No one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled.

[spatch]

The Telegraph recently ran an article detailing the amount of ludicrous complaints tour operators have received from various tourists who would have done better just staying at home.

One tourist was unhappy because there were too many Spanish people in Spain. Another one complained that the beaches were too sandy. And a third was bit by a mosquito and was thoroughly chagrined, because "no one told us they bite."

"No one told us" is a common theme. Wonder why.

Oh, and then there's the elephant. That might be the best one of all. G'wan and read it already.

Comments

[tansu.livejournal.com]

Which do you think are genuine, sincere, non piss-take complaints?

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

Sadly, this is not a new thing at all.

I remember a tour my Dad and I took in Italy around March of 1992. We went to Pompeii, Florence, the Colosseum, ate some really fantastic food in a country restaurant...and all we'd hear from the American tourists in their little clique in the back of the bus was shit like:

"I wanna be back in America where I can get a proper hamburger"

"Why is everything in this city so old and busted? You think they should take more pride in the way they look?"

"The food here is lousy."

etc etc etc.

My Dad and I, as one, rose, walked to the front of the bus, and sat back down. For the rest of the day, we pretended to be Canadian.

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

I reckon the real ones are: 4, 6, 7 (remember the complaints about the one-handed children's TV presenter?), 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 19 and 20.

5 wouldn't actually surprise me after all the middle-aged women I saw in Chiang Mai looking daggers at their husbands eyeing the Thai barmaids.

And I think 15 might actually be legit if the tour operators had put a family in a hotel full of stag parties.

[spatch]

I dunno. Having worked as a travel planner and having had to endure some of the most bizarre complaints and demands, I admit each one does indeed have an air of legitimacy. Lots of ignorant travellers out there. These are the people who tell you they want to plan a vacation and, when pressed for a destination, answer "Oh, I don't know... someplace warm. Close to the water. And not a lot of people around."

And they invariably end up picking a Spring Break weekend, too.

The elephant does smack of Henry Root, now that I think about it.

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

When we visited Rome a few years ago, we found ourself walking behind two American ladies who were loudly complaining about how horrible the coffee was, and what they would give for a Starbucks. They eventually decided to go to a McDonalds where they knew the coffee was just about acceptable.

Having said that, it's definitely not just an Anglophone thing. I know someone who went on a Czech coach trip to Italy, and she was the only person who did not bring a week's worth of Czech food to eat.

[wring.livejournal.com]

when I become King of the World, these people will be killed.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Someone should hook up Nude Beach Wife with Elephant Peen Guy. "No, honey, I'M the most insecure!"

[smacaski.livejournal.com]

The one from the pregnant woman was my favorite. It sounds too ridiculous to be a real grievance, but yet I'm still greatly amused by it.

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

Mind you, the birthrate in this country shot through the roof when Ikea first opened stores here - suddenly affordable double-beds were available, when almost everyone had slept in twins before. I know that correlation ain't causation, but it's an amusing thought.

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

Note that there's a Monty Python routine based on this...

this is actually a bigger problem with British travelers than Americans... Terry Pratchett makes a lot of fun of it too...

[mybadhairlife.livejournal.com]

I witnessed travellers who were upset that the ocean contained fish.

One of them ran screaming from the water because of a school of fish.

I laughed my ass off at them, of course.

[tansu.livejournal.com]

Well, I remember the discussion that contained the phrase "Who the hell takes yoghurt to the Balkans?"

[grendelyn.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I would complain to the tour operator about it, but I am certain there are too many Spanish people in Spain. Also Andorra.

Oh well, at least it keeps them out of England.

[tansu.livejournal.com]

I'm sure these are genuine: 3 (too sandy), 4(gravy), 6(ray bans), 7(fish), 8(travel times), 12(Spaniards), 13(white sand), 14(outside), 17(biccies), 18(siesta)
I'm sure these aren't: 1(elephant), 9(preggo)
These could be either: 2(do not disturb), 5 (topless), 10 (room size), 11 (hairdressers), 15 (unruly), 16(mozzies), 19 (curry), 20 (swimming cossies)

It's true that when you think "Can someone be this stupid?" the answer is often "yes".

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

This is not relevant, but phonemonkey, I love your icon.

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

If you like it, please gank it. The maker said it's to be freely distributed (she didn't make the original graphic).

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that being Canadian would really help. Sure they're less likely to be assholes about it, but not really any less provincial...

