Do you avoid other Westerners when you travel abroad?

[statnerd]

I find most Westerners abroad to be obnoxious, so I avoid them. So far, I've travelled mainly to Asian countries and so many of the White people that I see are sloppily dressed, loud, and don't bother to make the effort to use even a few basic phrases of the language of the country where they are visiting. I was eating at a restaurant in Thailand and there was a guy from California who I could hear from the other side of the room. He had the loudest laugh and he was bragging about all of the different countries that he had been to and how he wanted to become a Buddhist monk. I could hear everything the guy said.

In Taiwan, some American guy came up to me who lived in Japan but bragged to me that he had been to Taiwan over 20 times in the past few years and opened his passport to show me all of the stamps to prove it. I didn't even initiate a conversation with him. He just came up and started talking to me.

Then in Japan, I was buying a ticket from a subway ticket machine and some woman from the U.K. came up to me and said "Yes! Finally someone who can speak English!" and she let out this long groan. She was in Japan and the people there speak Japanese, not English very well. Most of them do at least try though. What did she expect?

This is slightly off topic, but there's a woman who is a friend of my family and she visited Japan. When she heard that I had been, she asked me if I was tired of eating sushi every day? I had kind of a puzzled look and told her that I ate sushi maybe once during my 3-week trip there. She stays at very fancy hotels and is really into luxury travel, so I bet she asked for sushi everyday at the hotel restaurant. She is really into "eating like a local," as she says, so I guess in her mind Japanese people eat sushi every day. LOL

[Contrarian Expatriate]

I find most Westerners abroad to be obnoxious, so I avoid them. So far, I've travelled mainly to Asian countries and so many of the White people that I see are sloppily dressed, loud, and don't bother to make the effort to use even a few basic phrases of the language of the country where they are visiting. I was eating at a restaurant in Thailand and there was a guy from California who I could hear from the other side of the room. He had the loudest laugh and he was bragging about all of the different countries that he had been to and how he wanted to become a Buddhist monk. I could hear everything the guy said.

In Taiwan, some American guy came up to me who lived in Japan but bragged to me that he had been to Taiwan over 20 times in the past few years and opened his passport to show me all of the stamps to prove it. I didn't even initiate a conversation with him. He just came up and started talking to me.

Then in Japan, I was buying a ticket from a subway ticket machine and some woman from the U.K. came up to me and said "Yes! Finally someone who can speak English!" and she let out this long groan. She was in Japan and the people there speak Japanese, not English very well. Most of them do at least try though. What did she expect?

This is slightly off topic, but there's a woman who is a friend of my family and she visited Japan. When she heard that I had been, she asked me if I was tired of eating sushi every day? I had kind of a puzzled look and told her that I ate sushi maybe once during my 3-week trip there. She stays at very fancy hotels and is really into luxury travel, so I bet she asked for sushi everyday at the hotel restaurant. She is really into "eating like a local," as she says, so I guess in her mind Japanese people eat sushi every day. LOL

Yes indeed! I have posted about this in the past here. Most of the negative incidents I have encountered abroad involved other Americans.

I personally live abroad to escape the American social style. Most other American seem to think that Americans are apt to want to flock together. When they get the impression that I do better than quite well melding into the local culture, resentment and envy seem to take hold. I have had drunk Americans want to instigate trouble because they see me speaking Russian with local girls, or because I am enjoying myself more than they are.

America is a society of rivals for power, money, women, and everything else desirable. When you encounter a rival abroad whose confidence game does not resonate with you, you can expect some negative repercussions.

On my 4th Ukraine trip several years back, I had some black American guy put his arm around my shoulders in the most inappropriate manner after watching me speak Russian for awhile. The guy asked me if I needed anything or any help, and I told him thanks, but I was not new in Ukraine. He offered up his friendship, but I told him I was only there to perfect my Russian and socialize with the girls. He then told me, “No, you don’t understand. You are going to need me here. I have lived here for 5 years and you are going to need me!”

I tried not to laugh at that because what he was saying was just the opposite. I have people on my phone from those who could make him disappear, to those who could have him arrested and deported the next day, to officials from the US Embassy so I explained to him, “You obviously don’t know who I am, but I can tell you that I won’t be needing anything from you in Ukraine or anywhere else. Have a good night.”

He put on a bit of a tantrum and had to have the last word as psychopaths do, but he went off without my having to hurt him.

The lesson of that is many American men abroad are sleazy opportunists seeking to gain your confidence and use you for their purposes be that money, information, game, access to local social circles, etc. Trying to impose your friendship on someone is a sign of this.

