Unhappy Tourists: Vacations Aren’t Always Fun : Kathika Travel Website

Everybody wants to have a fun and happy holiday, but not every vacation turns out exactly how people plan. Sometimes it’s a natural disaster like Hurricane Ike or Hurricane Gustav that spoil travel plans. But whether it is a result of a tragic accident, a travel mix-up or getting involved in political upheaval, this week the news seemed to be full of reports of travelers who have had a vacation that didn’t end up as expected – some tragically so, and some with simply unusual outcomes:

This week in the scenic New Zealand town of Queenstown, a Chinese woman was killed when the tourist jet boat she was riding in flipped and crashed. Several other tourists were injured and there’s now plenty of controversy in Queenstown about how the tragedy could have been prevented.
In an ongoing saga, a group of eleven tourists from various parts of Europe, along with eight Egyptians, are still being held by kidnappers who snatched them a week ago from south-western Egypt. This week the news came that the group have been moved to Libya and the kidnappers are demanding a ransom of up to $15 million.
Space tourism is at the very beginning of its existence, but there are already unhappy space tourists. This week a Japanese man who had booked a ten-day space trip to the International Space Station and had undertaken training and medical tests was bumped from the September 2006 flight at the last minute. Now Daisuke Enomoto is sueing Space Adventures, the company that he paid $21 million to, since they didn’t let him take part in the mission and gave his seat to a wealthy United States entrepreneur instead.
To end on a light-hearted note, there was a woman from Argentina who wanted to travel to Australia and bought a flight ticket online to Sydney. Unfortunately, this poor tourist ended up landing in Sydney, Nova Scotia in Canada and was very surprised that it wasn’t Australia. She took the mix-up in a good-natured way, however, and enjoyed her time exploring this much smaller Sydney.

But if you’re feeling disturbed by this news, don’t worry too long: everybody else who vacationed this week came home safely and probably had a good time too. Statistically speaking, the chances of enjoying your trip are very high.
photo credit: Krikit ♥