Contest Shortlist
Road Junky has 36 Contest Shortlist articles. Scroll down to view.
Sexual Harassment in a Truck in Ecuador
Having woken up several days earlier, on the cold, hard floor of a stranger’s kitchen, with a naked man laying expectantly on top of me, (with me dressed and relatively ...
The Road to Kathmandu, Encounter Overland
Then there was the time… Experienced travelers often attempt to one-up each other with their “my trip was more hellish than yours” stories. It’s a fun sort of ...
Beirut in the Baltics - Wild, Wild East
After the collapse of communism in the USSR, inflation in the freshly minted Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia rolled up the rouble into the cheapest toilet paper ...
An Airplane Ordeal
It was an ominous start. One hour before we were supposed to take the red-eye from Calgary to Montreal a nurse knocked on Scott’s hospital room door and matter-of-factly informed ...
From Communist China to Italy in 1952
1952: I was 18, my sister Maria 11 years older. A few days before, our ship from China had docked in Naples, and we had gone, by train, with our ...
A Crap Safari
A single, bare, overhead 300 watt light bulb hung over our orientation meeting. While it attracted most of the mosquitoes in southern Africa, it did little to dispel my gloom. ...
The Worst Passenger in the World
On any journey in our lifetime, the first bag we pack is ourselves. Right? At least it’s true in a spiritual sense. But you still have to pack your other ...
Meals On Wheels In Stung Meanchey, Phnom Penh
‘SOM CHO BEIE JOUR!’
This is my pleading request for 2 lines to 40 people in front of me. But the damp environment and limitations of my ...
Hitchhiking to Los Angeles
Some years ago, I was hitchhiking south on I-5 outside of Ashland, Oregon when I was picked up by a woman in her late 20s and her four-year-old daughter. They ...
Anatomy of a River Rescue
At this moment I hate just about everything and everyone. I hate that I learned how to kayak, film, and develop a love for travel. I hate Trip Jennings, Kyle ...
Getting Off With a Drunk Irishman in Croatia
White-sand beaches, clear-blue sea and quaint Mediterranean villas: That’s how the tourism board depicted Croatia. For months while I was living in Vienna I watched the commercials, studied the scenery ...
Escape From Mexico
Mexico. A land of sunshine and senoritas, cold cervezas and tequila, cheap drugs and beaches…good times and bad times. I was 18. I was no freshie to travel ...
The Worst Drivers in the World
I’ve travelled a lot around the world – my country counter is now over 30. One thing I’ve noticed throughout my travels is that the quality of driving around ...
No Sympathy for a Hitchhiker in Canada
I stumbled groggily through the streets of Calgary in search of a bus stop. A vicious hangover added to the weight of my backpack. It was two in the afternoon ...
Mexicano in the Hamptons, New York
To the owner of an American flag which was stolen on the fifth of July 2004 outside a bar in South Hampton my deepest apology. I can imagine one cheerful ...
Earache and Interspecies Incest in Kazakhstan
As I lay on my dorm room bed in agony a fat, silent teenager watched me impassively from the opposite bunk. He sat staring at me for several hours, but ...
Drunken Pirates in the Caribbean
Down the North Shore Road is a narrow sliver of sand. I shifted up into second gear on my father’s motorcycle as the beach came into the view. ...
Saving a Spanish Cat
We were ready to return to our chaotic Parisian lifestyle. My fiancé Fred and I were rejuvenated after a week in Parauta, a tiny village nestled in the mountains of ...
Wading Rivers in Nepal
We left Kathmandu in a far more civilised manner than we had entered it, namely we were on a bus driven by a local driver, rather than having hitched a ...
Honeymoon Hell in Honduras
8/25/08
The wedding was gorgeous! I can’t believe after a year of planning its over, but now Ben and I have our next adventure – a working honeymoon in Honduras. We ...
Road Trip to the Baja Badlands
I’d been knocking around a hostel in Ocean Beach, San Diego for a few weeks, keeping busy by alternating between various beds, bars and the beach, when I’d hooked up ...
When On a Burman Bus - Befriend the Ladyboy
A bus pulled up to the spot where the white dirt road met the black asphalt of the highway. Sergey and I had been sitting on our backpacks by the ...
Motorbiking in Ladakh
My left leg is hanging over a 3000-metre drop into a certain death. My right shoulder is touching a truck that we are trying to pass. I am sitting on ...
Drugged, Abducted and Robbed in Russia
Everyone around the tables was friendly. I remember having 3 shots with them and then…
Then I was stumbling and falling from weakness on gravel somewhere in the countryside amid early ...
The Special Bus from London to Athens
There used to be a ‘Special Bus’ that journeyed from London to Athens. The Magic Bus was said to be rough; for many years the Special Bus defied description, but ...
Up an Amazonian Creek
Tossing and turning in bed the night before my Amazon Jungle expedition, I was having second thoughts of going up the Ucayali River in Northeast Peru to live with the ...
Flashed in Fallouja, Iraq
Back when it was just another angry Iraqi city and months before it became the major flashpoint in U.S./Iraqi relations, I toured Fallouja.
I was investigating war damage at a water ...
Mugged By Police in Panama
“Get out of the car and put your hands where I can see them white boy!” barked the Uzi toting police officer. His obese face contorted angrily as he stared ...
Dolphin for Dinner and a Boat Trip From Hell
Salt caked my face and frothed out my mouth, my arms were locked and cramped from clinging to my seat. A wave rose over us and dumped six more inches ...
Robbed in Malaysia
It was a dumbass thing to do. I know. But let me just say this in my lame defense: when I first traveled Asia back in the early 90’s, I ...
Dodgy Flight With Garuda Out of Malaysia
Looking back we should have seen the signs: the whole morning was a treasury of forebodings written by a bad horror novelist. I rose before the sun and went downstairs ...
Foot Fetishes On a German Train
If you asked Dante, there are many kinds of hell. The flatterers, the sorcerers, the hoarders and even the lustful have their own layers. And so they should. Participants in ...
The Kindness of Strangers
Today was the day. After finishing teaching English in Hungary I was off on my first solo adventure. First stop Copenhagen, Denmark. Getting off the train I found myself on ...
Ambushed in Peru
We’re having an amazing time in backcountry Peru. My twin sister Lynn and I and our friend Rachel hike the Kuelap ruins on foot, and explore the Gocta waterfalls on ...
Dressed Like a Hooker and Stranded in the Bronx
Having blown all my cheese on booze, I had no choice but to trust the rappers. They weren’t rappers exactly, they were “Talent Agents” for Slim Shady records and ...
Getting Dental Work Done in the Philippines
Dentists have a tough job. They’re expensive, universally disliked, have to spend each working day staring into complete strangers’ mouths while being tormented by foul breath, and little kids cry ...
