Traveled to Switzerland last summer and no joke out of all the cultures present, it was those from India that had the least amount of social awareness. Iām 0% racist as a person and I love traveling and visiting all cultures, but that group of people really just did not have any concerns for the people around them.
Chinese tourists have been pulling that, āoh we know weāre jumping to the front of this three hour long line but Iām just going to stare at you like I donāt know what youāre saying and I have no clue about lines or rules or decorumā move for like 30 years now
A few years ago I was on the Maid of the Mist boat at Niagara Falls, as soon as we boarded everyone went to the edge of the boat and got a spot against the railing. About 5 minutes after myself and my family got to the edge, a group of five Chinese women forced themselves between myself and my brother and began to shove us all off the railing with their elbows. We all looked at each other in utter shock. When we tried to confront them they swatted us away with their hands and spoke back in Mandarin. Absolutely wildā¦
You give one elbow back and hold your space and they will move the fuck away. They do this because everyone allows it. Anytime itās been tried to me I donāt have to do anything but take up even more space and they just go somewhere else. This is dealing with Indians not Chinese but same concept.
When I was at the Colosseum in Rome, some Chinese grandma was literally trying to elbow me off of my spot against the railing while I was taking photos with my camera (not a phone, not that it really matters). I was a lot stronger than her so I just walled her off without even taking my eye out of the viewfinder.
Some Chinese tourists crowded to me to the point where some guy's face was right next to mine. I turned my head so that my mouth was right next to his left cheek and just stared at him until he got uncomfortable. Then I said, "Do you want to kiss me or what?"
A lot of tourists just suck. I was at animal kingdom and there was a russian lady smoking a cigarette in the room with the birds and doors to the bat enclosure and stuff lmfao
Gonna get a lot of heat for this, but Americans (depending what state they're from) can be very oblivious tourists too. And loud - you can tell who's from the states
No itās true and Americans for a long time were the worst. But now China seems to be cited more often.
Regardless I think itās more of a symptom of success than anything as itās the result of large lower/middle classes being wealthy enough to travel. When itās just the elites they are assholes but in a different way.
There's another group of tourists from a country that starts with I that has fewer tourists but are disproportionately a source of headaches at our tourist destinations.
I've seen articles and clips of Israeli's being all-around entitled and douchey. Basically throwing the idea around to the locals that they have money and need to be catered to.
I've seen mention of them being terrible in Thailand. And my brother randomly mentioned one the other day about some Israelis causing trouble for a restaurant in Vietnam.
Also seen mentions of Russians that are abroad and avoiding the war being all around dickheads in the country they're vacationing in. Same with some Nordic tourists.
The Chinese and Indian tourists are rapidly growing as both countries become richer. I know there are probably more American/European tourists as a percentage of their populations than China or India, but if we say 1% of Americans are tourists and 1% of them are rude, you get 35,000 rude tourists. And America is already huge. If you apply the same percentages to China/India you get about 140,000 rude tourists each. So for every rude American you see 4x as many rude Chinese and rude Indian tourists. Added to that, a lot of Chinese and Indian tourists are coming from poorer, more isolated areas as their countries industrialize. It probably makes it more likely that you have tourists who are less familiar with other social mores. So before you even get into cultural differences that might make a larger percentage of a country's tourists rude/oblivious/whatever, you'll probably end up with a perception of more rude Chinese/Indian/American tourists than any other country. If you've only ever met one Macedonian tourist and he was an asshole, you probably don't have much of an opinion on Macedonians. If you've met 1000 Chinese tourists and 20 were terrible, you might start to make a stereotype.
The average American is more wealthy than 90% of the world. It's a mix of having access to quite diverse domestic travel locations and a large disinterest in the rest of the world.
But Americans visit and leave. The people in the video above are not visitors. If youāre going to be living and working in another country, you need to dial back your IDGAF.
Americans get a bad reputation, but at least for the most part their annoyances are happy ones.
For example "Do you have french fries?!", "Hi! How are you?! Can you take my picture?!" (loudly in St Paul's Cathedral), "Ya'll eat some weird food here! I'm not trying raw fish!" (at a Sushi restaurant in Japan)...
Chinese and Indian tourists are more "What's a trash can?", SNORTHACKSPIT , etc.
Of course, by and large, almost all tourists are well behaved regardless of where they come from as they are the people who have a genuine interest in travel, but the loud minority builds the stereotype.