I really don’t encounter American women abroad all that much, but when I do, it is usually in that typical overbearing, presumptuous manner like injecting themselves into my conversations with local girls or behaving as if they would be somehow appealing to me.

So yes, I avoid them Canadians and most other Westerners unless they show themselves to be cut from a similar cloth.

[Yohan]

I have similar experience with some Western foreigners in some Asian countries. I have seen Western foreigners dirty, drunk, rude, living in the streets and begging for some coins, sitting in front of a 7/11 shop with a beer bottle every single day for hours looking to the sky....etc.

A pain are sometimes a few do-gooders who want to teach Asian people what is good and what is bad, I met a religious bigot from the States, who was telling local people in Thailand that Buddhism is a bad religion, but I think most of them did not understand him and some foreigners with their bargirls were laughing at him.

I met a Brit in Thailand, who was complaining that police stopped him - no driving licence, motorcycle had no number plate etc/ Finally he gave them baht 2000,- and they let him go, this is all the fault of the corrupt police taking bribes all the time.

I was asking him 'No driving licence, no number plate on your motorcycle - Can you do that in your own country?' - He was looking at me like if I am the man on the moon.

In Japan it is not that bad, as such foreigners quickly are running out of money and leave. However places like Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia etc. are often a hot spot for such kind of useless Westerners.

I met many 'normal foreigners' who are OK in Asia, no need to avoid them. But some of them are really useless, some of them even criminals and should be kicked out.

Naive Western people who think, all Japanese are eating sushi every day? Well, they are harmless and pretty misinformed. I met foreigners asking me about Thailand if children are going to school by elephant...

[yick]

I have worked in China and Korea for over 10 years now and I have met some batshit crazy western expats but some great people. Though I don't go out looking for westerners to befriend, there is nothing worse than some idiot with 'Marco Polo Syndrome' with a pole stuck up its ass! They're usually American but they can be sometimes Canadian or British - you never tend to get this with Australians.

Westerners don't annoy me at all on sight and I don't particularly care how they dress or how they look or how much of the local language they can't speak, they're not a reflection on me however much the locals try to make it one. I will give anyone a chance if they're polite or interesting.

There are some mad, crazy westerners in Asia though, proper batshit insane! I have worked alongside the truly mentally ill and functioning idiots with an array of personality disorders. Saying that, the worst foreigners are those judgmental arseholes with a chip on their shoulder because they want to be Marco Polo and found out they're as unique and as special as a knock off rolex down the local market.

[Contrarian Expatriate]

I have worked alongside the truly mentally ill and functioning idiots with an array of personality disorders.

I have had to intervene in specific cases where mentally ill Americans were not taking their psychotropic medications, or were doing things bordering on illegality. Pedophilia was a periodic theme with American guys who were involved with kids at church missions or schools. But there were decent people too, usually those who married locals and relocated there to raise children.

The conventional wisdom for Western expats is that whatever your vice, it will be amplified overseas. If you drink too much, you'll drink more overseas. If you like drugs, you'll do more overseas. If you have sexual deviancy, you'll be even more so overseas.

How would you define Marco Polo Syndrome? I imagine it is someone holding himself out as a local expert (often due to length of time in-country) when they are very much not, or someone behaving as if the place as his own personal domain.

[yick]

How would you define Marco Polo Syndrome? I imagine it is someone holding himself out as a local expert (often due to length of time in-country) when they are very much not, or someone behaving as if the place as his own personal domain.

Along those lines I think, someone who seems visibly annoyed that you are there within their line-of-vision, it tends to be a phenomenon in Asia because we're visible anyway unless we're like Winston and of Asian ethnicity, if anyone wants to nod at me or say hello because they feel some kind of kinship in a far away land then I will always reciprocate but I have seen some people become rather aggressive even on this simple, inoffensive act.

Women are as bad as men for it but because there are a lot more males than females in Asia (usually...) they're the worst ones.

[yick]

I agree with the amplification of vices - especially alcohol because it is so cheap! I have known people to properly cane it because eating out and drinking can be done every day at the prices and I am sure their years as an expat has knocked years off their life.

[flowerthief00]

The one time in recent memory when a Westerner came up to me was when I was having lunch with a couple local girls. The fellow pulled up a chair to our table and joined our conversation uninvited lol. They never come up to me when I'm eating alone.

[Contrarian Expatriate]

The one time in recent memory when a Westerner came up to me was when I was having lunch with a couple local girls. The fellow pulled up a chair to our table and joined our conversation uninvited lol. They never come up to me when I'm eating alone.

