If you ask anyone that knows me to describe me, "cautious" and "forward thinking" are probably not the first two words that would spring to mind.

Fortunately, I'm not a rocket scientist. I'm a travel journalist. So my tendency to get scammed first and think later hopefully serves a higher purpose.

As someone who has worked as a surf instructor in Sydney, an intern at a party travel company in Barcelona, an English teacher in Andalucia, a good for nothing exchange student in France and now a Travel Reporter at Escape, I've had the fortune of getting ripped off (and making embarrassing social faux pas) all over the world.

This in mind, here are some of the worst mistakes I've made.

Paying 60 euros for a 10 minute taxi ride

Once, in Paris, rushing to get a connecting train, I stumbled out of the Gare du Nord and fell into the arms of a man with a pony tail.

In my defence, I was jetlagged, 19 and naive. I was also carrying a satchel, a hiking pack and a surfboard. Plus: the legit taxi rank line was "all the way over there."

This guy, however, was persistent. 15 minutes to cross Paris? "Pas de probleme." He shook a pair of keys in my face and off we went. Him carrying my surfboard, me trotting behind admiring the reflection of the nearby buildings in his greasy hair, wondering, "where's this taxi?" 

It was around this point I got the ick. Unfortunately, when we finally stopped next to his motorbike, I was too awkward to tell him I'd changed my mind. He opened the helmet holder, threw my satchel inside, strapped my hiking pack on top, and then looked at me. 

One of the things I hate most about myself is my inability to handle any kind of confrontation. So of course, I ended up straddling a guy who represented everything I dislike about myself, and pretended to be stoked.

We went from 0 to 60kmph in about 2 seconds. I clung to him with my inner thighs, and my surfboard with both hands. I felt every cobblestone bounce in my groin. At no point did I ask how much the journey was going to cost (I was busy avoiding getting pulled under a bus). 

When we arrived he charged me 60 euros. I knew it was a rip off, but he had my satchel (with my passport in it) in his bike, so I smiled and paid him, slightly disgusted with myself but also buzzing with adrenaline.  

I then got him to take a couple of photos of me with the bike to make myself feel like I'd got a bit more of my money's worth. 

Welcome to Paris. 

Getting pickpocketed in Madrid (before even leaving the airport)

After spending almost three years living in Spain after I finished uni, I went back to visit for a couple of weeks in 2019, after moving back to Australia. I smugly considered myself a local by this point, having never been pickpocketed in the entire time I'd lived there. Of course, within 25 minutes of coming back as a visitor, I managed to get my wallet stolen on the shuttle bus between airport terminals.

I went to report it to the police, who told me it was a common occurrence, and that I probably should reconsider keeping my bulging wallet in the small zip compartment of my bag. 

Escape Associate Digital Editor Simone Mitchell shares my pain, having also learned a travel lesson the hard way in Madrid. 

"A number of years ago I was in Madrid, having a coffee out the front of a cafe. A man approached me with a laminated card that he placed on the table in front of me, explaining that he was deaf and homeless and asking for money. When he left, he picked up the card from the table ... along with my phone that was on the table underneath it."

Getting a night coach to save money on a night's accommodation (in England, in winter)

Another travel lesson I learned the hard way was not to get the night coach from Bristol to Newquay, a small town in Cornwall, if you don't have anywhere to go when you arrive.

But being the cheapskate I am, I figured it was a great idea. Things started badly enough when all the pubs in Bristol decided to shut at 11pm on a Wednesday night, leaving me stuck out in the cold until 2am, when the coach arrived. 

Then, when I arrived in Newquay at 6am, in the pitch dark, there was nowhere open to hide from the freezing wind until 7am, when I took refuge in a local supermarket cafe and had possibly the best tasting porridge of my life.

Getting this haircut 

Ah yes. That haircut. I felt super cool getting it, but ended up being the victim of some exquisite back-handed compliments ("If there's one thing I like about you, it's that you march to the beat of your own drum").

Pretending to take a pill in Ibiza...

Well, not Ibiza, exactly, but in Barcelona, while trying to impress a group of new friends, on the dance floor of a busy nightclub, I was offered some kind of pill. I didn't want to take it, but I didn't want to let them down. So I pretended to take it, thinking that if I subtly dropped it on the floor as I pretended to put it in my mouth, no-one would notice. Of course everyone noticed, I was mortified, and there was a mild stampede as everyone rushed to find it. 

Sleeping in a Prius in Portugal

People look at you real weird. Plus, I spent all the money I would have saved on a nice restaurant dinner. On reflection, it would have been cheaper and more comfortable to stay in a hostel and cook my own food. 

Insulting an English hooligan's grandmother 

On an end of season soccer trip to Bali, I was walking through Seminyak in a dress (at the start of the night we had all brought 'party shirts' to swap and that was the one I ended up with). 

