Tourist Rage

Just wanted to recount some incidents of bad behavior by western tourists in the first week we have been in India.

- Some piss drunk Austrailian was in a bar in Delhi with his wife and kid. For some reason he wanted to buy a whole bottle of whisky from the bar, which I am sure is very illegal in India. The guys at the bar actually said that they would do it for him, but they insisted on pouring it into a plastic container. He went nuts and spent 30 minutes arguing with them and bascially being a total jerk, making eveyone else in the bar very uncomfortable.

- English girl in Leh is buying a plane ticket from one of the mom and pop internet cafe and travel agent palces. There is some minor fee (like 5 bucks) that the places charges for booking the ticket which is not on the invoice from the airline. She argues in a really abusive way with the poor guy who runs the place for 30 minutes, really making the environment uncomfortable for those of us on the internet.

- Dutch people in resturant in Leh get two pots of tea rather then one from the very nice and hard working waiter. They get all mean at him even though a pot of tea is probabaly less then a dollar.

I sort of understand why some westerners get very defensive in India because it can feel like there are a lot of people trying to overcharge you or otherwise rip you off. However, not everyone is trying to rip you off, and often if you are getting overcharged it is for less then a dollar.

Westerners here often seem to totally lose prospective of what a Rupee is worth, because they will get so pissed of if they overpay 10 or 20 rupees for something when they are perfectly happy paying 5 dollars, aka 200 rupees for a beer back home.

Basically this is just kind of a rant because I hate to see the reputation of westerners ruined by a buch of jerks with no prospective. But, if I was an Indian who was trying to run an honest business, with some of these people here, I might start tying to screw the westerners as well, because some certainly deserve it.