Burping

I had two burping experiences today - which is too much to just ignore.

My Taiwanese groupmate (whom I love to pieces) burps. I think it's just what they do there - just in the middle of class, a conversation or whatever. Well - today in class we were actually talking about cultural assumptions and managing across cultures (since all of us speaks three languages, and we have almost all lived abroad at some point, and we will most likely work in an international environment...). In the middle of that discussion, he burped. Loud. People turned around, but it didn't bother him.

Then - on the way home tonight, in the taxi, the taxi driver burped literally at least once every ten seconds. It seems like every time he breathed out, he burped. They weren't just clean, airy burps. They were really icky sounding - liquidy, junky and just gross. I felt really sick by the end of the ride. I asked him to stop right when he got off the highway and I walked the rest of the way home. I thought I was going to throw up. I mean literally every ten seconds - AT LEAST!

Is it culturally insensitive of me to ask him to stop burping for the twenty minutes I'm in his car?