Biggest cultural shock you have come across?

I'm from Poland and what you are saying OP comes as a shock to me Have not seen a well in my life. Well, have never come across a place like that in my life. People sleeping 10 in 2 rooms??? Where did you visit???? (I'm actually genuinely interested)

@glitters
I'm aware people do this in other places , but there is no denying it is more widespread in India than in Paris.

Another German one: walking to the Hauptbahnhof (main rail station) in Frankfurt and watching a heroin addict shoot up right in front of me. I'd walked around Penn Station and Grand Central Station in New York for years and had never seen anything like that.

Experiencing white Western people who found my Indian roots of multiple people sharing bedrooms and if same sex even beds - weird and shocking. Much like the OP.

Their shock profoundly shocked me and made me think if India is all weird and strange, and if where I come from is rather filthy.

It isn't. India is lovely so I've made my peace with the shock horror you and your grandma shared a bed?!!!?!

*QuiteUnfitBit

I think we all think the way we live in the UK is normal for the UK, and the people we meet abroad are typical of everyone in that country. grin For example, in my family, it's normal for children to go to funerals. When I was young and didn't have much money, I lived in shared accommodation, with four strangers in one room. Lots of people still use bottled gas here. etc etc.*

Definitely. So many people do live with many to a room, or family of 4 in a 1 bedroom flat etc too. Some of these are definitely the norm to some in the UK.

Whereas in my head it was "Europe" so would be the same organised loveliness of Kings X.

ROFL - we can't be thinking about the same Kings X!

Many things, but the one that leaps out at me is sausage rolls. In every other place I've lived, sausage rolls are hotdogs wrapped in pastry. Horrible.

Mine is also mockable for its innocence. I grew up in the US, and the first time I left it was when I did a semester abroad in Germany and Austria during university. I started my semester in a small Bavarian village in January and was astonished to see men really wearing lederhosen and that there were plenty of women (not just old grannies) in dirndls! I had thought that was just a cliche.

Indonesia when I had just finished University.

Some of my family were expats - so lived in luxury with maid/driver etc. But I was taken to see the 'real' Jakarta too - and the image that will stay with me forever is a tiny boy - in a shanty town - brushing his teeth in the tiny stream of water that flowed through and served as drinking water and sewer.

We didn't venture into the shanty towns - just skirted round the edges. I felt like a voyeur, like I was in a zoo, staring at these people with nothing.

How cold English houses are
English children having diner at 5pm, and to bed at 6pm! I am still shocked by that one.
The "dress code" for English party girls in the middle of winter who have pretty much nothing on.
London black cabs. They are amazing.

@Puzzledandpissedoff the amount of times I saw a 100 baht note slip hands 🙊

The driving in China

Children clinging to parents on the back of motorcycles/mopeds with no helmets on. Always blows my mind

Underage prostitution in Thailand - and the profound and very obvious corruption among the police

And yes, another one who noted the statee of the toilets in China ...

I think we all think the way we live in the UK is normal for the UK, and the people we meet abroad are typical of everyone in that country. For example, in my family, it's normal for children to go to funerals. When I was young and didn't have much money, I lived in shared accommodation, with four strangers in one room. Lots of people still use bottled gas here. etc etc.

@Farandole lol you say that but I've seen people shit in the street, in the middle of the day, in both Paris and New York 🙈

Game

Oh, yes. that makes sense, I guess.

I grew up very sheltered in many ways. Or at least sheltered towards outside influences. My family is messed up enough to have imparted some weird/interesting ideas...

You'll mock me for this one, but I went to university as a somewhat sheltered 17 year old in the 1980s. A few weeks in I'd made some good friends and I attended a party in someone's room. As the evening wore down our host cuddled up affectionately with his girlfriend on his bed and when the rest of us left she stayed behind . I wasn't that sheltered, I knew that people did have sex outside marriage, but the I was genuinely gobsmacked by the idea that two unmarried nineteen year old heterosexuals would not be ashamed of the fact that they were sharing a bed and not care who knew it.

Mind you a (gay) friend of mine was equally shocked by the revelation that I'd been a virgin when I came up to university (and remained so throughout my first year). It came out in conversation talking about our "numbers" and he did a huge double take "But hang on! That would mean! When you came up to university...?!?? "

Public defecation in India.

Men holding hands and sitting on each other's lap in Pakistan.

mousy
I'm sure some people do live this way. But I personally really wouldn't make a generalised statement like this. It's definitely not what I have experienced, tbh.

Cricket Where I grew up was extremely rough. Hence the culture shock of university.

The toilets in China. The worst I came across were where there was a trough that ran under all the cubicles - so you could see everything floating past. The stench was unbelievable. I had to run straight out of that particular one. Yet in other parts there were high tech toilets with a number of buttons with different functions!

Another example of extremes: there were plenty of shopping centres full of designer shops. Yet we only had to walk 10-15 minutes away from one to find people washing their clothes in the local river.

Squat toilets in the train station in Moscow where you collect some pieces of loo roll from the old lady toilet attendant before going to squat. I changed my mind about needing a wee and decided to hold it until I got on the train!

In the UK, those on mains gas are in rural areas of very low population density.

In Spain, my friend without mains gas lives in a decent sized town about 10 miles along the coast from Marbella.

tectonic As I said, it was pretty common where I grew up so not at all horrifying or unusual for me.

I assure you it's become more and more commonplace in London. Lots of East European families here living in crowded households. I know several people who've lived next door to such families.