We’re taught as children to be wary of strangers. It’s good advice.

But when we travel as adults, we need to unlearn this rule.

For me, the really memorable moments of travel aren’t the monuments I see or the restaurants I eat in, but the friendships, however fleeting, that I strike up with complete strangers.

Whether it’s a garrulous taxi driver with a great personal story, or someone I bond with while waiting in a bakery queue, it’s the shared humanity with people from different cultures I’m looking for when I leave home.

Sometimes you meet a person who becomes a friend for life.

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This is often the experience of people on cruises and escorted tours. People bond; contacts are exchanged; promises are made to meet for a drink when everyone gets home or are next in each other’s orbit.

It’s not smart to throw caution to the wind completely, but if we don’t talk to strangers, we can miss their incredible kindness.

But what about those unexpected meetings with true strangers beyond the homogenised world of the cruise or tour, where you’re mostly travelling with people of a similar nationality or social group?

How many of us make friends with people we meet on the street?

I travel solo a lot, which means I sometimes feel more vulnerable than if I had the emotional crutch of travelling with a friend. But it also means I’m probably more receptive to strangers.

People are always chatting to me, and I to them, in a very random way. Occasionally, I’m being hit on for something, but most often the conversations are interesting, even inspirational.

My natural instinct is to be too cautious, and I need to fight it. All human interactions involve a degree of trust.

Still, there are reasons to take care.

Recently, a friend was kidnapped by a taxi driver in Vietnam who drove her away from the airport with the intent of extorting her.

Only some wily survival skills got her out of this extremely dangerous situation.

Another friend had the opposite experience.

A few weeks ago, she was stranded in Singapore after her flight was cancelled for technical difficulties. It was after midnight when she hailed an airport taxi to take her to her overnight hotel.

The taxi driver expressed concern when she told him that she hadn’t eaten anything for hours. He offered to divert to a 24-hour hawker stall he knew so that she could have a good feed.

Tired and hungry, she trusted him. As it turned out, the driver’s family owned the stall. The food was sensational, the people were lovely, and a bad travel experience turned into a magical one.

Both friends had trusted strangers, but the results were quite different.

I was in Rome in June. It was my last night in the city and punishingly hot.

I went out for a stroll in the late afternoon to find gelato, intending to spend the night back in my hotel, packing.

Walking along one of the shopping streets, I heard a male voice behind me calling out “Excuse me”. I didn’t stop. I’d been scammed by a stranger in Venice last year and was more nervous than usual.

The voice became more insistent. “Excuse me.” I walked a bit faster.

At the third “Excuse me” I slowed and turned. Maybe I’d dropped something?

I was greeted by a man and a woman. He asked me, “Were you just in Venice, staying at Airelles?”

Yes, I said, I had been.

“We thought so,” he said, and showed me a photo on his camera that he’d taken of me. It was by accident, he said. He’d been in the lobby of the hotel taking the shot when I walked into the frame.

We laughed at the coincidence, then chatted for a while. They were old friends from Canada, who met regularly in Italy, where the woman lived.

They asked me if I’d join them for dinner at the Bvlgari hotel, where he was staying. My instinct was to say no, that I was too busy packing. We exchanged cards anyway.

But when they messaged me later to ask once more, I thought: Why not? They seemed fun, and dinner at a posh hotel was a much more attractive proposition than packing for a flight.

We had a wonderful night sharing stories, and we’ve been in touch constantly since. It was the moment in my trip that I’ve talked about most since coming home.

It’s not smart to throw caution to the wind completely, but if we don’t talk to strangers, we can miss their incredible kindness.