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.

Also Japanese toilets!
I visited my sister when she live in Tokyo. I got up for the loo in the night and didn't turn the light on as I wanted to keep my vision night adjusted so I didn't wake anyone up by walking into something after I'd been. While I was sitting on the toilet I inadvertently pressed a button next to the rim, and something sprayed cold water all over my butt!

Krop Absolutely, the sight of old western men, lots of them. with very young Cambodian girls. The problem is that the old men in government do nothing about it because there is a belief embedded in Chinese culture that having sex with a young girl especially a virgin revitalises old men. (In Hong Kong the British government tolerated the trade in Mui Tsai, young girls who were then used as domestic servants / prostitutes, some Mui Tsai were specially trained to enable old men to get it up). The price of virginity in Cambodia is $600, a huge amount for a poor family, so young girls are left very vulnerable.

We now support an NGO that runs two schools for the slum children in Phnom Penh, they help children who have missed school because their families have sent them out to work e.g. on rubbish tips to catch up to the state system and then supports them through school, and now university. It still shocks me that the school nurse has a chart on the wall that shows the children of 5 and 6 the ways in which it is appropriate and inappropriate to be touched.....

Camping in Russia at an anarchist conference held in secret location in the wilderness (for cheapness of accommodation and because fascists and/or police would have attacked us in a more conventional venue.

The country is endless. You get on a train and just ride and ride it. Get off in the middle of nowhere at all and just wild camp wherever.
Coming from the UK, just the scale of it is a bit of a shock.

Some comrades had set up camp somewhere quite remote so we get off the train in the middle of nowhere (literally just a track in the wilderness, no platform or anything) and we hike for a day to meet them at the camping spot.

We need to ford a river so I start taking off my shoes and replacing them with crocs to get in the water. Literally everyone stops what they're doing to laugh (good naturedly) and point at my saying "First world, first world!" I was the only person there with a second pair of shoes. Not a second pair with me. A second pair at all.

Same trip: The conference was dry. No booze allowed. On the last day, one of the organisers explains that since we've all been such good kids and worked so hard, he will open his secret stash which he had hidden away with him.
This turns out to be surgical spirit which he proceeds to dole out to all present even asking how many fingers of spirit we take- as though this is a perfectly ordinary tipple.
This guy was a geeky little theorist type by the way. not some crazy punk.
I did partake. It tasted better than the fermented horse milk which I was also pressed into trying.

I have very fond memories of that conference. It was a real adventure. In general I dislike culture shock however. That sort of ennui and the sense that your identity is slipping away from you without your usual points of reference. Home sickness and so on (shudder). I'm not a natural traveller.

The number of homeless people sleeping in the streets in Vancouver

Oh this but in San Diego. I was pretty horrified seeing homeless people taking a dump on the side of the road in broad daylight. Very sorry state of affairs with homeless people, mental health care and so on in the USA

Upon moving to the UK: so very many relatively modern blocks of flats, 4-5 stories high, with no lift.

'This was twenty years ago so I'd like to think things are different now.'

Probably not. I got to C. America and the Caribbean every year/every other year, the poverty is always the same, and yy, the guards toting machine guns in front of banks, some shops, etc. in some places.

Gumboots - I'd never heard of Paris Syndrome, that's extraordinary. Oddly enough, India is the country where I've felt most at home. I keep going back (to different parts of the county) and never feel culture shock (only when I return home and everything is so full and grey!). I did find Japan a culture shock, though, and I can't quite put my finger on why. It was, of course, clean, efficient, beautiful, fascinating, etc., but it just felt very unfamiliar. It didn't help that my husband is very tall and people kept pointing at him and giggling

couple from me:

Seeing a chain gang in the US sweeping the streets

Abject poverty right next to luxury in Argentina

Ukraine - complete lack of road safety. Seatbelts taken out of cars so they would be more comfy, motorcades driving down the wrong side of the road.

More freedom for kids, being left home alone from age 11 (with granny around to help out if needed).

