Traveling to a foreign country is exhilarating. It is an amazing gift to be able to see and experience different places and cultures around the world. But traveling out of one’s own country brings its own set of challenges. There can be language barriers; there are unfamiliar streets and public transportation systems to navigate and different currencies to compute. On top of that, we must figure out how to properly tip service personnel at restaurants, hotels, spas and taxis in any given country .

Imagine this scenario: you are in a small local cafe far from the tourist crowds. In a quiet neighborhood, you find yourself the perfect perch for enjoying a meal and a glass of wine. The local streets become your stage. Time passes, minutes become hours as you watch and become part of the unfolding neighborhood scene. But, eventually all good things must come to an end. It is time for you to pay the check and head back out the streets. But, how much do you leave for a tip?

The rules of tipping etiquette vary widely around the globe and it is important to understand local gratuity customs and requirements. Like with other local traditions, doing a little research ahead of time will help you blend in with the natives and have a more authentic and comfortable experience. Most destination-specific travel guides offer some advice about tipping. (Personally I use the Lonely Planet Encounter guides. They have all the essential information you need when you are out exploring a city – restaurants, sights, shopping and entertainment – and they are small enough to fit in your purse or a coat pocket.) That said, here is a gratuity guide you can follow when gallivanting around the globe:

Tipping in the United States of American and Canada

Tipping is important for all service personnel in both of these countries and is normally not included in your bill. Tip a minimum of 15% and at least 20% for outstanding service at restaurants, salons and spas. Taxi drivers appreciate a tip of 10 to 15% of the fare and hotel porters should get $1 to 2 per bag.

Tipping in Latin America

A service charge is often included in your check at restaurants in Central and South America. If it is not, generally 10 to 15% tip is expected. For other services 10% is good, and porters appreciate $1 US per bag. In Brazil and Peru tipping is not really expected except in restaurants. The last thing to remember in Central America is that if you are staying at a luxury or all-inclusive resort gratuity may be included in the cost of your stay, in which case tipping will not be necessary.

Tipping in Europe

In many countries in western Europe a service charge is added to your total bill at restaurants and other service establishments. Check the bill. If service is included, leave some change or round up to the next euro. If service is not included, leave 10 to 15%. Again, give hotel porters 1 to 2 euros per bag. Gratuity in eastern Europe varies widely, so either check your guidebook or consult with your hotel concierge or a local tour guide for advice.

Tipping in the Middle East and North Africa

In this area of the world, a gratuity charge is often added to your bill at restaurants and hotels. In most countries if gratuity is not included, you should tip between 5 and 15% in cash. In Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, however, a 15 to 20% tip is expected. Tip other service personnel a similar rate and give porters $1 to 3 US depending on the country. If you visit a mosque give $1 US to the individual who hands out robes for women to wear and $1 US to the individual who minds your shoes, which you must leave at the door. Lastly, in most Middle Eastern and North African countries, it is important to tip discreetly.

Tipping in Africa

Tipping 10 to 15% is customary in Sub-Saharan Africa. Give porters the equivalent of $1 US per bag and give parking guards or attendants about $1 to 2 US. Local currency is appreciated in South Africa and several other countries, as it is difficult for many individuals to change currency.

Tipping in Asia/Pacific

In China tipping is against the rules; however, you may tip hotel staff, massage therapists and similar service personnel discretely for outstanding service. Japan is also a non-tipping society. That said, if you do want to tip tour guides, ryokan staff, or other service personnel give them yen in an envelope. But, do not be offended if the individual declines the gratuity. The last non-tipping country in Asia is South Korea, however most restaurant and hotel staff expect tips from foreign tourists.

In the rest of Asia, tipping is expected and appreciated. In most cases 10 to 15% is customary, slightly higher for outstanding service. Always check to see if a service charge is included in your bill, and if not, 10 to 15% tip is expected in most countries. It is important to note that in some developing countries the staff at restaurants and hotels may or may not see a portion of that charge, so you can still leave an additional tip in cash if you want to make sure you thank the staff for their service.

Australia and New Zealand have generally accepted western tipping standards, so 10 to 15% for restaurants, spas and taxis or $1 to 2 US dollars for a porter to carry your bag is customary. ** See addition below regarding tipping in Australia

And that brings us almost completely around the globe! One last note for Travel Belles: in many countries around the world people appreciate being paid or receiving tips in US dollars, British pounds or euros, however, this is not always the case. While these currencies might be more valuable and stable, often they can be hard to spend or convert for local people. It is important to become familiar with the local economy and learn what is customary.

