Embarrassing travel culture shocks

[WildBalonz]

Since it’s summer and holiday season I thought it might be fun to share some silly or funny or embarrassing cultural shocks we’ve all had when travelling!

I’ll start with an incident that is both funny and embarrassing depending how you look at it. A few years ago me, my brother, his wife and her brother (my brother and sister in law) went on a trip all through China. We were on a tour bus traveling through some rural areas outside Guangzhou. We had a pit stop to stretch our legs and use the toilet etc and our driver proudly told us that the public loos we had stopped at had western toilets which were very uncommon in these areas. Great we all thought, however what he didn’t mention is that instead of individual cubicals they had very small almost like shower screens separating each toilet. Not much privacy at all! It made for a very embarrassing poo for me my sister in law and two other ladies on our tour 😂. I laugh at it now but at the time it was probably the most awkward and embarrassing experience our lives. Luckily she’s a good sport and we joke about it these days!

Same. I have spent many an hour stuck in a public loo :(

My first trip to Japan. I was lucky enough to attend a tea ceremony and read about it extensively so as to be as polite as possible. However, my British sensibilities kicked in. I was served my tea and waited until the other guest had been served theirs - oh no, big mistake.
Only realised afterwards and was so embarrassed. To be fair to my sensitive British tongue, I can't drink super hot tea.
I did rectify my error with my host by recognising a sumo athlete outside our hotel and getting suitably giddy.
My former colleague will still occasionally tease me that I don't like my tea "too hot"!

Tbf the poster did say unless unwell, the op didn't say any of them having a synchronised poo in a facility without privacy were ill.

You've been holding on to this for nearly 30 years!

For the most part, this has been a light-hearted thread about encountering cultural differences and the ensuing embarrassment or later seeing the funny side of things. Using judgemental phrases like "national hysteria" go beyond comparing cultures. You are describing grief on a national scale, not hysteria. In fact, there was very real sorrow felt all over the world.

Empathy is a gift you may not have been given, but avoiding rude and unkind comments is possible. Please leave your judgy pants at home next time.

Yeah - in Hong Kong too. So used to dabbing and dropping after a pee. It seemed positively disgusting to have to dump soiled tp in a bin!

Cows on the beach in India, or just sitting in the road, or wandering into restaurants.

Seeing women in saris sitting sidesaddle on the back of a motorbike.

Again in India, beer being served in a teapot ( as the restaurant didn't have an alcohol licence )

Being constantly stared at and complete strangers asking to have their photos taken with me ( again in India ), probably because I'm blonde and blue eyed.

I've also had the experience of having a massage in Thailand and the woman massaged my boobs!

I've recently spent 6 weeks in Thailand and one of the things I'm missing is the ' bum guns'in the toilet to clean yourself with. It wouldn't really work in the UK as you'd need a wet room for it, but it's such a good idea!

This thread reminds me I used to avoid pooing in public toilets when possible, I NEVER did it at high school where all the tough girls used to hang around piercing each other's ears etc.
Now I'm older I can only dream of having that level of bowel control 😁

I felt the same and I'm British. It was a kind of mass hysteria. Bizarre.

I can assure you I’m very well travelled … the assumptions on this post about bowels are WILD, just because I choose not to publicly defecate a public toilet like I’m guessing many of you are doing by the state of some public toilets doesn’t mean I have bowel problems, I’m very regular, very healthy but very mindful 😉 🤣🤣🤣

Went on a hiking holiday in Ethiopia. We were doing a 4 day hike in the Simien mountains, camping in tents and told to go to the toilet in the bush - dig a hole or bury it with rocks. So there I am in what I thought was a quiet discreet spot, burying my poo with rocks, when I spot a poor lady who had come up to take a photo of the lovely sunset and stumbled across a half naked me, mid poo. If that wasn't mortifying enough, we then had to spend the next 3 days/trekking the same route. I wanted to die.

Sorry but when I've had 3 cups of coffee, I do an impression of Niagara Falls!