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I imagine that if anyone else on the bus at that moment in time had asked, it would have been easiest for us Americans to just fake being Canadian. Unless there were other Canadians on the bus at the time... :)

[jotasbrane.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I don't think the white/yellow sand one sounds too unreasonable. It sounds like a complaint about the brochure, not about the beach. If the picture in the advertisement doesn't actually look like the thing it's advertising, isn't that an appropriate reason to complain?

[del-the-psycho.livejournal.com]

There's Indian food in India! What the fuck!

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

I bet that complaint was about an all-in resort. As far as I know, those places usually have "international" food primarily, and may or may not also have whatever the locals eat.

[herself_nyc]

That was hilarious.

[spatch]

That kind of thing actually happens a lot more than you think; some American tourists during the reign of George II would go so far as to sew Canadian flag patches on their backpacks to avoid the stigma and harrassment. I think that goes a little too far, honestly, and could be very unfair to our brethren up north, but there are indeed some well-founded Ugly American stereotypes being perpetuated abroad on a daily basis and there's gotta be some way for the good tourists to say "Hey, I'm not like that, honest. I'm not even eating at McDonald's here, am I? No! I'm here for the experience!"

Ah well. I admit back in 1995 I was hanging out in Paris and heard several French youths openly speaking about me in French (assuming, I guess, that being an American tourist, I didn't bother to learn the language.) Their rationale for my being American, by the way, was that I was wearing sneakers. No, I don't quite understand it either, but I turned to them and said "tiens, je suis Canadien" and didn't hear a single word from them after that.

I admit I felt kinda bad for Canada after that, but you fellows would've understood.

Edit: This was before I went to a midnight Rocky Horror showing in Paris and made a lot of fun new friends, including one who said "You're in Paris for three more nights? Great! That's three more girls!" I took a taxi back to my hotel and fell asleep.

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

My favourite one from around here was the person who was shocked - shocked! to discover that the mountain trail goes through avalanche zones. How could the gubment allow people to put themselves in such awful peril?

Also (from cruise-ship passengers who are never venturing into the woods anyway): "What, you have bears here? Oh, now I don't feel safe."

The regular Idiot Question, from people who've just stepped off a cruise ship and walked half a dead-flat mile, is "So what's the elevation here?"

[spatch]

I think the fellow writing that complaint also ordered a margarita from the cabana waiter and specifically said no salt -- NO SALT!! -- but when he got it there were huge grains of salt on the glass.

[tansu.livejournal.com]

I can just about imagine that someone could have just picked Goa as a destination from a winter sun holiday brochure without really thinking through the implication of it being in India.

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

The joke among Eurotrash like me is that you can tell a Canadian backpacker from an American backpacker because the Canadian is only wearing one maple leaf.

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

Heh heh..vis a vis the French teens eating in McDonalds...they should not throw stones.

I was last in Paris in March of 1998, and it was my last night there. I did not speak enough French to feel comfortable really getting by, and I was feeling rather intimidated all around, as this was my first solo experience internationally (well, in a non-English as a primary language foreign country). So after hemming and hawing to myself for a while, I hung my head in shame, and admitted defeat by walking into the McDonalds in the Champs Elysee.

And when I did walk in, lo did my eyes see but four or five lines six to ten deep, and the whole place was like a monkey house filled with Le Teenagers du Parisian! And I order my une cheeseburger, une petit Coke et une pomme frites plus grand and walk to my table, and I'm suddenly siezed with the urge to scream out "What the hell is wrong with you kids? I'm stuck eating here in this McDonalds cause I suck and I'm too nervous to go eat in a nice restaurant, but you don't have that problem! How can you actually CHOOSE to hang out here like it was a gastronomical Studio 54! (You know, except without any of the rampant drug abuse or sexy orgies in the basement. That I know of...) You brats can go and eat some REAL food!

On the other hand, Midnight Rocky Horror in Paris sounds like Teh Shiz-Night. I would have loved to have seen that.

[dogofthefuture.livejournal.com]

"We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant."

It just *happened*. One day I woke up and unaccountably, I was with child. There is no way we could possibly have prevented it.

[dogofthefuture.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, it happens. In Rome we met an American lady who was shocked to learn that the Italian police officers did not speak English. Moreover she felt that her complaint of having had her pocket picked in the Piazza Navona was not taken seriously enough. Note: There are signs all over Piazza Navona, in just about every language known to mankind including English, that say "Beware of pickpockets."

