Evaluating Intercultural Behavior

Last Semester, me and my flat mates decided to have a trip to Thailand during the recess week. We were a group of multinationals, who came from different countries namely Spain, US and China. Just two weeks before the recess, we started planning our trip.

Then, I realized that we all had different goals for this trip. Helena, being a Spanish, who had seen a lot of beaches in her life wanted to spend more days visiting Bangkok rather than going to Phuket. Lauren and Kelly who had come half of the globe from America, wished to experience as much Asian staff as possible, thus they preferred to see more famous attractions with a relative high budgets. I was, at that time having a thought of withdrawing from the trip, because I desperately need the recess week to catch up with the study.

I found myself hard to directly express my will to withdraw from the travel group, as I do not want to disappoint them. Instead I was addressing them about my concerns to the midterm exams later after the travel. Actually, all I need was somebody who could ‘see through’ my thought and told me, it is alright to quit. However, Lauren, Kelly and Helena were from a low context culture countries where people did not read deep in between the lines, thus they thought that I simply wanted to have a shorter trip period.

Moreover, Lauren and Kelly thought that we should go to the same city together but visit attractions separately, since all of us got different attraction-to-visit lists. That was actually a typical American way of interpreting and evaluating things where they try to embrace the democracy and the freedom rights as great as possible. On the other hand, Helena did not quite appreciate it, as she felt that we should have fun together.

Just for a simple trip planning, because of the culture differences, we had experienced quite a number of misunderstandings in our communication. In the end, we still did not come up with a plan that satisfied everyone. We got good memories from the trip, but undeniably there was a little mess here or there.

I personally feel that, all these cultural issues we cannot entirely overcome them. Probably, all we need is to keep the differences but look for the similarities. Moreover, try to understand the other side rather than defending on your own.