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 currently in Istanbul and I'm still expected to do this in my modern hotel bathroom. I'm not normally squeamish about hygiene and obviously don't want go be responsible for blocking up a city's sewers but I may or may not be remembering to do it.

You'd better hope you don't get Crohn's disease, you would have to shit in a lot worse places than a public loo!

Perhaps that explains the state of some aeroplane toilets...

In Cambodia, a new-born baby in a sling tied between the handlebars of a motorbike.

Why is it disgusting? It's an essential bodily function. Ensure it is all clean for the next person. Honestly, you're limiting your life. Travel is fantastic!

I think the weirdest thing I experienced was A&E in Tobago, we had to take dd there. There were chickens and dogs wandering in and out and everyone who came in was subjected to interrogation about why they were there by the other patients waiting to be seen. One woman had something stuck in her ear, so one by one the other patients had a go at getting it out (as did anyone new who came in).

Also in Japan being given sperm sacs to eat was odd. Not that horrible but odd.

TBH I was startled even in Amsterdam just a few years ago, to see so many thousands of people whizzing at top speed around the city on bikes - with no helmets. A friend who was with us narrowly missed colliding with a woman whizzing past our hotel one morning - not only no helmet, but a baby in one arm!

They still exist in Italy. We were in the Venice area only a couple of years ago visiting my DD during her university year abroad and they were surprisingly common.!

I can't deal with the squatting to use them myself so if we were considering the merits of a particular bar or restaurant then DH and/or DD would have to go on ahead to be my "toilet scouts." If I wouldn't be able to use the toilet then we would go elsewhere. I must say I did wonder how disabled people there were supposed to manage.

Do you just let it slide out the bottom of your trouser leg? What on earth do you do if you are out in public and need a poo?

Not sure if it is widespread across the USA, but in Texas all of the public bathroom doors we saw (including high end restaurants) have gaps so big that you can clearly see people through.
Apparently it’s for safety and drugs prevention.
I found it gave me very bad performance anxiety when sitting on the loo!

I think people like this just don't go anywhere. Which is a shame. It must be so limiting.

In a cupboard in an apartment in Vietnam were 2 life jackets. When I asked what they were for was told it was for the bathing, what kind of bathroom do they have here.
Was then told Vietnamese ladies who are not used to having a bathroom (and live near the coast) go to the beach about 5.30am, don the life jacket and go into the sea along with soap and flannel and get their daily bath and when they are on holiday like to do the same. In the countryside it is ditches, rivers or a barrel in the garden.

Thinking I was going backpacking round Europe and everything was going to be so different (90s) and then discovering that everywhere has a McDonalds.

How many people you can fit on a minibus in Africa - quite a few plus some goats.

The desperate poverty in India - nothing prepares you for it. Toilets that are simply a hole in a concrete floor. We also went on a tour of the slums (with all the profits going back into community slum projects).

Biggest culture shock was coming back to UK after Africa - I broke down in Tesco at the sheer amount of choice, having spent a year with one shop selling bread and soap and one market selling vegetables.

Also it blew my mind shopping in markets in Africa and browsing clothes from America that would have been made in India, sold in America, donated to charity, then shipped to Africa....to be sold in markets to local people.

That's how the receptionists at my local hospital behave, except without the helpful and charming part when they do finally acknowledge you. They just behave like you're invisible until they're good and ready, then they process you.

Re squat loos, I saw them in the gents' loos at RAF Lyneham , UK.

Decades ago, seeing very poor, disabled people on homemade skate board contraptions begging amongst the car traffic in Cairo

A few years ago I used to regularly see a chap who was a double amputee and begging and who used a skateboard to get around. This was in London, Waterloo.

@WildBalonz i used to live where you are receiving…the loos were something else! Became adapt at using a squat loo (squatty) on a train - skill I never knew I needed! We used the loos in McDs when out and about as they were the cleanest but still not very clean. People thought we weee addicted to mcds but it was just the loos we were after 😂

I don’t have any choice in the matter, @TwinklyRoseTurtle - I have IBS and lymphocytic colitis, both of which can cause bloating, discomfort and diarrhoea - and the symptoms can come on with almost no warning whatsoever. It’s like being kicked in the guts, and I have to go to the loo ASAP. If I wasn’t prepared to poo in public toilets, I’d pretty much never be able to leave the house.

I feel embarrassed enough about my illness, without people making me feel worse by judging me for doing a poo in a public toilets.

TwinklyRoseTurtle you sound horrible, have you never come across anyone with bowel issues, i.e. Crohns, bowel cancer, IBD/IBS, food poisoning or even just a bog standard upset stomach with torrential squits?

My friend has IBD, is on permanent medication and is often caught out, I would truly hate to think she would come across someone like you making her feel worse than she already does when using public loos for a very urgent poo.

I saw someone having a poo over a drain on a busy intersection in Hanoi. Straining face and everything.

I didn't know where to look so took my cue from the locals and looked down. My young children did no such thing though. They pointed and laughed.

Wait until you eat something that spectacularly disagrees with your digestion, love.

You'll run for a cubicle as fast as any of us.

I think that's judgmental. I lived in Kensington at the time, and I saw so many people each day visiting the gardens or on their way on the tube with flowers, mostly alone in thought and none with a trace of 'hysteria'.

That happened on my very first day in Canada. I couldn't believe it. I just thought what the absolute fuck!!!!

I’m a pretty seasoned traveler, so not much shocks me, although once in Morocco I booked into a “spa” with a male colleague (more of a communal bath house) and it was inferred that we were married and therefore we were expected to get naked and be scrubbed and hosed within an inch of our lives on adjacent benches. We were terribly British and just went along with everything they said, whilst in absolute hysterics throughout the whole ordeal (not least because one of the ‘scrubbers’ kept slapping my arse cheek).

I failed to prepare my DS for the sorry reality of a drop toilet in a service area on a French motorway, however. He’s autistic, we suspect OCD and a sensitive soul. Age 6, he tore out of the ladies in tears, calling for help and screaming blue murder about the MASSIVE STINKING POO ON THE ACTUAL FLOOR MUMMY! I guess French women don’t have qualms about taking a dump in a public loo! 🤷🏻‍♀️

But this is exactly what they are for?