I quite admire someone that can poo with impunity. I can barely squeeze out a wee in a public loo, and that includes work! Even worse, if I go to the loo at work and someone has taken a shit, the smell makes me retch, no matter how hard I try not to. So I might go back to my desk looking like I’ve been crying 😂

My bowel just switches off if I’m staying at friends’. This isn’t a problem as it gives me no discomfort.

Also went to the local market in rural Ethiopia. I don't know what i was thinking but I put on a nice outfit and had visions of buying souvenirs. Then turned up to find it was a real market with locals trekking from all over to sell/buy live animals, fruit, veg, buckets of honey, spices. I had to jump out of the way multiple times to avoid being trampled by various livestock. Did come home with a big tub of delicious honey though 😂

Oh rubbish. I'm an empathetic person but I found the whole phenomenon of wailing over somebody you have never met absolutely bizarre. I found it quite interesting from a psychological perspective. It seemed like everyone was projecting grief about something else onto Diana's death. It doesn't mean that you lack empathy at all. People die every day of far worse things but we don't all cry en masse. What is going on now in Palestine is utterly heartbreaking but we aren't all crying in the streets. There was something very strange about it.

I was also going to say China and toilets.

Another one was no rubbish collection in Tunisia and Cambodia.

Sorry, OP, didn't mean to derail your thread!

By the sound of it, my school was quite different. "I need to pee and/or plop" was our call, just in case any girl was in any doubt about what we were going to do.

South Korea recently:

Japanese style bum washing toilets in the hotels, amazing how comforting a warm
loo seat is even when it’s 30 degrees outside
Anchor points by the window, a boxed up rope ladder and instructions on what to do in case of a fire - terrifying
Surprisingly hard to find what I’d consider lunch - more likely to find noodles etc which I’d rather save for dinner, and many cafes only do sweet food
On which subject, how sweet a lot of ‘savoury’ food is
Tiny dogs, like really small fluffy, frequently white dogs - and a pet shop with puppies in the window. DD is too young to remember these even used to be a thing in the UK
Amazing hotel breakfasts with food to suit a wide range of nationalities - including consistently and surprisingly good scrambled eggs

Picture, when it appears, for those appalled by lack of loo privacy 😂

It was a strange phenomenon. Not remotely cultural though as brits tend to be a bit uptight as a rule.
We've never seen it since and doubt we will unless a very divisive figure meets a tragic end.

This is the most shocking thing I have read on this thread 😱

The Diana thing was incredibly strange (and I am British). I lived right near Kensington Gardens and it was a very strange week all through. I also didn't (and still don't) understand what was going on there. Famous people die in sad circumstances all the time. I lived right near Freddie Mercury's house when he died, there were a lot of goings on in the street but most people didn't go mad. Same for any number of talented and amazing people who were loved and/or admired and died young in a tragic way. It's not insensitive not to be prostrated with grief by a wealthy socialite I had never met.

Sitting on a bus in Laos and at each stop people would come on board to sell food and drink. One of them was offering deep fried tarantulas on sticks. I nearly shat myself, and I wasn't even in a public loo.

People just stopping in the middle of the road, squatting down and taking a shit in rural India. Happened 4 or 5 times in the few months I was there.

Someone mentioned a help yourself bar in Czechia. I've recently stayed in a German guesthouse where they did the same thing because the bar was shit on a Sunday. Help yourself to beer, and pay into an honesty box.

I lived in China for quite a few years (and absolutely loved it)...but there is no such thing as personal space...even in toilets 😆

In Beijing about 30 years ago: toddlers didn't wear nappies but had holes in the back of their pants and shat on the pavement. That wasn't as bad for me personally as the whole deep fried birds on sticks in the market stalls, but I recognise that some would have loved these!

Apart from my earlier comment about an Italian school, I've always found France to be the worst place for those kind of toilets. You frequently have to walk through the "Hommes" (which seems to be all urinals) to get the "Femmes", which turns out to be 2 or 3 stalls with holes in the floor!