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!

No - they need to stay home so the rest of us can travel without their dramatics.

I'm still annoyed about the people I travelled with last summer who should definitely have stayed at home.

My culture shock was leaving africa where I had lived my first 19 years of life and arriving in the uk . Trying to make friends and be part of the community when I knew no one was really hard and the weather took many years to get used to and to be honest I don't think I really ever have got used to it . In africa it was a colour divide in the UK well let's just say , out in africa I experienced cleaner mud huts in the bush than the way some white people choose to live in the uk and there is not only a real class divide in the uk but racism is alive and thriving and I am not just talking black and white but religion and different nation hatred as well . People say the uk is multicultural , it maybe but there is still an undercurrent of dislike . To be honest that isn't all . Sadly the UK is going down the toilet fast and to be honest I can't see it improving anytime soon . It's so broken I don't think it can be fixed and I am just waiting for civil unrest and maybe full blown civil war due to feelings finally boiling over . Our country sadly is that broken I honestly don't think it can be saved and certainly not by the shower we have running it at present.

@AlexStocks Eh poo is normal. I put my foot in it

I think you should have put a new paragraph between those two sentences. 😂

I think I will get the Poo Fairy app. A bit less painful than the stitching.

This is going to haunt me....

Me too.

I think one thing that foreigners have a bit of a culture shock with is the fact that we don't allow plug sockets in bathrooms. Though I saw last weekend that the Netherlands don't, either, or at least the hotel I was staying in didn't and the light switch was outside too.

Also British showers can be really rubbish, though have got a lot better in recent years

To be fair, if you have something wrong, it could be a really good idea to have a shelf so you can inspect it. I used to laugh about it, but having had a gut problem recently I did actually "pine" for a German shelf loo so I could see what the heck was going on!

As I finished reading that first paragraph, I simply closed my eyes and whispered aloud, "No."

When my parents went to Germany in the early '80s to visit my father's grandmother who lived in Munich, she was very taken aback by how shopkeepers made it Very Clear that you were not to touch the merchandise. If you wanted anything, the clerk would get it.

As an American (incidentally, a left-handed American), this is totally baffling to me. Well, the only thing I can think of is that you might have been eating Continental style, keeping your fork in your left hand and your knife in your right, instead of putting the knife and fork down after cutting and switching (which I've always thought was really stupid).

Oh no, surely not! If it really was marshmallows it would have been a fruit or fluff salad, like what we call ambrosia in the South, not a lettuce and cold meats salad.

Not very embarrassing, but I was always taken aback and needed a second whenever someone in the UK asked, as a pleasantry/neutral greeting, "Are you all right?" or a variation. Because while I know intellectually that "All right?" etc. is just small talk in the UK, in the US, if you're asking someone if they're all right it's because you are surmising from looking at them that they're having some sort of problem.

My favorite culture shock was the dating show "Naked Attraction," which I first saw in Vienna on a German channel, at 8:00 in the evening on a normal channel (in the US it would have been on a pay channel and/or late night). The contestants were just... totally naked! And discussing the pubic hair styles of their prospective dates who were total strangers! Ultimately I came away thinking it was refreshingly cute that it was so open, but when I told my mother and friends in the US about it, they seemed skeptical that I was just watching normal TV on a normal channel when it started. "I swear, I wasn't trying to watch porn!"

It is weird that the UK doesn't allow sockets in bathrooms. We have them in Finland, the washing machine usually goes in the bathroom so that needs a socket, then for hairdryers and electric toothbrush chargers and whatnot yet we don't have an epidemic of bathroom electricutions.

I've got a proper double socket by the mirror and the sink in my bathroom. I don't know how the previous people got away with it but it is SO useful.

I was the same about the hysteria about Diana's death. I had to cycle everyday past Kensington Palace, avoiding the flowers and distraught people. Complete over-reaction

Also rural Spain

Well she did die very young, which was unusual.

So if you needed a poo, you’d wait to go home??
If I need to go, I HAVE to go and I will go. I will hover or sit on toilet paper once I wiped the toilet seat (I always carry hand cleaner spray) but yes, I’ll absolutely poo in a public toilet!

Im a bit intrigued about this. Presumably when you pee you're not aiming at the water then. Which seems odd. I'm not sure whether I'd be happy not to hear myself pee. I suppose I'd get used to it.

How do you manage to hover for a poo? I could never fully get that

That made me LOL because one of my most embarrassing moments was also related to going to the loo in China.
We were trekking parts of the Great Wall and one day after trekking we went to a local school. I was pretty desperate for a wee and asked if I could use the toilet. They said ‘sure’ and a couple of students took me to the bathrooms.
I opened the door and found myself in a big room. The toilets were lined up on the left and right hand side, they were ceramic toilets but sank into the ground. There were no cubicles and no dividers between the toilets. People had to squat above the toilets and do their business, in full view!
There were people using the toilet as I went in! I’ve never seen anything like that!
I turned around promptly and walked out.
I just couldn’t see how anyone can do their toilet business like that…

You just hover and it comes out, the same as you would have to do if you used a squat toilet in Asia.

She would have just been giving paper to Europeans. The water in the bucket is to wash yourself and then flush the loo. Washing yourself is surely cleaner that wiping with paper

🤣🤣🤣🤦🏻‍♀️

You kinda push your butt out (if you want me to be really technical) while doing a wider squat, so you don’t go on yourself 🤣🤣 (I do a lot of squats at the gym so physically it’s not difficult).
That’s if the loo is really dire! Otherwise I’d opt for putting a full coverage of loo paper on the seat after wiping it and spraying it, and doing the deed sitting down. I’d defo not take it home! 😳🤣🤣