Box5

Japan Airlines Safety Promotion Center. It is a museum dedicated to the crash of one of their planes. It does not have a sign on the outside. It is hidden in an office building that has no sign. I called when close by to ask for directions. After aimlessly walking, I saw the museum director, who had come outside to look for me. I was about one block away and not within direct sight of the front door so he was walking around looking for me.

sweeper20

This is a great thread!

undergrace

Thank you! I was about 15 pages deep into one of the "tourist scam" threads and it started to get really depressing, and made the world look pretty bleak. Most of the places I would like to visit were being mentioned as places full of pickpockets, scammers, and thieves. If someone who doesn't travel much stumbled onto some of those threads they'd be pretty nervous about going anywhere, and that was just a really sad thought. However, it made me think about the GOOD times I've had while traveling, so I wanted to turn it around and talk about the great experiences we have had as well! I'm really enjoying reading everyone's replies!

tkeppers

I was walking around a shopping center in London, and pulled out my cell phone to figure out directions back to my hotel. Unbeknownst to me, a Ł100 note fell out of my pocket. I didn't notice and started walking away. Another shopper picked it up, and chased me down to give it back.

Also, this isn't really a "random" act of kindness, but Dublin has a program where a local volunteer will take a visitor out for either a pint at a pub or a cup of tea (this is paid for by the city of Dublin; no cost to the visitor or volunteer). I ended up having a pint in Bewley's pub with a 7th-generation Dubliner named Brian. He spent well over two hours talking to me about what I planned to do on my trip, giving me pointers on things to see and do, providing maps to areas I was interested in, and just generally making me feel welcome in his hometown. I was traveling solo for the first time, and this guy really helped me feel right at home...it was a really cool and memorable part of the trip.

FlyingUnderTheRadar

I was on my way to Berchtesgaden (Germany) and had to change trains in Freilassing. It was the last train of the night to Berchtesgaden and I only had a few minutes to change trains. Unfortunately, for my self and a couple of other passengers we got on the wrong train to Berchtesgaden. By the time we realized it the train had left.

The guy in my car said was going to call his wife to come get him and would be happy give me a ride. That was very nice and we chatted realizing we had some similar research interests. His wife and baby show up about around 30 minutes later and off we go. All very nice given it was now well after 10pm, but …

I was going to camp and when we got to the campground the owner said it was nearly 11pm and they were closed for the night. The guy argued with the host that I had cash and did not need anything other than a spot to pitch my tent. Nope, he was having none of it and they were closed.

The guy was really embarrassed and apologized as he could not understand. There was a quick conversation between the guy and his wife. Next thing I know I am invited to their house for the night.

Thunderroad

I was in Varanasi, India back in April 1980. I was under the influence of (ahem) a local product that is gradually being legalized and decriminalized in the United States today, when I went to the city's swarming train station to buy a ticket. I got back to my very basic hotel and my passport, which I carried with me to the station, was gone!

Not only did this mean backtracking to New Delhi, which was sweltering in 110 degree heat, to get a new passport (and I was not exactly traveling in style at that point, so the journey would have been a PITA); it also meant that I could not go on to Nepal as planned.

I raked my mind to try to recall whether and how I might have lost it. Hmmm...there was a group of guys who'd approached me at the station, apparently just being friendly and practicing their English. This was not so unusual in India. But maybe they'd picked my pocket???

Just as I was resigned to my fate, the hotel manager called to say my passport had been found at the station! I ran over there and met the very nice head of the railway police there, who handed over the document. Apparently I'd left it at the counter when buying my ticket.

The the hotel manager had told me that offering cash to the honest police officer would have been inappropriate, but that if I could give him something from the West (like a pen) it would be appreciated. (My, ahem again, state of mind was such that I had no idea which ticket agent to thank in person, but I could at least thank the police.) The ironic problem was, traveling on about $4/day, I had nothing from the West to offer! But my gratitude was profuse.

