8 countries visited, 54 cities/towns explored, 14 flights taken, and thousands and thousands of miles traveled.

Your girl was even able to explore some of her very own Ontario which, let me tell you, was way overdue.

When I look back on 2019, I feel so blessed.

Taking a look at all the things I accomplished and all the places I visited, it’s hard to find words to describe how humble I feel.

It truly was an amazing year.

If you caught my highlight reel on Instagram, you probably saw all the places I traveled to and my favorite moments from each country and city visited. 

I took a whirlwind trip that lasted about 2 months and traveled about 3 other weeks on top of that.

To some, that may not seem like a lot, but to me, it was! It was way more than I’ve ever traveled any other year.

Now obviously when you’re traveling for that length of time, things are bound to happen.

Things are going to go wrong and today, I’m spilling it all out in this post.

I’ll be doing the opposite of my IG highlight reel.

This is my low-light reel.

My favorite travel blogger theblogabroad.com’s Glo, suggested instead of highlighting all the good things that happened, shed some light on the things that went wrong in the year.

I actually thought it was a really clever idea and so I went ahead and made a list of all my mishaps.

And there was A LOT of them.

I decided not to talk about all of them (because we’d be here forever!) but to choose 11 things that I thought topped the list.

Travel is awesome, not everyone is able to do it and for that, I am incredibly thankful.

However, I definitely would have loved avoiding some of these things listed below.

So let’s get into this.

These are listed in the order that they occurred but some of them were equally devastating.

So here goes!

My 11 top travel mishaps of 2019

***

11. I went to the Dominican for a destination wedding and I came home with vertigo.

Yup, you heard me right. My boyfriend and I had gone on a day trip to the beautiful island of La Saona.

It was an all-inclusive trip, so you know what that meant, food and drink was included.

Now Shylo on an all-inclusive means Shylo always has a drink in her hand. For some reason, my tolerance is always higher when I’m on vacation. I’m not sure why, but let’s not question this beautiful thing!

Despite my higher tolerance levels, I either had one too many drinks, or that rum punch was way stronger than it tasted.

On the way back to our resort, I felt that the contents contained in my stomach were about to make an appearance. Instead of being that girl, I layed down on the back nets of the catamaran, and slept the entire way back.

Surprisingly, I felt revived when the boat docked, which was great. However at dinner that night, I couldn’t stomach the food. I also felt like I was on a moving boat that was swaying genlty in the water. I chalked it up to the fact that we’d simply been on a boat the majority of the day.

At the end of the week when I got home, the sensation never went away. In fact, it increased.

I decided to see a doctor and after some tests, I found out that I’d caught a virus and that virus was causing me to have vertigo.

It was horrible.

I couldn’t take time off work to recover because I didn’t have any sick days left as I used it all to cover my big upcoming Southeast Asia trip.

Therefore, I had to go into work feeling like complete crap and like I was still living it up on the catamaran in the Islands.

You can be certain that I was the most unproductive employee those weeks back at work.

10. I lost my phone the first night in Chiang Mai

Only 5 days into my 2-month travels and our first night in Chiang Mai, I left my phone in the back of our airport transfer.

My brand new Google pixel 3 xl that I just got the month before and also went through hell just to get.

I was devastated, that was my brand new phone!

The camera on it was UH-mazing, plus it was my only way to communicate with my family back home and my boyfriend in France.

I honestly had zero hope that I would get it back but I have amazing friends who made call after call to the person that arranged our ride.

After a lot of back and forth, they finally got a hold of someone and we were able to meet them back at the airport.

I GOT MY PHONE BACK!

The relief was so freakin real and I vowed never to get out of a car again without first checking to make sure nothing was left behind.

9.  A failed hiking attempt to the mountain temple

My friend Sofhia and I decided to hike to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep from our Airbnb.

We’d looked at the route beforehand and saw that it would only take 2 hours to get there.

We set out wanting to reach the temple to watch the sunset engulf the city below, it was supposed to be a beautiful experience.

Following Google maps, we kept good pace walking along the sidewalk, then the sides of roads, through a lovely park, and were brought to the Chiang Mai zoo.

