Brookes confessions: What’s your craziest holiday story?

Whether it’s fighting off Alpacas in Peru, damaging your newly hired moped with the lads in Magaluf or chipping your tooth out at The Full Moon party, travelling abroad can come with its ups, downs and crazy experiences.

But let’s face it: these are the stories that will last a lifetime and will be the ones that we share with our grandchildren.

Alicia, English language and communication, second year

Last summer my friends and I went to Zante, Greece. We met a group of rugby boys on our transfer and it turns out they were staying in the same hotel as us and in the room directly below ours. On the second night we decided to pre together. It started off with the standard Uno and Ring of Fire but then we all got a little closer than we anticipated. In fact, some of us ended up having a nine people orgy (although some stayed out due to girlfriend/boyfriend reason).

This is still not the weirdest part of it.  As we all know, rugby boys have their own banter and they had one where someone would randomly say “shark bait” and everyone else joins in with “hoo-ha-ha” from the film Finding Nemo. During this orgy when things were getting pretty steamy, one of the boys leans up and shouts “shark bait” to which everyone responded with “hoo-ha-ha”. Everyone was in hysterics and the steaminess had  flown out of the window. It was more than surreal!

Mikey Lewis, Biomedical Science, second year

In the summer of 2014, 14 of the best friends that anyone could have went inter-railing around Europe. But because we were all scroungy and poor we decided to go on a month trip through Eastern Europe. We flew into Bulgaria and were greeted with warm threats of death and hostility. Which we probably deserved. We spent three days soaking up the culture of Varna, after which we had to get a train almost 500 miles into Serbia. However we spent the night before our 6am train getting to know absolutely no one and drinking ridiculously cheap vodka. So at 6am we all run to the train which is whistling and pulling off, and jump on with seconds to spare. Great we made it. Then about 100 miles into the journey I wake up and look around, it comes to my attention that we forgot to wake up Allen. Good thing he hasn’t got a phone, he doesn’t speak the language, and has no clue where the train station is. We should have all been worried, but unfortunately for Allen we travel by the pirate code: fall behind, get left behind. He turned up at our hostel in Croatia four days later. Sorry mate.

What happened to the pirate code, never leave a man behind or we’re all in this together? And is this the Allen we’ve all been searching for at festivals? He’s probably just asleep! There’s are just too many questions to be asked.

Chris, Engineering, first year

I was a ski instructor in Italy where I became the middle man for the son of a local mafia boss, who sold only weed and coke. It had huge pro’s as the police were a lot kinder to me, even giving me lifts home when I was to drunk, to some bars giving me free drinks at all times.

Oliver Williams, Computer Science, second year

I just got back from a really good trip but honestly nothing crazy happened, but I did learn to snowboard in just two hours and went straight down a red run. I was also very drunk which resulted in me falling down the slope full speed and I received a face full of snow. Surprisingly, the fall was just the one time.

Lauren McNamara, English language and Communication, third year

So my friend and I were coming out of a nightclub in Budapest when we were inter-railing and we got pepper sprayed in the eyes. They didn’t like us because in the club – a man picked us up and licked us which was so weird. But yeah we were rolling around on the floor crying and Hungarian people were pouring milk over our heads.

Does milk really help pepper sprayed eyes or were the Hungarian people pouring milk for fun? Well, research says it does in fact help – so be sure to carry around a carton of milk just in case of an unexpected pepper spray attack.

Dominic Lowry, International hospitality management, first year

My friends and I went on a spontaneous camping trip to Koh Lon, Thailand. Luckily for us his dad owns a boat shop in Phuket – where we were staying – so we managed to hitch a ride by boat to the island. When we arrived we set up tents to sleep in that night then went snorkeling in the sea and played football along the beach front. The next morning we explored the entire island and stumbled upon pineapple farms and shit.

Bea Dunscombe, English Language/ Communication and Anthropology, second year

I went travelling with two of my best friends in Cambodia. One day we got ridiculously drunk and crashed what we thought to be a Cambodian wedding. We danced around, ate a lot of their food and drank a lot of their alcohol. What we hadn’t noticed was the shrine in the corner with a photo of an old man and candles surrounding it. We immediately realised this wasn’t a wedding at all, it was in fact, a funeral. Completely embarrassed, we made a hasty runner.

Charlotte Arduino, Law, third year

To celebrate Air New Zealand 75 year anniversary, STA travel agency were offering £75 return flights from London to New Zealand. All we had to do was be the first 50 people to buy their tickets in a London branch on the Thursday. Jenny, Maren and I were just sitting around watching Jezza K when we saw the post on Facebook. Instead of just sitting around, we thought we’d give it a go and packed some things to take to London. We arrived four days before the Thursday to be sure we were in for a chance. We stayed in this shitty hotel, got up early hours of the morning to see if anyone had started queuing. As soon as the first person queued, we literally ran to the agency. We knew we had a long time to queue so we bought the essentials – an inflatable mattress, duvets and pillows. While camping outside the branch we embraced some strange situations – the funniest was watching tramps hit on Jenny by attempting to sing to her. hours later we’d made it to the front of the queue and got our hands on the crazy cheap flights. When we got to New Zealand we hired out this hippie camper van as we thought this would be a cool way to travel around in. We were right – it was cool, in both senses. Cool and freezing. It was winter after all. For this reason we kept the heating on constantly and this meant the battery always ran out. But the experience was amazing to say the least.

Is your travelling story better than this? Let us know by messaging our Facebook page.