If dollars or euros give you more bargaining power in the markets, then service people will most likely appreciate receiving tips in those currencies. Still, if local vendors are not willing to accept these currencies do not tip in them either.

Happy travel tipping! If you’re not sure exactly what country you’re visiting next, bookmark or print out this global gratuity guide so it will be handy on your next foreign trip!

* Photo provided by the author.

** Added Jan. 18 regarding Australia, from an Australian friend:  ”We don’t tip in Australia. Some restaurants have a suggested tip of 10%, but it’s just a suggestion, no pressure.”

“Khadijah wants to henna your hands,“ Aziz translated for me. It was a caught in the headlights moment, as getting my hands hennaed was only slightly above being held captive in the Western Sahara for my last few days in Morocco.

Once glance at Khadijah, however, melted any resistance. She was a young 20-year old mother, from an isolated Berber village high in the Atlas Mountains and it was important to her. A nod and her face lit up.

Aziz – who was 37 and spoke Berber, Arabic, French and English fluently – and Khadijad had married a year earlier. The plan was that Khadijah was going to get an education and then the two of them get jobs overseas. Tiliaf’s arrival, however, changed those plans. They lived in Rabat, Morocco’s capital city, where Aziz had a teaching job.

Aziz and I finished off the wine and solved a few more problems of the world. Just as we got to the bottom of the glasses, Khadijah appeared holding a bowl in one hand and stirring it with the other. The earthy smell of henna mixed with warm water wafted through the room.

Khadija sat at my feet and in sign language, told me to take off my rings. Giggling slightly she put a large dollop of henna on my right hand and then closed my fingers over it. Next it was the left hand. Reaching into the pocket on her jalaba, she produced some masking tape and a couple of plastic bags. She taped my fingers to my palms and then put a bag on each hand and secured them to my wrists.

“Leave the bags on for as long as you can,” Asiz advised me.

I cautiously lowered myself onto the sofa bed and went to sleep to the sound of crinkling plastic. Having a small bladder, though, sleeping through the night is rare. About 4:30 a.m., I opened one eye and then the other and remembered where I was. Bending my bagged hands at the elbow, I cautiously set out for the bathroom. The corridor was dark, but eventually I grouped my way there. The reality of the situation dictated that I undo the bags, as there was no other way to accomplish the task.

Ripping the bag off my left hand with my teeth, I still had to get the tape off from around my fingers. I momentarily had a vision of looking like a fox trying to gnaw off her arm to escape. Eventually my still-clenched hands were free. Slowly I opened first one and then the other hand and deposited the henna into the plastic bags. Running water over the hands, I waited until it ran clean and then washed briskly with soap.

The pattern – the color of rich terracotta – had embedded itself into my palms in an interesting design. Up until now I’d never paid much attention to the art, and dismissed it as it looked as though someone had played in the mud. When I studied it though, I began to appreciate what people saw in it.

After breakfast, I thanked Khadijah and headed back to Casablanca. Through Aziz I let her know that she had expanded my cultural horizons. When asked how long it would last Aziz said about a month. Actually, it was closer to two.

My Moroccan friends approved. “Oh, your hands look so beautiful. And it is such a wonderful Berber pattern,” gushed Sana, my adopted little sister. At my final party at the Churchill Club I got a lot of compliments on the artwork. Khadijah had done a good job.

Three days later I was on the plane to central Canada. Shortly after I arrived at my parents’ I was talking with my sister.

“What do you mean ‘happened to?’ I replied in a disdainful tone, waving my hands in the air for all to see. “Don’t you realize that this is living Berber art?”

“Yeah, well maybe,” injected my brother, “but it looks like you stuck your paws in iodine.”

I replied with a sniff and proceeded to deliver a cultural lecture to an audience that was ignoring me, and waxed eloquently about how it was an ancient art and that even boys had their hands hennaed the night before their circumcision ceremony.

A week later I arrived in Santiago, Chile, my new home. The color had started to fade a bit, but it was still a dark reddish-brown. I caught the Chileans – from the people at customs to those in cafés – quietly stealing glances at the palms of my hands. They were too polite to ask; my Spanish was too bad to even try to explain, so the only thing to do was leave it alone.

Leaving Casablanca, Morocco after 18 months wearing the culture proved to be a wonderful way to make the transition. Eventually, my skin tone returned to normal. But when that happened I felt as though I’d lost a henna friend.

I pointed to the Peter’s projection map on the wall behind my desk. “Easy. There are two major blank spaces: North Africa and South America.” He shot me a knowing look as he, too, is a travel junkie.

