Confessions of an International Traveler

I saw this post over at Thought Catalog and thought I'd write one of my own. My stories aren't quite as colorful as hers...but they're actually not that far off.

1. I joined a gym in the Hague and took spin classes in Dutch. (I don’t speak Dutch.)
2. I kayaked down canals in Utrecht.
3. I spoke the three words of Greek I knew to everyone I met in Crete. People gave me things. A man at the entrance to Phaistos gave me an orange. A waitress gave me a free shot of ouzo. Everyone asked me who I was and where I was from.
4. I rode a horse at nine in the morning in Ecuador up a volcano after being up all night on a bus the night before. Our horses were followed by a very persistent dog who kept trying to herd my horse off a cliff. There was also a zipline across a raging river and a very tall tree house involved.
5. I rode a camel on a beach in Mombasa.
6. I persuaded a taxi driver in Scotland to give me a three-hour taxi ride for almost free.
7. I danced underwater with sea lions in the Galapagos Islands.
8. I got a lap dance at a strip club in Prague.
9. I tried to flag down an out-of-service bus in London and almost got flattened.
10. I walked up the Appian Way in a violent rainstorm. The water on the road was up to my knees and every time a car drove by it splashed me and I got soaked.
11. I persuaded a guy with a seafood truck in Oban, Scotland to make me and a girl I was with a stack of lobsters for almost free. We bought cheap wine, got fall-down drunk with the Scotsman and his friends, and climbed around in strangers’ boats on the pier.
12. I went scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef.
13. I decided it would be a great idea to drink an entire bottle of champagne in the airport on my last day in Venice. I was rowdy-drunk on the plane and accidentally left my passport at the security line.
14. I hitchhiked in the Netherlands.
15. I ate oysters fresh from the sea in Cancale, in Normandy.
16. I spent this past Easter picnicking with a bottle of cider next to the Eiffel Tower.
17. I saw tadpoles in the fountains at the Taj Mahal.
18. I ate dinner on a rooftop with a view of the Taj Mahal and the setting sun.
19. I was chased by a mob of boys throwing rocks at me at a temple outside Jaipur.
20. I was surrounded by a mob of schoolchildren at the Jantar Mahar in Jaipur. They all wanted to take my picture. Their teacher came up and I thought he would shoo them away with some kind of apology; instead, he asked for my picture too!