phone smashed canceled flight climbing out of an airbnb on a ladder they put me in a bus one of
those airport buses with a private security guard can you believe it what's happening to my voice
i couldn't believe it right let's clean my glasses hang on hang on okay hi everyone and welcome
a couple of things first of all right now i am very sick i have a fever i have a headache
i have a sore throat and i haven't done my hair i'm a right mess it's not covered i've
had that once already this year 10 months ago in serbia this is definitely not that it's just
man flu but anyway um yeah welcome back to riga in latvia um however this is not a riga video it's a
mexico video see what i've done there mexican flag in the background
and right now barring isolation and also being sick i'm filming three videos from riga at the
moment so they will be coming up very soon but in the meantime i'm responding to requests that i had
recently on a live stream and also in messages wanted me to do a video about my cancun calamity
that's right so just to clarify if you clicked on this thinking that this is a video about you
know all-inclusive holidays in cancun and you know putting a face mask on and doing a thumbnail of it
and going you know during covid travel this video is not for you um it's a bit of a story time video
so let's get going as you may know recently i was back in mexico for about two and a half months
it felt like a lot longer and i recently returned to europe at the beginning of november it's the
beginning of december now so it's about a month later i've had time to recover and let's just
say my journey back to europe was not pleasant it wasn't easy obviously during this time of
year well this year covid i didn't expect it to be easy and certainly it wasn't easy it was a bliming
nightmare so let's just get some fundamental things out the way first so i was flying from
mexico city to cancun with vivo aerobus viva aerobus not viva mexico as i always call them
then i was flying with tui direct from cancun to london gatwick then i was staying in london for
one night and then flying from stansted to riga with someone else ryanair that's it really it yeah
and about a week before the flight i got an email the tui flight by the way i got an email saying
that your holiday has been cancelled holiday um what is a holiday or vacation if you're american
um yeah i'm not on holiday if you don't know i'm a digital nomad i just get flights one way here
and there you know i don't go on holiday but obviously to either airline if you don't know
it's um an airline in the uk that is primarily used for holiday makers flying from gatwick to
cancun or greece or wherever like an all-inclusive return trip so obviously that's why they assumed
i was on a holiday but basically they said yeah your holiday may be cancelled there wasn't any
confirmation or clarity it was just one of those generic emails so i thought okay fair enough i'll
get on twitter the response was it will take four days for us to get back to you four days
ridiculous anyway there was there wasn't much clarification over the
next four days until i got a message from lauren and nicola two messages saying that
flights back to uh the uk are still going ahead so the actual holidays as in the
return flights were cancelled but the one-way flights that people get were still happening
and i thought okay i'll take your word for that famous last words so anyway i flew from um mexico
city to cancun no problem good old viva edelbos i love mexican airlines i know some people have
some trouble with them but you know i've never had a problem with interjet volaris uh erdomard
you know air in mexico i have that's another story but um in general mexican airlines always great so
that was that bit got to cancun after my phone had smashed that's why there is no footage from this
whole calamity catastrophe disaster oblivion nightmare yeah so i got to cancun no phone
couldn't get on wi-fi obviously except with my laptop walked up to the screen
the departure screen to look for my tui flight to cancun oh what a surprise no flip in flight
couldn't believe it absolutely raging um i asked information desk people there wasn't any star from
tui at the airport i got told that there was no flight operating from cancun to gatwick double
brilliant at this point i was raging as you do looking back on it now it's quite hilarious um but
i think when we're in those sorts of situations and we think you know we've made plans going ahead
now my plans are absolutely screwed if you know what i mean without using a naughty word yeah
i got on my laptop and started just emailing and angrily twittering until i got responses
and yeah it turned out there was no flight and the funniest thing was was they said oh if you
have an issue contact your rep in the resort what resort what rep it's a one-way flight for chrysler
anyway one thing i wanted to add at this point was i talk a lot in the past about cancun is not
the real mexico which causes chaos generally because a lot of people say well everywhere
in mexico is real of course it is but i don't mean it like that i've been to cancun before and
when i say that it's not the real mexico it is that place that i'm gonna come across as a right
travel snob now but it is the place that people go to for all inclusive holidays i don't really
do that it's not really my thing what a wanker but yeah what i mean is that i'm comparing it to
magic towns and you know things like that it's not hasn't got that sort of historical authentic feel
that those places do and i really noticed the difference walking out of the airport to have
a cigarette a stressed cigarette and the guys out there of course saying oh do you want a taxi
in english they were saying this i responded in spanish just naturally and i think they
were honestly shocked that an english speaker a tourist was speaking spanish to them bonkers
and that just really kind of highlighted the difference between cancun or a touristy area
and a non-touristy area anyway what happened next right with the help of a friend of mine i managed
to book another flight um for the next day i found an airbnb to stay at that was just the start of
the chaos the airbnb was close to the airport close kind of i've got to stop doing quote marks
but it was actually in a hell area and what was it called um i've complete alfonso something i can't