As we walked down Seminyak at about midnight, some English guy guffawed: "You look like my grandma." I replied: "Your grandma wishes she looked like this."

For some reason he got very angry.

Ruining a mature age student's dinner party

While studying in La Rochelle, France, I got invited to a sophisticated dinner party by a mature age student, a lovely 40-something year old lady from Newcastle, Australia, who was also on exchange, and who was hoping to impress her new French friends with a classy soiree. Unfortunately I overindulged in the wine and spent most of the night on my hands and knees retching in the bathroom.

I thought I had muttered an apology in person as I left but either she missed it (or I imagined it). Either that or it simply wasn't enough to excuse my shameful state. She was insulted by this but I was oblivious that anything was wrong. I didn't realise she was even upset (I felt bad for myself more than her) until I realised she had unfriended me on Facebook.

When I finally worked up the courage to apologise properly I began with "I don't know what to say" (as a precursor to apologising, still feeling slightly hard done by, and unwilling to admit to being completely in the wrong, despite being completely in the wrong).

Before I could get any further she stormed off. She then felt bad and came back to find me to give me yet another chance to apologise, but I had gone to class. We eventually ran into each other later in the day, I apologised for "being so useless" and we both hugged and started crying. 

Thinking I'd left a super generous tip, then realising I'd actually left an incredibly insulting tip

On a recent boat trip to Indonesia, where I spent two weeks cruising around the Mentawai Islands, being looked after incredibly well by the staff on the boat, when I got to the end, I generously thought I would go above and beyond the recommended tip of $150 and give them everything I had left in the local currency (about $250). 

I got home feeling the good karma flowing all around my body, only to discover at the bottom of my bag an envelope from the currency exchange with about $200 in it. Oops: I had only given them everything that was left in my wallet, which was about $50...

Crashing a moped in Malta

Having never ridden a moped or motorbike before, I figured I'd give it a shot in Malta (it's got to be more relaxed than Bali, I figured). Not wanting to worry the moped rental store owner, when he went through how it all worked, I nodded along confidently, pretending I knew my stuff. 

For the first five minutes of driving it though, I noticed the brake was very weak. Like really weak. I could slow down, but not come to a complete halt (not easily anyway). Weird. Soon enough I came to a road work sign. The road was blocked. I tried to brake, but I could tell I was not going to stop in time. I veered left, thinking this might somehow help. 

Instead of knocking over the orange traffic cones that were in front of me, because I veered left, I bumped into a parked car. I was shunted forward and my knee hit the horn button on my moped, which was broken, and which proceeded to let out a constant beep. 

The only way I could get the beeping to stop was to switch off the ignition. I spent two stressful minutes starting and switching off the moped, until I figured out how to move the sticky beeping button into the off position. I then slunk away, hoping no one had seen.

I later learned that mopeds and motorbikes actually have two brakes, just like a normal bike, and if you squeeze them both, you should actually come to a stop...

Telling my girlfriend's dad that Australian wine is full of "preservativos"

Sometimes, when you guess a word in another language, based off what it is in your own, it works. Sometimes it's quite embarrassing though (preservativo means something quite rude in Spanish).

Going snowboarding with no ACL

After snapping my anterior cruciate ligament in my knee playing soccer after I first moved to Spain, I didn't want to admit to myself I was really that badly injured, so went to snowboard at Sierra Nevada anyway. This made landing from jumps quite difficult. On one, mid-air, I chose to land straight on my back rather than further ruin the knee. Not my finest hour (though it was a coup for the local pharmacy).

Wearing ankle socks to a 'fire sweeping' fiesta 

Deep in the Extremadura mountains, at the start of winter, there's an awesome fiesta in a town called Jarandilla de la Vera. Everyone, young and old, gets together to sweep the floor (and each other's legs) with flaming, broom-like bundles of sticks. My inner pyromaniac had a great time at this fiesta, but my ankles got lightly scorched. 

Asking a hostel of 'hardcore' backpackers, "where's the blender?"

I just wanted to make some spaghetti bolognese. But I got laughed out of the room. 

Being cajoled into playing guitar in front of a whole pub of people in Hossegor

Worse: I chose a song I only knew half the chords for. Highly embarrassing: do not recommend. 

Image credit: @superradness / @coolin_hossegor

Trying to sleep in a Mini with three people (also in Hossegor)

Who needs accommodation, we'll just sleep in the car? It sounded like a good idea at the time, but it turns out sleeping in the back seat of a mini (while my other two friends reclined their seats on top of me) is just as claustrophobic as it sounds. 

Going to the Camp Nou to see Messi, then realising he wasn't playing that day

What are the chances!? I went to one of the few games in 2016 where Messi was injured and so wasn't starting. Neymar was pretty spectacular though.