Box5

Good thing the shopper didn't call the police and have you arrested for counterfeit money! The Ł100 note was a fake!

Gardyloo

I posted this on Fodor's many years ago but it remains a favorite story.

Part 1

We were traveling from Amsterdam to the south of France, via the sleeper train from Brussels to Nice etc. When we got to our compartment in Brussels, the conductor told us that the last supper sitting was about to happen, so if we wanted dinner we should hustle forward to the dining car or else have to live on “snack bar” food or worse till morning. We left everything in the compartment, which he said he would lock.

At dinner we shared a table with a fascinating Canadian man who was working with an international agriculture agency (an NGO) headquartered in The Hague. He was traveling to Paris that evening. We were intrigued by his stories – he had worked all over the world and had witnessed things like the fall of Saigon, Tehran during the hostage crisis, things like that.

I absentmindedly noticed during dinner that the train had stopped somewhere in western Belgium or eastern France; somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. But then it started again and all was fine.

Dinner lasted through dessert, then coffee, then a brandy, and we were swapping stories and having a fine old time, until the dining car people started ahem-ing rather loudly, so we bid our adieus and we headed back to our compartment.

We didn’t make it all the way. I looked through the little window in the door between the last seating coach and the first sleeper, and saw…tracks, receding into the dusk. Evidently the stop during dinner had been when they’d disconnected the sleeping cars and attached them to a different train, which was now headed south to the Cote d’Azur, while we were standing in the remains of the train that was now barreling toward Paris. Oops.

When I say we left everything in the sleeping compartment, I mean everything – plane tickets, bags, passports, coats, cameras, toothbrushes, everything. My wife, bless her, had taken her handbag to dinner, in it her wallet, in that her credit and cash cards and drivers license, and maybe 100 Belgian Francs and a couple of Guilder. No FF. [Note, pre-Euros.]

We went a-searching for a conductor or anyone in a uniform, and found nobody, except our Canadian dinner companion. We explained what had happened, and he offered to help as best he could, which none of us knew how to define.

Part 2

We ended up back in the dining car, where the only person present was the headwaiter, counting and sorting the various banknotes left for tabs and tips. By this point my and my wife’s French had well and truly given out (“Please, how do you say imbecile?”) but our Canadian friend came to the rescue, explained our plight, and the waiter grudgingly agreed to call the conductor, who he knew was up in the locomotive schmoozing with the drivers (at least I hope that was all.)

The conductor arrives, our friend explains, and we receive a world-class series of Gallic shrugs. Can he see our tickets? Geez, no, they’re on the OTHER TRAIN.

Well, you’ll have to wait until we get to Paris, which is now an hour or so away, and maybe someone there can sort you out. I ask (through our new interpreter) what happens if the sleeper train arrives at its terminus (Ventimiglia, just over the Italian border) and nobody’s in our compartment. Well, he said, your stuff is piled on the station platform. Okey-dokey.

We arrive at the station in Paris (Gare de l’Est I think) and it’s late and everything’s shut. The conductor points the 3 of us toward the station manager’s office, shrugs, and vanishes. We march up to the office and our friend talks our way into the office, where we meet the SNCF station manager, a chain-smoking woman in a pixy cut and a black-on-black outfit. Our friend tells our story to her, and (I kid you not) she looks at us, grimaces, and says, “Oo la la..” In my many days and nights in France I have never had this said to me before or since.

The three of us stand there, two of us sheepish, while she goes through a couple more Gauloises. She says something to our Canadian savior, and he tells us he’s been dismissed. He’s now a couple of hours overdue for his hotel (early meeting the next day) so we thank him for the hundredth time and he goes.

The station manager asks us (French, but I’m managing, sort of) if we have any French money. No. Do we have an ATM card? Yes. Okay, you will need around 500F (around $80 at that time), get it from the ATM in the main concourse. Why? You’ll see.

