With Rebecca, Erin and Mary all writing recently about adoption travel, this story out of the UK on "The 25 Most Bizarre Travel Insurance Claims Ever" seemed appropriate blog fodder for the day.

Anyone who has traveled far or often or both has stories to tell about uproarious incidents they've either seen or done while on the road.

I have personally saved an Australian doctor from a potentially nasty encounter with a Crab-eating macaque (macaca fascicularis) in Borneo ... he kept smiling and waving, thinking to placate the angry, strong and well-toothed male, and smiling really makes monkeys mad ... sheltered a young American couple after a wild boar trashed their tent in the process of finding and consuming a bottle of strawberry-scented shampoo, calmed a young US Marine who stepped on a sea urchin and told me, "I think I'm gonna cry, Mam ... ", shared my clothes with a Danish girl whose luggage had been lost somewhere over Indonesia, took rolls of photos for a family who lost their camera on the way to the Great Wall and really hoped to have some images of their visit, advised dozens of total strangers not to hang clothes out in places with many monkeys and not to take naps under coconut trees, and otherwise averted many, many more adventures of the oooops variety.

Unlike many adoptive parents, I have traveled extensively so our trips to Cambodia to bring our kids home, although fraught with stress and anxiety because of the circumstance (After all, who can be relaxed and casual about meeting their child for the very first time, especially after such a wait?), were calm endeavors into new, but not uncomfortably new territory.

For many, however, the trip to meet their child will be the first out of the US. For others, the developing world will be a brand new, therefore somewhat frightening experience.

Travel insurance is a very good idea, but as you will see in the list of 25 strange claims linked to above, not all is forgiven ... or covered.

Take, for instance, the guy who wanted the cost of his trip refunded because a bunch of monkeys harassed him so much in Gibraltar that he has no fun AND lost his camera when one ran off with it. The camera, they covered. The rest of the trip, well, he had to eat the cost for that.

The man visiting Greece who zoned out so completely on the sight of a couple of girls in skimpy swim suits that he broke his nose on a bus shelter he had neglected to take into his consciousness did get his medical costs covered, but the family who lost their passports and wallets when they were eaten by a German goat didn't get a penny for their loss.

As my mother-in-law would say, never mind. With simple precautions and some basic common sense, adoptive families can hope to avoid embarrassing and/or costly incidents while traveling for their children. And ... what the heck ... encounters with monkeys and goats and other such exotic and new adventures will add some great stories to pass along when the kids ask for details.

Photo credit: ©2007SHBenoiton