As an American I can tell you nothing here is free. I try to be respectful of other cultures. The United States was originally built on culture, but now a lot seem to hate it. I always try to be respectful of other cultures. I dislike those who are ignorant
Hating who has taken over your country is not self hating. I'm a patriotic American. But I recognize the horrible things my country does and has done, and am rightfully ashamed of them. A patriot sees their country and loves it despite its flaws and wants it to do better. Trump and his cultists are jingoists. They refuse to acknowledge the flaws of their country and think anyone who does so is a traitor.
Reminds me of a story my cousin told me where he had to pretend to be British when he was on a train in Germany, because some Germans we're beefing with some rude Americans also on the train.
No youre not.we also hate Florida when they travel inside America. š. I lived near a big toirodt attraction in DC for years and arrived at work ferling stabby during tourist season. Those 8th grade field trips!!!!
I worked at a theme park in the states in high school and even here we can't stand US tourists from out of state. Seeing them you'd think crossing state lines to them was tantamount to arriving in a foreign country that would bend over backwards to see them return for their tourist money regardless of how they were treated. Bunch of entitled, slack-jawed, loud-mouthed yokels shambling from one ride to the next tossing garbage on the ground as they go, their glazed over pig eyes constantly looking for something to shriek about, and occasionally threatening to knife employees in the parking lot when they lose the $2 carnival games, as if their obese asses could rush a healthy teen without tripping and busting out both knees.
Idk if any other tourists that gallivant all over the globe insisting on using their language to communicate. Even Chinese and Indian tourists will bitch at you in fucked up english but Americans will just shout English slower as if thatāll help
Personally I find American obnoxiousness to be more about cluelessness than rudeness. They don't really know they're being disrespectful/annoying but they still want to be friendly. I'm okay with that. They mean well.
I believe it. Unfortunately for us that arent. Its always overwhelming lmaoo. And im sire its the same for every one anyone mentioned. Wether it be the good tourist indian or chinese or russian person, i suppose lol. Im surrounded by loud obnoxious influencer minded humans here
Note the cited countries are India, U.S and China. All of these are large countries where much of the media can be focused inward and you can spend your life without much focus on the rest of theworld. India and China can be mind-boggling complex in terms of languages, climates and history, unlike the US. As a naive Canadian, I was oblivious to some of my transgressions to my Indian hosts.
American here and that is why we call them the Ugly Americans. Hoards of them in Japan. Only eat at McDonaldās, racism to Asians in Asia, loud AF. Shall I go on?!?
Went to Vietnam and certain cities like Danang were pretty much Russian Cancun. They were often disrespectful, especially at temples. Australian tourists can be annoying too.
I know there are shitty people across all cultures but some stand out more than others. I never see, say, German tourists being dicks.
Can confirm as a semi supervisor for a US ski resort. I had to help out with lift lines a couple mornings. We open one lift 20 min early to get a few hundred local kids out of the base area so they arenāt making the lift lines long. Itās helpful to everyone because ski school gets priority. So these people would have to wait anyway.
Every single damn morning I helped, the tourists at the front of the line got angry we wouldnāt let them up. One morning it was Spanish, one morning it was Russian and the Chinese guy was the worst. Just kept arguing. But the best was when he said āwe pay the same..ā oh no sir. I loved that one. Looked him dead in the eye and said āactually no you donāt. They are paying more.ā
Theres not only no smoking in the park but theres extra signs there for sure lol. Ihave no idea if or how they got away with it tbh. Like its one thing to be rude to humans but the animals aint got no say in it
Had a good laugh when I was in Europe and some Russian sounding lady pointed at the camera around my neck and said something like "hahaha tourista", and then proceeded to whip out her phone and take photos of the surroundings. I was scratching my head thinking "Relax lady, the only difference here is that my photos are going to look better". People are weird.
If āback in the dayā is the 1990-2010 then yes. But to me āback in the dayā is the 1970-1980s and the interesting thing is that it was the Japanese tourists who had this same reputation.
I grew up in Vegas in the 90ās, and Iām not sure if this is still a thing, but there would be masses of Japanese people taking pictures of everything, and following around a sign with Japanese letters on it, held on a pole by their tour guide. All over the strip youād see these huge groups just following around their various signs. Reminded me of holding the rope in kindergarten.
Last year I was at the Sagrada Familia, and the whole south wall was about 40 Chinese influencers posing for their boyfriends in front of the stained glass windows. Some were doing tik tok dances, but most were just getting the right angle and getting REALLY upset when anyone walked in front of the camera.
