Sarah Pollok has made many mistakes and learned many lessons during years of travel. Photo / Sarah Pollok, 123rf
Sarah Pollok has made many mistakes and learned many lessons during years of travel. Photo / Sarah Pollok, 123rf
Opinion by Sarah Pollok
Sarah Pollok, Multimedia Journalist at New Zealand’s Herald, specialises in covering stories on travel and tourism, travelling as close as Waiheke and far as Ecuador for work.
Travel has been found to broaden people’s perspectives, develop resilience and foster self-discovery.
Troubles abroad can present opportunities to appreciate the kindness of strangers and sharpen your problem-solving skills.
Research shows alcohol can negatively affect judgment and decision-making, even after the immediate effects wear off. Jetlag can also impair one’s cognitive ability.
Sarah Pollok is a multimedia travel journalist who covers trends and advice for travel, tourism and aviation. She joined the Herald in 2021.
OPINION
Travel is inevitably a time of novelty, excitement and making embarrassing mistakes you must solve on the fly. Fortunately, with a little time and perspective, any traveller can learn to appreciate the lessons they provide, writes Sarah Pollok.
Lying on the ground in San Francisco Airport, I watch the paramedics exchange puzzled looks as my father’s laughter booms through the phone.
Fainting stone cold after missing my first solo international flight (for which, I still blame my sister) doesn’t feel particularly funny. Especially when, as a 17-year-old, I can’t refuse a hospital admission unless my parents give consent.
“Dad, I’m sure this will become a great story later but I need a few hours before I can laugh about it,” I mutter back to him. Of course, he was right. As with most travel disruptions, time smoothed the catastrophe into comedy and it remains one of my best travel stories.
The sticky, tricky moments don’t just make for good stories; they build resilience by forcing us to problem-solve while alone, disorientated and often exhausted.
Over the last few decades, I’ve accrued countless moments. Some were close calls, like almost falling for a dangerous scam in Morocco or almost leaving my passport in a hotel an hour’s drive from the hotel. Many were holes I dug myself, like surviving off $2 one day in Prague after learning they don’t use Euro, wandering London at 2am following a late flight and dead phone or falling asleep on the roof of a Parisian apartment after romanticising the idea of an all-nighter trip.
Here are just four other character-building travel fiascos I can finally laugh at and appreciate.
Cellphone roulette in Toulouse
It’s 5am on January 1, 2020, and I am spectacularly hungover. Sitting in the back of a rental car, my brother-in-law drives us from a villa in Carcassone to Toulouse airport, my sister naps and I clutch my head in the back seat, reeking of last night’s magnum of red wine and wish I was not alive.
At the airport, I fall out of the rental car, stomach roiling, and drape my upper body over a luggage trolley. Now, here’s where it gets good (or tragic). Standing in the check-in queue, it fuzzily occurs to me that I haven’t seen my phone in a while. I feebly paw through my check-in bag and figure there’s a 40% chance I left it in the rental car. At the time, those odds seem good enough for me.
It was about here when I realised the odds were high that I'd left my phone behind. Photo / Sarah Pollok
When I arrive at the Paris Airbnb and tip out my bag, I discover my phone is, indeed, back in Toulouse. I mistakenly think this is the worst of it. Then, I try to liaise with UPS Francais. Cut to the next day. I’m waiting on hold for 10 minutes (a second time) before connecting to a UPS employee I’d bet my life speaks English, only for them to hang up before I finish asking, “Parlez-vous Anglais?” Yes, we eventually got the phone delivered to a convenience store near our Airbnb. Yes, it arrives two days after I leave Paris for New Zealand.
Moral of the story? Never take the odds as a hungover traveller.
Bali booking blunder
In my defence, the pictures of the Airbnb on the east coast of Bali looked incredible. Located within the lush Bali jungle but minutes from the coastline, it has vibrant decor and a large communal pergola where you can enjoy your meals while looking out across rice paddy fields. This is back in 2016 (long before I became an expert on accommodation “red flags”), and the place is cheap - but we certainly pay for it.
“Are you sure you have the right address?” my mother says, as we stand on the dirt road with our bags, looking at a large concrete building. Like a heavily edited dating profile picture, you can see traces of familiarity: the same colourful sign at the entrance, the wooden pergola, and the rice paddy fields. What wasn’t shown were the filthy broken tiles, sticky cafe tables, and a constant swarm of flies. Things don’t improve when we see our bedroom (a windowless concrete room) and bathroom (an outdoor cubicle made of corrugated iron with a rusted shower head and yellowing toilet).
The advertisement showed images of the view but failed to show us what the bathroom looked like. Photo / Sarah Pollok
It feels par for the course when my sister and I wake up the next morning with dual infections- ear for her, eye for me. The empathetic Balinese host immediately calls (literally, they shout across their garden to a neighbouring hut) for the local healer, Ketut. Peering at my weepy, itchy eyes, the elderly man furrows his brow and eventually pronounces: “red” before shuffling over to my sister and peering at her ears. At this point, my mother demands we go to the nearest clinic, and 10 minutes later, transport arrives in the form of two boys (not men, boys) on mopeds. Not in a position to be picky, we clamber on and zoom to a little outhouse in a nearby village where a man in a white coat hands us boxes of pills we furtively Google to confirm they are, indeed, antibiotics.
The learning? Put on your detective hat when booking hotels online and receiving foreign medications (a lesson that serves me well years later in Mexico when a pharmacy gives me laxatives instead of Imodium).
Standing at the counter of Auckland Airport, my father and I are ready to check in for a flight to the US for a ski trip. The only issue? My father has a visa from a previous trip, but I do not. Now, I’m not one to blame my mistakes on others, but as a 12-year-old, I don’t know what an ESTA is, let alone that I need one.
Fortunately, the empathetic staff walk me through the online process, and 20 minutes later, I receive the confirmation email. While it feels exciting to be escorted past the security queues and fast-tracked to the gate, I’d still prefer to arrive at the gate with more than 30 seconds to spare.
Thankfully, a quick ESTA process meant we made our flight. Photo / Sarah Pollok
Years later, I still thoroughly research entry requirements well before departing overseas. I wish I could say my dad learned to check family members have ESTAs before arriving at the airport, but just six months ago he experienced the exact same issue. However, this time, it was my mother panic-completing the ESTA minutes before check-in closed.
Locking my bag shut in Rome
The idea is smart: keep a small padlock on my backpack during a summer Interrailing around Europe so nothing gets stolen while visiting big cities. Indeed, the lock keeps my phone, money, and hostel key secure. But the zip doesn’t budge a centimetre when I misplace the tiny key in Rome’s Parco del Colle Oppio and try to force it open.
A combination lock is a better approach to securing a bag if you're prone to losing things, like keys. Photo / Sarah Pollok
With few options, I duck into a small jeweller’s studio and proceed to use a little Italian and a lot of gesturing to ask the bewildered old Italian man to break the padlock. Thankfully, he doesn’t think I’ve stolen it (or he does and just wants the annoying blonde to go away), and he cracks it open.
Experiencing these small kindnesses from total strangers always reminds me just how much it can mean to a traveller when you give them a hand. Whether it’s offering directions, recommendations, or breaking a padlock.
