Are Americans Really The Worst? Five Other Countries Whose Tourists Make Us Look Good

We’ve all heard it before. The “Ugly American”; The clueless dingdong who travels other countries doing the following: talking too loud; complaining about everything – especially cigarette smoke and the lack of a decaffeinated coffee; traveling with their own peanut butter to live on lest the local food poison them; wearing funny looking clothes; ignoring the personal space of anyone around them.

Now, in all honesty, some of these stereotypes are true. Take Daddy for example. My old man has a strict summer uniform of ecru Rockport Walkers, long white knee socks, tan pressed khaki short, belted at the waist, a short sleeve button down/golf shirt with a pen in the neck, sunglasses and a sweatband or fishing hat.

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Daddy also has an endearing habit of going to European countries and talking “local like” – for example in Italy, a typical sentence would be, “Excuse-ay me-o, where-o can i get-o some damned pizza?” Or randomly saying things like, “Mamma Mia!” “Mangia, mangia!”

But he means well. He doesn’t complain. Much. There was that time in Italy where, while watching a pigeon defecate down the face of a statue of Mary. “Look at that!” he said. “That damned pigeon just taking a crap all over Mary’s face! Now if these damned Eye-talians had honored my good old American gun permit, I could’ve brought my Walther PPK over here and shot that heretic and we’d be having what they call squab-o for dinner! But nope – over here law abiding citizens can’t own their own damned guns. So the pigeons can just dump anywhere.”

No, my friends, after traveling the world, I have decided we Americans get a bad rap. Especially as there are other countries that deserve so much more vitriol! Find out which ones after the jump:

1. The Russians!!!!!

This is pretty much the same as walking around naked in Egypt. Photo courtesy of Angel Ganev.
This is pretty much the same as walking around naked in Egypt. Photo courtesy of Angel Ganev.

Armed with a sense of superiority and a boatload of rubles, Russians are a pain in the ass. And they just don’t give a damn. So there I was in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt – all sorts of covered up, not just because culturally it’s respectful, but also because I didn’t want to get third degree sunburn – and I start realizing the locals eyes were bugging out. Next thing you know, a bunch of local kids start running over. Right behind me arrives a tour bus of Russians – the woman are (I’m not shitting you) in bra tops and short shorts, the men were in various stages of undress (it was 100 degrees out) and all were turning a nice shade of boiled lobster red. Spitting on the ground, and throwing trash all the while giving the locals a pay-per-view.

“Those Russians are crazy,” my guide Osama said. “They don’t care about anything.”

A few years earlier, when I stayed at the Aman resort in Luang Prabang, Laos, a hotel employee said, “No one is here right now but a few Russians. And they are very upset. I think they though because it was an Aman resort there would be more glamour – but it’s Laos. Now they just sit by the pool and yell at us. A few people left for Vietnam.”

2. The Chinese

Photo courtesy of Nasiuduk.
Photo courtesy of Nasiuduk.

The Chinese tourists’ behavior is so bad, even their own government is commenting on it.

Vice Premier Wang Yang admonished the “uncivilized behavior” of certain Chinese tourists, in remarks widely reported by state media and reflecting concern about how the increasingly image-conscious country is seen overseas.

“They make a terrible racket in public places, scrawl their names on tourist sites, ignore red lights when crossing the road and spit everywhere. This damages our national image and has a terrible effect,” Wang said.

“Objectively speaking, our tourists have relatively low-civilized characters,” said Liu Simin, researcher with the Tourism Research Centre of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

“Overseas travel is a new luxury, Chinese who can afford it compare with each other and want to show off,” Liu said. “Many Chinese tourists are just going abroad, and are often inexperienced and unfamiliar with overseas rules and norms.”

Last year, a 15-year-old Chinese boy scratched his name into a 3,500-year-old temple in Egypt’s Luxor, a mother let her child defecate on the floor of the Kaohsiung airport in Taiwan and… well, just ask anyone [ed note: me] who’s accidentally gotten in between a Chinese tour group and something famous they want to see. The bruising isn’t pretty.

3. The Germans

Ach du lieber! Photo of german tourist courtesy of Paradosos.
Ach du lieber! Photo of german tourist courtesy of Paradosos.

It’s almost not their fault that they are so annoying – almost. Germans like love rules. If it is not in a rule book – it can not be done. If it is in a rule book, they will do it. (Which totally explains the Holocaust – Hitler wrote Mein Kampf just so he could be like, “See? It’s in a book – totally okay!”) They also like to do things their way and to do them speedily and do them now. I was on the climb to La Ciudad Perdida outside of Santa Marta, Colombia recently and there was a German, well call him Gunther. Gunther was a very fast walker and couldn’t understand why the strenuous trek had to be broken up into four days.

“Why can I not go to zee top NOW? I want to walk fast and go! Zees country ees so stoopid! Why can zey not be like Germany? I pay park fees and zen I walk and go!”

“Dude, Gunther, chill out,” someone said. “There’s still some FARC around here and someone was kidnapped a few months ago from this trail. You’re not allowed to go off on your own for a reason.”

“YES BUT I GO NOW!” He later got sharted on by a mule, but that’s a story for another time.

And you think someone from San Francisco is smug and annoying? A group of Germans almost lost their shizz when they saw a Brit smoking on that trek.

“It is a drug addiction,” one German woman sniffed to her partner.

“Disgusting!” he stage whispered. ‘They kill themselves AND us!”

“They can not help themselves. They are just leetle addicts.”

Scene.

4. The British

Passed out - photo courtesy of Duncan C.
Passed out – photo courtesy of Duncan C.

Ever since the sun set on the British Empire, the citizens of the Queen have been going out, trying to recapture the glory. They  show up in former colonies, pasty white (not their fault – the sun never shines in the UK) and ready to rock while loudly reminiscing about the good old days when all the locals of the former colonies were under their control. They get drunk, belligerent and often undress. When they get arrested for bad behavior – like banging on the beach in Dubai – they are incredulous. Everyone else is a stereotype and the end of every evening almost always involves vomiting or a proper cup of tea. Or both. God Bless the Queen!

5. The Saudis

You probably won’t run into a Saudi outside of the Middle East unless you are in New York City, St. Barth’s, St. Tropez, Aspen, Gstaad, Monaco or… well you get the point. But, frankly, that’s not such a bad thing. The entourage for the men usually includes a boat load of “models” (hot scantily clad western women who are not their wives) and the women – a bunch of people carrying a million shopping bags. Imperious doesn’t begin to describe them and because these travelers are almost all part of the ginormous royal family, if they do something bad (like beat the maid or murder someone) they almost always expect to get away with it. As a lot of them have diplomatic passports half the time, they often do.

So. there’s my list. I’d love to hear your stories and thoughts… and feel free to add your own. Yes, I know – the French didn’t make the cut. But there’s always next year!