I’ve recently been reminded of a couple of “schaudenfreude” (spelling?) type phenomena about travelling — or perhaps about human nature — that I’ve observed in the past.

The first of these is the delight that some people take in telling travel horror stories; the cautionary tales about muggings after dark, shark attacks, poisonous reptile bites, theft of bodily organs from hotels etc. etc.

The second is the even greater delight such people seem to take in informing others that they’ve been ripped off or conned, normally by a trivial amount: “You paid 20 (insert strange foreign currency unit here) for that? You were ripped off, that should only have been 5! They saw YOU coming!”

In both cases, the correct response is to tell the offending person to bog off and mind their own business.