Shadowing Practice: My BIGGEST Solo Travel MISTAKE - Learn English Speaking with Video

When I was solo traveling in Portugal last year, I made a really, really big mistake.

Like a really big mistake.

And it was so stressful that I didn't vlog any of it.

I didn't include any of it in my Portugal video.

And I haven't even talked about it until now.

But today, I'm going to tell you guys the story.

Three days into my 10-day trip to Portugal all by myself, I lost my wallet with all of my credit cards,

all of my cash, and I did not have a single euro on me.

There is a crazy twist at the end of this story.

So just when you think you've heard it all, hold onto your hat.

So here's what happened.

It was my third and final day in Lagos, which is a little beach town on the South coast of Portugal in the Algarve.

It's about five hours South of Lisbon.

And I'd gotten up at sunrise to go for a walk through town when everything's quiet.

I really like sunrises when I'm solo traveling because there aren't as many people out and it's just very peaceful.

And I vividly remember, this is an important key point of this story, that as I was getting ready to leave my hotel,

I picked a five-year-old note up off of my nightstander dresser and I shoved it into my wallet.

And it wasn't like a big wallet.

It was one of those little just like card slot slide wallets.

So I know I had my wallet that morning in my hotel room.

So I head out for my walk.

It's like 7 a.m.

Literally zero people are on the streets.

I have the entire place to myself.

It's because it was a Saturday morning and Portuguese nightlife runs very, very, very, very late, like five or six in the morning so nobody is out at seven on a Saturday.

So there was no chance of pickpocketing or anything like that.

So I take my time.

I stroll down like a hundred different streets, like with no specific route.

And then I went to breakfast and after I finished eating my meal, I went to pay and I didn't have my wallet.

Not only is that situation mortifying, it was the first time in my life it's ever happened to me, but I was in a foreign country all by myself.

And the restaurant was really nice about it.

I could tell that they were kind of like, is this a scam?

Because I was clearly a traveler, and I was like, I am so sorry.

I must have left my wallet in my hotel room.

I will run back and get it, and come straight back and pay you.

So I leave the restaurant, I race back to my hotel room, and as soon as I walk in, I have a feeling my wallet isn't there, because I'd tidied everything before I left for housekeeping,

so all of the surfaces were clear, and I knew that if I'd left my wallet, I would have just accidentally like put it back on the nightstand.

I didn't go pack it away somewhere.

But still I tear the room apart and I don't find my wallet.

So this is when I start to panic

because I'm pretty sure I've lost my wallet

and I'm kicking myself for making the mistake of not having a backup card and cash in the room safe.

My passport was in the room safe, thankfully.

I knew better than to not put a second form of cash and payment in the safe for exactly this scenario.

Like if I had filmed a YouTube video of like solo travel tips and things you should always do before this trip, that would have been one of the things that I would have included.

Like I knew better yet.

I had just been enjoying my trip so far and so relaxed in Lagos.

And I just, I didn't do it.

I didn't do it.

And I'm panicking because it's a Saturday and a little beach town, even if there is somewhere that I can set up a wire to.

I don't know if it's open on the weekend.

I'm supposed to be leaving in the morning to head to another city.

And I'm five hours from the Lisbon airport that I flew into.

So I don't even have, I don't even have money to hire a taxi to take me to a wire transfer place

or a bank or to take me up to Lisbon to get a flight home.

Like I am stuck within walking distance of where I am and I do not have any money, any money.

So what does a girl do? she texts her dad at 4 a.m his time and says, hey, I'm pretty sure I lost my wallet.

So he's up, he's ready to save the day.

And I ask him, can you start researching where near this hotel I can get a wire transfer?

And in the meantime, I'm going to go run

and retrace my steps through the city and see if my wallet fell out somewhere.

Because as I was walking around, I was like taking pictures, pulling my camera out, putting my phone back away.

And like, I'm thinking that that's how it must've happened.

And I'm trying to be as efficient as possible, because I'm like, it's a Saturday, maybe somewhere's open, but maybe it's only open until noon.

Like, I need to figure this out as fast as possible.

So he's on like the research side for where I could get money.

I take off running my steps back through Lagos, like scanning the ground, like trying to remember which streets I went down, where all I'd been.

