It’s the hit Channel Nine series that currently has thousands of Aussies clamouring to join the next season, but being on Travel Guides doesn’t necessarily mean that fabulous, drama-free trips are guaranteed.
Amid whispers of spin-off shows and headlines about their secret lives away from the cameras, the Travel Guides cast spoke to New Idea about their worst trips ever, and the holidays they’d rather soon forget…
The Fren Family
For matriarch Cathy, her worst travel experience has to be the time she, husband Mark, and their adult kids, Victoria and Jonathon, were trying to get home to Newcastle, NSW, from Sri Lanka.
“It took four days!” she recounts in horror. “First, our plane didn’t even show up. When it finally arrived 12 hours later, we flew to Doha, but had to stay overnight because there were no connecting flights.
“We managed to change our booking to get home quicker, but just when we thought we were nearly there, our flight had to make an emergency landing in Adelaide – only two hours left to go. What a disaster!”
Victoria, meanwhile, says one unforgettable “sticky situation” was a beautiful ocean feast the family had in Tahiti.
“It was made by the Princess – except it was full of her black hair and we were worried about high tide coming in!” she says.
As for Jono, his worst experience was losing all their luggage in Morocco, and Mark’s was the time two members of the family were upgraded to business class on a flight – “and it wasn’t Cathy or I!” he tells us with a laugh.
Karly & Bri
Bri says one of her holiday horror stories involves Karly misplacing her passport in Peru – and causing a public commotion!
The pair were about to leave for Machu Picchu for the day and needed their passports. Bri says Karly had put hers in her bag but forgot it was there.
“Five minutes before leaving, we’re ripping everything apart to find it,” she shares. “Thankfully, it only took three minutes to locate and off to Machu Picchu we went.”
Karly adds that hers involves Bri falling down a set of stairs in Nepal.
“We thought she broke her backside,” she shares. “That was not a vibe!”
Another memorable moment was when Karly got hit in the eye by a bug during a speedboat ride around the Statue of Liberty in New York.
“I had to try to get it out for her,” Bri says with a big laugh. “That was a core memory I’ll be telling our babies one day.”
Kev, Dorian & Teng
Dorian’s nightmare involves getting shingles on a trip to Tel Aviv, Israel. He tells us: “It’s one of the coolest cities I’ve ever been to. I was having such an amazing time and was so keen to swim in the Dead Sea, but then had to be so cautious because my forehead was covered in shingles.” Ouch!
For Kev, his was when he got food poisoning and “may have had an accident” in his bed as a result, while Teng can never forget “watching Kev try to woo grandparents at an Elvis show in the States!”
Kevin & Janetta
“It’s no secret that we hate camping or anything similar,” Kevin reminds us. “But spending the night on a deserted and desolate beach in Western Australia, in a cheap campervan while a force 10 gale blew all night, just reinforces my belief that camping, caravanning and campervanning are not for me.”
For Janetta, an ashram in Rishikesh, India, wasn’t her cup of tea.
“The rooms cost about three dollars a night and are worth every cent of it,” she explains. “Fortunately, we received enlightenment after a night and moved to a more conventional hotel, which boasted pillows instead of wooden blocks!”
Matt & Brett
Unlike their fellow Guides, Matt and Brett claim, “we don’t really have a horror story”.
“On balance, we’ve been luckier than some others in our travels,” the married couple tells New Idea. “We’ve, of course, both had the odd illness or injury that clipped our wings for a while, but probably the most memorably stressful situation we found ourselves in was being in the USA when the global financial crisis hit in 2008.
“Overnight, everything doubled – at least – in price, and we hadn’t budgeted for that. We ended up thousands of extra dollars out of pocket! Luckily, we had a credit card and dealt with the bills when we got home.”
