The Best Travel Memories Are Made Of Misfortune

Photo Credit: Azam Hostetler

The travel experiences I remember are typically the ones where things go terribly wrong. It appears that travel experiences, especially casual commutes, I tend to forget after a while. A drive through a familiar neighborhood, a bus you usually take, or a walk on a familiar forest trail are forgettable, however peaceful they are. 

The interesting matters that you end up remembering are usually unknown, although they may be chaotic. Today, I want to share my most chaotic (yet memorable) travel story. 

First, the context.

I’ve had my fair share of eventful travel stories. A tiny earthquake once struck while I was on the Metro-North train with my family. Ironically, everyone else knew about it and was blowing up our phones, but we didn’t feel a thing. Then there’s the fishing charter off the Islamorada Keys, in which I was trapped on a 60-foot boat with ocean waves for 6 hours. A story for another time.

There is, of course, the first time I took the M train to Brooklyn. In 2024, I was enrolled in a film internship in Brooklyn, in an effort to broaden my independence and ability to commute alone. I always took the L train, and after passing under the East River, it’s only three stops into Brooklyn. I got off at Graham Avenue in Williamsburg, which is not far into Brooklyn, at least for an unfamiliar traveler like me. However, one day, I became aware that the L train’s power had shut down. I was still in Union Square (14th Street), purchasing chocolate Babka in a crowded bakery, when I heard the news.

An Uber to Manhattan to Brooklyn costs a fortune, and there is nothing scarier than the thought of being trapped in a metal box underneath the East River. The power came back on pretty quickly, but by that time I had already asked a pedestrian for directions. Soon, I was on the M train to get off at a stop within walking distance, albeit a little further away. All I remember is freaking out when the M train began rising over the bridge, as I had this preconceived notion that all subways traveled underground. When it began ascending and we were on the Williamsburg Bridge many stories up, I remembered filming it on my phone, as if it were some spectacle. I walked 30 minutes through an unfamiliar part of Brooklyn that morning towards the office, at one point running to be there on time while playing the Rocky theme song on my phone.

Another travel story that embodied this quality of chaos was on my family’s Florida Keys trip for my brother’s birthday last year. My family and I drove north in our rental car from the top of the Keys (around Key Largo) to Fort Lauderdale Airport. I was essentially the passenger seat GPS. We left at 2 a.m. and my father and I were the only ones who understood how terrible a drive it was, since everyone else was sleeping then. I’m not sure if all road layouts in Florida are like they are in Miami, but it feels like every road has five or six one-way lanes. On the highway, it feels like you are merging onto another parkway every couple of minutes, and if you’re not paying attention, you will easily miss your exit.

The main objectives that August morning, besides arriving on time, were to avoid crime-ridden areas on an early Sunday morning and to avoid tolls. We had been told this horror story by the rental car company, among others, which reaffirmed our belief that passing one toll would charge our rental plate ten dollars for every day we kept the car. On top of twisting and turning on six-lane highways with branching off paths, we had to avoid routes with tolls, which the friendly computer GPS always rerouted us back to. 

We stopped for gas in Florida City, in a little bit of a sleazy area. Every other lighted building you passed was a showgirls club, a smoke shop, or a casino. Toward the end of the journey, we ended up missing a turn because we either misread or missed a sign telling us to get on another highway. When we looped back around to take the right exit, it turned out the correct highway sign had fallen off its post and was lying in the dirt and tall grass before us. I would be glad if I never returned to Miami, honestly. 

Yet this is not the most incredible and memorable travel story I have ever experienced. I know that I am privileged to have had these experiences at all; I must say I am grateful. My complaints are an attempt to chronicle these mishaps as meaningful. 

My third and final story involves miserable, extreme exhaustion. 

In 2024, my family and I visited Malaysia to see family, which was my second time there. On the way back, we stopped in Singapore before stopping in the United Kingdom for a week. We spent an entire day walking around in Singapore after a night flight, sightseeing as tourists do. I remember being in the Singapore Changi airport, which is essentially a botanical garden with a waterfall that happens to have an airport inside of it. We boarded a 13-hour flight to London Heathrow, already exhausted after being awake the entire day.