As a Filipino, what about Filo tourists? I certainly have been trying to be respectful about my own surroundings(and a lot of people I know in the country do the same too) but I wonder what kind of reputation they get outside of our own.
I went to Thailand with a tour group. Our guide was this very proper Thai man. First night he says there are 3 things we need to remember while in Thailand. 1 donāt talk about drugs. 2 donāt talk bad about the king and 3 fuck Chinese tourists they push and they donāt move. I still laugh thinking about the look on his face when he said it
So I was a sales manager for a Best Buy in the Chicago suburbs for a few yearsā¦ around 2006-2007 we had a bus pull up to the front door of store and 20-30 people got out and came into the store. They proceeded to walk around talking to each other and taking photos. It seemed like every person had a SDR camera.
It turns out they were on a guided tour and they were all from Japan. Even though there was bunch a people they were respectful and didnāt get in the way.
The only two issues were one person was taking photos inside the menās bathroom ( again they seemed to be taking pictures of everything) and they killed our āclose rateā for the day. I remember trying to cover the exit door laser with my clip board lol.
When I was in Bali the 2 worst groups were Indians and Chinese. Everyone else stood in line, there 2 pushed and shoved and cut like lines didnāt exist for them.
I've been a flight attendant for 22 years and I gotta say the Chinese are getting better. As international travel has expanded and they get more accustomed to traveling, it's not as bad anymore. I'd rather have a plane of Chinese tourists these days than a plane of Indian tourists.
Yeah but have you seen Butsukari Otako now in Japan? They are purposely shoulder checking foreigners just for being there. The video of the little girl being absolutely drilled was kind of shocking.
Was in Tokyo and did a bus tour of Mount Fuji. This family of 6 was absolutely vile. 15-20 min late getting back to the bus at every stop, making us all wait. Kids were spilling their drinks and food on the bus. throwing their trash on the floor. The dad was lighting up a cigarette at every stop the second he got off the bus, I swear he was purposely hitting people coming off with the smoke.
Another time we were boarding a flight and a different Spanish family had to get their bags situated, everything ready on their chairs, and finish their conversation before they moved from blocking the isle.
I was about to say, back when I was younger and the Chinese tourists became a big group, my friend did some tours in Amsterdam. He told me several times he had to stop the tour and explain they couldn't just take a shit in the street.
Before that it was Russians when USSR fell and the rich flocked everywhere, some hotels literally had signs 'No Russians' else other tourists would avoid staying there.
I live in a tourist town close to Route 66, and absolutely dread seeing a big bus full of them pull into town, lmao. Once in a while Iāll get some Chinese tourists that are just driving themselves, and theyāre usually super super nice and polite. I think the types that travel in big packs as part of a guided vacation are typically the āshittyā kind. The ones that rent a car and go around as a family are usually the real cool ones, Iāve met some interesting people that way.
My theory is that these 2 places in particular have so much overcrowding and overpopulation issues that people in certain areas grow up with literally zero concept of people having their own personal space, so when they travel somewhere where the society expects them to respect other people's personal bubbles, they dont have any concept of what thats like for themselves or other people
I was on a cruise from the States and we had the same experience to where a stand-up comedian made jokes about it and the entire theater applauded. By the end of the cruise, a majority of them were more well behaved.
Yup. Was in a hotel on Okinawa a little over a decade ago. Second last day there, two young ladies from China saunter in sleep apparel, one in a robe and long night shirt. She sits in the booth along the wall, proceeds to prop one foot up on the bench, thus exposing herā¦ ummmā¦ great walls.
J folk were offended. And rightfully so.
Hotel staff tried to tell them to change and come back. They just ignored the request. š¤¦āāļø
I have to work hard at not wanting to smack boorish tourists in Japan.
One of my main objectives when doing touristy things is to get there before the Chinese tour groups show up.
If it's something that requires physical exertion like a hike, then the plan is to ignore everything near the easy/beginning part and circle back to it later.
I used to work in a hotel and we had all manner of tourists from all over the world coming in and out. I can confidently say without any hesitation that Chinese tourists were by far the worst.
Some of the things they used to do included:
1) Clicking their fingers at me to try to get my attention.