How did you handle that? That is the greatest form of disrespect ever. I would have given him one peaceful opportunity to remove himself from the table, then the peace would have ended. I actually see that behavior as a form of passive aggression towards a man who is punishing you for being successful where he is not.

[E Irizarry R&B Singer]

The one time in recent memory when a Westerner came up to me was when I was having lunch with a couple local girls. The fellow pulled up a chair to our table and joined our conversation uninvited lol. They never come up to me when I'm eating alone.

How did you handle that? That is the greatest form of disrespect ever. I would have given him one peaceful opportunity to remove himself from the table, then the peace would have ended. I actually see that behavior as a form of passive aggression towards a man who is punishing you for being successful where he is not.

..or when they see that they feel you don't belong to such women that he wished he had or still even feels you don't deserve them. N. Americans are great at that. Canadian travelers USED to be cool, calm, and collected but more and more they are becoming horrible people to deal with. I had to be cool because I was in Costa Rica at a hostel and this Canadian guy out of thin air accused me of being a bully just because of my size. He was cool with the White-washed female Tica (Tica is a Costa Rican woman) owner of the hostel so I decided the odds were against me so I just chilled. Haven't been back to CR nor that hostel ever since not because I'm a coward but because I didn't like the culture there. The only good looking woment hey had were either BBW Ticas or Colombian Dominican or Venezolana w.hores. Central America is not that great, and I've been there several times. It's simply too close to the U.S. of Gay for it to have cajones of its own. It's feminism lite down there. Mexico is becoming worse in that department; I learned that when I was there for most of BOGUS-19 scamdemic.

[E Irizarry R&B Singer]

In Nicaragua, I dealt with a feminist Spirit Airlines WASP stewardess. Not ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but had a mudshark aura and a stern streak to other passengers to her that I had to challenge. I called her a dizzy blonde to her face when she couldn't get the tickets together for peoples' sitting arrangements so she tried to get me kicked off the flight to Managua (Nicaragua) from Ft. Lauderdale after she yelled "OOO I GOT YOU!". Yet the b.itch admitted that's not her colored hair and STILL TRIED to get me kicked off. Then some equal-leveled Black dude came up to me (I guess this is "cultural appropriation" as the meedi-hate-tor) and I politically correctly answered the question that she and I had no qualms with one another just so they didn't tick off the checkbox to throw me off the flight.

That wasn't enough: when the AirBnB owner miscommunicated the times to pick me up on their personal airport van to bring me to Granada (small Western expat city in Nicaragua) and asserted their misstep about it on the texting portion of our conversation, she quickly diss-missed my reservation and had the audacity to leave me a berating review on my AirBnB profile which I got it rescinded thank goodness.

Understand this: some of the others were able to find the van 1am in the morning and left others stranded too but had the bone to pick with me methinks. She said in her rant that I got rescinded that other Spirit passengers loathed me too for being mean to that dizzy blonde dyed hair stewardess.

So nobody had the heart to accost me during that little event on the plane, yet people identified me as an a-hole that I would have rode in with side-by-side in that airport van. This is why I loathe Westerners when travelling...I have been saying this for years before this thread even existed!!!!!!

[lordofcode513]

I do notice that some Westerners don't leave behind their bad behavior/attitude which is unfortunate.

They feel the need to be rude and inject themselves into the conversation even though they don't know what the subject is.
The best conversations had was with those that are a similar mindset and polite.

[ladislav]

I don't. I am nice to everybody.
What if that person is the same as me? Someone interested in the culture, international life, etc.? I just need to see how they behave.
What if he is one of our members?
Also, where "abroad"? How can you avoid Westerners if you go to France? Is Mexico West or not?
You probably mean E/SE Asia. But many of the natives are not that friendly to the foreign devil. Many try and avoid me or rip me off.
A lot of Orientals want to stay away from white or black people, period. Sullen faces - like they are constipated and trying to sh-t but cannot. Yech!
And even if you learn the language, in many cases, there is still nothing to talk about. Many of them don't know anything. Some are smart, most are not.
Just see if a person is good or not, be it local or foreign. Then, you make friends or don't.

[flowerthief00]

How did you handle that? That is the greatest form of disrespect ever. I would have given him one peaceful opportunity to remove himself from the table, then the peace would have ended. I actually see that behavior as a form of passive aggression towards a man who is punishing you for being successful where he is not.

Nah it wasn't a big deal. I got lonely vibes from him, which I can sympathize with to an extent, as it is easy to feel lonely in a foreign country. He must have seen us having fun, speaking in English, and wanted to be a part of it. So I was neither mean nor nice to him and eventually he left, tho not before asking for my number lol.