18 Mishaps While On Our Around The World Family Trip

When leaving for almost a year on a family trip, as we did in 2019-2002, you surely will have lots of good memories… but also some mishaps!

As I like to remind myself, at times when bad experiences, bad lucks, accidents, etc. keep happening, we always say in an attempt to keep our heads high and keep moving on #haha: “Surely, nothing comes to those who do nothing”.

So, of course, if we push back our limits, we move stuff around, we take action, well yes, great and beautiful things can happen, but sometimes we also might stumble upon less fun things and some inconveniences.

But we keep in mind that it’s part of the adventure. And up until now, we were still quite lucky since it mainly allowed us to come back home with some pretty good stories to tell. ? I recently told you about our top 18 of our most wonderful moments while on an around the world family trip.

Now, I feel like I want to share with you our 18 little (and big!) mishaps while on this around the world family trip.

In order and disorder, there was that time when:

In Spain, we lost an important part of our double stroller when we got off the plain. The stakes were high since it wasn’t even 2 months since we left for our big adventure. And we had to let go of our OH SO PREEECIOUS double stroller? Needless to say, we were panicking. Haha! This stroller was definitely our fifth wheel and an essential part of a successful round-the-world trip since we were travelling with young kids.

2. In Marocco, I got bitten by a camel hard enough to leave a mark behind for several weeks.

3. In Marocco, Ély dislocated his wrist, and we had to go to Marrakech’s hospital the day before catching our flight.

4. In Marocco, we missed our flight out of the country, which was supposed to take us to Greece. With nearly $2000 lost: we had to take another flight, find a new dwelling in Marocco until we could leave again, and pay for the dwelling in Greece even though we weren’t there, all for nothing…

5. In Greece, the hubby and I had a HUGE food poisoning after eating seafood. We were stuck in bed for 4 days (with no help with the kids – it was hell. We had to take turns getting up for 10 minutes every 4 hours to feed snacks to the kids and to head back to the toilet, puking). My children literally spent 4 days watching TV, playing on the tablet, and eating snacks. We were only trying to survive. At one point, we thought we would both have to head to the hospital since we were starting to suffer from dehydration.

6. In Croatia, Ély was playing “sweeping the floor” and broke our host’s TV. $600 poorer, we replaced the TV…

7. In Croatia, Ély fell into the sea, but we didn’t notice immediately. He got wet, that’s the least we can say about that. Then we had the scare of our lives, I was in shock until the next morning.

8. In Egypt, I prayed to every single dead person I knew since I was quite sure that we would die in a car accident. Our taxi was driving at 100mph (if not more) in Cairo’s 6 PM traffic jam. Everybody around was driving between 25 and 37 mph. The driver was zigzagging between these rapidly slowing cars, and that was when he didn’t climb on the median strips. We came close to getting into at least 6 accidents in an hour. And may I remind you that in Egypt there is no safety belt… So don’t ask for a child’s seat. I was holding my kids with all the strength I had, even though I knew it wouldn’t help if there had been an impact. We rode a ton of taxis again in Egypt, but never, in my whole, had I seen anything comparable to that one. We truly caught a crazy driver.

9. In Sri Lank, I fell with Ély on my back and twisted an ankle (an injury that lasted for a long 3-4 weeks) as we came down the Pidurangala mountain. (We also have bad memories of that trail for the previously mentioned incident, but also because we came across a killer bee’s nest that attack when there is a lot of sounds… and guess what my kids were doing?! #KeepYelling… And I was the only one who ended up at the summit to admire the Lion’s Rock because the last bit of the trail was just impossible to do with kids – and they were quite done with all the walking, so no collaboration to try and make dad go up afterward.)

10. In Myanmar, our taxi had a flat along the road, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We were scared since we hadn’t felt anything when we were in the car. It was as we were crossing some sort of gate on the road (you know the ones with the small, weird cabin and armed men) that one man told our driver – which we assumed since it was in their tongue – to stop the car to take a look at it. So we stopped and realized we did have a flat. We were quite on edge, trying to figure out if we fell into a trap.

11. In January, in Thailand, we’re pretty sure the whole family caught the coronavirus since we all got sick for about a month. We couldn’t taste anything, we had loud coughs, a wake of the lungs, and a high fever that just wouldn’t go away for many days.

12. In Malaysia, on the Perhentian Islands, I got attacked by a jellyfish while snorkelling.

13. In Malaysia, at Penang, we got chased by monkeys because my hubby thought good to take the cookies out since the kids were hungry. #NotAGoodIdea #NowYouKnow

14. In Malaysia, on the Perhentian Islands, the day after my jellyfish attack, I got bitten by a red ant, and my foot got swollen, red, and terribly painful. It only lasted 24 hours, and I was up and running the next day, but my skin was spotted with swollen areas, and the skin under my foot had lifted.

15. In Malaysia, we were trailing in the jungle, and I wasn’t wearing the right shoes (I had my sandals), and I fell with Ély on my back again, twisting the same ankle I had twisted in Sri Lanka. I twisted my knee as well. I really thought I broke a tendon this time since the pain was so sharp. It took another few weeks to get back to normal.

16. In Malaysia (yes, I know, a lot happened in Malaysia, haha), the local army came to rescue all the tourists, including us, form the island with their tiny boat to get us out of the Perhentian Islands. There was a huge storm at sea, and we would have been stuck on the island for a long week if we hadn’t gone with them. So at midnight, we got on the Malaysian boat, hugging our children while sitting on the deck’s floor, our face drenched in the rain for more than 2 hours before reaching land again—what a #CrazyNight.

17. In New Zealand, we were getting ready to come back home, and it was indicated EVERYWHERE that it was forbidden to carry fruits, veggies, meat… and we forgot three apples sitting in our backpack. It cost us $400 for this offence and “lie”.

18. While the world was in pandemic and we had to come back home 3 months early and didn’t have access to our house since we had tenants there. So we had to live in our summer round-the-world stuff while it was still cold winter in Quebec.

So here’s what sums up our 18 mishaps while on this around the world family trip!

Keep in mind that we have had as many (a lot more) good moments, quality family time while exploring the world – so we can’t really summarize our trip with these few little mishaps. ?

Regardless of all of this, which really is nothing, in fact, I would do this once-in-a-lifetime trip 1000 times over. It went by at the speed of light and allowed us to grow so much.

As for you, tell me about an adventure you had while on one of your latest trip – you know, just to remind us it can happen to anyone!??

This post was translated from French to English by: