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!

I’ve had the requisite toilets in Asia shocks - and the “shelf” loos in Vienna surprise, and the heated seat and music playing high-tech ones in Japan (loos overseas are endlessly fascinating apparently) but the thread’s got a bit toilet-focussed.

So I’ll do a UK one - in my late 20s (a loooong time ago!) I spent a few years working and travelling in the UK (am Australian) and early on I went to buy a hair dryer and thought it must be defective because the cord ended in naked wires. Then I saw they were all like that, and you had to buy a separate plug and put it on yourself. Mind blown. Also a bit panicked, no real internet in those Dark Ages and I had no idea how to go about it. There were a lot of those disorientating almost-the-same-but-weirdly-different moments but that was the most shocking.

I have a similar story of vegetarian friends from India ordering sea cucumber in a chinese restaurant in Singapore.

Toilet paper for front and back wiping considered unhygienic (and the plumbing can’t handle it) so use a hose and your left hand.

Soap is a commodity that many cannot afford. It is locked in the cabinet in workplaces. I was unaware and bought some for the ladies toilet. It disappeared the same day. Ditto the next day. Then I discovered that bars of soap are valuable …for dishes, floors, clothes, hair and body. My host eventually told me that I could asked for the soap from the cabinet when I needed it.

Japan - vending machines selling hot drinks in cans eg tea. Never thought of this before!

Spitting in the street in china. Lots of things in China to be fair. I remember an English translation of a menu in one place was 'a plate of visceral gore'.

Swimming clothed in India. The waves were so strong I was almost swept in wearing a sarong!

Not being able to walk anywhere in florida cities. There were no pavements, and no Jay walking, so we had to drive 2 blocks to go for dinner.

I’ve had loads, I’m lucky I’ve travelled a lot, but thinking about my career, these ones stick in my mind.

Morocco - our riad hotel was next to a nursery. We would frequently see a mass of children come to the restaurant, suddenly toddle by the pool…..and just be yelled at to come back by a teacher sat in the cafe. They were sweet kids, loved to chase the turtle that wandered round the grounds.
One morning, we were headed out in a trip and waiting outside our entrance. The nursery door popped open and out came a man and a woman, and about 12 preschool aged children. Man disappeared and returned with a bike - attached to the front of the bike was a big wooden box thing, and on the back a wagon - again basically a wooden box on wheels. He loaded a few children into the front (just plonked them in, no helmets, straps or anything) and then loaded the rest in the wagon - the last one could barely fit but they were being squished right in. Then off he went and the woman followed behind on another bike. I thought it was brilliant!

Germany - I did a terms placement there at uni and worked in a primary school. During a maths lesson, they were learning about recording data, finding averages etc. Similarly, another subject had work related to trains. Teacher suddenly said “let’s go into town and go to the station and get some data”. And up we all got. No replanning, nothing. Teacher just strolled by the office and said we were all going to town, not sure when we will be back. Merry farewell from principal……sat in the station doing tally charts, teacher then said “let’s get the train to X town and compare” - so we did! Ended up having a hot drink in a cafe and returning.

I was flabbergasted and the teacher was flabbergasted at me for thinking it was a big thing! I’m a teacher here in the UK - ANY trip out has to have a permission slip, be in the school diary by October each year. My class had a trip to the flipping park a ten minute walk away this term - the risk assessment was 18 pages long, the preparation involved with getting extra adults, high vis jackets, mass safety rules, date was in the diary in September, I had to tell school exact return time…..yet over there, it’s just one permission for the time at school to leave the site and off they go! Totally on a whim yet totally in line with teaching. I loved it.

Same, I couldn’t believe it! We actually emailed the company after our stay. it was those awful polystyrene type plates too.

Not embarrassing, but here's something that was more of a shock especially because American and British culture is so similar.
On the first day of a stay in London, a long time ago, we went out to some little place for breakfast, and at the counter I asked for milk. "Hot or cold?" asked the counter man, which was itself startling, since in the U.S. milk - public milk, anyway - is always cold. "Cold, please," I said politely. Then he dipped into a huge open vat with a ladle and spooned me out some room-temperature milk that had a black speck floating in it. I have no idea if that was common or unusual, but I suddenly felt as though I was no longer in a First World country, but in some outlier country with totally unsanitary food.

This post made me smile, as I know Gambia well 🙂. Gambia certainly does make for a memorable holiday 😁

NYC probably the most shocking culture shock tbh. Entering a supermarket in a pretty unglamorous area of Brooklyn to discover the prices were off the scale! $9 for a loaf. Not artisanal sour-dough poncery, just a mass-produced brown loaf. Not sure if we were in the local equivalent of Waitrose Metro, was a fairly dreary shop selling ordinary food and mums with kids paying with ticker rolls of food-stamps so I don’t think so. Also realised why all the US teens flying home to JFK on our outward leg seemed to be carrying their body-weight in European biscuits and crisps. Slightly perturbed by the billboard in NYC offering $10k rewards for information leading to the arrest of anyone who shot a policeman. 1-800-COP-SHOT. Bit dystopian. Anti-perspirant locked in alarmed cabinets in Manhattan pharmacies and costing ten times as much as it does here (captive market of tourists? heavy theft? I forgot to check if other pharmacies elsewhere in the US did the same thing and is it all so insanely expensive?) Ordering tea with milk in multiple places in Massachussets and more often than not having to explain. They did all have teabags but seemed to be the addition of milk that made it weird? Or was it a wind-up😜 I started drinking sugarless ice tea to avoid the social embarrassment. Hotel room doors in Sweden opening into the corridor. Old chair-under-the-door-handle security trick didn’t work!

The proliferation of elderly vehicles in Portugal, as a driver of a ‘modern classic’ (banger, lol) nice to see cars I haven’t seen since the 90s. How pleasant people working in public service roles are. They don’t seem to hate the public! And the perennial classic; topless women of all ages on beaches, in France, not caring a damn. Coming down from what looked like, from their outfits, desk jobs, towel out of the handbag, whip off the blouse and skirt and ready to sunbathe. Must be dead relaxing. Cannot imagine it here somehow.

Not all of us were doing that. I am British and I thought those people had lost the plot too. Collective herd hysteria. I was living not all that far from BP at that time and I stayed well out of the weeping and wailing.

We had a French exchange student in the very early 2000s but I would never allow my children to do this now. Sounds like a safeguarding nightmare! Have to admit I’ve not heard of any cases of it going wrong but haven’t looked. You’ve peaked my interest now though!

Our schools serve school lunch on disposable trays and plates too. Unimaginable waste! Including much of the food that’s served

we used to have a share table to put unwanted food but that has gone by the wayside

Worse than that for me was also in Varanasi, also dogs eating human flesh, but they had dragged it up onto the pathway ahead of me. As I approached the pile of flesh I was horrified, and am still mentally scarred to this day, to realise that it was the lower half of a dead baby.

So, you just continued and acted like eating off the placemat was totally normal? 😂😂😂

The UK did lose its collective mind.

There was competitive mourning, signs on the underground to point people to the various flower sites.

Agree with the men in Japan. I was not expecting that!

The water just goes down the toilet/hole in the ground. You aim the water in the right place and go for it, so much cleaner than using toilet paper to smear everything around. You can use to the hose to clean the toilet first if it’s filthy. I’m not sure what locals do but I always carry around toilet paper while travelling to dry myself afterwards.

DH once had explosive diarrhoea in a Chinese train station toilet with no cubicles. Doesn’t help that people tend to stare at tourists in areas where open toilets are still common so you also have an audience while you are doing your shit.

Other than toilets in China I would say that dog meat in Southern China was a bit of a culture shock. Restaurants would proudly display a dead dog in their window or dog stew in a market where you could still recognise the heads floating around.

And another China one- the trousers that toddlers wear with the slit in the bum so they can just squat down and open it and do a poo or a wee in the street. They were even wearing them in zero degree temperatures in winter.

That used to happen here in the 1970s.

I remember a trip in infants to the local park with a pond to get frog spawn that we watched turn into tadpoles and then frogs, that we took back to the park.

In my second junior school (house move) I had a fabulous teacher who was really into local history so our history lessons started with us lining up outside the head's office, we then had to go out and bend down under the head's window, otherwise, according to fab teacher, she would be out on her broomstick chasing us.

After her window we could stand up again and go for a walk into the town centre to be told all about the local history.

There was never a permission slip or anything, it was only when we got home that our parents found out we had been out for 2 hours.

Saw that kind of thing in Thailand. The two memorable ones were small child, dad, baby, mum in that order all sat riding on a scooter and a flat bed pick up truck, piled high with mattresses on it and several kids riding on the top. Neither the mattresses or the kids were secured in any way.

horrific.

So you'd shit yourself if you had the runs when out in public, rather than use the nearest public toilet?

I guess you don't have IBS or Crohns...

What country is this?

And the absolute food wastage.
The amount of times I saw meals being ordered, and then left by customers in the US. Particularly surprising when they’ve had a better and more practical approach to ‘doggie bags’ for years.

Along those lines; plastic water bottles. Virtually everywhere I’ve travelled outside of the uk, everyone seems to use plastic and then they’re just chucked/dumped en masse along roadsides. I sort of understand if you are in a country where water sources can be dodgy, but within Europe and the US, it’s inexcusable. The best system I ever saw overseas was at a resort in Antigua. When you arrived at the hotel you were provided with a Chillys type bottle for your use during your stay. There were water stations dotted around the grounds to enable you to fill up when required.

My only embarrassment has been as a natural left hander travelling in the Middle East. It’s a huge cultural gaffe to use your left hand for anything except wiping your behind, but I instinctively use mine for holding forks or spoons or even reaching or indicating for something. It genuinely took a huge amount of effort to always be so conscious of using the correct hand.

A few years ago I was working as a receptionist in the UK.There was a Kenyan security guard who used to stop and chat.
One day he told me his father had died in Kenya and sadly he could not go for the funeral as it would be the next day.
So the next day as he was walking by looking at his phone, he showed it to me, it was live video of his father’s body being burned on a bonfire.
Whilst on holiday in Bali in a lovely place called Ubud in the evening we were out for a meal and had to walk over people sleeping on the pavement with babies asleep on the pavement also. We were told they were not Balinese but from Jakarta.
Also whilst in Australia me my DH came across some Japanese school girls in full Japanese style uniforms.They asked to have photos taken with my DH they did not want me. I think it’s because he was blonde and I’m dark haired.

Yes, those old enough to remember will know how the world reacted to John Lennon's death. And those of us not old enough to remember will have heard/seen footage. The entire world grieving. So it's not that unusual, the reaction to Diana and the like.