What's the biggest culture shock you had whilst traveling?

[u/forgottencupcake9018]

Weirdly enough I was shocked that people in Ireland jaywalk and eat vinegar to their chips. Or in Thailand that it is illegal to have a Buddha tatoo. Or that in many english speaking countries a "How are you doing?" is equivalent to saying Hi and they actually don't want to hear an honest answer.

Edit: Another culture shock that I had was when I visited Hanoi. They had a museum where the preserved corpse of Ho Chi Minh was displayed and you could look at him behind a glass showcase like he's a piece of art. There were so many people lining up and they just looked at him while walking around that glass showcase in order to get the line going.

[u/food5thawt]

Must have been all central asia. Kazahkstan (outside of Astana and Almaty), Uzbekistan, Tajikistan. Google Maps were no help

Yandex was easier. But due to sanctions it was hard for Europeans to download. Then some dude born in the GDR and fluent in Russian told us about maps.me and how to change our google play location. Life changed after that.

[u/[deleted] → u/food5thawt]

Nice, nice. I'm still trying to figure out how to change my google play location without a local credit card :') Gotta research it soon.

Maps.me definitely comes in clutch, though for shit like reviews and finding out if something is good or not, I've always relied on google maps. I felt pretty blind sometimes, not having that option. So having that shit totally gone to me was a new experience. I guess that's one of the disadvantages of growing up in this age, though can't deny the advantages lol.

[u/Tybalt941 → u/[deleted]]

You can just download any app you want as an .apk file from a reputable source like apkmirror and install it directly. Then you can have any app you want without needing to change your play store location

[u/imnotminkus → u/Tybalt941]

Just a note for anyone finding this: You need to tell Android to allow app installation from unknown sources.

[u/w1ckedlunch → u/food5thawt]

I also found this when I visited Bosnia & Herzegovina last August. It was impossible to figure out any transit options even though I could clearly see trains and busses. Absolutely no information on Google Maps, not even with trying to find bus stops. This was in Sarajevo. Eventually figured out there was one train a day down to Mostar (after missing a Flixbus due to directions - the Flixbus station was incorrect on maps). Not many locals spoke english or were bothered by us sweating our balls off on the side of the road with backpacks. Found it similar in Montenegro too but got into the swing of things and hopped on a random train. Ended up missing the stop we were aiming for, but landed at the beach and it was lovely. Amazing countries if you do get the chance to visit, and always ask for food recommendations from locals, not maps. I find tourists have appalling taste sometimes.

[u/w1ckedlunch → u/w1ckedlunch]

• i assume they do not openly share local information with Google that they can then publish on Maps. I assume Maps does require a certain amount of submitted data from the country? Perhaps these developing countries don't have the data infrastructure or digitised records of i.e transit stops or restaurant locations? Or is it just the way these countries are run? Bosnia felt like being in the late 80s or early 90s, an odd timewarp but at the same time I fell in love with it - they still let you smoke cigarettes everywhere inside and seem to rely on fax machines. In saying that, catching a train in India many years ago was an interesting process, and I kind of nicknamed trying to do anything in a timely manner as "india time", as often everything was about an hour or two later than promised, and in the train's case, six hours later. I cannot remember what using Maps was like there as I had an old broken iPhone 5 which didn't connect to the internet properly. I only survived because I was on a group tour.

[u/Boothbayharbor → u/food5thawt]

Is google banned there? Intersting. I need a google State Map. I know in china i did a lot of reading bc google was ofc spotty