Biggest cultural shock you have come across?

[hibbledobble]

What have you encountered while travelling that was your biggest cultural shock?

I'll go first: in Poland I saw families/extended families living 10+ in a 2 bedroom home. The concept of having a bedroom or even a bed to oneself is seemingly unheard of. Everyone sleeps in different beds each night, and beds are often shared. Having visitors in this set up is no problem either: everyone just rearranges. Water also came from Wells, lots of homes had no bathrooms. Ovens were these metal beasts that were plugged into the mains.

Oh God yes....and how ugly the textiles are here.

HIDEOUS and expensive too!

Lamb is cheap though! So I'm well fed but have ugly duvet covers.

In Nigeria I had loads...
But one of the things that stands out is all the health problems and deformities that we saw, stuff that would have been fixed in the UK, like cleft palates and club feet.

@BarbaraofSeville mains gas isn't the norm in the Cotswolds either, we have gas bottles

That Ireland didn't have a cervical screening programme when I visited 11 years ago with Jo's Trust.

Oh yes and Thailand, beaten up mopeds with toddler on front, dad behind, tiny baby squashed behind dad and mum holding on for dear life on the back. Pick up trucks with piles of mattresses on them and ten kids riding loose on the top.

Birdz God your experience sounds like mine! When I went to drama school in London, I was 21 and had never had a cappucino! I'd never been in a Cafe Nero or anything...this was the 90s. I also hadn't eaten in a "proper restaurant" and my big brother who had also gone to uni in London and still lived there, threatened a male student on my course because he'd tried to get off with me and when I turned him down, this lad had pushed me down the stairs!

China - it being a sign of politeness to leave some food on your plate, shows the host you've had enough food. If you eat it all they offer you more.

This worked to my advantage because I really struggled with the veggie food in China.

In USA many years ago billboard posters advertising Smear tests by some charity, the stark realisation that things we take for granted healthcare wise are not available to many there.

Silence. Or maybe more like quietness in Japan.

Being confronted with racism (in the UK).
Alcohol.
What I call "British chattiness". I really like that one, btw. So maybe I shouldn't call it culture shock. More like culture surpise...

In this country, the widespread idea that children shouldn't attend funerals for fear seeing a dead body and/or adult grief will traumatise them permanently.

@Chavelita THIS! I was coming on to post exactly the same thing.

The attitude to death in this country will always flummox me. The first funeral I remember attending was when I was five. I also know how to sympathise appropriately. This notion of ignoring death is weird. You don't need to be interfering or in people's business, but you can at least sympathise!

I live in the UK and don't have mains gas and constant hot water. That's not that unusual surely?

Attitudes towards children. (Walking to school, pointy things etc.)

Actually, I think this one is the biggest one, tbh.

When I went with a friend to visit his family in Kenya. They employed a maid, a handyman, and a gardener.

When we arrived at the house from the airport, the manservant insisted on taking my case, and every single job - no matter how trivial - I was told (not in a high and mighty way) - to leave to the staff.

I'm not cut out for being waited on hand and foot. It really didn't sit well.

You'll be happy to hear they do now Hotel. Long overdue....but Ireland and women's health....well, let's not derail the thread....

OP, I had once read somewhere that houses in Poland are bigger than the UK because they normally house 3 generations. So isn't that the case?? It seems to me that it's a myth that in other (European) countries people live in huge properties.

Being held at gunpoint by a tax driver in Bangkok which led to me having a wonder through the slums. He decided to switch his meter off on the wireless road.

Stray dogs running in packs around bkk

Having a conversation with a hotel barmaid in a Thai resort hotel and saying how I did a similar job at home. She had this long conversation with me about how she was still "lower" than me much to my insistence that we were equals.

That Thai girls, particulate from the Isan, areas would be sent to to the cities and work whilst sending money home to husbands etc who wouldn't work and just sit around and chew khat

Baby elephants being paraded down city streets for tourists

Learning that "being run over by a cement mixer" was local talk for probably been murdered

tectonic while there is some overcrowding in London, it's not the norm, and people do consider themselves overcrowded (and register with the council for a bigger place). In Poland it's their norm.

This was in the very rural countryside near Krakow.

Crossing to the Asian side of Istanbul and within a minutes' walk you are among barefoot children collecting water from communal taps, using old paint cans as buckets. The Ceramic Mosque is well worth a visit though and the chaps in its tea-room were the male Muslim version of English parish ladies, foisting tea and cake on us.

Most unexpected culture shock - rural American mid-West. Not counting the time I ended up at the hotel with the KKK convention, the insularity and suspicion of anything educated, foreign and in particular, any food posher than Taco Hell, let alone 'socialized medicine', was astounding.

Going to a sheep feast in Kyrgyzstan. After we'd sat for some time round a long table eating snacks and salads, everyone trooped outside to see the sheep being slaughtered in the courtyard. DP and I went for a stroll while it was butchered, and came back to see an old woman washing its entrails in a huge bowl of water, at the same time keeping an eye on a baby in one of those walker things beside her. The whole lot was boiled and served up as we sat in another room, on quilts on the floor round a low table. Two young men were given the head, which they split open to eat the brains and thus acquire extra intelligence.

It wasn't exactly a shock, more fascinating.

Oh and having a maid. Hated it. She would get angry if I tried to do my washing (but it would come back with holes in 😢)

user Haha! Before University I'd only ever eaten at Harvesters or Toby carveries. A guy from my course took me to a "proper" restaurant and was mortified when I tucked my napkin into my top. He told me the "right" way to do it. At the end of the night I told him he was a pretentious twat. I still have to fight the urge to tuck my napkin into my top. It just makes more sense than on your lap

The rubbish piled high on the streets in Ko Samui - right next to the shops selling Jimmy Choo shoes and Prada handbags!

A man in Morroco doing a pee whilst fully clothed, just standing in the street watching The World go by.

American gun laws!

In the middle of the first term, I was having some problems with a bloke who lived in the room above me. I called my brother who brought his friends over and they, basically, kidnapped him and threatened to break his legs. This was a pretty normal way of resolving things where I grew up. My flatmates were completely horrified and news of this event spread all round the University.

Erm, WTF? I'm not surprised they were horrified.

Having to buy gas bottles when we lived in Valencia - first time i ran out of hot water and gas then had to find out where to replace the bottles and how to hook it all up! I soon learnt ( and we were not told by the landlord any of this)
Watching Ed Byrne and Dara O'Brine on tiv last night in Malaysia , they were amazed at all the different religions and cultures, how diverse it was.
I had no idea either as i;ve never been there!

I have never in my life seen or heard of 10 plus people living in a 2 bedroom home in Poland OP. Even in the communist era I have never known this.

choco Often 3 generations live in a house, but no they aren't bigger than the UK.

The village I saw had a typical layout of 4 rooms bungalows: 2 bedrooms, a lounge (where you would sleep too) and a kitchen. You had to go through the first bedroom to get to the second.