BootsnAll Travel Community

No matter how hard some of us might try to not be 'tourists' (please don't start the traveller vs tourist debate here!), we've all had our moments when the locals start sniggering as soon as we turn our backs, and calling us 'stupid gringos' or something similar.

I don't just mean breaking down and going to the local tourist attraction, cuz face it, most of us do that. I mean really dumb 'trying too hard to fit in' moments. Or moments when we forget that we're trying to fit in, and act like total westerners.

Like when we try so hard to fit in by eating all the food the locals are eating, then have to run to the nearest bathroom in mere moments. (can't say that's ever happened to me, but I know a guy....)

Or like that time I decided to feed the cat at the hostel and it swiped at me and stole my steak. Apparently it's not the local norm to feed the cats. And they will steal your dinner, which is why you shouldn't do it.
Or the time that my friend decided to walk a couple of miles through the desert because he'd had enough of the camel.
Or the time that we were probably inadvertantly rude to the touts at the Turkish bus station, because we hadn't yet learned that Turkish bus touts are actually awesome.

So what's your tourist moment? When have you totally brought shame to the tourist name by acting the part?

I handed a half full can of soda over to a monkey in Kuala Lumpur a couple of weeks ago. I had this idea that he would drink all the soda out of it and then hand the can nicely back to me so that I could dispose of it. Instead he poked around at it for a bit and got soda all over the stairs while everyone looked at me like I was a littering fool. I never did get the can back and I felt pretty stupid. The monkeys then tagged me as a provider and followed me around the caves for a bit.

sigh...

Being kicked out of a pub in Barcelona for using the men's toilet (which was free, as oposed to the women's toiled which had a huge line of people waiting!)

Oh, and there's this when in a restaurant in Rome I ordered Penne Allarabiata agaist the owner's advice not to, because, you see, I like hot food. But after the first mouthful I absolutely coudn't take it and there was no staff in the room and I had no water, I ran to the bathroom to drink tap water. The owner caught me and was VERY mad. Apparently it was quite disrespectful of his food...

i'll always remember the day in september of 2005 when i was kicked off the berlin u-bahn (subway) by sneaky plainclothes guards for having a CHILD ticket instead of an adult one...

*hangs head in shame*

the saddest part is, on the ticket machine, they have an english option, and i still got it wrong. it was the first time i'd ever seen public transportation operating on the honor system, and the one time there were guys coming around to check our tickets, i had the wrong one. and even worse, i had russian friends with me and they were depending on me to do it right, as well. the guards pulled us off the train, demanded to see our passports, wrote up fines, and demanded forty euros. my friends cried hysterically because they'd left their passports in the hostel (not sure why), and because forty euros was a lot of money for them...after being threatened with arrest, they let us go. my friends didn't pay, and i did. after that, they refused to go anywhere unless we were walking there.

(never again!

Having a Dutch local point me to the post box after finding me on the street corner in suburban Amsterdam trying to cram three post cards into a parking meter. Gawds, did I feel stoopid!

Backpack - $180

'98 Roundtrip charter flight to Paris - $300

Watching your friend try to slip through the Paris subway gate right behind the friend that paid for a pass, only to have the gate slam shut between him and his backpack, leaving him literally trapped while locals looked on in horror at the American cheapskates, until finally someone realized he had to take the pack off and have it thrown over the plastic doors for him to escape - PRICELESS

...and hugely embarassing!

<<< was once scolded for ripping olive twigs of a tree while in Corfu. We were having a dressup party and I wanted to do the "Greek Goddess" thing with with an olive wreath on my head.

In a new city, I always feel like an idiot figuring out how to stamp a ticket on a tram/metro. You never know which way it goes and how far you have to stick it in and when to pull it out... and ya know everybody is staring at you, because in the cities I live in, its always funny to laugh at the silly tourists who don't know how to use the ticket machines

Mine was the chairlift. Taking my sons (2 of them) for a week's holiday to Rye one Easter, I determined to show them all the things my parents had shown me.

Off we go to the chairlift with me full of happy childhood memories, sons get on chairlift, I get on next one, chairs start moving upwards. Feet dangling in the air PANIC sets in. My feet are no longer on terra firma and I start screaming , "Stop the chairlift, stop the chairlift, help help".

The lift operators actually stopped it, sent it backwards about 10 metres and let me get off.

It was SOOOoo embarrasing . I didn't have a car then, so had to walk around the hill/mountain to the top in 30 degree heat.And then had to face my sons with "oh MUM how COULD you embarrass us like that? To make matters worse, I remembered a great English pub called "The Pig & Whistle" and decided we'd go there for lunch. Problem? Hadn't realised the distance. It took us 2 hours to get there. Needless to say we caught a taxi back. But I still had to walk back down around the mountain.

When I caught a plane for the first time I was terrified and sons told me " They won't turn the plane back and let you get off like you did on the chairlift".

Funny though, I am not scared of heights.


Have a nice day, Whistler.


If you can keep a sense of humour and see the funny side of life, you will never be old. SMC.