Double checking the map, it showed us we were supposed to pass through the zoo to get to the temple.

We tried asking the person at the booth and the security guard if they knew if it was the right way but they did not speak English at all.

Google was our trusted source, google had never (off the top of my head) steered me wrong before, so we paid the Baht (the currency in Thailand) to get into the zoo and continued along the path.

We climbed up some crazy inclines (why are the roads so steep in the dang zoo?!) till we came up to a seriously unmaintained path.

This path was throwing some super sketchy vibes our way, which we were not feeling, so we decided to turn around and headed all the way back down to the street.

After walking about an hour and a half in the humid heat of Chaing Mai, we sadly called it quits and opted to take a tuk-tuk the rest of the way.

Negotiating the price of our ride down as much as we could, we hopped into the tuk and started the ride up the mountain.

And guess what we saw!

People walking along the side of the road up to the mountain.

Now why hadn’t we thought of that?!

Big Womp.

8. Your girl got sick in Halong Bay.

Just after cocktail hour as we were getting into the spring roll competition, I started feeling very off.

I’d only had 2 fruity cocktail drinks up until that point (aka 80 percent juice, 20 percent alcohol) but I knew I was going to throw up.

I almost didn’t make it back to our cabin the first time, but thank the lord that I did.

There went my cocktail hour drinks and the contents of my lunch.

Heading back to join the festivities, I still felt a little off.

So back to the room I went, where even though there was nothing left, I threw up once more. And then again, and again.

I ended up spending the remainder of the evening in my cabin where I threw up several more times.

Nothing would stay down.

We were in Halong Bay for only one night, on this beautiful boat and I just had to get sick.

I missed our 3 course dinner, dessert, and the nights’ festivities.

My friends had told the captain I wasn’t feeling well and he personally came to my room with a tray complete with ginger tea and some small biscuits.

Talk about amazing service. It was so unexpected but I was so thankkful. I drank the tea (very slowly) but couldn’t stomach anything else.

It felt like my vertigo had come back to haunt me.

7. Where TF is my luggage?!

The flight from Thailand to Bali was a long one.

We had an overnight stopover in Singapour and arrived in Bali around 7 am.

When we arrived however, my luggage had other plans and decided not to join the party.

A lot of extra time was spent in the airport trying to find out what happened to my big old purple backpack and filling out the necessary forms.

I was already super exhausted from the flight and then we had to go out and buy a few items to get me by.

Naturally, I was a little nervous that I’d never see my precious bag again but a part of me had high hopes that my bag would come back to me.

Thankfully it did just a little over 48 hrs later.

6. I ran out of money with almost 2 weeks still left of travel.

I know, I know, I seriously need help with keeping a budget. Budgeting has never been my strongsuit, I’ll admit.

This chick (a.k.a. me) balled out hard in Phuket and then I spent way more than I should have in Bali.

I totally ran out of money in Sydney.

Luckily I had paid for all our stays in advance otherwise we would’ve been in deep doo-doo.

I’d been expecting a paycheck to hit at the beginning of April, that never came. (Mightve been a mis-sight on my part, but I still blame my work). I had money left on my credit card but I couldn’t touch that because it was for our campervan in New Zeland.

So I basically had to bum off my boyfriend for the rest of the trip. I honestly felt like the lowest of bums.

Womp womp. 

5. The ferry to Kangaroo island was canceled

After driving the great ocean road from Melbourne to Adelaide, we were ready to get on the ferry that would take us to Kangaroo Island.

I’d called ahead and spoken to a representative to see if we could pay for our ticket when we got there or if we needed to pay in advance.

We were assured we could pay when we got there.

The ferry was leaving for 7:25 but we wanted to get there early just to be on the safe side.

Only when we got to where google maps (was google trying to fail me again?!) said the office should be, there was only road. Instead of losing time driving back and forth trying to find the place, I called to try to get directions.

It was then, however, that I was informed that they had cancelled the ferry because no one had booked a ride across.

I was so upset and explained what I’d been told earlier that morning by her coworker. I could’ve easily just booked the ticket online but was assured we could just get it upon arrival. 

