Travel hits and misses: Lucy Lovegrove

Lucy Lovegrove.

HIT

I've been lucky enough to visit a fair number of countries, but travelling in Japan in 2015 has to be one of my ultimate experiences. One night, while wandering about the streets of Shinjuku, I found the Robot Restaurant, which is every part as neon and electric as you can imagine.

As we were getting our tickets, the man behind the counter asked me if I wanted to boxarobot. I was stunned into an awkward silence, sure that I'd misheard, but my travelling companion — showing himself to be a "true friend" with "only my best interests at heart", quickly answered yes on my behalf.

We were shown to seemingly ordinary seats and the performance began. I was so swept up in butterflies riding gorillas shooting fireworks into the audience that I completely forgot about my upcoming battle. Until . . . all the cute (and/or remotely friendly-looking) robots exited stage left, and giant chains appeared on stage creating the world's most terrifying boxing ring. Robots the size of transformers entered the stage and a spotlight fell upon me. My soul momentarily exited my body and I found myself on stage being kitted up in boxing gloves seven times the size of my body. A hush fell. The fight began. I beat the crap out of that robot. Lucy 1 — Robot 0.

MISS

In 2012, some uni friends and I travelled to India. Towards the end of our trip we found ourselves in Goa. It was idyllic, lush and green after the deserts of Rajasthan.

On our travels we met an Australian lady who told us that she had been a contestant on MasterChef Australia some years prior, and was now living here in Goa. None of us watched MasterChef, so we all believed her, and when she invited us to a drop-in dinner she was hosting near our hostel (a paywhat-you-think-style dinner), we thought we were in forapretty great treat. We arrived in convoy on our little scooters and made friends with the other travellers she had invited. However, it was not quite the casual drop-in evening she'd sold us, but a formal sit-down meal around a small table.

The food when served was incredibly average, the chicken still pink, and we all started to feel a little uncomfortable about leaving. But finally someone was brave enough to broach the subject and The Lady declared the meal would be the equivalent of $20 each (which is outrageous because food in India is cheap and delicious, besides which she had brought us here under very different pretences). We argued and things got heated. She threatened to call her gang member friends on us if we didn't all pay, and eventually we all just decided to walk out together. She wasn't going to give up so easily though and grabbed her phone and her dog and hopped in her truck.

We raced back to the scooters and rode off into the night with her truck hard on our heels, she was screeching into her phone, trying to follow us.

We zoomed into the safety of our hostel and were so shaken that we got the owner to lock the gate and turn out the lights!

Lucy Lovegrove plays Sass Connelly in Shortland Street. The one-hour special final episode for the year screens on Monday December 18 on TVNZ 2