Although I started travelling in 1978 on a Eurail pass, I didn’t become obsessive-compulsive about it until I spent two years in Nigeria from 1981 to 1983. There I took overland jaunts to neighboring West African countries. The travel bug bit deep.

After my second round-the-world trip in 1992 and 1993, I sat down with a map – being a purist it was, of course, a Peter’s projection – and filled in the 29 countries I’d visited: dotted lines for flying, solid ones for overland travel. Then I added earlier trips and it evolved into a work of art, a personal travel statement.

Every time I took a trip I added the information. Countries and years are listed in the bottom left-hand corner, along with a list of the countries I’ve lived in. Another thing on my to-do list was to visit the seven wonders of the world, so they, too, get their own column.

When I left Sydney for Casablanca six weeks after I talked with Leo, I had reduced my material possessions to fit into two suitcases and a carry-on. During my 18 months in Morocco I managed to add Portugal, Algeria and Tunisia to the list. And when Ramadan was looming on the horizon, I decided to pack up and move to Santiago, Chile to start filling in the South American hole.

My dog-eared, travel-junkie map is now tucked away in a desk drawer for handy reference. Being a bit of a Luddite, I prefer something I can touch, point to and sigh over when it comes to the trips I have yet to take.

With the digital age in full swing, there are many online options for you technically savvy Travel Belles. At this free map site, for instance, you can have fun plotting your travels on the interactive map. Then you can download and print copies, post it to Facebook and send it to your friends. You might even want to jazz it up with blog links from various destinations.

What you want to create is a travel overview, an immediate reference of where you have been. To that end, a map and a list – either hands-on or digital – is an ideal way to track your travels.

A word of caution, though. When people look at my map they remark about how much I’ve travelled; when I look at it, however, I see the places I haven’t yet visited.

I stand at a pay phone and drop in a couple coins. I’m calling a hostel on the recommendation of a fellow traveler. I dial the number scribbled on a scrap of paper and make my reservation. I heave on my backpack and head to the train station. Because I didn’t check the timetables, I have to wait an hour for the train. When I arrive at my destination, I hunt for a map with a big red dot that will tell me: “You are here.” I want to plot my way to the hostel, but the scrap of paper has sunk to the bottom of my bag and gotten lost amidst other bits and scraps. Anyway, the street I need isn’t on the map. I ask for directions. I get lost in the foreign streets. I ask for more directions until I arrive, exhausted.

The above scene — me, nearly ten years ago — has already become archaic. Pay phones? Scraps of paper? Maps with big red dots? Almost every minor detail of traveling has been replaced by electronic devices that boast a super-human efficiency in basically everything. A hostel reservation is made in a flash after consulting reviews ahead of time; timetables are online or have their own apps; as for maps, there are so many electronic options. The paragraph becomes: I take the train, walk to the hostel, check in, then start to explore the city.

The thousands of travel apps available can lend a hand to travelers in a myriad situations. They include but aren’t limited to: packing lists, maps, travel itineraries, updated flight information, airport maps, postcard creation and delivery, city guides, historical tours, language help, hotel recommendations and the answer to the burning question, “Where should we eat?”

© GIS - Fotolia.com

Many of these apps save time and worry, organizing the details of a trip that are often chaotic. As a friend and frequent business traveler was telling me recently, there’s an app that informs him about delays of connecting flights before they are announced over the airport loudspeaker. Apps save the weary traveler valuable time that is better spent enjoying a well-deserved vacation or, as in the case of my friend, they attempt to diminish the hassles of travel.

As for me, I am an app bystander. I am amazed at their variety but continue to clutch at a stubborn nostalgia for scraps of paper. I will use the computer as much as I need to prepare for a trip — making reservations, researching some sights that interest me — but once I’m there it’s only for emails, Skype, blog posts (if the trip is long), and maps. Traveling allows me the indulgence of disconnection, which is something I never take for granted. And here I mean more than the disconnection from electronics, but that wonderful experience of being thrown into a place that forces me to test the limits of myself; to disconnect from the ordinary and step, hands free, into the extraordinary. ( I should post-script this paragraph with the fact that I don’t have a cell phone. I know, pretty strange.)

My bystander penchant encourages me to often wonder if the advantage of apps compensates for what we lose. (Isn’t that always the question with technology?) An aimless search for a hostel that lasts hours is not a pleasant way to spend time, but it is an interesting way to begin a relationship with a new city. It’s a toss up.

One thing I greatly admire about travel apps is their element of choice.

