"That Shit Would Not Fly in the States..."

In the past four months in southeast Asia I have found myself saying in my head many times a day "That shit would NOT fly in the States!" There aren't really rules or regulations on a lot of things here and you just have to learn to deal with it. I have compiled a short list of some of the things I know would not fly in the States. The list is bound to get longer and I'm missing a bunch of things, but here are some examples:

**4 people on one motorbike. This often includes at least one child sitting in the front with a parent's hand barely on them. Also at least one of the people is riding side saddle.

**Menu Clip Art. On the menus here they don't take pictures of the actual food they produce, they for sure just Google "spring rolls" and paste that picture on their menu. No citation, no truth behind the picture, just don't ever order based off of a picture.

**People (often children) coming to your table at a restaurant trying to sell you things. The restaurant owners don't even care, they just let people come in and harass you while you're trying to eat.

**Border officials forcing bribes and making up prices. I've already written some blogs on border scams. There is just no regulation for making an extra buck.

**Throwing your garbage on the road/river. We have consequences for those things! There is so much garbage on the roads and in the rivers here it is just heartbreaking.

**While we're talking about it, showering/going to the bathroom in the river...and then eating the fish. We saw a toilet that was a seat just over the river. Also the bathrooms in the boats definitely just go straight through to the water!

**Toilets without toilet paper. Sometimes you'll be in a bathroom in the States where the TP runs out, but here you just have to always carry it with you, and throw it away in a garbage can, not the toilet.

**Taking shoes off before entering a store. I highly doubt many people in the States would like to take their shoes off before going into a lot of stores, especially when the floor seems as dirty as the streets you just walked on.

**Meat tables at the market. There are just giant slabs of meat laying in the hot sun with flies all over them. That would NOT fly at the St. Paul Farmer's Market!

**Aggressive and persistent hassling. There is nothing you can really do about people coming up to you and literally grabbing you. I have a feeling though that the majority of people in the States would not let that happen on a regular basis.

**The hundreds and hundreds of stray dogs all over Southeast Asia. They often are missing patches of hair, have big bellies full of more stray dogs and just look so sadly disgusting.

**The general lack of traffic rules. It's even hard to explain. There are NO rules of the road. Just survival.

**Selling liquor on the streets next to Ritz Crackers. No liquor license necessary.

**Napkins=Toilet Paper at restaurants. They try and cover it with a festive (or sometimes not festive) box, but when you use napkins at a restaurant it is often times just a roll of really cheap toilet paper.

**Really loud announcements everywhere. People in the States would freak out with all of the loud announcements that are everywhere. They seem completely unnecessary and there will often be competing loud announcements.

**No tipping. In Cambodia and Vietnam more than Thailand people just don't tip. Yeah the food is really inexpensive, but tipping is just not a way of life here. Sometimes when you leave extra they'll chase you down and make you take the change.

**Powdered coffee. Self explanatory...ick.

**Foreigner price mark-up/segregation. Often times we get put in special areas and pay special prices for being foreigners. I guess it's not that big of a deal, but I have a feeling that shit wouldn't fly in the States.

**Barefoot children playing in the streets. Not to mention the dirtiest streets i've seen.

**Sweaters at 90 degrees F. White skin is considered very beautiful so people go to great lengths to cover up their skin here, even when it is boiling hot outside. You will often see pants, sweaters, gloves and a hat while I'm wearing a swim suit and sweating.

**Foreigners coming into the country expecting everyone to know their language. We sadly expect people to speak English and get mad (well not us, but others) when they don't. In the States we aren't expected to speak Vietnamese, why should they be expected to speak English?

**Not being able to complain about travel agencies or get money back. We've had some bad travel company experiences, but the deal is you just have to grin and bear it. You can't call and complain, and if you do i'm sure nothing will happen with it.


There are a lot of other things that I know would never fly in the States. It can get annoying learning to deal with the annoyances and not be able to fix them, but what i've realized while here is that is the fun of it! I love trying to figure out daily life and we have so much fun laughing about the crazy things happening everyday around us. No, these things wouldn't fly in the States, but they DO fly here, so deal with it and have some fun!