Super flustered, ready to break down into tears, I didn’t know what to do. We’d already booked out hotel on the island and had a full day planned out there. The lady suggested that we drive down and take the other ferry heading to Kangaroo Island. Only thing is it was scheduled to leave for 7.

It was probably about 6:55 at this point.

Cue panic.

We sped down the road to the only other ferry heading to the island and rushed inside. After quickly explaining our situation, they held the boat for us and quickly put our paperwork through and we boarded the ferry.

This ferry, however, was literally double the price of the original ferry we were to take.

It hurt my heart so bad, but probably hurt my boyfriends waller even more.

4. Going all the way to New Zealand only to find out the hike I had my heart set on was closed.

When planning my trip to New Zealand, one of the main things I’d wanted to do was hike the Hooker Valley Track.

Like I said, I had my heart set on it.

So when the time finally came, I was over my head with excitement. We drove all the way to mount cook super excited to do this epic hike.

Only when we got there, I saw saw the sign saying the trail was closed due to flooding.

I thought OMG nooooo.

It might be a mistake, so we continued walking down the path anyways, a few other people we heading in that direction too.

The epic mountains came into view as well as the infamous bridge.

We strolled up to it and sure enough, it was chained off with a sign reading the trail was closed. 

With my sinking heart, I stared longingly at the other side of the bridge and the beauty I knew was lying just beyond it and couldnt help but think…

EPIC FAIL. ?

3.That time our crappy campervan decided not to start.

One cold morning in New Zealand, we prepared to head out on the road early.

We packed up the van and  when Yann tried starting the campervan, it would not start.

Like are you kidding me?

I called the campervan company and after much back and forth, they said they would send someone to look at the van. If there was no mechanical error, we were informed we would be charged for the service.

I’m there thinking there’s no way we’re getting charged for this. The company gave us the crappiest van amongst their vans and they want to charge us for this?!

Like hell!

We waited just under an hour for the mechanic and after taking a look, it turned out all we needed was a boost. He said we must’ve left something running all night.

But we certainly did not, we made absolutely certain we didn’t. Our nightly routine was to turn everything off before going to bed.

Because all that was needed was a boost and nothing was mechanically wrong with the van, we ended up getting bill over $100NZ.

Big big womp.

2. Our tour of hobbiton was cancelled the day before

Another must I had for visiting New Zealand was to go on a tour of Hobbiton.

I’m not a major fan of The Hobbit and Lord of the rings, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the books and films. I figured there was no way I could go ALL the way to New Zealand and not go on this tour.

Tickets were known to sell out fast and so I made it a point to get our tickets in advance.

Lo and behold I was super stunned and upset when I got an email saying our Hobbiton tour was canceled the day before due to the ticket agency overselling seats. There were no other openings that day.

I luckily found another ticketing company to purchase through but the only time they had left was the day we were supposed to give the campervan back.

Again, let me say, we couldn’t go ALL the way to New Zealand without going to Hobbiton!

So I quickly bought the tickets and the tour was amazing.

However, the end result was us giving back the campervan a day later which, obviously wasn’t the plan or in the budget. And we definitely paid for it.

My pockets–actually my boyfriends’ pockets (remember I ran out of money in Australia) hurt like a B$tc@.

1. Camping in torrential rain is not fun.

When planning our trip, the weather was supposed to be beautiful the entire week. But we all know the weathermen(women) sometimes lie.

The only 2 nights we camped in Cape Breton up in Nova Scotia, there was a torrential downpour.

We were totally unprepared for the weather.

We had to mop out the tent out countless times with only our towels and the red solo cups we brought for our drinks.

Since mosquitoes thrive in water, we were also got eaten alive.

It was not a fun night.

***

Well there you have it.

Life really went sideways multiple times for me, huh 😖.

A LOT of things went wrong.

I definitely wallowed in self pitty a bit, more than once, shhh, don’t tell anyone.

Despite that, I can definitely say I learned a lot from these mishaps.

I can try to better plan for things in the future and come up with some contingency plans to get me out of trouble when (not if) things go sideways.

Until next time, stay blessed ♡

……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

-Jon Kabat-Zinn

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