On 5/21/2021 at 8:00 AM, patti said:
Question for the people who reacted with sad emojis. Are you sad for me or for her? 😉
Can't speak for the others but for me it is sad for you! I don't feel sad for these obnoxious, attention-seeking morons with their self-entitlement issues. I've come across it here with tourists (usually all clutching their Lonely Planets like life jackets), demanding food the country quite simply doesn't have.
In one idyllic spot, deep in the countryside, where I often stayed for work reasons, the wife of the couple who ran the only hotel cooked an evening meal for everyone at a very reasonable price. In fact, there could have been no way she covered her costs. There was no menu; you got what she found at the market that day and what her family would have been eating anyway. It was delicious.
Often Western tourists would complain about the food or the cooking process or anything really. One time I was there, a group of French tourists arrived and started plotting among themselves (in French) what they would complain about. What they didn't realise was that I was giving the woman's husband a running translation of their French into Chinese as they moaned and complained through their meal, while throwing out random insults about China and the Chinese. They didn't know a word of Chinese, so couldn't know what I was saying, not that they paid any attention to anything but themselves. He just shrugged resignedly as if to say "What can I do about it?"
Then the leader of the group said that, when it came time to pay, they would claim that the copious amount of beer they had drunk should be included in the price quoted for the meal only. I translated this too and the man exploded in rage. They said in worse English than his that, in France, that is normal. I stood up and said to them in French "That is a damned lie! You are a disgrace to France. Blah-blah-blah!" Well, something like that. Less polite, as I recall.
The look on their faces was a prize. They knew they had been roundly busted! They sheepishly paid the correct price (still very cheap) and went off to their rooms to hide. Next morning they set off, thinking they were 'independent travellers', to the next destination printed in their guide book. What the idiots didn't realise is that hotel-keepers, bar-owners, restaurant people etc all know each other. Even before they left, the man had phoned ahead to their next destination, another one hotel spot, warning them. I heard later that when the French group arrived there , the hotel was mysteriously full! They hadn't booked, thnking they were explorers arriving in some remote village which had never seen white people before, so the hotel must be empty.
In fact, the hotel wasn't full (or empty). This was just their come-uppance. I imagine the rest of their trip was the same as word of their approach spread down the well-trodden line.
I particularly resent this kind of behaviour as it means many people assume that all foreigners are like that - arrogant, dishonest, self-entitled scum. They just make it more difficult for everyone else, especially those who live here. I'm not going home in two weeks after pissing everyone off. And they wouldn't dare act like that at home!
Luckily, the couple know me well and are more enlightened than that, although he did once tell me his list of the top three nations whose visitors were the worst. I won't repeat it.
