11 rules for traveling overseas once you get old...

[ArenaBoy]

Tourist: Yes I quite agree with you, I mean what's the point of being
treated like a sheep, I mean I'm fed up going abroad and being
treated like a sheep, what's the point of being carted around in
busses, surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and
Boventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their
transistor radios and their 'Sunday Mirrors', complaining about
the tea, 'Oh they don't make it properly here do they not like
at home' stopping at Majorcan bodegas, selling fish and chips
and Watney's Red Barrel and calamares and two veg and sitting in
cotton sun frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over
their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh cos they 'overdid it on
the first day'!

Bounder: (agreeing patiently) Yes. Absolutely, yes, I quite agree...

Tourist: And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellevueses
and Bontinentals with their international luxury modern roomettes
and their Watney's Red Barrel and their swimming pools full of
fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming
pyramids and frightening the children and barging in to the queues
and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss your bowl
of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu
of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night there's
bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny emaciated dago
with nine-inch hips and some big fat bloated tart with her hair
Brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for
Foreigners.

Bounder: (beginning to get fed up) Yes, yes, now...

Tourist: And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with diarrhoea
and flabby white legs and hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called
Manuel, and then, once a week there's an excursion to the local
Roman ruins where you can buy cherryade and melted ice cream and
bleedin' Watney's Red Barrel, and then one night they take you
to a local restaurant with local color and coloring and they
show you there and you sit next to a party of people from Rhyl
who keeps singing 'Torremolinos, Torremolinos', and complaining
about the food, 'Oh! It's so greasy isn't it?' and then you get
cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an
Instamatic and Dr Scholl sandals and Tuesday's 'Daily Express'
and he drones on and on about how Mr Smith should be running
this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and
then he throws up all over the Cuban Libres.

Bounder: Will you be quiet please.

Tourist: And sending tinted postcards of places they don't know they
haven't even visited, 'to all at number 22, weather wonderful
our room is marked with an "X". Wish you were here.'

Bounder: Shut up.

Tourist: 'Food very greasy but we have managed to find this marvellous
little place hidden away in the back streets.'

Bounder: Shut up!

Tourist: 'Where you can even get Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and
onion...'

Bounder: Shut up!!!

Tourist: '...crisps and the accordionist plays "Maybe its because I'm a
Londoner"' and spending four days on the tarmac at Lutton
airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried
Watney's sandwiches...

Bounder: Shut your bloody gob! I've had enough of this, I'm going to
ring the police.

From Monty Python, this came up in my head when I saw this. Sorry it's somewhat long but every tourist (smart) will agree with this. That and the video on youtube was gone.

[Kat33auS]

??) Ask shop workers to convert various prices into your local currency and when they hand you the calculator in confusion, attempt the convertion yourself. Make sure to get it wrong and not buy the item!

True story.

[Bella_Vixen]

Only the cool kids can know which one.

But...but...I'm the awesome-ist!!



Thanks, Broomjockey! That's what I thought, but just wanted to make sure.

[Shabo]

And now that I think about it,

, too.

I can't wait for the day when the US dollar drops like a rock and all the yuppies in this country get to deal with other nations' dumb tourists.

Yeah, same here. I need to perfect a Canadian accent for when I go to Ireland this summer...

As far as the US dollar, since it's already weak (and hit an all time low the other day!) then we ARE getting other nations' dumb tourists.

On a not-related-to-tourist note here, I am friends with a girl from France that came to study at my school last year. We went shopping for blue jeans while she was here because they are far cheaper here than there (which I knew from previous experience) but she was looking at $100+ jeans! I don't even want to know how much they were in France! I tried to tell her that there were nice jeans for cheaper than that, but fashion was a big deal to her. She wasn't a stupid tourist though.

And hauntedheadnc... Doesn't France have a rampant racism problem themselves? Especially because they are having a huge African immigrant problem?