She picks up the phone and barks words, and presently a smallish Algerian or Tunisian man appears. She writes a note on a slip of paper, shows him, and hands it to me. It says “Valenton.” More barking at the guy, then okay, she says, go with him, via the ATM. Bon chance (Gringos.)

I use my wife’s cash card at the ATM, trying with partial success to keep the guy from seeing the PIN. He leads us out into the night (pretty chilly and us with no coats) to his – aha – taxi.

We then roar through the night, up on to the Peripherique, making like a Mirage, out of town to the south.

Half an hour later he pulls off the Autoroute and onto a side road, then another turn and we are on a dirt road, deep in the dark boondocks. My wife is contemplating swallowing her wedding ring at this point. We bump along for a couple of minutes until we come to a lone house with a light on. Our driver goes to the door and knocks on it; a man in an undershirt appears (PO’d possibly?) and indicates no, you idiot, not here. More bumping and we come to another identical building. Another knock, this time the guy’s in a shirt. Yes, this is it. Get out, go in. It is about 2 AM.

Part 3 (last)

We gladly fork over the 300F cab fare and add another 100F for not killing us. Off the cab goes, and upstairs we go with the new guy. We emerge into… the war room. On all four walls are enormous computer screens and diagrams of the French railway system for the Paris region, with crawling, blinking lights, numbers on readouts, colored shapes on black. The room is occupied with four or five people sitting at consoles. One console starts making a beeping noise and the attendant pushes a button and the beeping stops. All look up at the big board, where no doubt tragedy has just been averted.

We are told to sit over there and be quiet (except for our teeth chattering, which we could not control) and we do so for half an hour. Then one of the men gets up and motions for us to follow him outside. He grabs an old-fashioned railway lantern, and proceeds to lead us across dozens of sets of railway tracks, waving the lantern as he goes, no doubt so the TGV traveling at 300 kph will have time to stop.

Finally we arrive at a cement pad, where we wait for about two minutes. A train pulls up, slides forward until we are opposite a door in one of the coaches, stops. Our sleeping car conductor looks down on us and says, “Oh there you are.”

A few hours later we raise the curtain and look out on the Mediterranean in the morning sun’s glare, and we start to process how lucky we were to have been befriended, and saved, by two or three strangers. A night to remember, full of kind people.

Cassie55

Wow Gardyloo that's an amazing story!

What an experience.

txflyer77

Tokyo during and after Fukushima.

Those who were there know that Tokyo was never in much danger but it was tough to get good information on what was going on during those first 72 hours.

So, those who helped a confused 20-year-old American:

- The English expat at Ebisu station translating an NHK broadcast for a bunch of foreigners who'd gathered around

- The woman who noticed I was lost while trying to walk from Ebisu to Asakusa because the subway lines were all closed and walked me to a main intersection and gave me directions

- The local tour guide I met on the train from Narita and with whom I'd exchanged contact information who contacted my hostel to find out if I was okay

- The station manager of Aoto station who did his best choreography routine in trying to tell me how to get to NRT after the train had to stop there and couldn't continue onwards

- The other expat who was also at Aoto station and spoke enough Japanese that between the diagram I had from station manager and her questions to everyone we ran into, we eventually made our way from Aoto to NRT (backtracking to Ueno, cab to TCAT and a bus to NRT).

A few others from around the world:

- The woman who ran a little noodle stand in Kanchanaburi, Thailand who used her phone to call my guesthouse so I could figure out where it was after I (and the tuk-tuk driver) got horribly lost

- The old man at the temple in Nara who insisted on telling me the entire history of the huge bell

Ikaz

During an internship in a small company I used to travel every month or so to Rotterdam for a project. I would fly out with my boss (the COO of my company) on the first flight in the morning to Amsterdam and fly back on the last flight in the evening.

The last time I was due to fly this trip I decided to fly out on the previous day instead, the trip was cheaper including a night in the hotel and I would get more sleep. My boss however was due to fly out in the morning.