remember i'll put the name of it down the bottom but yeah when i said to the taxi guy where i was
going he said oh are you sure you want to go there it was one of those shady areas it wasn't that bad
but the funny thing was you know the fact that i could speak a bit of spanish to the taxi guys
and that the collective guy they they let me have local price i was shocked when they showed me this
a4 like laminated sheet from the back of the taxi which had tourist prices local prices on it
i couldn't believe it like the tourist price was something like 60 to go to the center of cancun
but the local price was like three times less so i paid 200 pesos to go from the airport
to this place it wasn't actually that close it was bloody miles away which i would find out the
next day anyway finally find this airbnb which is in the middle of nowhere the wi-fi doesn't work
despite being promised that it worked got up the next day went to leave but everything was locked
and i couldn't get out this was like half or six in the morning so i had to use a ladder that was
up next to like the entrance bit to climb up with my bags drag the ladder up throw it down the other
side again and then climb down um to escape from this airbnb next up i thought okay i'll get a taxi
to the airport there were no atms anywhere the one that i did find wasn't working actually two there
was another one i then get on my laptop outside domino's to find that the flight that i booked
had now been cancelled or the payment hadn't gone through or something so outside domino's i
had to book another flight last minute okay then i started walking to the airport from wherever this
place was i think it was about 10 kilometers i must have walked about three quarters of it
in the rain in you know you know what cancun heat is like as well when you have rain and it's just
sweaty as hell finally found a hotel um i can't remember the name of it it was the first one i
found i persuaded the guy in there to let me use the airport shuttle which was 300 pesos for the
rest of the way to the airport at that point i didn't give a [ __ ] i just wanted to get to the
airport yeah so thank christ for that guy and you know if it wasn't for him i'd probably been dead
by now after that it was relatively plain sailing in a way so i had to go from cancun to toronto
in canada but the mistake i made with the domino's pizza flight booking thing
was the fact that i forgot that as a uk citizen i can't enter canada at the moment and also i can't
go from terminal to terminal because you have to go through immigration and customs and everything
so i thought oh crap i'm going to be stuck in toronto but turns out and this another godsend
just like the hotel guy there was a guy waiting for me as i got off the plane in in toronto and he
said oh are you david i was like oh my god what's going on it turned out that they were waiting for
me the airport um or someone had emailed them or whatever the ground staff told them that i was
coming that i needed to be transported to the other terminal i was like oh my god so i i i'm
not gonna believe this they put me in a bus one of those airport buses with a private security guard
can you believe it what's happening to my voice i couldn't believe it i was like a celebrity i
felt like adele you know on a private bus going through the the um you know the airport passed
all the planes with the security guard that wasn't speaking to me anyway i got off the bus and then
the woman then had to walk me to the gate because she told me you can't go out of a certain area
around the gate so i was like oh my god so i had to sit down and then i eventually got on
the flight to london and um what happened then oh yeah that was it you know at the beginning i said
i was going to stay in london for a night well it turns out i now couldn't because
of the capital flight and everything so instead of staying anywhere in london i had to get to london
london heathrow get on what did i get on two trains i got on the tube and then another train
to stanton airport for my flight to riga which was the original flight that i booked for that day
and then finally got to riga so that was it so you know phone smashed cancelled flight
climbing out of an airbnb on a ladder no atms and just every step of the way
was an absolute flip in disaster and there's something about cancun that really annoys me
you know atms why do they dispense money in us dollars you're in mexico you're not in the us
people at the atms who there was this woman who was saying oh i don't know how much 200
pesos is in the us dollars why didn't you check that before you left are you stupid
so i had to tell her how much it was while i was waiting for her to finally finish at this atm
the thing about people making no effort to speak spanish and the fact that all the guys there speak
english why should people who are from mexico feel like they have to speak english to tourists
why aren't the tourists making an effort to learn the language i just don't get it i'm
in latvia i learned la vaca la la tien paladies russian spacebas de las vegas oblivion it's not
difficult to learn some basic phrases jesus hola buenas it's not rocket science people you know
i just don't get this whole cancun thing this obsession with cancun and kind of this
cancun calamity has kind of reminded me that christ i never want to go somewhere like that
you know but looking back you know it's a it's a hilarious humorous travel experience that
you know these things happen we have to just try and remain calm to the best of our ability
and the great news is i did get a refund from tui bloody tui what's their names again lauren
and nicola that's where they're going to get it in the neck if i ever meet him yeah i've
got a refund in about a week i'm actually i've applied for the eu uh compensation as well you
if your flight is cancelled leaving from the eu or to the eu or whatever you get compensation
that's ongoing um but yeah in short don't fly with an airline like tooie but viva head of us
really in so thanks for watching that was a bit of a calamity i'll see you next time there'll
be some rega videos coming up next i don't know if any trains have been going past during this
video but whatever goodbye mexico i'll see you next year 2021 brilliant catch you later
you