[Acolyte]

And hauntedheadnc... Doesn't France have a rampant racism problem themselves? Especially because they are having a huge African immigrant problem?

Pretty much any country bordering/near a country with significant ethnic differences has that issue. See America and Mexico (Well, Latin America in general), France and Northern Africa, Germany and Turkey and so on.

[GingerBiscuit]

Why is it the English become so badly behaved abroad?

ANswers on a postcard please.

Because everyone keeps telling us we're all so bloody 'quaint' and have got 'really good manners'. It's kind of like rebelling.

Note: I have NEVER behaved badly as a tourist, and never would. But that's because whenever some idiot says something like 'Oh, I bet you live in a wattle and daub house!' or 'I didn't think you got anime over here!' or 'whats this gold-coloured coin?' or 'why aren't you cockney?' I just imagine bashing their head in with a lead model of Big Ben.

[cinema guy]

"I just love your accent! Are you Australian?"

And several of our group were Welsh, "Is Wales in England?"

GRRRR.

But most of the Americans we met were pleasant and welcoming.

[auntiem]

This is reminding me of the jackass couple who had to be on every excursion with us during a western Caribbean cruise (Belize, Costa Rica, and Panama):
[*]Referred to Belize TWICE to the tour guide as an island

...and you wonder why the rest of the world looks at Americans as stupid, egocentric, and arrogant?

Please tell me you were at least on Ambergis Caye when they said this and not in Belize City or something.

Also, when travelling in an underdeveloped country make sure to complain loudly to anyone within earshot of the "lousy construction" or "lazy builders" or "bad design". Bonus points if you are staying at a lodge built to reflect the architecture of the local's homes.

Every single time I go to Scotland people at pubs overhear my American accent and want to know what kind of gun I have.

[NightRain]

Speaking of daft.

A while back, when the mighty American dollar was almost as low as it is now, a friend of mine worked in a jewelry store. Small, family run type thing.

An American gent walks in and comments how wonderful a necklace is, and how is wife would love it.
"Certainly, sir. That will be £250" (about $500 American at the time, I think.)
"Now look here son, I'll give you two hundred dollars for this"
"Er, sir, at the current exchange rate you'd need $500 for that necklace"
"Don't be silly, boy! This is TWO HUNDRED AMERICAN dollars we're talking about!"

This continued for a small amount of time, with the tourist stomping off in disgust that someone told him his dollars didn't buy much.

[NateTheChops]

*sigh* Well, I at least take comfort in the fact that Americans aren't alone in being idiots, tourist wise.

In Burlington, Vermont we have a lot of nationals from the UK, Australia, Romania, etc, and I try my hardest to give them a good impression of the place when they come into my store. To tell you the truth I get excited when I meet people from different countries because I was born in a town with a pretty small diversity. (There were like five black kids in my school and maybe two Asians) And if you ask me where stuff is in Burlington and it's not too busy in the store I'll give you a fully detailed list of the best places to go because I like the idea of Vermonters being hospitible to tourists and I take pride in being a Vermonter.

[zzapp the witch]

A long time Canadian friend told me once that IF I ever intended to leave my country, to say I was Canadian.....in fact, he gave me permission to say I was Canadian. That I was the only American he had ever met that he trusted in giving that permission to......

Then he moved to Africa and I haven't heard from him since.


Canadians, the other white meat.

[Boozy]

??) Ask shop workers to convert various prices into your local currency and when they hand you the calculator in confusion, attempt the conversion yourself. Make sure to get it wrong and not buy the item!

This is such a nightmare. I have yet to meet a tourist able to properly calculate a conversion. They have no idea what to multiply by what. They don't know what to do with decimal places.

No big deal; it can be confusing. That's why you should take the shopkeeper's word for it. We have a computer that figures it all out for us. There's no point in accusing us of cheating you - we are. The rate we're offering is heavily weighted in our favour. But that's the price you pay for not bothering to convert your dollars at an exchange before you started shopping.