Woman taunts tourists, accuses them of taking up space with luggage on train

Going overseas is often an exciting experience. But for one family visiting Singapore, their trip turned sour after an unpleasant encounter with a woman on the train. 

Reddit user Yoomzster posted on Monday (March 27) about an encounter she witnessed involving some tourists and a woman while onboard the train on the Downtown Line.

In the video included in the Reddit post, a woman is seen berating a family who were seated next to her at the end of the row with their luggage, accusing them of blocking the train entrance. 

The woman can also be seen speaking to a man offscreen: "Your bag is clearly blocking the seat. You are blocking the entrance!"

The man counters her, and the woman proceeds to threaten to file a police report, accusing him of calling her a racist.

The woman is then seen pointing to the child seated next to her and remarking: "You're parents... Your kid will grow up to be a brat as well."

[embed]https://www.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/123e2uf/encounter_with_a_possibly_racist_woman_on_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=w[/embed]

Speaking to AsiaOne, Yoomzster claimed that the woman had been hostile to the family from the moment she boarded the train.

Yoomzster also noted that the family's luggage and bags were kept as close to them as possible, adding that they were trying their best not to take up space.

Despite this, she said the woman still continued to yell at them. 

In the Reddit post, Yoomzster said she noticed that when an elderly man went to sit next to the woman, the latter readily moved her bag and umbrella away to make room for him to sit.

Yoomzster and the family happened to be alighting at the same station at Bukit Panjang, and that was when she approached the woman to tell her off, saying, "Look, your umbrella was on the other seat and the other passenger didn't have to shout at you to get you to make space. Why did you have to shout at them? Have some compassion."

According to Yoomzster, the woman replied: "Speak for yourself!"

Once Yoomzster and the family alighted from the train, she spoke to them.

She learned that they were tourists who had just arrived from Australia and that they were already having "a tough time finding their way [around] since leaving the airport".

Yoomzster told AsiaOne: "They were worried because they didn't know what to do, or whether or not they were going to be in trouble if the police were going to find them. [I was] really sad to hear all of that."

Commenters on the Reddit post were equally appalled by the incident, adding that such behaviour damages Singapore's reputation as a tourist destination. 

Some commenters also praised Yoomzster for standing up against the woman.

Others even felt that Yoomzster was considerate for censoring the woman's face in the video. 

Yoomzster told AsiaOne that she was in disbelief after seeing such horrible treatment first-hand. 

"I titled my Reddit post 'Encounter with a possibly racist woman' without knowing for certain if this incident is racial discrimination," she said. 

"But simply by looking at some of the comments in the post, it's clear that minorities empathise and have definitely experienced discrimination. This isn't something new."

Interracial couple encounters racist moment with Chinese man in lift

In another incident, TikTok user AmirahVgi shared a racist encounter she experienced when she and her Chinese husband took the lift with their neighbour, a Chinese man. 

In the video, Amirah mentioned that as soon as they entered the lift, the man "asked a very weird question".

According to Amirah, the man asked her husband in Chinese "if he will still follow her if Singapore chased the Malays back to Malaysia".

Amirah ends her video by stating: "I share this experience not to create trouble. It's just that I want to spread awareness that these kind of incidents still happen in our society and I feel like we should treat everyone with the same respect and dignity, regardless of race, ethnicity or background."

ALSO READ: 'You shouldn't be with a Chinese girl!' Man allegedly spits at interracial couple at Orchard Road mall

ashwini.balan@asiaone.com

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