The Epicurious Wanderers!

The Ugly becomes the Arrogant…

For many years we heard about the ugly American, the tourist who seemed to find nothing to their satisfaction. They were loud and brash and of the opinion that the work revolved round them. We also had the Aussie Yobbo, who seemingly went overseas just to drink beer and party. Lately I think these stereotypes have been replaced with a new ugly tourist, the Arrogant Chinese.

A rise in the middle class and an increased ability to travel due to lifting of some government restrictions has seen them increasingly head overseas. Our government has even launched campaigns to attract them to WA. Given what we’ve seen in the last few days I’d be a little worried by this.

The arrogance that we’ve see from some of them is just amazing. On our boat trip to Koh Tao we were one of only two non-Chinese couples on the tour. As we boarded the boat I went to sit at a table near the front, an elderly lady launched herself from the table she was at already to get there first. She then left her bag on the table and went back to her original seat. This family group comprised of, as best we could work out, a husband and wife , their mothers and a baby. The mother-in-laws could only communicate by yelling at each other and the parents seemed oblivious to the crying of the baby. At lunch on Koh Nang Yuan the two elderly ladies sat on either side of the dining area, despite the shortage of tables, and then proceeded to converse in loud guttural Chinese across the whole area. At one point the daughter joined in from across the others side, meanwhile the child was still yelling.

Our resort has had an influx of new guests due to a Chinese holiday and even the staff here are seemingly not impressed by some of them. At the pool yesterday on couple occupied four pool lounges, but effectively blocked out two others by the way they sat. Again they then conversed by shouting to other groups around the pool, an Italian guy near to me remarked on the lack of manners as well.  One of our pool/bar guys commented on the influx, saying would be crazy busy.

Age seems to play little part in it either, an elderly gent at dinner last night was telling the waitress that they had the menu all wrong and demanding to be served the way he said it should be done. When the restaurant manager appeared he argued with him as well. Meanwhile his wife was dragging furniture around to suit herself. They were at a table for 6, only two of them mind you, but needs extra chairs. They had a toddler with them, the staff brought over a high chair, toddler refused to go in so the elderly couple motioned for it to be taken away. Toddler then screamed so they had the high chair returned, toddler still wouldn’t sit in it but was happy sitting on then table.

We then have the young couple at breakfast who loaded up their plates and indeed the whole table with every food on offer. Two omelettes, two lots of fried eggs, all the accompaniments as well as several types of drink. Then then we’re so busy on their phones taking selfies that everything went cold and so most of it was left.

I’m not trying to be negative here, I’m just writing about what I’ve observed from this cultural group. It is a shame that the ones who stand out are hopefully the minority and not representative of the whole.