Much better education system for maths, sciences, awful for foreign languages. English textbooks with glaring mistakes in them.

citychick Even as a gweillo with a western perspective I find your post incomprehensible. Bad customer Service? You are in for a shock if you ever come to live in the UK. I honestly dream of Asian customer service when I am being moaned at and subjected to sexist comments by the average British man who arrives to provide me with any sort of service in my home. Imagine a British removal man carrying heavy furniture that would not fit in the lift up 20 floors without complaining or the IKEA delivery man not just delivering the furniture not just at all but promptly and then assemble it

However I did find it a road to Damascus when I did a Masters in Chinese Studies, suddenly a lot of things that had not made sense at work and in society became entirely comprehensible in the context of Chinese culture. I suggest you google Confucianism and Guanxi as a start. A knowledge of Guanxi in particular is absolutely essential if you are going to function effectively in business in Asia.....It certainly explains the social relations and networks that are being built up in those pre meeting chats, and which are then used to get things done organically outside the formal structures of the organisation..........

The showering regime at Scandinavian public swimming pools is a bit of a shock to Brits. A naked and very thorough shower in open showers, no cubicles.

Poverty in Bangkok and Thailand being so bad that beautiful young women are so desperate to get out that hooking up with any Western man - including fat/disgusting/abusive/ violent/unemployed men - is seen as an ultimate goal to be striven for

You're right of course, but equally there are many who have no desire or intention to get out. It seems a well worn path for Thai women to agree an "engagement" with some visitor, pack him off home after he's agreed to keep sending her money for education, the flight to join him in the west or whatever ... then just move on to the next man

I've travelled in Asia and Middle East and life is very different there but I was expecting it to be radically different so wasn't that shocked.

When I moved to the US I really did have a culture shock for a while. I came from an Ireland where everyone more or less agreed in theory that the state should provide certain things including education, healthcare, safety net and people just disagreed on how that should happen. It was really shocking to realise that even liberal people could believe that government should play a minor role in these things - it is a very different philosophy.

By the same token an american friend told me how shocked he was when he was approached by a begging traveller child when in Ireland. he gasped and said "where is your mother? why aren't you in school?" - probably first time that kid got that reaction. And I imagine the average american in Ireland would find the religion in school odd.

Since going on MN I am finding a fair bit of culture shock particularly with regard to families/money and teenage children. There seems to be far more of an attitude of "well your husband is earning the money, if you have school aged children, you should be out earning your own or else you can't complain". I don't know anyone who thinks that here. Also don't know anyone who thinks it isn't any of their business if their 16 year olds are out during the week/having sex/drinking. All of the parents I know supervise their teens way more than seems usual on MN/UK.

The showering regime at Scandinavian public swimming pools is a bit of a shock to Brits. A naked and very thorough shower in open showers, no cubicles

Took me a little while to get used to it when I moved to Finland, now I strip off and walk to the showers without a second thought

standing on toilet seats is an Asia-wide problem

Ohhhh! I work in a university and on more than one occasion a colleague has gone into the toilet immediately following the same overseas student and found shit on the seat. I've been utterly baffled about how a functioning adult can repeatedly shit on a toilet seat but if they were standing on it, that would make sense!

Wow lalegue that is truly shocking

I lived in Malaysia and Singapore for a bit, and all the office toilets had signs up reminding people they weren't to do it.

Shocking was going to a Macdonald's toilet in Shanghai, and discovering that no-one put the paper down the toilet, but in a bin next to it. An over-flowing bin, filled with tissues covered in everything.

I didn't go to the toilet unless in a nice restaurant/office or back at the hotel for the rest of the trip.

The showering regime at Scandinavian public swimming pools is a bit of a shock to Brits. A naked and very thorough shower in open showers, no cubicles

To be fair, I was shocked the first time I saw a naked woman in the gym changing room! I was 19 and she had her breasts out, casually toweling off her pubes - I nearly gave myself whiplash trying to avert my gaze! I grew up in a decidedly clothed house and nobody at school got changed openly. I'd never seen anyone naked outside of a sexual context before that point.