All goes well to start off, the flight is going well. But soon before we arrive, Amsterdam airport closes due to a huge storm that hit the country. We circle for a while trying to land, but can’t and the pilot decides to divert to Eindhoven. Once we land (35 minutes after scheduled landing in Amsterdam) the storm hits Eindhoven, it is chaos, thunder, heavy rain, wind and lightning. When I say the storm hits us when we land, we didn’t even have time to get off the plane before it arrived…
So we landed, and because of the storm they cannot let us off the plane! It is the first time that I feel “turbulence” on a plane, but we were on the ground. The vibe is quite good, everybody is glad to be on the ground, and looking at the chaos outside the windows.
The cabin crew goes around the cabin, offers another drinks service, and asks everybody where they are heading. They are organising a bus towards Amsterdam airport for anyone that wants to.
I tell them that I am going to Rotterdam and they tell me to take a cab to the train station and then a train to Rotterdam, it will be the fastest solution.
Once we are allowed off the plane (looking at my records, we were stuck on the ground for 1 hour and 20 minutes!!), I go to Eindhoven train station.

Arriving at the train station I find that because of the storm, the direct train line between Eindhoven and Rotterdam is not working any more, so I will have to find a different way to get there. I asked a taxi driver, and he quoted “at least 200€”, I didn’t have the approval to spend that much, and as an intern I wasn’t sure if it would be accepted to claim it back, so I declined.

Kind stranger #1

So I go back to have a look at the trains, and nothing is in English so I ask a passenger to help me understand what is happening and how I could still arrive in Rotterdam that evening. I think that he checked online with his phone and said that he was going in the same direction so he could help me out. This was a godsend as all announcements were in Dutch and I had no clue on what was happening, or what I could do. I followed him around for the start of the trip and he explained to me how to do the rest once he arrived home, and told me that he would drive me to Rotterdam to make sure that I would arrive safe, but he had been drinking so couldn’t do that. My trip ended up with me taking a bus from Eindhoven to S-Hertogenbosch (40 minutes trip), a train to Utrech (35 minutes), and then the night train to Rotterdam (about 2 hours).
After all of this I arrived at my hotel just after 3:00 in the morning when I was supposed to arrive there at about 20:30.

At around 4:30 in the morning I get a text from my boss, saying that I will need to represent my company as there is a major issue at the factory so he can’t fly out.

Luckily the meeting started at 10:00 the next morning so I could catch enough sleep, and it went really well for me and therefore for my company (it helped that some of the project team had failed to arrive due to the storm).

Kind stranger #2

On the flight back I board the flight amongst the last people, and I get to my seat at one of the last rows of the plane, and ask the man sitting in the aisle if I can get to my window seat the other side of him. He gets up and goes and sits in an empty row behind. Once I am sat down one of the cabin crew comes and says hello to me and asks me if I would like to sit in front as I would have more space. This became my first flight in business class (she did apologise for not having the business class meal, but I wasn’t expecting a real meal so I ate at the airport anyway). She recognised me from the flight the day before and spent part of the flight talking to me (and was surprised about how late I arrived in Rotterdam).
As I was first off the place I ended up catching the last train home just before it left also, saving the taxi fare for my company.

Jeannietx

So many great stories!

We have had many great encounters with strangers who either noticed us looking at a map, or maybe we just had that perplexed look on our face and they stepped in. Directed us to the right subway station in NYC, etc.

**In Paris we had walked across the Seine to see the Arc de Triomphe and afterwards stopped at a restaurant for an early dinner.

When we came out of the restaurant it was pouring down rain so we got our little travel umbrellas to prepare for the walk back. We thought it would be good if we could get a cab but all of them seemed to be full.

All of a sudden a cab stopped and a gentleman in the back seat asked if we wanted to share his as he was close to his destination.

He jumped out and got in the front seat and we got in the back and off we go. Turned out he was an American from NYC living in Paris. When the cab arrived at his destination we again thanked him and told him we would get his cab fare. He said no need and handed the driver money and off he went.

