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Comment by INTPenis | Hacker News Reader

I'm not surprised. I had some crazy experiences in Thailand.

Once the floor dropped out in our bungalow, as I was stepping on it. Sheer luck that I didn't fall through and cut myself open on the exposed building material.

Trying to explain this to the owner and they accused us of breaking the floor and wanted to charge for it.

Another time we wanted them to order a cab for us but they insisted we use their limo service. This was ludicrous so I just stood my ground and they finally ordered a regular city cab.

It can get pretty frustrating communicating with someone who doesn't understand.

Also raising your voice and gesticulating in their culture is really frowned upon. Even when you're mad you don't raise your voice or start waving your arms around.

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> It can get pretty frustrating communicating with someone who doesn't understand.

They understand, they’re just aiming to maximise monetary gain. There’s so many scams to avoid that it’s actually hard work to travel there.

The culture of keeping a calm exterior can lull people into a false sense of security. A businessman I knew who lives there told me “you’ll never know a Thai is angry with you until they’re trying to kill you”. Definitely a gross generalisation, but hints of truth to it.

It goes both ways...

I had similar experiences in Thailand, but I also saw a lot of terrible behaviour from tourists - trashing rooms, causing disturbances late at night, trying to trick/scam or just nickle-and-dime the locals . Thailand seems to attract a particularly hard-partying demographic from Australia, UK and Germany in particular that gives other tourists a bad reputation - who are then treated with a lot of suspicion.

It wasn’t Thailand, but a long time ago I went to Bali and while walking around it dawned on me it was the Australian equivalent of Miami Beach.

Those locals put up with a ton of shit from drunk Aussies. But I’m sure they make enough money to put up with it.

> Australian equivalent of Miami Beach

That's the Gold Coast. Maybe it's more like Cancun?

Yes, Cancun was exactly the parallel my mind drew when I was in Bali years ago. Hordes of young, drunk a-holes looking to party on the cheap in a not-too-far-away locale.

There does seem to be an attitude, especially among the "lifestyle business" crowd, that SEA exists for Westerners to live like kings, with it borderlining on a masters/servants mentality.

That is true as well, particularly when it comes to Western pick-up artists perpetuating the image of "Asian" girls as "easy" and desperate for any White men, who then flock to those places in hopes of scoring what they can't do so easily back home.

> or just nickle-and-dime the locals

Some of the most revolting tourist behavior I've seen is along these lines.

Like being at a cenote in Mexico and a tourist with her three kids is livid at the clerk that she has to pay 100 pesos for her family (<$5) yet there's a sign that says the impoverished locals only have to pay 15 pesos (<$1). She wants that price! Arguing with the 16yo kid at the front gate who is nervously looking around for an adult to help. Then she got in an argument with us in line.

Some people feel untouchable when they're abroad, and they expect every place in the world to be the same as their little suburb. We need to stop making these people.

Those people probably also nickle-and-dime their countrymen when they're not tourists.

This seems like just classic poorer country trying to milk money out of rich westerner (well minus the floor dropping out that sounds awful)

The people you’re dealing with and owning these places are not necessarily poor. There are many poor people in Thailand but many very, very wealthy people and you might not be able to recognise which is which. The wealth divide is very big.

> There are many poor people in Thailand but many very, very wealthy people and you might not be able to recognise which is which. The wealth divide is very big.

Of course - this is true of most countries in the global south since the 80/90s.

Maybe it's because I've only just run across it, but this 'global north' / 'global south' thing is super weird. If you mean 'rich countries' / 'poor countries' why not say that, rather than link it to something like latitude which is only nebulously related to what you're actually trying to say?

Rich and poor country is relative, too. Compared to 50 years ago, there are almost no third world countries anymore. I believe Hans Rosling shared some data about this in his book Factfulness.

I would say almost no completely third world countries, but there are large parts of many, if not most countries that are very much severely underdeveloped or riddled with systemic corruption (third world by the classical definition), This is sometimes even found in the middle of some of the worlds most highly developed nations (cough, cough, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc). To what percentage of a country's human-inhabited area these third world tracts extend is essentially based on how pervasive or deeply rooted bad government and systemic daily corruption are. But i'd argue that in any country where the percentage of underdevelopment goes over 50% you can loosely claim third world status.