I check with the front desk of my hotel, thinking maybe somebody turned it in there.

They said they didn't have anything.

So I head back to my room.

I hear back from my dad.

He's found a Western Union in Lagos that's open on Saturday

and we set up a wire transfer to get me some cash.

I felt so lucky that there was a place within walking distance

that was open that I could get cash from because I don't know what I would have done.

Would I have had to walk 15, 20 miles to another town where there was something there?

So I pick up the cash at the Western Union, I head back to my hotel and I cancel all of my credit cards and I'm just relieved to have a resolution.

But remember the twist I told you about at the beginning of the video.

I'm sitting in my hotel room that afternoon and my room phone rings

and I pick it up and it's the front desk saying that a supermarket in town has my wallet.

And I'm confused for a variety of reasons.

One, I didn't go into any supermarkets that morning.

Nowhere was open.

And how do they know who I am and where I'm staying and how did they find me?

This gets crazy guys.

The front desk guy doesn't really have a lot of answers, but he tells me I need to go to a market that is near like another restaurant or something.

And I was like, what's the name of the market?

And he's like, it doesn't have a name.

It's just a market in that area.

So I head into town looking for this market

and I kind of see like a grocery here

that looks like a market and another store there that could be a market.

But then I see this little tiny market with some fruit inside and my gut just tells me this feels right.

So I walk in and I go up to the counter and there's an older woman behind the counter and I ask, do you have a wallet by chance that's been turned in?

And she gestures to the rack to her side and there is my little card wallet sitting right there.

So this is where it gets crazy.

I have so many questions and this market is family owned.

This woman and her husband own it and they don't speak really fluent English

and they're trying to explain to me the situation and I don't really understand them.

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And then their son comes over who's about my age and he's totally fluent in English.

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And he comes up to me and he goes, were you robbed?

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We assumed that you were robbed.

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When my parents opened their market this morning, your wallet was on the front steps, but it had been stripped of cash.

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And that's usually a sign of a robbery in the area because thieves usually want your wallet.

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They just want the cash out of it.

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So they rob you for your wallet.

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They take the cash and they chuck the wallet to the side of the street and run.

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And he says, we called the police to have them come around

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and investigate and document the situation and they had my ID with like my picture

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and my name on it with record of this American woman who was supposedly robbed in this area recently, filed a police report.

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And then I asked, how did you find me?

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How did you know where I was staying?

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And the mom points to my wallet and she says a little receipt.

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And I look in to this little center section here

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and I pull out just this tiniest little receipt that said Carvey Beach Hotel on it, which was the hotel I was staying in, which I don't ever keep,

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like this isn't a wallet you keep receipts in, but I must have paid when I checked in

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and just like shoved it in there with my other cards in a hurry.

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It was the only receipt in here and it had my hotel name on it.

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Absolutely crazy.

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I could not believe all of that happened.

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I mean, my wallet was useless because stripped all the cash out of it and I'd canceled all of my cards.

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So I mean, I might as well have not found my wallet.

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But also what a cool story, because I get asked so often, is it scary traveling by yourself?

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Is solo travel safe?

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And here's an example of where a local family found a wallet, assumed that a traveling woman had been robbed or something had happened.

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They called the police, they filed a report, like they were looking out for people.

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I just thought that was very, very cool, very heartwarming.

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So the moral of my story is always keep a backup credit card and or some cash in your room safe,

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especially if you're traveling by yourself because this isn't something

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that I ever really thought about when traveling with others because worst case scenario, if one person loses their wallet,

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the other person can spot them until they can get to an ATM or something.

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But when you're by yourself, you're really in trouble.

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So that is my biggest solo travel mistake so far.

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It's one of my craziest solo travel stories.

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I hope you guys enjoyed this.

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If you haven't seen my Portugal video, I will link it down below if you want to see what the rest of the trip looked like.

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All of the good parts of the trip.

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I considered maybe talking about this in that video and then I was like, it's going to be a 10 minute detour off of everything else and I just need to make a separate video.

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Thank you for watching.

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Be sure to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe

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if you liked it and I will see you guys next time.

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Bye.

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Yeah.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: My BIGGEST Solo Travel MISTAKE - Learn English Speaking with Video

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