What do you think?

* Top photo property of The Travel Belles ©

Even if you are a person who “needs” two huge suitcases and a portable jewellery box to go away for the weekend, there is hope. Think small, portable and cute. A carry-on size bag with wheels is really all you need to travel for a month or two. If you plan on bringing a lot of things back with you, buy a cheap bag there for the return trip.

1. Organise the clothes you think you will need into piles on the bed – shirts, jeans, dresses. Stick to easy color schemes – black and white or green and grey – because it makes the process easier. Keep accessories to a minimum.

2. Discard half of each pile. It will take determination, but it can be done. Stay focused on what you really need, not what you want to take. Repeat this step until you are down to where you can fit everything into the carry-on bag with some room to spare. Rolled clothes take up less space and don’t require as much ironing.

3. Use the rule ‘”two outfits” and “something acceptable to go out in.” If you are staying in a 5-star hotel you can afford to send things out to be cleaned. If you are backpacking in a hostel, you can wash one outfit and wear the other. If you suddenly end up with an invitation to a spectacular see-and-be-seen party you can always buy something from Saks or at a second-hand shop, as the budget dictates. Even overseas – such as the middle of Nigeria or the north of Morocco — there are always places to buy used clothes.

4. Get mini-size bottles for shampoo, use a small tube of toothpaste and take only the cosmetics you need. Check department stores for trial sizes. If you run out of body lotion on your trip, buy the smallest bottle possible, refill yours and give the remains to somebody who will use it, like the woman who cleans your room.

5. Plan on wearing or carrying your coat or jacket as it takes up too much room to pack.

Bonus Belle Tip: Invest in a large computer bag or serious handbag with an across-the-body-strap for your laptop, camera and other valuables.

Warning: You may become a bit smug about people lined up waiting for their suitcase, as you sail by to begin your light-luggage travel style.

*Photos by and property of the author.

Is it ever appropriate to recline one’s seat during air travel?

Even though your average Travel Belle is generally smaller than her Travel Beau counterparts, physically speaking (I personally am 5’4″), when it comes to a The Great Seat Back Debate this small belle has a big opinion.

The questions revolve around whether or not anyone should recline their airline seats. Who is and who isn’t entitled to more airline legroom? How much space are we really talking about here anyway? The discussion of whether to recline or not  has reached new heights over what is considered “correct” at 35, 000 feet.

The subject and the intense feelings surrounding it come as no surprise. I was on the front lines of this battle several weeks ago on both legs of round-trip air travel from Charlotte to Rome. Both were unequivocally the most uncomfortable, potentially volatile overseas flights I had ever been on. Why? Because of the escalation of seat wars.

What I take issue with are blanket assertions made about what is “rude,” “common sense,” “totally fine,” or “my right.” Humanity on any given airplane  is wildly diverse; we are different people with different backgrounds and different perspectives.  The fact is that whenever things are totally arbitrary, it is only natural for humans to arbitrate. Besides there  is nothing natural or easy about being bivouacked together in a metal tube hurling 600 miles per hour through the atmosphere.

After giving this a lot of thought my solution is quite simple:

At any given time in coach class, either all passengers should be required to recline, or no passengers should be allowed to recline.

On the surface use of a reclining mechanism in an airplane seat, appears to be a kind gesture by the airline industry, a reassuring nod to comfort, as if to say, “We care about you!” But I seriously doubt there are many of us left who buy into that.

How I see it is that the fact that seats can be reclined at will is shirking responsibility from airlines to passenger, and  extremely unfair to fliers of all shapes and sizes, and I would guess to the flight attendants who attend to them.

Setting up Camp: Charlotte to Rome

I watched as the couple who were going to be seated directly in front of me for the duration of the ten hour flight came aboard the plane and settled in. Upon spotting me, they looked  very glad to see me. He, a western European gentleman with an easy smile was affable, his expression,  practically jubilant; his wife, who  glanced towards me as he continued to stuff their carry-ons in the overhead compartment, was perceptibly relieved. Naively I thought perhaps I knew them, or maybe I reminded them of somebody.

While I was still thinking how friendly they were, he reclined his seat back as far as it would go. Yes, the one person in the entire cabin who had to be asked to put his seat up by the flight attendant before take off, was right in front of me. (I bet he’s always in front of you too, right?) This perpetrator just happened to have salt and pepper hair and a nice smile. Sure enough as soon as we were airborne, he once again put his seat back as far as it would go.