Also, don't be fooled by the main business/living hubs of the glittering major cities of the world into thinking that most places are now mostly first world: Sure, you can travel from Bangkok to Delhi to Cairo and then Mexico City and in all of them spend days inside an urban area that's remarkably comparable to a normal European or U.S city's. However, these bubbles only represent a small fraction of the totality of these places, and much of that total outside of said bubbles is very, very different in how it looks and works compared to how the majority outer parts of most first world cities look or work. This without even going into any detail about difference in the countryside and smaller provincial towns that aren't specifically tourist hubs.

> these bubbles only represent a small fraction of the totality of these places,

You are substantially under-estimating the size of the urban population of these countries if you think that the major cities only represent a "small fraction."

These bubbles I mention represent only a portion of the cities themselves. I'm not at all referring to the whole populations and areas of many third world countries' large cities. I'm aware of how urbanized many developing countries have become.

I partly speak from personal experience here too. The city I live in has a largish core urban zone that's fairly tourist-friendly, clean and highly, fashionably modernized and cultural (but with a charming colonial aspect).

Since the city in general has well over 15 million inhabitants, this "bubble" area itself contains well over a million people, easily, but it's just a small fraction of the rest of the city, which is very much what you'd call a dangerously third world place in terms of crime, corruption, administrative ineptitude and barely functional infrastructure.

Yeah, there's lots of phrases that can be unexpected when you first run into them - so I can get how you'd find it confusing.

I don't just mean 'rich countries'/'poor countries.' First, because that is not necessarily as simply true anymore - the economic relations are much more complicated. Second, that is a value judgement about how countries ought to develop.

You can read up more about it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_South

There's no shortage of rich westerners trying to use those poorer countries as their cash cows (think cheap VAs, the traveling entrepreneur living cheap there, etc)

> raising your voice and gesticulating in their culture is really frowned upon.

Where do people not frown upon that? Would you like someone raising their voice and waving their arms around in front of you?

> It can get pretty frustrating communicating with someone who doesn't understand.

Did you try speaking their language?

When I'm watching to some Italians communicating with each other, sometimes I think that they're going to start a fight, while they're just merely chit-chatting. Cultures are very different around the world.

Do Italians appreciate tourists in Italy angrily raising their voices and waving their arms around at them because the tourist didn't bother learning the language? That's what the other poster seems to be describing, rather than lively chit chat among friends.

How many places can a person reasonably travel to if they have to be conversational in the local language first?

Yes, no, please, thank you, and 1-10 aren't 80-20, but can go surprisingly far.

If you can't visit a country without shouting at the locals in your own language and waving your hands at them, while acting like it's their problem you're just another dime a dozen ignorant asshole tourist, and not the VIP you think you are, then you shouldn't be visiting anywhere.

And to save any more missing the point stereotypes about Italians or New Yorkers waving their hands at each other in completely different contexts:

A stranger angrily waving their hands and unintelligibly shouting things at you would be frowned upon in any culture.

And that this has to be explained - again - to some people is unbelievable.

I actually wasn't sure if the original post wasn't just a parody of the archetypal ignorant English-speaker abroad, since it's such a staple of comedy.

Judging by the downvotes though, HN is absolutely crawling with similarly entitled egotists who blame other people for their own chronic laziness and ignorance when they condescend to grace other countries with their presence.

Having the floor collapse under you and then being expected to pay for it seems like a situation where angry shouting and waving would not be considered inappropriate in many cultures.

On the other hand, some cultures may suppress even severe anger.

You've rented your property out to someone who one day tells you the floor has collapsed. You don't know what happened, only that since the guest was staying there your property is now seriously damaged.

Would you approve of the person who you consider damaged your property waving their arms about and shouting at you?

I don't think most people would, in any culture, from New York to Boston to Italy.

If somebody just almost died on my property and in the heat of the moment I had the nerve to ask them to pay for the damage, I would expect that kind of reaction. As a third party, I wouldn't disapprove either.

Anyway, this seems to be the hill you want to die on. You shall have it.

I got on much better with the sabra security at TLV after raising my voice and waving my arms around. A colleague later explained my initial beating around the bush reservation had been on the rude side by their standards, but expressing my frustration was polite honesty.

(I was blunt upon departure and it went swimmingly.)

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvwpNkJd82w&t=75

New York? Boston?

Are you asking if I'm from New York or Boston because I wave my arms around when I speak?

No I'm from southern europe. ;) Where Bostonians and New Yorkers come from.

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