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!

What a strange way of looking at it.

People don't CHOOSE to, they NEED to. They don't generally decide to poo in a public toilet for fun or to piss off other people or even as an act of thoughtlessness. They use the toilet because they need to and the consequences of not doing so are unacceptable to them, and most likely to anyone in their vicinity.

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School exchange to France, aged 13, the toilet was behind a curtain in the corner of the living room.
Same trip, coco powder sandwiches.

Actually reflecting….school exchanges… age 13, two weeks staying in the house of a family that I had never met. In our case, with ‘penfriends’ out in place the week before as the longer established ‘twinned school’ pulled out at the last minute.

Arriving, getting off the coach with my school friends, to be separated and taken off alone to an unfamiliar family house. It happened to be the equivalent of a Bank Holiday too, so we didn't see anyone familiar for the first 5 days.
Can you imagine that now? (or do they still happen?).

I cried, homesick, for two weeks!

I remember them from childhood holidays. I'm currently in France and there are lots of unisex toilets. Which is fine if cubicles but the urinals are a bank as you walk in and just open. My husband went in and came back out saying he couldn't use it as there were school kids about 5/6 in there and he said it just felt wrong.

many years ago on ship stopped briefly in Karachi, watched bodies, animal and humans floating down river.

Stopping on coach trip through southern Morocco, by bricked up building, offered for toilet, directed ladies behind it on left, men behind on right! offered anti bacterial gel on way back to coach, 🤑

Visiting Petra, Jordan alone with daughters, stopped for drink. Asked by man with good English (brother in Bognor) where my man was? seemed very puzzled!! (usual offers of camels haha)

Seeing Garbage city in Cairo.
A district where the community live in a slum and sort and sell garbage for their living.

This one is my favourite.

Hardly lovey, I'll leave extremism to you!

I was in a bar in Easter Island with some other tourists and the staff were busy playing a board game. They told me to help myself, then they'd just say "mil" (1,000 pesos, roughly £1 at the time) and I'd hand over a 1,000 peso note.

It was all great fun until I got totally smashed and was later very sick.

In my gap year I worked as an assistant in a primary school in France. I stayed in a little town just outside of Paris. I became friendly with another assistant (French) my age and she suggested we go out in the evening for drinks. I put on a nice top, trousers and some heels (it was 2004!) when she picked me up she was in jeans, trainers and a roll neck jumper. Then when we got to the bar I was first to order and ordered a something like a Daquiri. She ordered a cup of tea. I’ve never felt so British in my life 😄

The Yangpu Bridge across the Huangpu River separating Shanghai and Pudong. SO high up and absolutely terrifyingly high up. The off ramp spiral literally gave me palpitations.

The speed and height of Chinese trains, particularly the Maglev. 400kmh. Had to close my eyes on the bends.

Ha, that's so funny! Not for the restaurant though! What did the staff say?

When I moved to the UK 23 years ago I was a bit perplexed why people were staring at me in the pool changing room. Having grown up in Sweden I just took all my kit off, happily standing there in the nude whilst I put my swimming costume on. I got a lot of weird looks until I realised taking all your clothes off and just being naked is a bit weird in the UK..
I was a swimmer as a kid/teenager. We had communal showers with no screens or cubicles. Just a big square room with showers around the side, with a sauna attached. And all the ladies were always naked🤷‍♀️

I know, isn't it awful? I just touch the Poo Fairy app on my phone and she comes and discreetly magics it away.

The waiter brought an actual plate over and looked pretty shocked. I then just ate the rest of my food off the placemat.

It was the oddest place I’ve ever eaten - Russian food in a Cambodian restaurant / reptile house with snakes and lizards in glass cases including inside our table. In short, I feel like the odd thing I did was probably not the oddest thing about the night!

For me, the worst starring I ever experienced was in India (been in 15+ states). I found it absolutely suffocating. What really surprised me was that, in stark contrast, there was none of that in neighboring Sri Lanka

Yep same for me and recently in New Orleans. So bizarre and horrible.

Fuck me you are seriously fucked up. You’re going to give yourself CRC if you’re not more careful. You should never hold that in. It’s a shame that so many people are still so uneducated.

Same in Florida, the people I was staying with didn't recycle, I can't tell you how alien it felt throwing paper in a a normal bin!

My other is an Egyptian train, for 9 hours, having to use the loo. It was a hole in the floor straight through to the track... I had to stand in poo to use it, literally no other choice. I will never moan about GWR again! An American lady got really angry at the guard for the state of them, he couldn't have given less of a shit!

Why not if you need to? 🙄I mean, d'you just hang on to it? Not always possible!

This is SO true Maybe I'm naive or unique but tbh I don't ALWAYS know exactly what my body will get rid of when I sit down.
I suppose one or the other takes precedence when I feel the need, and peeing tends to come first, but I don't say to my rear, Oh Now Come On, You Didn't Warn Me That You Were Going To Appear!
I simply wait patiently and up the tp quotient!
Sorry if I'm being ott, but there are some serious concerns here!

And the sketchier the place, the smaller the doors, I guess to discourage drug taking etc. The toilet doors in McDonald's at the rough end of Market Street in San Francisco are more like a belt than a door. Very stressful.

You would hate the toilet at my allotment then.

What do you do when you're out and not going to be home for hours. Do you just shit your pants? Have you never been travelling, been to a festival, had a full time job? Mind boggling

My very sweet friend came to visit me in Greece and we went to a bouzoukia for the night which is kind of like a cabaret. After a while she went off to the toilets and came back with a very serious look on her face and told us that 'someone has stolen all of the toilets in the ladies loos'. It was a hole in the floor situation but she couldn't wrap her head around it and thought we were joking.

They do still happen but we had to get an enhanced DBS check befoŕe hosting and the French hosts had to go to their police station for checks. Dd went on two in the last few years to Bordeaux.