Concept of culture shock and reflective diary Essay

Concept of culture shock and reflective diary - Essay Example 16 Reisinger, Y. &, Turner, L. 2003. Cross cultural behaviour in tourism. London: British Library 16 Concept of ‘Culture Shock’ Culture shock is the feeling of dissociation that one feels upon travelling to a foreign country and experiencing a sudden change in their way of life. It is experienced due to a sudden change in food, clothing, manner of communication and even the roles of men and women in the community as. It results from one being unable to read the cultural cues as they differ from the ones, which an individual was familiar with at home. Culture shock has been identified to occur in five different phases Euphoria, disintegration, reintegration, adjustment and re-entry, each one has its own challenges and should be handled in a different manner from the other. Before Travel Before preparing to travel to a new destination, the individual should read as much as they can about their new location. Background knowledge will result in the traveller being prepared t o see some of the things that differ from their culture, which will mean lower shock, and less confrontation between the traveller and the indigenous people (Greensboro, n.d). Upon arrival, the traveller should also talk to his embassy about the local culture there, this is imperative to add on the learning in order to get a first-hand detailed description of the differences they will experience from those from their own country. While China is trying to improve its international image, its public toilets have been of very low hygiene standards (Bailie and Jeff, 2013) and most foreigners are generally advised by their own fellow citizens to not use the public ones but rather wait to use the ones at their hotel. This is information that can only be got from first-hand experience and not from any average travel website. Initial Euphoria Upon arrival, the newcomer to the society is usually excited by the experience of going to a new culture. The new way of life seems extremely appealin g and is usually experienced by those who have stayed there for at most a month. Many tourists on holiday experience this and travel back home without progressing to the other stages. People in the euphoric stage use words such as enchanting, magical, mystical, beautiful and exotic to describe the places they have travelled to as they are experiencing the new country for the first time even when the new country has high levels of poverty and a low development level (Pedersen, 1995). The reason for this is that the locals of the destination country recognize that you are a foreigner and therefore exempt you from the social expectations and cultural norms that the rest of the country is governed by. The locals therefore dismiss the foreigner as just been ignorant instead of confronting them as they would a local (Pedersen, 1995). Police also realize that the national image is at stake when a foreigner lodges a complaint and will do their best to ensure that their problems are resolved quickly in order to avoid complaints being lodged by the embassy resulting in their supervisors coming to scrutinise their work. Locals also try their best to ensure that foreigners will leave with a good report of the country and therefore see to it they explain to them the dangers of doing certain things that would be criticised in the destination c