**Also in Paris, we had walked from our hotel to the Eiffel Tower, and then decided to go to somewhere I had read about. We stopped out of the way on a sidewalk while my husband looked at the map, and I was admiring a lady's beautiful dog as she went in a bakery across the street.

When she and her dog came out shortly, she and her dog crossed the street and came up to us to see if we needed assistance. I got to tell her how beautiful I thought her dog was. And she told us where to find what we were looking for.

**In Germany, we were driving around some small towns as my husband was looking for a little town that had the same name as his sister's married name.

We spotted the sign and pulled into the driveway of a home that was obviously part of a horse farm to turn around. A lady came out of the house and asked if she could help us. We apologized for using her driveway an explained we were just turning around.

I commented on her pretty flowers and the really beautiful horse I could see being groomed. She invited us to get out if we would like to see all of the horses, I was thrilled!

We went with her and she introduced us to all the horses, told us that these horses were show horses. Her husband and son were currently away competing. She showed us all around the horse farm and then invited us to come in to see the Olympic medal that her husband had won in equestrian.
What a gracious lady, she definitely made our day.

**Also in Germany, we were on a train in Germany headed to our stop for the night. The train stopped at what we thought was the right stop and we got off. We looked around and thought it really didn't look like the place we were looking for.

A gentleman noticed us and asked if he could help. My husband told him where we were looking for. He said we had gotten off one stop too early so to wait for the next train and then get off at the first stop.

**In Italy, again on a train. A lady sitting in the same booth of seats struck up a conversation. Turned out she was an American who had married an Italian and had lived in Italy for almost 20 years.

She kept us occupied for several hours telling us about her life in Italy, answering our questions and teaching us a few words in Italian she thought we should know.

**In Australia, I had struck up a friendship with a lady who lived in Australia on a similar forum to FT, and she had been very helpful with information for our eight week DIY tour of Australia. She gave me her phone number to call when we arrived in Sydney from Auckland.

She and her husband came the day after we arrived in Sydney and spent the whole day showing us some of their favorite places near Sydney.

We still keep in touch.

**England, we were doing a day trip from London to Stratford Upon Avon, it was our first train ride in England.

We arrived at our destination and grabbed our stuff to get off. Oops, DH was not able to open the door. A nice gentleman showed him that you had to reach out and open the door from the outside.

There are so many good stories, it is great to share them.

BuildingMyBento

There have been a number of kind folks whom I have encountered in my travels. This list is certainly not exhaustive:

- A couple of Gulfies who helped me find a hotel and took me to dinner in Kuwait
- The fellow who treated me to a sushi dinner and a historical dictionary, in Okayama, Japan
- Another, perhaps more colorful person who invited me to sushi and a スナック in Fukuoka
- My seatmates on a flight to Cape Town who helped me find a hotel
- A bunch of others from Lahore to Dublin who have welcomed me into their homes/favorite restaurants

Globalrig

When I was much younger, I traveled with a friend to Norway for the Lillehammer Olympics. We flew into Oslo from London and then took a train north.

On the train we met a lovely young woman who lived in a town nearby. We chatted for over an hour. We had reservations to stay in a hostel for 3 nights and then knew we did not have a reservation for the last night. (We were in our 20s and planned to "figure something out".)

She left her phone number and name with us and invited us to give her a call. She lived at home with her parents.

The hostel was way overbooked and even the floor of the lobby was full. So when our reservation ran out a couple of days later, we took her up on the offer and asked if we could stay for a night at her house!

She agreed and picked us up from the hostel, brought us to meet her parents, and had dinner together. If I recall correctly, she also dropped us off at the train station so that we could make it back to Oslo for the flights home. Absolutely wonderful of her and her parents to open their home to strangers. Many years later, I remember that dinner better than I remember most of the events we watched.

Weean

Could have been a Scottish note...