International Nesties
Cecilia arrived 12 October 2012
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Stupid travel complaints
I saw this on another board. I couldn't help but laugh at some of these.
Cecilia arrived 12 October 2012
Re: Stupid travel complaints
Ha ha! I love those.
When I was a travel agent, I had a client come back to me after their all-inclusive to the Caribbean and complained that there was only liquid soap at the hotel. I asked her to write a complaint letter to the resort and that I would get it to them. I assume she realised how ridiculous her complaint was, as I never saw her again.
Oh my god, this is really taking me back to my tour leading days!
I've had some freaking doozies on my tours in China before - one that really stands out is a German / American couple from HELL.
They apparently gained their American citizenship during "the war" and view America as the end all be all saviour of the world and best of absolutely everything. They would seriously stop random people in China and ask how many children they had, and then proceed to lecture them that if they lived in America they could have as many children as they wanted.
What really made my day though, was that they booked the tour because they were told that it had a lot of buses and private transportation - which they understood to be a comfy, air conditioned coach tour of China. What they didn't understand was that this was classed as a "pioneer tour" of China that followed the historical Long March of the Communist Party from Hong Kong to the South of China in the birthplace of the communist movement up through the Tibetan Plateau and basically spending 3 weeks in bumfuuck nowhere sleeping in caves, travelling from airports that were also in caves and 36 hour public buses full of smoke, chickens and outrageously loud karaoke.
Yeah, they were super fun to have in the group.
The best part though, was when they threw an absolute hissy fit and accused me of purposely avoding paved roads on one 18 hour stretch of a van journey just to piss them off because I didn't like them because they were American. I assured them that no, I was not avoiding paved roads, there weren't any paved roads available on this route (the other 8 group members understood this). He then whipped out a map and pushed it into my face screaming that I was lying to him and that if there were no paved highways what the hell was this long blue thing, then.
I was like..."um... the river."
Chronically hilarious - you'll split your stitches!
I wrote a book! Bucket list CHECK!
http://notesfortheirtherapist.blogspot.co.uk
Oh, and then there was another woman once who lost her 3 young children in Hong Kong as soon as we got there (8-13 years old) and was more concerned about her missing louis vitton luggage that the children were carrying.
She was a blast on the camel back gobi desert camping trip.
Chronically hilarious - you'll split your stitches!
I wrote a book! Bucket list CHECK!
http://notesfortheirtherapist.blogspot.co.uk
Oh man, or the one that demanded that due to her peanut allergy ( that she didn't disclose prior to the trip or prior to the moment we got on our first plane ) she insisted that the flight staff not serve peanuts or allow passengers to eat any peanuts that they brought on board themselves or she would die.
So I had to speak to the flight staff and captain in my then pretty broken Chinese to convince them not to serve the peanuts. I then had to convince them to announce the peanut ban to the other passengers to which they said, and I quote, foreigners die when they smell peanuts. Please don't eat peanuts on the flight.
I then spent 2 hours fielding questions about the correlation between peanut consumption and the death of white people again, in Chinese.
Chronically hilarious - you'll split your stitches!
I wrote a book! Bucket list CHECK!
http://notesfortheirtherapist.blogspot.co.uk
LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!
Oh, one of the dumbest pax I ever had was also the strangest, it was on a tour of China, standard tour from Beijing to Hong Kong and this chick was CHINESE. Like, FROM CHINA kind of CHINESE. She apparently lived abroad with a British family when she was a student and they booked her to join them on their trip to China. Sounds fine, right?
SHE WAS AN IDIOT.
The day before the tour started, she called the emergency mobile number of my boss because she couldn't find an internet cafe by the hotel in Beijing.
She didnt know that she couldn't get into Hong Kong without a visa. She asked if the cruise ship we were on on the Yangtze for 3 days could make a quick unscheduled stop at a city along the way so she could see her uncle.
During the trip her bag was stolen, camera broken, flight ticket lost, passport was left in a hotel safe and I had to have it courierd to our next city, she lost her train ticket... the list goes on. Seriously. In a group of 17 bright white, black and hispanic foreigners that stick out like sore thumbs, do not speak a word of Chinese and are pretty much walking around with "rob/mug/scam/swindle me because I'm a rich foreigner" signs on their foreheads, the ONE Chinese girl on tour is the one that I had to mollycoddle.
Where is the sense in that?!?!
Chronically hilarious - you'll split your stitches!
I wrote a book! Bucket list CHECK!
http://notesfortheirtherapist.blogspot.co.uk
Oh, but going the other way - I once had an American Chinese pax on tour - his family is American Chinese, he had never been to China and didn't speak any Chinese, just a Chinese guy touring China with his mates. Funny as hell, everyone we came across that didn't already know me assumed that he was the tour leader because he was Chinese - so they would just immediately start trying to deal with him.
When I explained to them that he was a pax and doesn't speak Chinese they always asked "what is wrong with him?" and assumed that he has a disability.
Chronically hilarious - you'll split your stitches!
I wrote a book! Bucket list CHECK!
http://notesfortheirtherapist.blogspot.co.uk
I know it seems crazy but actually she probably could go into anaphylactic shock if someone on the plane had opened the peanuts while she was on there. There are people that are that allergic. My nephew is one of them and I know my sister has to have them make an announcement when he flies that there is someone with a peanut/nut allergy aboard and could passengers please refrain from eating anything with nuts in it for the duration of the flight. They always disclose the allergy when booking, though. It's crazy not to.
Exactly. It's fine that she has an allergy, but had she disclosed that at the time of booking that would have all been dealt with with the airline, restaurants ( do you have any idea how hard it is to find restauarants in China that don't use peanut oil?!?) and hotels behind the scenes, so I wouldn't have had to try to explain it on the fly, you know?
Chronically hilarious - you'll split your stitches!
I wrote a book! Bucket list CHECK!
http://notesfortheirtherapist.blogspot.co.uk
I loved the list!
Tofu, you're stories are hysterical!
Duke's House: Eating and Running with the Big Dog in Chennai: eatrunbrit.com
2010 Race PRs:
5K - 24:57 10M - 1:28:20 13.1M - 1:57:29 26.2M - 4:28:29
Just read this and dying laughing. Hahaha.