Funniest Thing for October

Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. There are no restrictions on length. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean.) The ITN staff will choose each month’s winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.

This month’s winner is DAVID RIEGERT of Reno, Nevada:

In 1993 my wife and I sailed with Renaissance Cruises from Singapore to Bali, whereupon we were promptly introduced to the joys of driving in Asia. As our bus pulled out of the airport, it seemed that we were being assaulted from every direction by all sorts of vehicles that managed to miss us literally by inches.

It was unnerving, to say the least. I never quite got used to seeing a car pass us at high speed at the last possible second on a narrow 2-lane road, in the face of oncoming traffic where no one seemed to do anything to avert disaster and yet somehow everyone involved came though it unscathed.

After we had more or less come to realize that we might even survive this adventure, one of the men in our group asked the guide about the cost of auto insurance.

“Oh, it is terribly expensive,” he said very seriously. “Almost no one can afford it. That is why we are so careful when we drive.”