I’d Seen Enough Travel Mistakes to Recognize Them. Unfortunately, That Didn’t Include My Own.
I used to think I could spot a clueless tourist from across a train station. Then one day I realized the guy making the stupid assumption wasn’t standing across from me.
He was carrying my passport.
By then, I’d spent years abroad. I knew the usual scams, had learned when to keep my mouth shut, and no longer panicked every time something worked differently than it did back home.
That was part of the problem. Experience had made me better at traveling, but it had also made me much more certain that I knew what was happening.
First-timers check things because they’re nervous.
After enough years abroad, you start skipping that part because you’ve seen this before.
Until you haven’t.
That’s when a mistake gets embarrassing.
Here are six things I once associated with clueless tourists, right up till I learned how easily experienced travelers can walk straight into them, too.
1. I Thought Scams Came With Warning Labels
After enough time abroad, you start thinking scams should look like, well, scams. There should be some sweaty guy hovering too close, a ridiculous price, or at least somebody doing something that makes your bullshit detector twitch.
The problem is that the good ones usually look boring.
Someone seems helpful. The price sounds reasonable. Everything moves along normally enough that you start wondering why less experienced travelers make such a fuss about this stuff.
That confidence is dangerous. You’ve seen enough obvious scams that you start believing you’ll recognize the next one before it gets anywhere near you.
I’ve caught myself doing exactly that. Instead of asking whether something makes sense, I start explaining to myself why it probably does.
So Much for Experience: Experience gave me a better bullshit detector sure, but overconfidence occasionally convinced me I didn’t need to switch it on.
2. I Thought I’d Feel Trouble Before I Saw It
Travelers love talking about trusting their gut. Something feels off, the hairs on your neck stand up, and suddenly you know to get the hell out of there.
Real life isn’t always that generous.
Some situations that have caused me the biggest headaches felt completely normal at the beginning. Nobody looked suspicious, nothing seemed urgent, and there wasn’t a little voice whispering,
“Dave, perhaps this is where you start reconsidering your life choices.”
That little voice usually shows up later.
By then you’ve already followed the directions, accepted the explanation, or committed yourself far enough that getting out becomes considerably more annoying.
So Much for Experience: Years abroad taught me to read situations faster. They also made me a little too sure I was reading them right. The problems I saw coming got my attention. The ones that blindsided me usually looked harmless.
Ready for some stories where life abroad really did go wrong? Expat Life Gone Wrong ($4.99) serves up 10 fast-paced stories about scams, booze and spectacularly bad decisions you won’t find on Instagram.
3. I Thought I Could Always Talk My Way Out of a Problem
Americans tend to have tremendous faith in a good explanation. Give us a misunderstanding and five minutes, and we’re convinced somebody will eventually see our point.
I’ve stood at counters abroad doing exactly that.
There’s usually a moment when I realize the person across from me has understood every word. They simply don’t care.
That’s when I make the mistake of explaining it again.
Maybe I add more background. Perhaps I point out why the situation doesn’t make sense. Surely one more detail will unlock the part where everyone agrees I’m being perfectly reasonable.
It rarely does.
So Much for Experience: Knowing how to explain myself didn’t mean anyone cared about my explanation. A few of my best arguments would’ve gone better if I’d never made them.
Occasionally, keeping your mouth shut is an advanced travel skill.
4. I Thought Routine Things Didn’t Need a Backup
On my first trips abroad, I prepared for everything. I wrote things down, double-checked details, and carried enough backup information to survive a minor government collapse.
Years later, I got much more relaxed, letting my guard down.
That’s great right up to the moment one ordinary thing stops working.
Your phone dies. The machine won’t take your card. The reservation you’ve pulled up a dozen times suddenly needs a password you haven’t entered since the Clinton administration.
None of these feels dramatic enough to prepare for. You’ve done them too many times.
That’s the trap.
Beginners often prepare for things that will probably never happen. Experienced travelers sometimes stop preparing for the boring stuff because it has worked perfectly the last hundred times.
So Much for Experience: The boring stuff is easy to ignore when it always works. The day it doesn’t, you find out half your plan was riding on it.
5. I Thought I’d Traveled Enough to Wing It
There comes a dangerous point in your travel life when research starts feeling optional.
You’ve arrived in strange cities before. You’ve figured out buses, trains, neighborhoods and local systems without anybody holding your hand.
So you start saying the most expensive words in travel.
“I’ll figure it out when I get there.”
Usually, you do.
Then comes the day when you arrive late, discover the thing you assumed would be open isn’t, and realize your brilliant backup plan depends on another thing you never bothered checking beforehand.
Now you’re improvising your improvisation.
So Much for Experience: I still like traveling without every hour planned. Half the fun disappears when a trip starts looking like a military operation.
Somewhere along the way, though, I occasionally confused flexibility with having absolutely no idea what I was doing.
Those two can look remarkably the same from a distance.
6. I Thought That Kind of Disaster Happened to Other People
Experienced travelers are fantastic after the disaster.
Someone gets overcharged and we know exactly what they should’ve noticed. Somebody trusts the wrong person and suddenly everyone in the room becomes an expert on obvious warning signs.
I’ve done it too.
You hear the story and think, “Come on. How did you miss that?”
Then a few years go by and you collect enough stories of your own.
That’s when you discover something irritating. Most travel mistakes become embarrassingly obvious once you already know how the story ends.
The warning sign was obvious.
The stupid decision was sitting right there.
The smarter choice seems so clear afterward that you wonder how anyone could’ve missed it.
So Much for Experience: The person at the beginning of the story rarely feels clueless, though. Quite often, they’re feeling pretty damn confident. Nobody walks into a disaster thinking, “This is where I finally prove I’m an idiot.”
Usually, you’re thinking you’ve got everything under control.
Experience Has a Sense of Humor
I used to divide travelers into people who knew what they were doing and people who came home with ridiculous stories.
Years abroad gradually ruined that theory.
Experience helps. You panic less when something unfamiliar happens, and you get much better at figuring things out as you go.
It also gives you plenty of confidence.
Sometimes far more than the situation deserves.
These days, I don’t laugh quite as quickly when somebody tells me about an obvious travel mistake. Give any of us enough confidence, bad timing and one wrong assumption, and eventually we’ve all got a story.
If these six sounded familiar, Expat Life Gone Wrong ($4.99) takes you into 10 fast-paced stories about people who were sure they had things under control right before life abroad proved otherwise.
They’re the stories people usually tell later, once enough time has passed to laugh about what the hell happened.
The article ends here. Thanks for reading!
The Expat Backroom begins here in the Substack version. That’s where I get into the mistakes I don’t laugh off quite so easily anymore. How do I know personally, when a stupid mistake abroad is actually trying to tell me something?
David Peluchette is a Premium Ghostwriter/Travel and Tech Enthusiast. When David isn’t writing he enjoys traveling, learning new languages, fitness, hiking and going on long walks (did the 550 mile Camino de Santiago, not once but twice!), cooking, eating, reading and building niche websites with WordPress.