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Rude awakening

Arrogance, aggression, spitting and slurping - it seems nothing can dissuade the intrepid traveller.

Mon dieu! Zut alors! Francophiles the world over are in uproar (probably) about the country's latest glittering honour. Incredible, you may think, but the French recently distinguished themselves by being voted the world's most unfriendly nation. They triumphed by the cliched landslide, knocking the rest of the world's grumps, grouches and grousers into a tri-cornered hat.

Our Gallic cousins won the malcontents' wooden shovel in a scientifically impeccable online poll conducted through travellers' website Where Are You Now? (founded by a Frenchman). According to 46 per cent of the 6,000 users surveyed at www.wayn.com, the French were also considered the world's 'most boring and most ungenerous' people.

The fact the survey was hosted by a British site, and the results were widely reported by a gleeful British press, might conceivably have coloured the results and the reaction. Slightly. The mutual antipathy, of course, has profound historical roots, stretching all the way back to 1982, when England's Bryan Robson scored what was then the fastest World Cup goal, against France, after 27 seconds.

I am British, I confess - and 'confess' often seems the correct verb at this juncture. But I love the French - I really do - with their dinky little Citroen 2CVs, cow-pat hats and unshaven female armpits. (Sorry, that's the Germans.) But British bias notwithstanding, the surly Parisian waiter of legend who sees every tourist as the anti-Christ; the enduring French pride; and the continuing bellyaching and mud slinging at cyclist Lance Armstrong, possibly history's finest athlete and career Tour de France hijacker, give the burgeoning numbers of visitors from cultures such as those of Southeast Asia a clue as to what they can expect in old Europe.

But hang on, Napoleon knockers. The French must be doing something right, because France is the biggest tourist attraction on the planet and has been for years. The World Tourism Organisation regularly puts France's pulling power at 75 million foreign tourists a year, or almost twice as many as that of the US.

Strident right-wing American commentators have the gall to call the Gauls 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys', even though the US populates its airport immigration desks with the sort of public relations executives who make starving great white sharks look companionable. Then there are the 'snap-happy Japs', as I've heard them called, ridiculed for moving in swarms dense enough to block the sun, never mind the Arc de Triomphe. Some Australians, meanwhile, having evolved so far away from the rest of the world, make a national sport out of being boorish.

When one's hosts are tipped to be as attractive as this, it makes one wonder why anybody travels at all. So much, so irritating. There is, however, nothing more than the width of a swinging baton separating official rudeness from aggression, especially when that aggression wears national uniform.

Glenn Wong and partner Catherine Leung, of Sai Kung, recently arrived in Morocco with dreams of sunshine, souks and sailing for Spain, but left in fear of incarceration, sullied by intimations of illegality. Of their dealings with Moroccan immigration officials at the border with Spain, in Ceuta, they were, he says, 'treated rudely, disrespectfully and even ridiculed, as if we were criminals'.

Wong, holder of a British passport, was waved through. But the fist of international misunderstanding was extended when Leung's HKSAR passport was produced. Officials disappeared with it for 30 minutes, forcing Wong and Leung to wait in the sun, before reappearing and escorting them to what Wong, in a letter to the consul general of Morocco in Hong Kong, calls an 'interrogation room'.

Eventually every item in their luggage was removed and minutely examined in what Wong calls an 'offensive manner'. Some time later came the explanation that the border guards considered Leung's passport 'a Chinese fake'; Wong believes they failed to recognise Hong Kong as an issuing authority. Requests to contact Chinese and Hong Kong diplomatic staff were refused and when,

Wong says, a call was placed from Leung's mobile phone to the Chinese embassy in London, the 'offensive' Moroccan officer in charge yelled at them to hang up immediately.

Despite their suspicions, the Moroccan functionaries advised the pair to try to enter Spain via Tangiers, an hour away, which led to a run-in with an 'angry' and 'hostile' immigration chief who, Wong says, threatened to have them imprisoned if they did not leave the country immediately. They emplaned for Hong Kong the next day - in Casablanca. A 'devastated' Wong, who says he is waiting for an apology and compensation from the Moroccan government, estimates the cost of a lost week in Spain and additional airfares to be almost $10,000.

Being confronted by bad manners abroad is one thing; exporting them is another. Our mainland brothers are now venturing overseas in exodus-type numbers; unfortunately, complaints about their 'uncivilised' behaviour are on the return flight.

According to Xinhua, Beijing is growing increasingly sensitive to international perceptions of its image, particularly with the 2008 Olympic starting pistol almost loaded. Having suddenly woken up to the aural assaults of noodle slurpers and the biohazards inherent in spitting, the government, says Xinhua, has ordered travelling countrymen to mind their manners. 'Spitting, slurping food and jumping queues merely disgusts people at home, but it is intolerable in other countries,' a recent report said. It added that Singapore hotel staff had found mainland tourists spitting in their rooms and that airlines had received complaints from other passengers infuriated by incessant chattering.

Meanwhile, spitting, lighting up in no-smoking zones and a lack of courtesy have drawn flak in Hong Kong, the holiday destination of choice for the almost 13 million mainland guests who have called on us under the Individual Visit Scheme. As of May 1, that scheme has been available to the residents of 44 mainland cities.

Back in Beijing, the bad press has resulted in an etiquette campaign that means you can now be fined for 'gobbing' in public: watch out, watch out, the spit squad's about! 'Enforcement teams' have been deployed on the streets of the capital and have the power to fine phlegm-projectile marksmen up to 50 yuan, says (deep breath) Zhang Huiguang, director of the Capital Ethic Development Office.

And the spitters can't always see the lawmen riding after them: some are deployed in nondescript street-cruising white vans equipped with cameras to catch offenders in the act of discharge. Great expectorations are resulting in more coughing up than ever, says Zhang.

I'm all for not having my shoes decorated by a new tubercular friend, but surely the decision to travel implies some acceptance of habits at your destination. Travel is supposed to be an international bridge builder, so why don't we all just kiss and make up? As long as no one's hacking. Or stinking of garlic.

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