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I spent a pleasant afternoon in the Piazza Navona watching pickpockets work and there were cops quite close by the entire time. I can see getting a little annoyed that you've been randomly chosen for a illegal tourist tax.

[spatch]

They did the "Raise your hands if you've seen it this many times" thing and when they got to cinquante my hand was still up and one of the guys leaned over to me and said "Cinquante is fifty" and I said "Oui, je sais" only I was in Paris long enough that the Oui came out like sounding like "way"...

...and they all moved back over to me on the Group W bench...

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I sort of wish I worked in a complaint department. I would blog the stupid ones and get a book deal.

[brak55.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure U.S. tourists are about the worst in the world.

Even back in the mid-70's, when I lived in Europe for awhile, I heard about it. One day, this guy comes stomping down the middle of the sidewalk screaming "God damned fucking American tourists!"

[saint-buddha.livejournal.com]

British television has a ton of daytime programs about British people complaining while on vacation. The shows are hilarious. My favorite episodes are when they are filming people vacationing in Florida. Nothing is acceptable.

I went to a wedding in Italy last summer. It was at a villa in the middle of nowhere. The groom was English and the bride was Canadian (both still are). The groom's mother and the bride's grandmother, both English, bitched non-stop one day about the owner doing some improvement on the property because they were too loud. The bride and groom were groaning in embarassment. It was pretty funny because I didn't expect to encounter that in person.

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

Oh well, at least it keeps them out of England.

Hardly! Not that I'm complaining, of course.

[sandrylene.livejournal.com]

Awesome. The linked article on 20 stupid questions was also pretty priceless. "Do you know of any undiscovered ruins?" "Yes, and in my pocket there's an undisturbed piece of rock from it, as well."

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

I'm only up to about 15-16 myself. I need to catch up!

And on a related note, they STILL have a weekly shadow cast doing Rocky at the Tower Theather these days. You should pop on down and see how Teh Gnu Hawtness does it these days... *heh*

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

In 2006 Sam and I went on a cruise in the western Mediterranean, and it ended up getting diverted to Menorca. We took a hastily arranged bus tour of the island, which to us seemed like a nice little adventure in a lovely place (even if it was raining), but the thing I remember most vividly was the British tourists who spent the whole trip haranguing the tour guide about how nobody told them they might miss their assigned dinner seating on the ship. It was as if they were grimly determined to have as unpleasant a time as possible and drag others along with them.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Er, 2005 actually. 2006 we had the baby. It all blurs together now.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I'm not actually sure about that. I've seen some terrible behavior by Americans, but the one (granted, completely unscientific) survey I saw on this several years ago, of European resort workers if I recall correctly, put Americans behind several other nationalities for sheer horribleness. The UK was the worst (the story was in a British paper, so there was probably a reporting bias induced by that angle).

I think some resentment of American tourists is just political or cultural-hegemony-based resentment of the United States as a whole, rather than a reflection of unusually bad behavior on the tourists' part.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I've personally experienced the thing where people pegging me as North American first ask if I'm Canadian, because Canadians are terribly offended to be taken for US citizens but the reverse is not true.

[spatch]

I heard Tower got a gang back together. Out here we've got a few groups that do their thing. I enjoy the film experience more than I usually enjoy a lengthy pre-show, but the folks up there are having fun and that's what counts.

Noticing that there aren't so many callbacks nowadays, though, that's a bit sad -- but fortunate if you're extensively vocal. Get a lot of nice laughs in an otherwise quiet house.

[tonysalieri.livejournal.com]

Yeah...I've noticed that...if the crew at Tower didn't have their own confederates "priming up" the audience with call backs, I don't think there would be so much at all...but I've learned a fair amount and can help out where I can. But I do get the impression people used to get more into it in the days of yore.

And now people are trying to make a new cult trend out of Repo! The Genetic Opera...which is a movie I like more the more I see it, and has some great callback moments in it. Were I ten years younger or more, I'd be jumping into the shadow cast for that (The Rocky folks do Repo every month or so)

[redtheblue.livejournal.com]

Forget how educated they are. How freaking unappreciative can you be? I just dream I could be one of those tourists someday. "Hello, you booked me a trip to the Vatican City and when I got there God didn't exist. I want a refund."