There is just something about buses/planes/trains that brings out the very worst of humanity.
24-year-old writer Munyee Lau wrote an open letter to a fellow plane passenger that went super viral this week. Lau was flying from Singapore to Sydney last month when she found- or rather smelt- a couple of unsolicited seat mates during her flight.
“Dear passenger 15A,” she wrote on her blog. “You do not know me but I was seated in front of you during the flight from Singapore to Sydney on April 12th. What I had initially thought to be a routine flight turned out to be a once in a lifetime experience – and it was all because of you.”
She continued, “It was so nice of you to take off your shoes and put your feet between my seat and the plane window. It must have taken considerable effort — it was a small space but you stuck it as close to my face as you possibly could.”
“For immediately, my nose was assaulted by a putrid smell of death and decay.”
“The stench was so strong that I turned to check if the old lady seated next to me was still breathing.”
But if you thought smelly socks was the worst thing to be dealt with during transit, think again. We’ve rounded up some of the most disgusting transit stories from around the office and the interwebs for your reading pleasure horror.
Warning: These stories get pretty foul.
1. “A friend of mine witnessed a hand-job on the train and then the girl wiped the semen on the hand pole in the carriage.”
2. “On a bus one time this woman was eating a Kit Kat, and mid-chew she sneezed. I was standing across the aisle from her, and it all happened in slow motion – all the saliva and choccy chunks sailed through the air, illuminated by the afternoon sun, and landed squarely on my face.”
3. “I strongly believe that on domestic flights it is an unspoken rule that you DO NOT recline your seat. On a 1.5hr flight from Sydney to Brisbane I had a guy recline his seat into my long legs and then proceeded to rub his sweaty, smelly, bald head all over his seat cushion which was like five centimetres from my face.”
4. “I was on a train once and a man cut his arm and told everyone he had HIV. Then he tried to put his bleeding arm on people.”
5. “When I was about 14 going to my drama classes in Redfern, a guy came and sat opposite me in an empty carriage, looked at me intently and then started masturbating while staring at me. It was so traumatising.”
6. “I am that person who gets travel sick, and I was really unwell on my flight home from Thailand, and the girl next to me was a total bitch about it. Complained loudly the whole time, kept hitting the call button to bring flight attendants over so she could dob me in (although one was already looking after me) and was just generally awful. It’s hard because when you’re motion sick you can’t do anything about it and I was just trying to get through it. I kinda wished I’d thrown up ON her.”