15 Peculiar Things You Can Encounter When Travelling

 

I’ve been living abroad outside of North America for a bit over a decade now. It’s involved a lot of visits to many different countries and living in a couple of them.

One of the reasons I love this life of non-normality is the everyday encounters of the weird — sometimes approaching Ripley’s Believe It or Not levels.

For those of you that are considering traveling abroad (and I don’t mean to a resort in Cancun), here are a bunch of the more common ‘everyday’ encounters I’ve seen abroad. One’s that I often forget how strange they truly are back home.

1. Unwalkable roads

Imagine seeing streets that have no sidewalks, and traffic that uses every single ounce of space to get to their destination quicker. It’s one of those see-it-to-believe-it things when you see motorcycles and cars drive within inches of store doors on an entire stretch of road.

2. No automatic lights on vehicles

Picture yourself walking down a busy road at night where some lovely drivers have those crazy strong new-age high beam lights — and then almost being nailed by a motorcycle that has literally no lights. This occurs much more often than it should.

3. Prostitution

Both the legal and illegal varieties are often way more socially acceptable than back home in North America. Even a famous-for-being-strict country like Singapore has legalized areas for prostitution. So does Germany, Finland, parts of Australia and almost half of the world’s countries — to one degree or another.

4. Animal rights

This one is sadly more common than I’d hoped to see in many countries I’ve visited. Stray packs of mixed dog breeds, cat colonies, dogs in tiny cages 24 hours a day, huskies walking around near the equator panting non-stop. People just don’t treat animals with the same level of respect as humans in some of these parts — and it can be heartbreaking. It makes you feel even worse knowing that you’re a guest in many of these places and it’s not kosher to speak out about things you don’t agree with — it’s an easy way to get thrown in jail or kicked out at best.

5. Drinkable tap water

Even I (scarily) forget about this from time to time when traveling. In many Western countries, it’s taken for granted that if you really want to, you can drink straight from your faucet — or garden hose as a kid. In some places, the water is so potentially dangerous that you’re advised not to even brush your teeth with it — and you’ll see tiny water bottles in hotel bathrooms for this purpose. The biggest shock about this is you can find the same issue in even well-developed countries. So please be aware of this when going to new places.

6. Right of way when crossing streets

I’ve encountered this problem over and over again throughout my travels. Look both ways before crossing a street is probably the biggest life-saving advice my 4-year-old self ever received. The typical crazy traffic roads where you literally have to cross in the middle of traffic — even at intersections — are par for the course when visiting lesser developed countries. But even in the more well-off places, they don’t always have similar rules like us. I once narrowly avoided getting plowed down in a 1st world country because I wasn’t aware they had no right-of-way for pedestrian rules — at all. Lesson learned.

7. Being able to use English everywhere

This one sounds like an obvious point, and indeed many, many countries around the world have their tourism areas catered to English speaking. But not all — and those countries can often lead to very quirky adventures due to miscommunication. Or worse. Avoid the worse.

8. Waste and recycling

I’m not a super eco save the planet kind of guy, even though I know I should be. But I do try to not litter and to recycle when I have the option available. Unfortunately, many countries don’t care nor give you that option. 33% of the world’s garbage is dumped in open unregulated sites. And 11% is simply incinerated — these places are sites to behold and always have a special scent in the general area.

9. Parental rights

Not all countries treat being a parent as a right. I’ve not experienced this first hand as I don’t have any children (to my knowledge). But I have encountered several sad dad’s that were cut off from seeing their children. Some countries have an extreme lack of rights in this area such as Japan, where you can read many cases of a parent essentially kidnapping a child and never contacting the other parent again — with no legal recourse to change that.

10. Cheating on a spouse

Not only is culturally acceptable cheating part of some societies I’ve encountered, but it’s also fully illegal in many too. As in, go-to-prison-and-pay-a-big-fine kind of illegal. Of course, in countries with strict religious-based values like Sharia law, it’s to be expected. But similar laws are also still in several places around the world — even in parts of the US! The number of countries still enacting these laws is lessening over time, though. For example, the second most populated country in the world, India, recently decriminalized adultery in 2018.

11. Treatment of alcohol

I’ve been to countries where you can buy alcohol anywhere at any time of night or day. Places where you can drink openly in the street and no one bats an eye. Countries that highly regulate it and the prices are very high compared to the normal cost of living. And even a dry country where the only people allowed to drink are tourists — and only if they brought one bottle with them to consume in a hotel room. There’re lots of fun examples of strange laws when it comes to one of our favorite beverages. Hell, I come from a place where it's one of the few foreign-owned private beer monopolies in the world.

12. Addresses

Oh, the luxury of planned roads and physical addresses — you readers are lucky! I’ve been to many a place where not only can you not find it on Google Maps, but even a local taxi driver struggles to find it after years of roaming the neighborhood. I’m just glad I have yet to live at one of these pseudo-addresses, as I can only imagine the nightmare of important documents getting lost in the mail.

13. Humor

I confess I often miss hanging out with Canadians from my part of the country. Not out of missing life there, or family and friends — but purely because I like to joke a lot. And in different cultures, if your jokes have anything to do with your home country or upbringing, they’ll land as often as Bill Maher could at a MAGA rally. Throw cultural references out the window, breach the language barrier, and make the joke about something extremely relevant to the conversation is the only way to succeed in these situations. Or not —and it’s often ‘not’ for me.

14. Smells

Ahh, to walk by a bakery in Paris or a maple syrup plant in Canada. Smells I’ll never forget. Smells I wish I could forget are ones that might surprise you. Sure, poor sewage systems are par for the course when traveling, and sometimes even waft up through toilets at hotels. But it’s the scent of local specialties that sometimes gives me life-long nightmares. Stinky tofu stalls might as well be openly defecating in your nose. Limburger cheese will make your eyes water and your soul cry. Durian fruit will have you wondering who passed gas directly in your face (but is surprisingly tasty and creamy for fruit when eating it).

15. Touching

I always say I enjoy my personal bubble of space. I like to know when I’m about to touch or be touched. I know this is true for a lot of people, to varying degrees on the size of the bubble. When traveling through different cultures though, you should be aware that there are a lot of different standards for this. Some French people practice the act of kissing everyone on the cheek when arriving at dinner. It’s rude to use your left hand to touch people in India, and you might be interested to know why that is. People in many countries, especially when alcohol is involved, love to manhandle people they’re talking to. Firm grabs, ten-minute long grapple hugs, and falling asleep on another person’s lap can be par for the course. On the opposite end is gender-based non-touching in countries with more religious influence. It always helps to read about these (and other etiquettes) before visiting another country.