped into the warm rain and was immediately set-upon by extremely eager rikshaw drivers, who ripped our rucksacks from our backs. One of the guys absolutely stank of alcohol and there was no way he was driving me and my girlfriend through the chaotic streets of mumbai in that weather. But he was relentless and only when I got him in a thumb-lock and my girlfriend threatened him with her umbrella, did he back down. We were very tired, angry, damp and my girlfriend was close to tears... We ended up arguing as we climbed into a slightly safer rikshaw and was then ripped off as he took us to the airport.

Then we spent about four hours waiting in the airport (our only pleasure was sneaking out for a sneaky joint - due to remembering we still had some green in our bags, which we quickly smoked).
But we had to throw the stuff away as a guard with a machine gun started to get suspicious!
We then hopped on a flight to Saudi Arabia and waited about five hours....

We noticed the airport had a bar! But we had very little money left and each pint cost a fiver or something ridiculous. That is where we then met up with cockney Dave. A cool as fuck geezah, who had over stayed his visa in Indonesia and had barely managed to slip through passport control and was quite happy at the fact he didn't have to pay £1000 fine or a year in some grubby jail. Anyhoo, he buys us loads of pints and thoroughyl tired and drunk we end up on our flight back to heathrow... arrive with a bastard hang over and almost hallucinating through lack of sleep... we neck down some coffee's and realise we have to find our way through the london underground (and take various buses which replaced cancelled tube's)... and then we have to wait another four or five hours before we could get a coach to Liverpool (with the very last of our money!)

Then the coach gets delayed and takes a few hours extra to get there... then we get picked up and taken back (hung-over, high from all the caffeine, jet-lagged, damp, tired, spaced and miserable) to a WELCOME HOME PARTY!!!! Yes, the very last thing we wanted to do was have a bloody party!

So after our 35 hour trip of no sleep etc... we ended up being persuaded to have a rather strong dose of LSD and some intensly strong skunk. Not a good idea.

I think we slept for something like three days afterwards.

How hardcore are we?

Length? Yes it was...
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 13:46, Reply)

the worst journey I've ever taken

is the one I'm on now - the journey from the cradle to the grave.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 13:41, Reply)

Mini - Madness
I hired the Motoring Club Mini once. Should have been suspisious when it was just £1 per day for members.

Two bucket racing seats with harnesses.
Engine requiers cold-start sprayed into the carb. to start it.

Driving down the motor way, Seb sitting next to me is watching the bonnet bounce up and down and wonders if I've thought about what to do when the it flies open and we can't see out the front windshield.

I had thought about it. Alot.

After a nice days diving, cable tying the hood down and starting it in the rain, the lights don't turn on.

Found the switch after a while, but now we don't have any indicators. Nevermind, we'll wave.

Rain continues.
Windshield wipers don't work well.
Footwell begins to flood.
Articulated lorries try to kill us.

Gearbox makes odd noises when you try to put it in 5th gear (found out later that mini's don't have a 5th gear. Thus the odd noises)

Highlight of the trip was negotiating Marble Arch roundabout by waving our hands out the windows.

Found out that while looking for the headlight switch, we got turned the switch for the hazard lights. That didn't work. But the switch did override the indicators though.

Haven't hired it since.
(Squash, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 13:20, Reply)

calgacus...
...exactly the reason my cubicle door remained locked the entire time :D
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 13:19, Reply)

1 wedding and a car crash
The day after my best friend's wedding, me and the birdman were driving up to my mum and dad's on the M1.

Cue horrendous 6 car pile up only metres in front of my heavily hungover eyes.

Imagine the scene. A two hour wait in midday heat, amid death, mayhem. I had to keep my door shut to stop the sick fuckers walking up through the traffic to see what had happened from bumping into my door every 6 seconds. None of this helped my situation.

After we got to my mum and dad's I did count myself lucky to still be alive. Didn't stop me from overindulging at weddings though (although at least everyone always remembers you)
(birdwoman pissed herself at least once on, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 13:09, Reply)

3 days
One family holiday myself my sister, mum, dad AND MY NAN all packed up the car and set sail for abroad.
We were in a Ford Explorer which although big wasnt half cramped with 5 people and 5 peoples luggage.
6 hours in San Gottard Pass (excuse the spelling
Nearly threw the old spinster out going over the swiss mountains i tell the.
Took us 3 days to get to the bottom of the old boot that is Italy. 3 days of my nan reading out every sign we passed. Even when she was asleep she offended me with her mouth-breather snoring.


but Vesuvius is lovely
(Legs 11 last got some loving on, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 13:09, Reply)

Ferry bad, ferry bad
I refer the honourable reader to the answer I gave some QotWs ago.
( calgacus Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 12:54, Reply)

driving to london down the M1.
in a battered old beige metro, when i start to slowly overtake a wooden framed morris traveller driven by a pensioner with i presumed his wife in the passenger seat, doing about 45mph.