I am lucky that I am able to sleep on planes, but my family was not. I had fun watching “Monsters, Inc.” and then waking up to an airline microwaved English breakfast in a plastic container, as I looked out the window at dreary clouds. I’m fairly certain my older brother and mom got no sleep at all, and if they did, it was not good. We arrived at London Heathrow Airport at 6 a.m. My brother and mom had been up for nearly 24 hours. We had traveled almost 7,000 miles.

We stayed in London the second half of that week in the United Kingdom, but the two days prior we were to spend in Daventry, a small town two hours north of London, where my mom’s cousin lived. This was my Malay grandfather’s brother’s daughter and her sons, and we were going there first to make the final trip home easier. What made this journey infinitely worse was not just the exhaustion, but our luggage. 

My older brother has a nut allergy, about which little is known or cared for in Asia. One of the precautions we took was bringing a suitcase full of food to Asia to calm his worries and act as a safety net against anaphylactic shock in a nation where they seem to breathe and drink peanut sauce. This suitcase had been emptied and was now full of souvenirs. To make matters worse, my own suitcase was massive. I had made an unintelligent decision to bring a ginormous suitcase. I hadn’t expected a servant to fold my underwear in Kuala Lumpur or for there to exist washing machines in a Chinatown hotel. I had packed twenty pairs of clothing for twenty days in the bulkiest suitcase you could find, and now I was carrying my own weight. We essentially had four suitcases among three people.

After boarding a shuttle to Paddington Station, we wandered around at 7 a.m. in a big station. Paddington Station is essentially Grand Central, but better. The London Underground is extremely efficient, but only because there are so many more train lines, resulting in many more ways to get where you need to go. However, if you’re running on no sleep in a different time zone and hauling your own weight in luggage while staring at a map that looks like Chutes and Ladders times ten, it’s miserable. Fortunately, they speak English in England, so we asked for directions. 

We struggled for about 15 minutes walking to a line named Hammersmith and City, before boarding a train heading to a place called Euston Station. We stood on the train, exhausted, as a man talked near us in a British accent to a girl about how he was thinking about going to France on the weekend, but wasn’t sure about it. 

Soon we were off at Euston Square, only apparently there was a difference between Euston Square and Euston Station. We needed to be at the station to take another train two hours north to Daventry, but we were essentially dropped off at a London Underground station. A good analogy for us New Englanders is that we needed to get to Penn Station in Manhattan, but we were still a couple of blocks away from exiting the New York subway. Unfortunately for our hundreds of pounds of luggage (not pounds of money, though I wish), there was no elevator here.

I took charge and began lugging my 100-pound suitcase up the stone steps, which ascended above ground, but my luggage felt like ten ten-pound weights. Which it was. Soon, some people noticed our plight and, without talking, took our luggage and helped carry it up the stairs, which was extremely embarrassing yet very kind. That would never happen in New York, mind you. Once we emerged on the surface, I had to navigate my family, who were falling asleep through twisting and turning streets, when we soon hit a construction zone, which I had to navigate us through.

We entered the real Euston Station and got on the first train to Long Buckby, which was a town away from Daventry. Having not sat down in over an hour and about to miss the current train, we took the first open car door in said train, which happened to be the last one. Finally sitting down with all our luggage, we sank into our seats with breaths of relief. About 15 minutes later, after we were already in motion heading North, an unfortunate announcement came on the overhead speaker.

The last four train cars were to soon split off and detach from the rest of the train cars, so that they could join a different rail and head god knows where. Exhausted, we picked up our luggage and began moving up several train cars to avoid being stranded. My suitcase was too wide for the aisles, so I had to twist and turn it. We huffed and puffed, dragging these bulky boxes full of tourist souvenirs from Southeast Asia while bulleting past the beautiful green isles of English farmland. 

There is not really a moral to the story here, other than that misfortune makes a better story. I think about this,and I’m glad it happened because it’s amusing to think about, even though at the moment I must have been about to pass out. This is the nature of adventure; everyday adventures do not need to be life-changing, international in distance, or expensive. 

A good adventure is about the journey, even if it’s a small obstacle. Misfortune can even sometimes lead to rewarding experiences. It hardens us and emboldens us, as well as teaches us. If you do not go outside, the world will not show you its chaos. That is beyond terrifying, no doubt, but it’s still reality. Thank you for listening.