100% Proof That Travel Insurance Is Essential When Travelling Overseas… No Matter What!

As you’ll soon find out, Travel Insurance is essential for any backpacking trip abroad, not just to cover your travel gear, but also to protect your own health.

If you’re the type of person that likes to throw caution to the wind… let me do my best to convince you to cover your travelling arse – with insurance by sharing a few personal ‘travel gone wrong’ stories of our own – plus one from a close friend.

The Time Our Travel Insurance Personally Saved Us $3,700

In 2010 we made plans well in advance to fly to Europe in April and spend 9 weeks taking in the sights.

The excitement peaked around a week before our trip and then disaster struck (a natural disaster in fact) some stupid volcano in Iceland I’d never heard of erupted… shutting down most of Europe’s airports & threatening our impending travel plans.

We remained optimistic as airports opened, closed, then reopened again right up until we were due to leave.

A phone call to Qantas 12 hours before our flight was due to depart delivered the bad news that nearly crushed us. Our flights were cancelled and because we’d booked with reward points we were not a priority to the airline and we could end up waiting up to 6 months to get new flights issued.

Sonova B!#ch!

We had two options…

1. Turn up to work feeling sorry for oursleves for another 6 months until we could get new flights issued, or

2. Find an airport in Europe that was open – pay for new flights & work the rest of our travel plans out once we were on European soil.

We picked up the phone, called our travel agent and instructed her to get us into Europe asap.

The next 48 hours were spent zig zagging around the globe.

Perth to Singapore. Singapore to Mumbai. Mumbai to Bahrain. Finally Bahrain to Athens…
were we spent a few weeks recovering from the epic saga of getting there.

When we got home after an amazing 9 weeks in Europe, we submitted a claim to our insurance company for over $3,700 worth of flights & other unexpected costs that were a direct result of the volcano.

To our joy (and surprise) We Were Reimbursed for All of Our Unforeseen Expenses In Full.

Nice one!

How You Feeling About Travel Insurance Now? Convinced Yet…

If Not Read On For More Travel Disaster Stories!

When travel goes bad in Bali Indonesia – a travel disaster story from a close friend

Get This Man To A Doctor Stat – His Appendix his About To Explode!

It was my first trip overseas (besides Australia & New Zealand) with a bunch of high school buddies. We were young and excited… but things didn’t get off to a good start for my mate John.

(John’s not his real name… his real names Ben).

We were waiting to board our plane at the airport when we got a call over the PA system for a representative of our group to please come forward because we had a ‘problem’…

One of the lads went to see what the commotion was about & came back to inform us that a bag belonging to someone in our group was having some kind of issue involving leaking fluids.

After pretty much everyone had inspected the luggage one-by-one. Ben put his hand up to claim the leaky baggage and opened it up to find that the 1.5ltr red cordial bottle he packed had burst… and now every article of clothing within the bag was a funky ‘tie died’ red/hot pink colour.

Not long after calming down from the luggage incident… in mid-air ‘Pink Clothes Ben’ starts to get stomach pains & makes more than a few trips to the mens room.

Upon landing in Bali & trying to sleep off the illness, we organised a doctor to make a visit to the hotel room.

“Bali belly” the doctor declared (even though we had been on the island only a few hours). A jab in the bum and a few rupiah later, Doc assures us our travel companion will be back on his feet in no time.

The next morning (in the waiting room at the hospital) more doctors inform us ‘matter of factly’ – that our friend has appendicitis and that he must have surgery immediately – if not sooner.

And he absolutely cannot make the 3 hour flight home under any circumstances as the organ could burst at any minute. (the holiday’s not looking too good for Ben by this stage).

To top it all off the operation was going to cost $3,900 dollars with full payment needed up front.

No Money. No Surgery.

Ben organised travel insurance at the last minute at his Mothers persistence… a few days before we left so lucky for him (and Dean who was the only one who had that kind of change available on his credit card) the medical bills were reimbursed in full.

Bens story ends well…

He was reimbursed for the cost his clothes that were ruined at the airport… his medical bills were covered in full – plus the cost of business class seats home (care of the insurance company).

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