Shocking was going to a Macdonald's toilet in Shanghai, and discovering that no-one put the paper down the toilet, but in a bin next to it. An over-flowing bin, filled with tissues covered in everything.

That happens in parts of Greece too - the plumbing can't cope with toilet paper.

The hideous poverty, inequality and corruption in India. It seems so much crueller than many other third world countries I have visited.

The violence in South Africa and how it effects everyone. My maid was held up by gun twice within a month. The really depressing thing was is that she treated it like it was just one of those things. I suggested she might want to at least take a few days off (paid) work but she thought I was being silly.

When I first went to Japan and got on a commuter train with my Starbucks, and everyone backed away from me. Apparently it isn't done to eat or drink on the go. Also Japanese toilets!

When I first moved to US more than 20 years ago I was absolutely shocked at everyone eating and drinking on the trains/buses. But it seems absolutely normal to me now and it is also really common in IReland and UK. It wasn't back then though.

This thread is fantastic!
I'd probably say my fist visit to India and the poverty I witnessed, I have never seen people actually living on the street or kids naked for lack of clothes. So sad, I spent weeks in shock.
On a much smaller scale, I moved to the UK about 15 years ago from Italy and I do still remember a couple of minor cultural shocks (please don't laugh!):

• no bidets and realization people don't wash their bits with soap/water after a number two
• dinner time/bed time for kids, particularly in summer. I still haven't figured out the reason for sending them to bed so early compared to other countries. Surely they have to sleep the same number of hours?
• old people eating crisps. Funny eh? Crisps in Italy are mostly a snack for kids, party food or they accompany a drink. The sight of an old person eating crisps out of a packet it was just so weird
• amount of booze that can be actually drunk by an individual. I still remember my first company's Christmas party, so shocking!
• lack of tablecloth in restaurants/cafe. I think I spent a good six months horrified that the cutlery was actually touching the table...
• skin on potatoes. We peal our potatoes in Italy. I no longer do that now, but have to remember to do it every time I have visitors from there....

Someone mentioned earlier that in Italy shared bedrooms for children are unheard of. which comes as a shock to me ! I never met anyone who didn't have their own bedroom vs parents' bedroom (I am mid 40s). Even my parents when young had one and they don't come from very well off backgrounds. Sometimes you share it with your siblings and I think my mum shared it with her nan for a while, but that is as far as it goes. Normally the set ups are pretty much like in the UK....

shocking to realise that even liberal people (in USA) could believe that government should play a minor role

That's very true, but then another culture shock I found there is the sheer number of voluntary organisations who help the disadvantaged. I'm not talking about donating a few dollars mainly to make themselves feel better, but actual ongoing hard work and a real feeling of social obligation - duty, even - to help in making a difference

I've often thought it's something we could do with adopting in the UK, rather than relying so much on government

I came on to say Poland too OP. I've travelled all over but Poland was the only country to shock me! It's one of my favourite places though.

The horror expressed by a GP in Singapore that my DS wasn't circumcised. He told me that this was causing the UTI DS had and that I should get it sorted as soon as I got home.

As soon as we got home DS was an emergency admission to hospital with a burst appendix. Funnily enough we didn't feel the need to discuss circumcision as we felt DS's foreskin had probably had little effect on his intestines.

Outing myself as a filthy Brit, but exactly how do you use a bidet? Do you have to get undressed? What do you use to get dry and how long does it all take? What about if you have to go at work? I just can't imagine stripping off to get a good wash if I go for a number 2 half way though the day.

Continuing on the toilet themed anecdotes, bins for toilet paper are common in Lanzarote too.

whatwouldrondo like you I'm puzzled by citychick. I think customer service is generally great in HK.
Thank you for posting about Guanxi, I'm going to reap up on it. Am intrigued.