Not having much more power and going up a long hill, this takes some time, and as i'm just about level with them, something in their drivechain siezes solid and their car stops literally dead in the slow lane. Unfortunately the lorry tailgating them doesnt, and goes practically through the car, crushing it to matchwood, inches away from my car, showering it in bits of debris.

I pull over, and have to hang around for the next few hours while the Fire Brigade retrieve the bodies, the Police take statements and I'm treated for shock.

Fortunately, the Fire Brigade hosed down the side of my car to remove the bits of pensioner adhered to it...

Yeah, that was a shit journey, but not as shit as theirs...
(dieselmonkey, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 12:48, Reply)

Just to be original, a National Express story
I will warn you in advance that this story probably isn't going to be funny. It's a story about a journey too boring to be funny but if you still read this and feel shortchanged, consider yourself lucky that it only wasted one minute of your life rather than 10 hours.

I have been on a National Express coach once and I will never go on one again. Edinburgh to Manchester. Via Glasgow.

My journey started with a 30 mile journey to get to Edinburgh in the first place so I'd gone through a bit of my boredom reserves by the time I met up with my travelling companion Barry at Edinburgh bus station.

Still, we were on our way to a few days visiting our friend Andy for his 21st and we were going to have a great time, nothing a little bus journey could get in the way of. However, even though our spirits were high we realised quickly that 3 things were going to ruin our journey.

Firstly, it's a long distance to travel when you're going on a slow ass bus and there just isn't enough leg room. I felt really bad for Barry who's over 6'.

Secondly, for those lucky enough not to have endured a long distance National Express coach, here's the deal. There are two drivers who take it in turn to (a) drive and (b) be the worst, most irritating compere/half-assed comedian/letch on the planet. Within 30 minutes my mate and I were describing fantasies of standing up and shouting "Shut the f*** up already! I don't want to hear your suggestive comments over the intercom about how you'd show that 50 year old, Michelin woman in the third row a good time."

Finally, and worst of all we made the mistake of sitting one row from the back seat. Right next to the chav family from hell.

Like when Super Nanny "observes" the latest contestants of Britain's Worst Parents, we could see what we were in for within 2 minutes. The parents had no desire to controls their little brats and just ignored them. This resulted in shouting, throwing, fighting and general "Mummy, mummy, look at me. Look at meeeeee. You're not looking!"

The two things I remember most of this journey was when one of the little cherubs was acrobatically dangling upside-down off the seat by their legs and shouting something. I ignored it while praying that somehow the bus would turn or go over a bump and they'd fall off (don't worry, I bought my ticket to Hull long ago). But the most unbelievable thing was when on the back seat of the bus the dad of Damian's cousins started rolling a joint. Barry and I were just looking at each other in disbelief. At one of the breaks in the journey waiting outside he started smoking it and I remember Barry saying, "Go on, ask him if he's got a spare."

So we get to Manchester Airport hours later, absolutely drained and we're waiting to be picked up by our mate. Ten minutes late and he's still not arrived. It wasn't until a while later that I realised that I'd told them the wrong terminal number. Barry was not happy with me.

So there you go we found our friend eventually and we had a great weekend. I've bored the b3tan community once again with my poor, poor story telling but I don't care. My message is clear - don't go on a National Express coach. It will finish you off.
( djtrialprice, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 12:30, Reply)

Ferry from Liverpool to Dublin (LENGTH WARNING)
Here's another one I'd forgotten about. My fellow B3TAns seem to have a knack for awakening buried memories - only problem is I buried them for a reason :)

So, my then-GF and I along with a mate and his yank exchange student GF were going to go to Dublin to soak up the atmosphere, not to mention the guinness, for a couple of days. Living close to Liverpool, we decided the best (read:cheapest) way to get there would be via the ferry that departed from the Mersey. Not being informed of anything but an uneventful journey, we boarded and headed straight for the bar to get a head-start on our planned shamrocky goodness.

Oh my.

