The lessons learnt from my worst travel mishaps

My most terrifying experience was en route to a family holiday in Mauritius when two of our three engines failed over the Atlantic. We had to make an emergency landing in the Azores, a windswept bit of rock in the middle of the raging ocean. After tongue-kissing the tarmac, 500 passengers made the simultaneous realisation that there was only one tiny hotel. The ensuing scramble resembled the desperate dash for the last helicopter out of Saigon.

It wasn’t that pleasant being caught up in a cyclone in the Caribbean, either. The coconut concussion was bad enough but much worse was being forced to share a bunker with 40 random people badly harmonising Kum Ba Yah for days on end.

My bodysurfing adventure in Dubai is only funny in retrospect. In reality, it was a little nail-gnawing. Although Dubai is in a traditional Muslim country, its private hotel beaches allow wanton Westerners to frolic in teeny bikinis and budgie smugglers tight enough to detect a man’s religion.

I was wearing a hot-pink string bikini … which was fine, until a current swept me out to sea. I finally spluttered to shore about a kilometre further down the coast, to find every female shrouded in black burkini ensembles. The conservative locals gawked at me, en masse, as though I’d just beamed down from Planet Infidel. I smiled, waved – then ran for my life back to Touristville to book a ski holiday.

My worst vacation ever was a make-or-break trip with a boyfriend to the Maldives. It rained solidly for the whole fortnight. Cooped up at close quarters, we ran out of polite conversation by day two; on day three, during an argument, he confessed all his affairs. Mind you, an island holiday did at least offer a unique opportunity to drown my sorrows – if I held his head under long enough.