Trouble on the Right Flank

At this point I was more aware of the the family of four who were sitting next to me in three seats, one of whom was a baby of the kind who can walk,  who isn’t really a baby at all except by airline standards. She, adorable, but wiggly and tense sitting on her mother’s lap, was working her way into a frenzied shrieking festival that would be sustained with only ocassional intermissions for the duration of the flight.

It turned out that the reclined seat in front of me and the screaming toddler who wasn’t being allowed to toddle, were only the beginning of my problems. The couple whom I will refer to as the duo of  darkness (I never would get a look at the man seated directly behind me) for the remainder of this story, had slithered in unnoticed.

Surprise attack from the Southern Front

Mealtime, where we all ate like little T-rexes, elbows pressed in at our chests, with insubstantial cutlery, came and went.  I removed my contact lenses, took a sleeping pill, setting out to endure along with 400 or so of my new closest friends, our flight into darkness over the Atlantic. I wrapped myself in a blanket, and…  I admit it, I reclined.

Just as I had closed my eyes waiting for the haze of the sleeping pill to overtake me, an index finger with a bone to pick, darted through the vulnerable space between the seats that I had opened up in my reclination.  The entity poked me, fast and with all the brute strength a good finger poking can have.

Startled, I sat up. Because of the presumption and intimacy of a poke styled in such a fashion, my first thought was that it was a family member and something must be really wrong. I then followed the line of fire, angling my head to look back  behind me. It was there that I met the steely glare and scrunched up face of the designated finger poker, the female half of the dark duo.

Without trace of politesse or even any voice, she mouthed, “PUT YOUR SEAT UP,” gesturing with several upward kicky motions with the palm of her hand that was home to the finger. She looked at me as if she was the one with every right to be the stunned one between us, as if I have committed a heinous crime against her kinfolk, or butted in front of her in the line at WalMart.

This is where I made the decision to avoid taking a path that could land the entire plane full of people at the nearest airport, and me and the dark duo in The Washington Post. Nope, I knew the only right thing to do was to let go of any feelings of air rage and suck it up.

In other words like the  good polite solid citizen wimp a** I am, I obeyed. I put my seat up.

Unfortunately the familiar feelings of shame, and just wanting everything to be ok that initially flooded me, lingered, apparently taking the  form of some kind of adrenaline. I say this  because in spite of the sleeping pill,  I would not fall asleep until 7 hours or so later, just seconds before the plane’s landing gear went down.

What is wrong with this picture? From this female’s perspective, everything. If you want to debate the iniquities in our culture based on sex, size and appearances, I have a list as long as my arm, probably even as long as your arm too.

It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for how ridiculous and uncomfortable it must be for a tall person to sit comfortably in coach class for a long flight. But what about my comfort and basic rights, and those of the many others on any given flight of whom none of us know their real stories of bad backs, necks and who knows what other issues?

The Western Front, aka:the flight home

Two days before leaving Italy to fly home, I injured myself on a curb. I was on crutches, but my fellow passengers couldn’t see this as they filled in the seats around us for the marathon flight.  Even if they had, I’m not convinced very many would care. (But based on experience I know a few of them would have.) After my injury I contacted the airline and had tried to no avail to switch to a more comfortable seat, such as one in the bulkhead.

This flight was only slightly better than the first, as far as seat wars. It lacked the factor of physical intimidation, and instead of sitting in a middle row with a screaming baby who wasn’t a baby at all by anyone’s standards except the airlines, I was in a window seat next to my own daughter.

Neither of us were able to recline at all, our seats were both physically immovable. I’m pretty sure this was due to the fact that  the uber prepared travelers behind us had invested in some “knee weaponry” to defend their legroom, such as Gadget Duck’s Knee Defender.

For the airlines to not have clear rules for this reclining seat back business ignores a big responsibility. As long as people who fly have different ideas about these things – which will be forever  - passing the problem along to air passengers to arbitrate among themselves is a losing and risky proposition.  What’s left of today’s friendly skies does not need to contend with being what amounts to an unsupervised flying preschool, a form of social Darwinism.

Cease Fire: A few ideas

If it’s that unreasonable for a tall person to sit in one of the “less premium” airline seats, there should be a more reasonably priced alternative to offering them the option to buy a business or first class ticket. A good start would be making all those new “premium economy” seats available for a reasonable charge available first to people with real legroom or other health challenges.

Or how about the airlines come up with some hard and fast rules, about when it is required to “put your seat in the upright position” and especially  in the case of long flights, when it is required to recline. No finger poking allowed, or even encouraged.

What are your thoughts on the battle over airline legroom? Is it right or rude to recline airline seats?