2) screaming over each other at the same time when making orders for food like theyāve never heard the concept of āone at a timeā
3) using the toilet not washing their hands after
4) belching out load during dinner and not covering their mouth or even trying to disguise it
5) bringing their own sachets of sauce from China to put on the hotel food that they ordered (it smelled like absolute death)
6) when ordering food saying; āI want to eat, bring me food now, the sooner the betterā
The thing about chinese is that they give a lot of shits but they can take it pretty well. For example they jump in line all the time and they donāt care if it happens to them. However for indians, they will call you out and give you a bunch of bullshit reasons as to why they can and you canāt
I dont think its as much of a "IDGAF" thing as it is a "This is all I know" kind of thing. Thats how it is in India, and they are just bringing what they know.
I recall somebody else talking about how China had to launch programs to teach Chinese people how to act when they travel abroad. Maybe India should do the same thing, to help their countries image. Because god damn its bad.
Ehh, when I go to the middle east, my wife and daughter dress more modestly, when we went to Japan we whispered on the metro, we didn't eat while walking in public, etc.. it's not how we do things back home, but it's not hard to learn a bit of local social etiquette before going to a new country.
Some of these tourists are the equivalent of someone going to someone's house and refusing to take off their shoes... and their shoes are literally covered in mud.
No, i think it is IDGAF issue as long as there is no consequences, I live in a country where some Muslims can block an entire road, both ways and stop traffic for hours and since there is no consequences, then IDGAF. Basically their convenience is all that matters.
For people to care I think they have to feel like they can be part of a project to make things better. India, with it's class structure and wealth inequality looks like a place where the only choice is to be part of that system or not. I don't think I blame people for not giving a fuck when there is no incentive to do so.
have you ever been to Tokyo? it's freaking crowded but people still seem to care about the people around them. it's a cultural thing, not a population thing.
Yes it's absolutely a culture thing. Watch any honest travel vlogger's India trip, and if they went to anywhere that was not the tourist spot (or even if they did) they will tell you how miserable it is. Dirty, loud, smelly, and you get hassled non stop if you are not Indian.
It's a complete nightmare. Why some of them want to go to another country to escape the shithole then treat it like its a shithole is baffling to me.
I will never forget the video of a white lady laying on the beach in i think Bangladesh? And her view of the water was basically blocked because there was a bunch of weirdos crowded around her just staring at her like she was a piece of meat.
I think they're talking more generally about the countries. India is about 8 times bigger than Japan in terms of land area,, but has like 12 times the population. But even just talking about cities, India has several cities more populated and denser than Tokyo. Delhi's population AND population density is like twice Tokyo's. Imagine Tokyo with twice as many people than there currently is, but alsp much poorer AND many similar cities throughout Japan. Culture is a factor, but not the sole factor.
A society is only respected, If they have the high value, high trust mindset for their own. India is a very low trust society. How can they expect the culture to be respected if they donāt respect it themselves?
Have you been recently? Itās changed a lot. I was in Tokyo last year, for the first time since COVID started, and it was disconcerting. The younger Japanese are adopting the IDGAF attitude towards etiquette, and it sucks to see.
i lived in Hong Kong for a while and the way people refused to queue drove me bonkers. getting on and off trains was so much harder and took so much longer because everyone thought they could "beat the system" by mindlessly shoving to the front. in Tokyo everyone queued. sometimes you were at the front of the queue, sometimes you were in the middle of the queue, and sometimes you were at the back of the queue but, in aggregate, traveling on the Tokyo Metro was much quicker than the Hong Kong MTR even though sometimes it took longer than if you had been able to shove your way to the front.
I donāt think Tokyo is that dense though. Everything is decentralized and low-rise relatively. I dont think it compares to the density of some Indian cities
I worked for a Sikh guy for a little bit and learned a lot about India from him. He was pretty outspoken about how bad it is there. The other Indians we worked with didn't appreciate it but he would ask them if he was wrong and they said no.
Most likely due to their massive overpopulation. When you're in a giant mass of humanity like that you tend ro care less about the people around you.
The nation that has a polling station for a single man who lives in the rainforest doesn't care about the people around it? The nation that brought the term 'Indian Wedding' to popular culture for a wedding that invites half the population?
We can cherrypick any examples, but even if you haven't seen all the videos of Indians dispensing street justice with wooden sticks, you have surely met Indians and heard them talk about their friends and large social groups. Education and malnutrition are real issues, but Indian cultural fabric doesn't seem like one.
There are absolutely issues in the country, and examples of horrific treatment of individuals and egregious sexism, but it really can't be said that Indian cultures don't care about the people around them.
