TRIPS' Top Travel Neuroses

On my last trip to Ecuador, it occurred to me that travelling is not something a true neurotic should do, because it magnifies all your worst neuroses. Then I realized that without neuroses, the traveller is going to have a very boring time. Here are my top travel neuroses. Write to me with yours, and we'll start a collection on this web site!

 

• Someone is going to break into my hotel room when I'm asleep and rape, rob, and kill me.
  
• Everything I eat and drink is full of deadly parasites.
  
• The restaurant/hotel staff are lying, and this water is not really boiled/filtered/purified.
  
• Someone is going to plant drugs in my luggage, and I'll be busted for drug trafficking, have no defense, and be thrown in jail for 20 years.
  
• The bus I'm travelling on is going to have brake failure and go hurtling off a cliff into a ravine, and everyone will be killed.
  
• That clunking noise I heard on this bus is the sound of my backpack falling off the roof, onto the road, and off a cliff.
  
• Someone is going to break into my place back home while I'm gone and steal everything.
  They will inadvertently let the cat out, and she'll wander around in the freezing cold and die of exposure. Or be hit by a car.
  
• The person looking after my cat is going to die, and then no-one will be able to feed the cat, and she will die too.
  
• I am going to be bitten by a rabid dog and will die of rabies.
  
• If I sleep at all tonight, I'm going to miss my flight.
  
• This taxi driver is going around in circles to make the fare higher.
  
• This is not a real taxi. The driver is a criminal who's conned me into his car and is going to rape, rob and kill me.
  
• I am going to get hopelessly lost in this rainforest, bitten by an anaconda, and then will die a painful death, alone.
  
• If I drink a lot of liquids on this flight, I'll be constantly climbing over people's legs to get to the washroom. If I don't drink anything I'm going to become severely dehydrated and will get a migraine headache.
  
• If I sit in an aisle seat on the plane, people will be climbing over my legs for the whole flight. If I sit in a window seat, I'll be the one climbing over other people's legs.
  
• Everyone is talking about me in a foreign language and laughing because I don't understand them.
  
• The "guide" I've hired is not really a guide; he's an escaped criminal who is going to take me to a secluded spot and rob me.
  
  

This page last updated January 3, 2001.

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