Holiday hell … Finn, Jenny and Art are hoping their next holiday won’t be a repeat of their last. 53723_01 Picture: KRISTIAN SCOTT
By Vanessa Chircop
BEHIND every dark cloud is a silver lining. Williamstown’s Jenny Leach would vouch for it after her story about a nightmare travel experience won her family a trip to Bali.
In 2009, Jenny, her husband and their then two-year-old son went to Thailand with hopes of creating fun family memories only to have those hopes shattered by a series of unfortunate events.
Their first night in Thailand was spent in a Bangkok emergency room after their son Finn, hit his head on tiles and needed stitches.
Jenny suffered an allergic reaction to the hotel’s laundry powder, which made her whole body red, sore and itchy and her husband required emergency dental work after being hit by a bike.
Jenny said all these unfortunate incidents were nothing compared to the devastating news that would follow.
Halfway through their 10-day holiday Jenny found out her beloved Grandma had passed away and they would miss her funeral.
To top it all off, the global financial crisis hit Australia and the Australian dollar crashed leaving them with no funds.
Jenny entered her saga in a competition for the worst travel stories and came out a deserved winner.
She is not worried that history will repeat itself on this next family holiday.
‘We’re very excited about going to Bali and we’re not too worried,’ Jenny said.
‘We’re pretty relaxed travellers and even in our nightmare holiday, we managed to find good things in there.’
Entrants were asked to write their most compelling travel nightmare story that had a happy ending.
Jenny said the upside to their travel disaster was they didn’t get diarrhoea.
