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Culture Shock Traveling

Unless you do not travel, you are bound to experience to some kind of culture shock.

When my father sent me off to school in Hong Kong at the age of 7 years old in 1996, I did not aware of the cultural problem we all know today as culture shock. The term "culture shock" was coined by Kalvero Oberg only a few years earlier then in 1954 and was hardly known by any common people at that time. It is a psychological experience of adults during the time of cultural adjustment that accompanies a period of cultural socialization or acculturation (which is different from the enculturation process experienced by small children).

The first shock
I went into a primary 4 class room one morning and prepared to learn my new lesson of Chinese calligraphy. I took out my usual writing gears I used back home in Thailand. It was an ink-pad and the writing brush. I poured some water on the pad and started to rub on it to get some black ink to write. Suddenly, the whole class room of thirty over students started to stare and laugh at me. I did not know what was going on. But I was so embarrassed I just wanted to duck my head under to escape all eyes that were piecing at me. I learned later that they do not use the kind of ink-pad for Chinese writing anymore in Hong Kong. They use a modern tiny ink box and pour in the black ink when you want to write. They thought I came from the former Chinese Dynastic of Qing.

Second shock
One Sunday morning and it was a holiday for everyone in Hong Kong, I went out window shopping with a friend at the famous shopping center of Nathan Road. We were good friends and it would be naturally for us to hold hands or hugging each other with arms on the shoulders while walking. Suddenly, a man walked by and told us that it was illegal in Hong Kong for boys to hold hands in public. It was quite a shock to us. How could that be? We would do that to our good friend back at home in Thailand. I learned later that the behavior might be considered as breaking the Homosexual law in Hong Kong which was ruled by Britain at that time. I was 14 years old then.

Continuing shock
One year later at the age 15, my father sent me to further my studies in Australia. We were still flying propeller planes and allowed to smoke in the cabins. That was a universal culture and nobody seemed to be annoyed at the smokes that get into your eyes. I was enjoying my meal flying from Singapore to Sydney. I did what I usually do with

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