Video of passengers and gondolier ending up in canal water widely shared online
Please don’t be American, please don’t be American, please don’t be American.
Reads article … “Chinese tour group.”
Yes!
I love to hate on Americans (in a friendly way) as much as the next European, however American tourists aren’t that bad. This level of stupid assholery is 99% Chinese tourists, the missing 1% is Russians. No hate for Chinese, Russians, anyone that can behave themselves though- they probably hate their fellow citizens more that anyone of us ever could.
And 98% of those asshole Chinese tourists are the ones that travel with a group. It’s rarely like a young Chinese couple on their honeymoon. It’s almost always some middle age and older nouveau riche dickwad who is too afraid to travel by themselves.
Does the culture lack the simple teaching mechanism of “The guy said to sit your ass down, Li, so you shoulda sat your fucking ass down. I’m posting the video of your drippy ass on IG.”?
I wonder if it’s like a translation thing? I bet individuals in these groups don’t speak the local language but have a translator. Maybe the translator is too deferential and won’t actually translate orders properly so as not to offend their clients. Just pulling a guess out my bum; anyone with real experience know?
What I read a few years ago is that it’s potentially from the rise of many rural Chinese families becoming much wealthier in a short period of time and moving into the cities and being able to travel outside the country for the first time in generations, if anyone in their family ever had. Basically the “hillbillies” of China to put it very crudely.
As a whitewater river guide, there are two groups that will never listen to you and make your day hell: Asians and Indians. Every time.
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
In response to basic safety guidelines.
any stories?
“Asians and Indians” is like saying “Europeans and the French”
Right? Like for once, it’s not one of us.
We did it boys ( and girls ) time to go home !
Woohoo, we
windidn’t totally lose by a landslide! \o/
Is China the international Mississippi?
I’d compare it to mid-1960s Alabama given how they treat protests and minorities.
I was also honestly surprised to read it weren’t Muricans
Haha ; take that China!
No one got hurt or died, so imo it’s fine to laugh here, and this particular quote was just especially good.
“It’s true that compared with 10 or 15 years ago, tourists weigh a bit more,” Andrea Balbi, the president of Venice’s gondoliers’ association, told the Guardian at the time.
Once everyone was safe and all, I refuse to believe that gondolier didn’t have a satisfying moment of thinking “serves you right, assholes!”
We have a Venetian saying for those situations “(de)scantabaùchi” which is hard to translate even in standard Italian, more or less it means “idiot-awakener”
Oh thank God! Not Americans! (this time)
I think it’s mandatory that every tourist horror story has to include at least one American anecdote.
From the last paragraph …
In 2022, an American tourist sustained minor injuries after he fell into the crater of Mount Vesuvius as he tried to retrieve his phone, which had slipped out of his hand while taking a selfie.
I wonder where such self centered tourists are from
- opens article *
Ahh I could have guessed
Forgot the spoiler: Chinese tourists.
And to top it off, Venice’ canals are full of raw sewage.
