Collection of Stupidity

This is the entry where I'm an old hag who has no sympathy for people who do things differently to me!

Clothing

The thing that I find the stupidest in other travellers and tourists is their ignorance of the environment and the country they're visiting. This is reflected in many ways, and the most obvious is what people wear. I realise that SE Asia can get very hot and the Western way of dressing into heat is very baring. However, in most of the Asian countries it is disrespectful to wear clothes that show your shoulders, knees, midriff and cleavage. Still the backpacker trail is full of people who ignorantly show all of those bits of their body, and in worst cases, these people happily wander into temples and other places of worship wearing next to nothing. It's not only the guide books that preach of the dress code, also some of the entrance tickets to sights and huge signs outside state what visitors should wear... so how stupid can you be to try to enter a temple with shoes, hat and no shirt?

And it's just not that these people wear minimalistic clothing: they wear the ugliest and dirtiest minimalistic clothing imaginable. Bright purple tanktops declaring "Fullmoon Party" combined with bright orange swimming shorts labelled "In the Tubing Vang Vieng". T-shirts promoting certain bars: "Angor What?" and "Drink triple, see double, act single" were common sights. Boys usually without a shirt, and when there was a shirt, 95% of the time it was a sleeveless tanktop promoting a beer or tubing. The worst girl I saw had a t-shirt where the sleeves and sides were completely cut off and fully showed the lingerie underneath which was sweat-marked dirty brown.

Party-people by the river in Vang Vieng. Dressing like this to go tubing - effectively swimming- is fine, but a lot of people dressed like this in the cities, busses, temple areas... (c) Boyfriend.

Personally, I wore shoulder-baring tops to the beach, but tried hard to avoid it in cities, villages, religious places, public transport and generally in places where there is a lot of interaction with local people. After a couple of trips to Asia I find it increasingly difficult to wear anything revealing, just because the locals never do.

Some boys we met confessed to have stopped wearing underwear because it was so much easier just wear swimming shorts and just dip in the river/sea/lake when feeling dirty. Also, they declared shampoo unnecessary altogether. Obviously no need for personal hygiene when travelling!

And then there were the heroes who thought it was a good idea to trek over a steep jungle-covered hill (known to have lethally poisonous snakes) in flip flops.

Behaviour

First prize in the stupidity goes to every single tourist who rubs the old carvings in thousand year-old temples just to make sure they're there. Well, I promise it is there, and rubbing the texts does not make you suddenly understand ancient languages, it will just make the text wear off and next year there won't be anything to see anymore.

Not so much stupid, but something that kept me wondering: the locals really could not handle bus journeys without throwing up. They also couldn't handle preparing for throwing up - plastic bags never prepared for kids, and the kids always threw up. And the old ladies. Sometimes even before the bus had started!

I remember having more ideas to this category, but I've forgotten them by now. Maybe should've written this blog post ages ago!

Health and safety

I understand that not everyone is as paranoid as I am about my health; I took all the possible vaccinations and antimalarials the whole trip, and carried a huge first aid kit just in case. Also, we had all of our dearest valuables (cards and passports) in money belts under our underwear just to be sure. So following instances screamed pure stupid to me:

Having a full-blown bacterial infection on your leg, and not bothering to go to see a doctor to get antibiotics until a week later.

Not believing in travel insurance.

Not believing in sunscreen, and proceeding to spend three hours in direct sunlight on the beach wearing only shorts. Wondering why he burnt.

Keeping your bank cards and passport in your handbag when going out for a drink or realistically five, and carry the bag flimsily... until a passing by moto snaps it off your hand. Also many people carried their money belts or pouches on the TOP of their clothing, showing that they have a massive wad of cash!

Getting too drunk, especially on your own. Like the guy who pissed off the locals in Thailand, got drugged for three days solid and was taken around town to take huge ugly tattoos and spend all his money.

Attitude

There seems to be a party-train that goes from beaches of Southern Thailand and the Full Moon Party on Koh Phagnan to Pai in Northern Thailand, to Vang Vieng in Laos, to Sihanoukville and Siem Reap in Cambodia and culminates in Bangkok. We met people who had only these places on their agenda, willing to do 36-hour bus journeys to reach the next destination, and it truly seemed that the main point of their trip was just to get drunk in different countries without getting to know the country at all.

Finally, the most annoying stupid person we met was an older Canadian guy who kept complaining about the unfairness of Vietnam. Well, I also think that there are many things that are just not fair in that country, like most of them living in ramshackle houses with tiny income. But to him, the unfairness was that he had to pay a dollar for a coke when the locals paid maybe half the price. This was the reason why he was fed up with Vietnam and why he would never travel there again. And he went on and on about it. He declared all Vietnamese were lazy bastards who just leech of hardworking people like him... I bet he's never done a full day on a rice field and got just about enough money for it to buy a coke!