It transpired that the sea was unusually rough that day but blissfully unaware for the moment, we downed one round before we even left the Mersey. We passed into the Irish Sea as I was partway through my second and I began to feel a little queer. The sway on deck became quickly more noticable and 5 minutes later I regurgitated my last gulp back into my glass. With profuse apologies for my understandably grossed-out companions I headed for the gents, seeing a fair few others looking a little green on the way. I took some comfort in the fact that I wasn't the only sea-pussy on board.

I took a cubicle and quickly rid myself of the contents of my stomach, but it didn't end there. Oh no. Not for SEVEN FUCKING HOURS. The crossing is meant to take something like two-and-a-bit, but instead I stayed in that cubicle for SEVEN FUCKING HOURS, leaning againt one wall as the bow pitched up over one wave, and then bracing myself against the other as it hit the sea again with an audible and quite disturbing 'BONG!' All the while, every time, I puked up more and more of this disturbing purple stuff into the bowl. Despite the fact that I'd had about a pint-and-a-third, it was like being insensibly drunk - head spinning, guts churning, don't dare close your eyes for fear of feeling even worse etc - for SEVEN FUCKING HOURS - not nice at all.

Every few seconds I heard the door to the gents open, admitting another poor fucker who was feeling just as badly as I did. My mate came in at some point to throw up, after which he cried out '*thatbloke*! You in here mate?' to which I replied 'Present, and fucking wishing I wasn't' He chuckled and said he'd assure the missus that I hadn't fallen off the boat. He checked on me a few more times to make sure I was conscious at least, probably at her urging, bless her :)

Finally, after about SEVEN FUCKING HOURS, the ride started to calm down a bit and so did my guts. I composed myself and left my self-imposed confinement. It seemed that the cubicle I was in ended up being the cleanest spot on the boat. In the gents and outside it, there was puke everywhere. In every corner, every litter bin, on the seats, on the floor - the entire boat stank of it.

I found my friends shivering in a corner seat near the middle of the boat, all very pale with dark circles around the eyes, all muttering things along the lines of 'Get me off this fucking boat right now', aside for my mate's GF who kept repeating 'One way or another my parents are gonna wire me the money to fucking fly back to England - I'm never doing that again'

As we got off the boat, we saw a massive line of people waiting to board with impatient looks on thier faces. I felt sorry for them for a moment until I realised that they were transferring thier annoyance to myself and my fellow passengers, as if we were somehow responsible for the SEVEN FUCKING HOUR puke-fest we had just undertaken. So I approached a fiftysomething couple at the front of the queue, watching thier faces change as they realised that I, along with everyone else disembarking, reeked of vomit and simply said 'Bon voyage'. I grinned at hearing the urgent muted chattering that started up as I walked away.

Needless to say, we spent the entirety of the first night in the hostel and were asleep before 10pm - couldn't face a bite or a gulp, any one of us. The next two nights we felt much better and proceeded to have the good time we should have from the start. We did get the ferry back in the end, and following the example of a few canny travellers on the previous crossing, we all took a shitload of dramamine and lay down on the floor for the entirety of the journey back. The crossing was far lighter that time, but we were taking no chances.

I'll say it once more - SEVEN FUCKING HOURS :(
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 12:16, Reply)

Northern Rail
The 18.29 from Leeds to Harrogate has been late every weekday for the last six months, They don't care. I pay £120 a month for my fvcking season ticket.
(frankspencer, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 12:01, Reply)

oh and
christmas 1999. coach driving us back from liverpool to manchester at 5am. driver was in a tremendous hurry as he had been booked for 2am but had been bribed to stay and wait for us with enormous quantities of cash. he was therefore trying to get out of there as quickly as possible.

so we're all hammered, swigging from the stolen spirits bottles, singing, dancing in the aisles and generally twatting around. the stinky french cleaner fell on the sleeping managing director's knee, who in his stupor wrapped his arms around the cleaner's putrid waist. the cleaner waved his arms and legs around like an ugly overfed insect but he was trapped.

anyway, the lanky, hideous ginger virgin of a trainee plumber found this so funny that he needed to piss. so he headed into the toilet. after about 30 seconds, during which we could all hear him pissing like a racehorse despite the drunken cavorting around him, the coach lurched around a corner.

lanky hideous ginger virgin fell backwards out of the toilet, white cock in hand, and pissed an arc of golden piss over everything in sight as he landed on his back in the aisle.

poor, poor colleagues on the left of the coach. happily i was on the right side so i found it hilarious.

hmmm. yet another of my stories featuring a foul and incontintent beast. however, i didn't shag this one - yay for me.
( rachelswipe with a fork, Fri 8 Sep 2006, 11:20, Reply)