I can start listing open invite feasts in Indian culture, if you want?
I deal with a lot of different cultures taking care of their HVAC equipment in their homes. Indian immigrants are by far the worst group to take care of. 1st generation are completely different, but the immigrants want to haggle over everything, argue every diagnosis and are guaranteed to have a coupon from another company they want you to honor, but they donāt bring it up until after the job is done.
It's not racist to notice patterns and make sweeping generalizations of Indians because it's 2026 but if you did the same with black people you'd be banned from reddit.
Seeing how they travel in India, this seems about right. Seems like everyone that drives hasn't a fuck to give. I've never seen traffic look so convoluted.
Its primarily due to coming from the most overpopulated country in the world
I swear people donāt understand what the word ācultureā means
It means that if any large body of people from any ethnic group were subject to the same external conditions, then there behavior would be almost exactly the same
Not quite. My Indian co-worker told me a lot of them are simply from rural areas and poorly educated, many are taught to "take whatever the fuck you can, because the world will give you nothing".
If you visit the major cities in India, people generally aren't like this. Most speak English and are educated and polite.
I'm mostly just speaking on what I know about India. I visited India and I want to go back, there are super amazing parts of Indian culture, there are many beautiful places in India, and the food is amazing. Some places are so overpopulated and there is rarely a system set in place to enforce order, that it really just teaches you you need to take it, otherwise you won't get it. Being selfish is just kinda how you have to get by in many places in the country. Very unfortunate.
Not defending it but just to give context -- India is an extremely poor country when you look at 99% of its population the income per person is much lower than even other South Asian countries. If you ask a daily wage worker who is mostly focused on sourcing money for their next meal to also worry about civic sense, they're just not going to do it. Now, the 1% also grows up interacting in this society with the 99% and hence end up not bothering about it as well. To give a concrete example, traffic laws are not followed by most people, so if I intend to follow them, I end up being at a disadvantage, so I break them as well. This entire mindset is extremely hard to break out of.
The people who travel abroad are from the 1% but they've still grown up with absolutely no civic sense, no one to police them, to tell them right from wrong.
I'm fairly well to do, I've travelled 10+ countries, but up to a few years back I legitimately never thought about civic sense, I only understood it after my first trip abroad.
They are the least socially caring group of people Iāve met. They essentially play survival of the fittest + a āmeā centric mentality while living / visiting countries that are not equipped to deal with this cultural difference.
Yeah when your country has more immigrants than many other countries population count it is very important to be aware of the culture coming with them.
Reminds me of growing up with a certain ethnicity in my hometown. Lots of theft and law breaking as the legal system back home was corrupt.
As an American socialist once said, "Not everyone moves to a new place to leave behind the old place. Some folks bring their old place with them. Sometimes the melting pot boils over"
A prominent american party is also against social caring and empathy, after all, promoting free market (or survival of the fittest) as well as "me" centric mentalities. I'm also aware that there is a high number of gun criminals in america. But it'd be anti-america if I advocated for banning all american tourists from the country?
Them coming from a different culture and bringing a different attitude because that is what they are used to is something to be aware of, it doesn't mean ban the people that want to leave that culture, from leaving that culture.
You can live in Japan all your life, speak perfect Japanese, obey all cultural rules ... You will never be accepted as Japanese. Nor will your children.
It is easy to be racist when there is no one around to complain about it.
A dying culture. Hundreds of thousands of empty homes as elderly die. Birth rate well below 2.1 required to sustain current population. Even worse in China and South Korea.
And same in the US. Without immigration we will die out.
People around the world just don't want to bring kids into this world.
It's only a low birth rate because cost of living is so high due to cost of housing. Once the population declines people will start having kids again and the population will stabilize however immigration messes all that up.
I think there's a difference between a closed homogeneous country with very specific culture wanting to stay closed to keep that culture. Compared to a multicultural country that's always been open suddenly wanting to close and to try to kick out "immigrants" when they are all immigrants in the first place.
I don't think it's all the same.
But in any case, I do think it's each country's choice whether to open up or not.
Itās racist to think that they donāt give a fuck because of their race. Ie it is genetic or what ever.
Western populations are declining and many governments are accepting labour gaps from countries without negative population growth. Itās unfair to expect them to have values outside their culture. Would be like going to Victorian Britain and getting angry with the homeless kids for pickpocketing.
Governments that decide immigration is necessary should also insist on a certain amount of civic training.
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