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'm not surprised by this as there are people brought up in different cultures and they will stand on a Western toilet creating a hell of a mess. Many years ago while teaching abroad we had to instruct children how to use a toilet as they only had a pit latrine in their gardens.

People like Baroness Mone (she of the bras and multi-million pound PPS lawsuit), Lord Botham, or Lord Hannan and Lord Frost (the people whose Brexit fantasy has set the country back decades and cost hundreds of billions), or Lord Lansley (whose reforms crippled the NHS)? Or Boris Johnson's chums, donors, fluffers and family ... none of these can by any stretch of the imagination claim to be "on top of their game" or to have vast experience of anything other than being consistantly wrong about everything

Morocco - 2 adults, a toddler, and a newborn on a moped.

And your suggested alternative while travelling would be???

Assuming you don't get out much

Me speaking semi-fluent Spanish (ok fine bare bones Spanish!) and thinking I could smash it in Barcelona, only to discover they speak Catalun. I felt like a wally.
I also did this somewhere in Eastern Europe, ordered what I thought was 4 cheese pizza - turned out to be 4 meat/fish pizza and the fish was under the cheese so I couldn’t even pick it off! I was a vegetarian at the time.

You mean they poo in their own loos? How disgusting.

Actually I do remember an old guy whose house was being modernised by the council. One feature was a bathroom with loo. He declined the offer and said shutting indoors was disgusting and he was happy with the loo in the backyard.

I suppose it depends what you mean by "miss". I've always "aimed" for the water (I seem to be one of those people who needs to "hear" it to know she's operating properly, sts). But as a little girl I sometimes dribbled rather than flowed, especially if I was being held above the toilet by my mother.
Sorry, tmi but you asked.

The first time DS1 encountered a shelf loo in Austria he sent a photo of his poo to his friend. His friend was impressed. Boys can be revolting.
I couldn't get over how tiny the loos were when we had a layover in Houston a few weeks ago. They were like primary school loos. Which is possibly better than the massive loo in a restaurant in Pisa where my feet were a few inches off the ground. Felt like I ought to have one of those inserts you use so little kids can use a loo without falling in.

How old was he? 🤣🤣 my boys would do the exact same thing

@ABitAbout 15.

The problem with US loos is they combine very low pans with very high gaps at the bottom of doors. I feel exposed practically up to knee level.

With German shelf ones I always have an irrational worry about what happens if a poo is too long.

Yep, some of the appointees are more than questionable. I like it as a concept though.

There are quite a lot of genuinely knowledgeable types lurking in the Lords aside from the personality hires. Lots of expert scientists for example.

"The first time DS1 encountered a shelf loo in Austria he sent a photo of his poo to his friend. His friend was impressed. Boys can be revolting."

They have them in some properties in Spain.

My DH (fully-grown, grey-haired, adult) sent me a picture as well.

What else would she do? Shit her pants?

It baffles me too, @yakkity. Maybe @TwinklyRoseTurtle has iron control of her bowels, but for most of us (especially those of us blessed with bowel conditions), if we’ve got to go, we’ve got to go.

Only one man and one baby? You've seen nothing ... whole families on "two wheelers" is very common ...

This is why the Tata nano was developed

I've seen signs on public toilets here asking people to NOT do that!

My carefully practiced Duolingo Spanish was sometimes of use in Bilbao, but I did cop a rant in Basque from a bus driver for simply asking if this was the right bus for the metro station 😳. And nobody's going to be learning the basics of Basque in a couple of days. I did just about manage to master "thank you"- "ezkerrik asko" 😬.

My French used to be semi fluent as I worked in Paris for few years. But it’s very rusty now as I’m out of practice, my accent has always been a bit too English. My French friend says to a French person, I now speak the language like Officer Crabtree from Allo Allo.

Hahaha. I know someone who is proficient in several languages in terms of vocabulary but once heard someone describe them as ‘they speak French like Winston Churchill’.

Well then consider yourself very lucky not to have had to! Travelling/living in India for many years, I have a ton of stories when there was really no option. Including one "toilet" somewhere in Rajasthan with shit all up the walls. It was gross and haunts me 30 years later, but there REALLY was no other option!

Friend was German, I forgot to mention that.