Aussies on Holiday ... OMG..

[Used to be broken 147]

This is old, and you may have seen it .. but came up on a search related to something else and I could not help myself.. :rofl:

Wedgies and petty theft tie up consular staff

Author: Tim Elliott

Date: 23/05/2009

Words: 437

Source: SMH

Publication: Sydney Morning Herald

Section: News and Features

Page: 1

TOUCHING up a Singapore Airlines flight attendant, giving drinkers "wedgies" at Oktoberfest and pilfering bar mats from Phuket bars. Australians love to travel and we are, it seems, finding ever more unorthodox ways of extending our time overseas - even if it means bunking down in the lock-up.

"Australians go everywhere, and everywhere they go they get into trouble," a senior official from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says. "It makes you proud."

DFAT's consular division in Canberra has 55 staff, and half of them work full-time on the 1500 cases of Australians in strife overseas. Some involve death, missing persons and medical evacuations, but many are of the Annice Smoel "bar mat bandit" variety, trivial incidents that account for a large slab of consular resources.

"Touching up cabin crew is quite common," the DFAT official says. "On Singapore Airlines, for instance, even grabbing a stewardess by the wrist can get you an 'outrage of modesty' charge, which we see a bit. And Australians, usually women, can't seem to keep their fingers off stuff when they are transiting through airports, either. We had a woman caught stealing toiletries in Bangkok airport last year."

Men, on the other hand, are better at "offensive behaviour like pissing in pot plants and crashing jet-skis".

Midair meltdowns are also common. Terrance George, 57, of Melbourne, hit the headlines last week for lashing out at flight attendants who tried to move him from his seat on a Qantas flight to London. The navy officer had reportedly been making unwanted advances to a fellow passenger.

"Often alcohol is the catalyst," the DFAT source says. "Two years ago we had three young Australian men who went round at Oktoberfest giving people 'huggy wedgies', where you walk up, hug a person and yank up their underwear. They thought it was hilarious but they were arrested and we had to help them get legal advice."

A Sydney barrister, Ben Clark, says offences that are regarded as innocuous by most Australians can be serious overseas. In February he represented two Sydney men who were jailed for two days in Phuket and ordered to pay $1000 compensation for stealing a 50-cent picture from a street vendor.

In Thailand, says Mr Clark, "penalties for crimes committed at night are far more severe than if the same crime were committed during the day".

And the Land of Smiles is a clear favourite with Aussie travellers. "Our embassy in Bangkok gets by far the largest volume of Australians behaving badly of anywhere in world," the DFAT official says.

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"Australians go everywhere, and everywhere they go they get into trouble," a senior official from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says. "It makes you proud."

I love Australians. Haha.