48 Non-Americans Recall Their “What The Hell” Moments While Traveling In The US

I was complimented on my excellent English by a girl from Ohio.

I'm Canadian.

She thought we all spoke German.

I was in an uber going to the airport and the driver asked where I was flying to. I said "Hong Kong". He asked if I spoke Japanese. I told him that we speak Chinese in Hong Kong. He says "What's the difference?" Hs genuinely didn't know that Japanese and Chinese were different languages.

French ex-exchange teenager in Cali here. Summer 97. I was young and missed the fieldtrip bus to Disneyland from San Diego. So I did something pretty stupid, I hitchiked to go there by myself. Dude who took me looked like a plaincloth cops, but a good buddy. When he heard I was french he told me to never ever hitchike in USA because its pretty dangerous. He told me to open the glovebox in front of me: There was a suppospedly loaded desert eagle inside.

He dropped me at the bus station and insisted to give me 10 dols for ticket (I had cash) and waited for me to go in the bus.

Korean friend who just got off the plane in Atlanta: "So many big fat black women!" Yes, he said it loudly and in public.

But my favorite was a Japanese fellow who went to a buffet with a group of us in Vegas. He sits down and his plate looks like a normal little meal; we all have heaps of things all over ours, and his eyes bug out that we have so much food. I said he's really going to freak out when he realizes this is only our *first* plate.

I had to tip an ATM.

When I went to the U.S. the first time and ordered a meal from Burger King, ordering a large fry, coke, and a Whopper, I was blown away by the size of it all. Each item was larger than the same item back home, I was already like "what", but then the cashier said I could have a second Whopper for 1$! Again, I was like "what, sign me up!"

Another time, while I was in Daytona, I went to a restaurant and the woman kept refilling my drink, again and again. Being a bit shy, I did not tell her to stop, and expected a bill with 15$ for sodas, but then I found out the refills were free, what!? FREE REFILLS?! I'd only seen that at places like Subway, but so many restaurants in the U.S. had free refills.

I love the U.S. for restaurants and food in general, the portions are massive and very reasonably priced.

A few years back I took a cruise that left out of San Diego. I'm from Canada and had never been further in to the states than New York City. It was pretty late when we got to the hotel so we decided to just go to the Denny's down the road.

We first had our minds blown by the portion sizes, we have Denny's in Canada but our plates are much smaller. I'm a big guy who'd been travelling all day and was hungry as hell and I couldn't even finish my meal.

The next day was the real WTH moment though. I head down to the hotel breakfast for my first ever pancakes form a machine and notice on my way in through the door that there is a woman who is so large she has to sit on 2 chairs. Wow OK that's sad but I've seen it once before in Canada, then I notice 2 other people doing the same thing. Not sitting at the same table or anything just 3 people, completely unrelated to each other beside the fact that they're so fat they can't sit on one chair and need a second for backup.

I asked an old lady if it's true all Americans carry guns.

She smiled and pulled a revolver out of her purse. She was a nice lady.

A universal WTH for both foreign and US citizens: The Golden Corral

Everything was submerged in liquid butter. The patrons were larger than some cars.

"Do you have cellphones in Norway?"

This was in 2012. Kids nowadays get an iPhone and/or iPad before they're born.

Not my story but my mom's (again) and instead of visiting, it was more like a "people who have immigrated to the US, what is your 'WTH America' story.

So it's the early 1980's, and my mom's plane touches down in LAX from Tokyo. As she was collecting her luggage and waiting for her friend to pick her up, a Hare Krishna (which she had never seen before) came up to her and asks her (in English) if she could donate a few dollars.

My mom, who only had a few yen and a poor grasp of English, tried to explain to the Hare Krishna that she couldn't understand him and that she had just arrived in the United States. The moment she started talking to him in Japanese, he just gave her some of the money he had and went on his merry way, leaving her at the luggage carousel confused as hell.

I'm from Canada and the first thing I saw upon my arrival to Port Angeles, Washington (which happened to be the first time I stepped foot in the states), was a large spherical lady sitting in the middle of the sidewalk blocking my path to the bus terminal, just staring at me.

Another time, I was in San Diego one summer and a woman, genuinely curious, asked me if it was summer in Vancouver too. (Edit: it was July).

A lady came up to my friend & I while we were wandering around Victoria's Secret & basically apologised for George W Bush being elected. She had heard our accents & literally approached us just to apologise. She also let us know that she was praying about it every night, which clearly made sense to her, but didn't seem like a particularly effective way of changing the situation to us.

Was in Spokane at Silverwood (amusement park) and asked where the washroom was. I was promptly told there were no washrooms in the park. This happened a good handful of times and it never even occurred to me that I had to say restroom to receive any real help.

Irish guy here,

Once told an American we didn't have Wednesdays in Ireland, and convinced her we had more weeks in the year than they did. Consequently that American was my boss, I stressed how I wasn't used to the 5 day working week, so I got every Wednesday off. Confessed the story 2 months later when I was leaving the country. She wasn't too happy.

According to New Yorkers, my mother and I can't possibly be Portuguese. Apparently we're Russian, da.

Other than, incredibly nice and friendly. I loved it.

I visited America recently, and there are so many more people than i'm used to. I come from New Zealand, and our biggest city only has about 1.3 - 1.5 million people in it, and the total population is around 4.471 million people.

Was at an all-you-can-eat buffet with a soft serve ice cream machine. As kids we thought we were being little pigs by swirling as high as we possibly could (while our parents weren't looking or they certainly would have stopped us). The guy after us grabbed a full-sized drink tumbler and filled it up with ice cream. No shame at all. No child-like glee at making the mother-of-all sundaes. I suspect now it was something he did regularly.

I'm Canadian and have visited the United States multiple time and have had an overall enjoyable experience on each one.

I wouldn't blame this on America but I saw a fat bald middle aged man standing on the side of a Pennsylvania highway with bunny ears. I'm sure this happens in Canada too but this is the first time I've seen something like this.

I'm Canadian and I went down to the US to do a little shopping. I accidentally pulled out some Canadian bills and the cashier asked why I kept Monopoly money in my wallet.

EDIT: A lot of people are saying it was just sarcasm. I don't think it was. The cashier looked around 16 years old, she had probably never seen Canadian money before. When I started awkwardly chuckling, she had a puzzled look on her face. But who knows, maybe she was just really invested in a joke.