Day 1 of The Big Adventure mostly consisted of me dropping my phone and the screen smashing into a thousand tiny peices, a very long flight to Bangkok via Kuala Lumpur and the dread as I realised my backpack is not appearing on the carousel. 

What do you call a backpacker without a backpack? 

Screwed.

All my beloved possessions flashed before my eyes, as I realised I would have to live out of, what can only be described as, a clutch-with-a-strap. All my worldly possession included:

1. Both passports
2. Purse
3. Phone
4. iPod
5. Lip balm
6. Chewing gum

We filed a missing bag report with Air Asia and went on our way.

Next hurdle was finding our way to the hostel – we had to jump on a local bus to get to the nearest skytrain station. 

The bus…

  
With a little help from some friendly locals we managed to get off the bus at the right stop and found our way to the sky train.

We had a half an hour journey on the sky train which was comparable to Iceland in terms of temperature and got off at the stop closest to our hostel.

We followed the directions to our hostel which seemed to be taking us down a lot of dingy dark alleys, lined with street food carts and the overwhelming smell of sewage. 

We finally spotted the sign for our hostel and went straight in. The lady at the desk greeted us with ‘you are Lauren booking?’ which was deceptively reassuring. She then went onto explain that the hostel was overbooked and they had sold our room. Oh great. 

Thankfully, she offered us a bunk bed in a 14 bed dorm free of charge. It was 3am our time and all we wanted to do was sleep so we weren’t in a position to be picky. 

I tried to call the airline to check if they’d found my bag but the number they’d given me was not working. The wifi was not working. And to top it all, the hostel owner came in and told us he didn’t like English people.

At this point, we decided to head up to bed before anything else went wrong. 

I don’t think I slept a wink that night.

Officially the worst travelling day in the history of mankind.