h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Most tourists are too trusting that are from the UK.Not only this, but they all go to the same places and say "Oohh, how nice.", even in places that are, like what was said above, crappy when seen in comparison to other places. I've got about ten people shouting at me here to put in their comments on people from the UK and none of them are good. So you could probably get a general picture of what us people in Oz think of UK toourists.

Why is it people in other countries don't like American tourists more than everyone doesn't like every other type of tourist? Or is this merely an illusion? For an example of this, check the entry on Australia, where it mentions that Australians always have a kind word for tourists.

Hey, we're not THAT BAD, are we? Because see, I'm American, and I'm set on seeing England when I graduate, maybe Australia... but if you guys don't like us .... Is it the accent? The whole colonial thing? c'mon, guys, I'm sorry about all that, I'll even fake a James Bond accent if you'd like....I just want people to like me.

When your here just remember money talks!!!!! Me personally have got nothing against you. At least you have one redeeming feature...you are a member of H2G2 at least.

Aww Thanks. I feel better now. I promise to bring lots of money and to not make the guys with the tall fuzzy hats laugh.

I want one of those hats! Oh, wait, I think I just discovered why they don't like Americans...
"Hey buddy, 40 bucks for the hat? Hello? Hey, c'mon. Fine, 65. Hello?? Why does everyone in this damned country hate me?"

Well, when you ask, you have to use the James Bond accent, remember?

I love that accent.
Its funky.

If you can do the eyebrow thing too, a la Moore, then you're really onto something.....

Wow, that would be nice, having someone come up to you and do the eyebrow thing and then say, in a James Bond accent... "Could you direct me to Sea World, darling?" or something like that.... NO ONE would hate them!

Nah, everyone would be jealous and so everyone would hate them anyway. In my experience you can't win. =)

I find that the tourist is easily recognised not by the brightness of their brand new tan, nor by the bizarre dress sense. Neither can you only spot their presence from the sheer loudness at which they speak, nor the perplexed look on their faces as they stare at maps. In my lovely seaside town, the best way to find the tourist is to simply go about your business. Try to park, try to get into a shop or cafe. The person in YOUR seat on the bus. . .the family in your favourite spot on the beach, where you've been going for five years, that's them.

I have the secret for avoiding tourists. Live somewhere where NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND would EVER want to visit. For example, much of the north of England. Having said that, sometimes even that fails. I swear I've got 'Ask me the way to the station' written on my head in Italian.

Here in the Washington D.C. Metro area, we know that Spring has arrived when we start spotting families and school groups in shorts, t-shirts and sneakers wandering down the streets looking for museums and blocking the escalators in the Metro. We get them from March until January when it finally snows. This is a great city with good public transportation, lots of free museum, good resturants and nice monuments which are best viewed at night. I was once showing an English friend the Lincoln Memorial (the one where he's sitting in the chair) and, honest to God, there was a guy hanging around dressed up like Lincoln... at 11pm in November! He didn't work for the National Park Service, it was just his thing. The weirdest thing was seeing him get into a taxi later with his stove-pipe hat. If you come here, stick to the central parts of the city around the Capital and the monuments and you'll be safe, even late at night. Don't wander too far off the beaten track though. An English tourist was once killed when he wandered into a drug zone in South-East. You are welcome to your casual dress and people will be very nice if you ask directions, but DON'T BLOCK THE ESCALATORS IN THE METRO. Stand to the right and let people pass your group on the left. This is a working city and it's no fun to waste your short lunch hour trapped behind a group of gawkers with nothing to do and all day to do it in.

Once up to Inverness the tourist in Scotland is very easy to spot. They are in the car at the front of a three mile tail back, dawdling along at 20 miles an hour, not realising that in the car behind them there is a local, who they have fostered into a psychopath. The psycopath in the car behind vents the rage building, by recklessly endagering life and limb to overtake on a blind corner, or if the tourists are unlucky pulling along side, making them pull over and giving them verbal abuse for ten minutes. Of course this only occurs with well controlled psycopaths. If they are in a hurry then things get nasty.

Once up to Inverness the tourist in Scotland is very easy to spot. They are in the car at the front of a three mile tail back, dawdling along at 20 miles an hour, not realising that in the car behind them there is a local, who they have fostered into a psychopath. The psycopath in the car behind vents the rage building, by recklessly endagering life and limb to overtake on a blind corner, or if the tourists are unlucky pulling along side, making them pull over and giving them verbal abuse for ten minutes. Of course this only occurs with well controlled psycopaths. If they are in a hurry then things get nasty.

I have lived in both Wales and Devon, UK. A common way to spot tourists in both is simply the speed at which they drive. The roads are very narrow and have many twists and turns.
The tourists drive very slowly and carefully and sound their horns at every blind corner.
The natives drive at incredible speeds, timing the handbrake turns precisely. If a native meets a car coming the other way, he will slam his brakes on and stop in less than three milliseconds.

The natives complain about the tourists and how slow they go, and complain about being stuck behind them.

The tourists complain about the natives and how fast they go, and complain about nearly having a heart attack whenever they meet one in the road.

Funnily enough, the tourists cause more accidents than the natives.

I lived awhile in Northern Brazi(Joao Pessoa)l and I was immediately took as a tourist ( I wasn't, I was an exchange student). They took one look at my light skin, blonde hair, blue eyes and decided I must've come from Mars. They had never seen the likes of me, 'cept on TV. Also the baggy clothes I wore to keep cool.(I'm American) They all went around in skin tight clothes and not much of it. I don't know maybe it was the sunscreen, or the fact I turned hermit from 10:00 to 3:00 during the day. Who knows? But, I gathered that I was acting a typical tourist anyway since the first time I discoverd the local McDonalds I went about once a month (that's a lot by local standards)
And from watching all the other tourists they seem to be the only ones to by "local art"(including me),