scot47

Avoid Malls. Believers know that they are the temples of Satan.

nonthaburi

Ever been to China? That will test your theory.

Dubaiexile

Yes, I live there for one third of the year in Dalian, and yes the spitting etc drives me up the wall, although they do not waltz through the malls line abreast and are usually very polite to laowai`s.
What really bugs me here if you say excuse me, they just look at you as if you are from another planet.....ever tried holding the door open for someone here and they sally through as if that is your job, no thanks, nod or any kind of recognition.....getting wound up thinking about it!!!!!!!

Alexa

Haha..China is great fun! There I developed the stop and go practice. When ever a shop attendant sticks to your backside ( which they almost always do), start walking a few very fast steps and then abruptly stop. They walk into you..you look at them and say " can I help you" ? They will stay away from you as if you were the plague.

Shard

Why would you hold doors open when that is not the custom?

scrubbedexpat141

I followed a guy through the madinat once. I held the door open for my mrs, he followed through shouting down his phone in Arabic. Not a nod, not even any acknowledgement that there had been a door there.

I took huge amounts of joy in following him, asking him why he was so rude, being ignored, tapping him on the shoulder and asking him to say thank you for holding the door. Fortunately, he reacted by apologising and going bright red instead of getting angry.

Normally a loud enough "you're welcome" follows anyone who doesn't say thanks.

Shard

Make sure you uphold your own standards the next time you are in somewhere like Glasgow, you'll be given the reaction you deserve. Absolutely pathetic overseas behaviour.

Irishbeekeeper

HA! Im sorry but you are wrong there mate. I hate using the word 'these people', but since I know 'these people', I can safely say that the majority dont realize the mistake they have made and if you go out of your way to point out what they did wrong, 90% of the time they will smile, nod their head and accept it, and then hopefully make sure next time they dont it and more hopefully : next time they dont do it in front of their kids. By pointing it out it is not bad manners on your part, it is a very small step in the right direction to making this world a better place and achieving world peace and harmony and utopia and free beer coolers at every street corner and all that crap!
Its just like driving on the road actually, if you see someone coming out from behind you in a waiting line and then try and cut in front of you, what do you do? you honk (or swear etc). Its human nature to try and fix things in my opinion. Like I say everytime, there are only 2 types of people in the world, those who know better and those who dont.

scrubbedexpat141

What reaction did I deserve then?

Meh, two wrongs don't make a right - maybe I was rude by telling this guy he was rude. Maybe me asking for him to say thanks was rude. Frankly, I don't ****ing care. When people are knobs they deserve to be told it's not cool.

Shard

Thanks for your views beekeeper. My motto is 'when in Rome...' for these kinds of things. Anyway, I'm outta here.

Dubaiexile

Not a custom where????? I was bought up to show good manners, and try to wherever I am......... and will continue to do so. If people cannot show me the common courtesy of a thank you for this then I am with Scamp on this, as I will point out their rudeness.
Being polite costs nothing!

OleJanx

Yet means so much.

scrubbedexpat141

Weak.

Gobobo

I used to get upset about people walking in front of me, bumping into me, zigging and zagging in my way, not looking where I was coming from, stopping unexpectedly and having to quickly do the hands in the air sidestep foxtrot balancing act to avoid walking into them. This was in China and Korea where crowd densities are berserk.

Then I took a look at the problem from a different point of view; maybe it isn't everyone else, maybe it's me? I sat at a few coffee places and watched everyone walk around, looking for the inevitable collisions and frustrations. There weren't any.

I was so used to swiftly walking around western cities where people have a heightened sense of their surroundings - you know when you walk through a crowded train station or airport, everyone walking in different directions at different speeds but missing each other by a few inches by slightly changing direction, speeding up or slowing down - that I thought "That's what you do, in a crowd."

Nah, it isn't. Not here. People still meander, walk in different directions and at different speeds but they're much, much s...l...o...w...e...r. Agonisingly slowly, until you realise you don't actually have to be anywhere in a hurry. Now I walk around, slowly, more like strolling, and just get on with whatever I'm doing without getting in a big flap. You have to time things better - no point going out at 15 minutes to prayers and imagining you're going to get anything achieved, time for a cup of tea and catching up on emails instead.

I don't know if it'd work here - probably not - but, in SE Asian cities, slowly walking around and gazing everywhere except where you are going lets everyone see you (big-nosed clumsy foreign whitey) coming and they get out of your way.

Meow

Are you mental? Expecting a modicum of manners is not pathetic; quite the opposite.