What is the scariest thing that has happened to you whilst abroad?

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A couple of years ago, I went around the Mongolian countryside for a week with five other travellers I had met. This involved some nights staying with the nomads, in their yurts, and some nights camping by ourselves.

I will never forget what happened on one of the nights when we camped.

Everything had seemed ok. We had pitched our tents, a shallow stream acted as a beer fridge and there was plenty of firewood knocking about.

Soon, the fire was roaring and the drinks were going down very nicely indeed. That was until somebody noticed a few shapes grouping together menacingly in the distance. I hoped that they would leave us alone. I was to be disappointed.

A pack of around fifteen big semi-wild dogs began to slowly walk over, getting closer and closer. Semi-wild... they belong to people, they wear collars, but they are left to form gangs and roam around most of the time. A gang had indeed been formed and they were slowly roaming towards us. A few rocks hurled in their general direction seemed at first to dissuade them as they turned around and began to walk away.

A few yards further on, they sat down.

They were waiting for night to fall.

I was worried. Our bags of food were clearly an attractive proposition to them. But were they merely hungry or had we strayed into their territory? Were they scavengers or fighters? We decided a good course of action would be to distance ourselves from our food. Two large trees stood further down the river and the highest boughs we could reach became our larder, the bags of food hanging out of the dogs' reach.

After around an hour of pure fear on my part, as darkness began to descend, the dogs roused themselves and edged closer. We huddled around the ever diminishing fire and spoke about what we thought may happen. Nobody could see it ending well. As the dogs got closer, they walked away to the left and disappeared over a small ridge, out of sight. Although unable to see them, we could still hear them. They growled and barked.

Complete darkness soon handed them the advantage. We had choices to make. Would we be safe as long as we had fire? Just a few large sticks remained. Was there more value in warmth, light and an animal’s primal fear than there was in having primitive clubs? Would a thrown beer bottle stop an angry dog? Would the bottle of Chinggis Khaan vodka make a good incendiary bomb, burning rag stuffed into the top and hurled into the pack? Or should it be saved to lessen the pain after their vicious attack has left us all missing whole chunks of flesh?

The only unnatural light anywhere close was that of our torches. Shone towards the incessant growling, it was reflected back by many pairs of evil eyes as the dogs came over the ridge. Were they fighting between themselves or working up for an assault?

The moon cast shadows as some of the braver dogs began to get closer. A noise from behind caused me to shine my torch. Eyes. They were circling us. Back to back, we stood over the pile of embers. How on Earth do you defend yourself against a large group of big dogs? There was more than twice as many of them as there was of us.

Dark, completely alone and with no possible help anywhere close, it was the perfect horror movie scenario.

More dogs emerged from the shadows all around. The situation had become critical. Our only chance was the almost non-existent protection offered by the tents. It was our only hope, to get inside and pray that they would be too lazy to try ripping them open. Perhaps they would smell the food and head for the tree. As we walked slowly towards the camp, a huge shape loomed in the middle of our circle of tents.

The biggest dog in the pack was lying there, blocking our way in. Back at the fire, we discussed our options. I think the conclusion we reached was more in hope than expectation.

"If they were going to tear us limb from limb, they would have done it by now."

Approaching again, the dog seemed unconcerned by our presence. He had fallen asleep. How unhappy would he be if we woke him? If he growls, how long before the others come? It was too late. He looked up. He looked at us... and began wagging his tail. Dropping his ears, he just lay there as we stroked him.

The relief I felt was unreal. Never, before or since, have I been so convinced that I was in a situation that could only end with me being seriously hurt, or worse. I climbed into my tent and quickly fell asleep.

Waking in the morning, I stepped out into the open air to see what damage had been done. It was obvious that once we were out of sight, they would have all gathered outside.

It was horrible. How could we have expected anything else? They may have seemed tame by the end of the night but dogs are still dogs. They do what dogs do.

Nobody escaped unscathed and the mass marking of territory they had undertaken now stained every corner of every tent.

I walked away from the camp to heed the call of nature myself. Around five of the dogs were lying beneath a tree on the other side of the river. As I did what I had to do, I looked over at them and wondered if that was their usual place to hang out. With more bravery, I could have dished out a wee bit of revenge.

Another lad and I walked over to the tree to take down the food. The dogs had been either uninterested or unable to reach it. Unfortunately, some birds had been far keener and able to see what we had. All of the ‘real food’ was untouched but it seems the birds had a far sweeter tooth than can be satisfied by instant noodles. My jellybeans had bore the brunt of their scavenging nature and were now all over the floor.

Bloody birds.

The time between it getting dark and us realising the dogs weren’t going to rip us to shreds was without doubt the scariest experience I have had in my life. But because it happened abroad, I thought I’d make that a condition of this thread and put it in the travel section.

So, if you can face reliving it and writing it up, what is yours?

I had been working in Caracas in Venezuela and was flying back via Frankfurt.

As we landed at Frankfurt they had police checking your passports getting off the plane to the bus and then as you walk through the doors to the airport you are surrounded by police and police dogs sniffing. I got through ok but then next minute I got a tap on the shoulder. Two policemen with dogs wanted to see my passport and then started asking me questions about where I had been, what I had been doing, etc. I had only been on business but it still scared me even though I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. I was thinking what if someone has put drugs in my suitcase or something due to Columbia being next to Venezuela. Anyway I was ok and got my flight home to Manchester.

I was about to vomit a serious amount of Guinness into the toilet of the hotel room I was sharing in Dublin a couple of years back when I saw a used tampon in the bowl.  It has scarred me hugely.

Went to a German metal festival shortly after the 7/7 attacks in London. Upon returning to Stanstead an unwashed sleep deprived alchohol soaked bunch of metalheads (of whom I may have been one your honour but I cannot recall specifics) proceeded to start bellowing out lyrics to any number of tracks with death, destruction mayhem etc contained within and one wit, upon seeing a poster asking if anyone had seen anything unusal on 7th July shouted, "Yeah, buses exploding in the street. That's not ******* normal is it?"

At this point, armed security took a bit of an interest in their antics and started making mutterings about the Prevention of Terrorism Act and blah blah blah and whilst you'd think this would have a sobering effect on things, some of them may have miscalculated the effects of copious amounts of German lager and were led away for a "quiet word"

Thankfully a bunch of long haired heavily tattooed/pierced white lads didn't fit the steroetypical image of a radical fundamentalist terrorist and no further actin was taken but, even if they hadn't been camping for a long weekend, I think clean underwear was very high on their list of priorities afterwards.

not half as bad as some of your stories, did get beat up with truncheons by the police in tenerife on my first lads hoilday, for nothing more than just messing about with our t-shirts off, w&nkers knew what they were doing just belting us across the body where less chance of killing us

also thought i was going to die in ibiza, poland, germany x2, but they were all stag do's and it was probably the huge beer fear i was getting after drinking far too much

Nothing worse than P***ed up, noisy Brits that don't know how to behave themselves.....

Can't say my holidays have been as eventful as some on here and I'm thankful for it.....

Had some fish soup at a Marbella restaurant about fifteen years ago and was sick for about two days solid.......Lost all my tan...

It's my only real bad experience..........Then again we tend to stay away from the rowdier type of places up the road like Fuengirola and Malaga....

well thats generally how they see all of us and in some cases the majority that is the case, but we weren't too bad to be honest. certainly didn't deserve that, they don't mind raking in all the tourist money anyway. cant think what the tenerife economy would be like without peed up brits