You don’t often see male friends walking hand in hand along the seafront in Sliema, but in India, men regularly hold hands to denote kinship. Similarly, slipping off your shoes and entering the St John’s Co-Cathedral barefoot would seem a little odd, but across the Middle East, it’s completely taboo to enter a mosque while shod.
In Asia if you eat everything on your plate, your host will presume you are still hungry and serve you more until you have to beg for mercy- Helen Raine
Taboo comes from the Polynesian word for ‘forbidden’ and pretty much wherever you go in the world there’ll be a new way to offend the locals that you never evenimagined.
To smooth your passage around the world, here is the quick fire guide to avoiding offence and possibly imprisonment because of a something as simple as a gesture.
Tipping
In most of Europe, leaving a tip is an indication of good service and not an obligation. Not so in North America. Tipping is virtually mandatory, as waiters don’t earn minimum wage and have to pay income tax on their projected tips.
Anything less than 15 per cent indicates that you were unhappy with the food or the service and not leaving a tip at all can actually lead to you being followed out of the restaurant by waiting staff. At the very least, you won’t be welcome if you go back.
It’s not just in restaurants where a tip is a serious matter either. Bartenders would expect around $1 per drink or 15 per cent of the total bill, hairdressers 10-20 per cent, bellboys $1 or $2 per bag, taxi drivers 10-15 per cent and tour guides around 15 per cent.
So keep your wallet filled with single dollar bills so you don’t have to endure the icy glare of an enraged server.
Chop chop
Unless you want to horrify your fellow diners by bringing the graveyard into the dining room, never leave your chopsticks sticking out of a bowl of rice in Asia. It reminds people of the incense sticks that they use to mark graves and is a sign of impending misfortune that will cause a ripple of dismay around the room.
Instead, put your chopsticks on a rest if you’re pausing for thought or across the top of your bowl if you’ve finished. Don’t use them to spear food or to serve it either.
Suck it up
The Japanese and Chinese like their noodles good and hot, and to ensure this, they slurp them down at lightning speed with a slightly open mouth. The resulting noise level is hard to get used to for a European, haunted as we are by our mothers’ commands to eat with our mouths closed.
However, silent noodle eating is an indication that you are not enjoying the food, so forget your Western sensibilities and get slurping straight from the bowl. In Singapore, you can also follow up with a polite burp to show you enjoyed dinner.
Finger licking good
In Asia, licking your fingers is considered pretty disgusting, no matter how much slurping of noodles and eating with fingers may have gone on beforehand. You’ll have your hosts scrambling for a napkin and thinking your manners are akin to the dog’s.
Clinking beer glasses
The Hungarians don’t clink their beer glasses together as a toast. This is allegedly because after the 1848 revolution against the Habsburg Empire, the Austrians toasted the executions of Hungarian martyrs this way. The Hungarians responded by banning the toast for 150 years. The time limit has expired, but the tradition goes on.
Cleaning your plate
In many countries in Asia, particularly Cambodia and China, if you eat everything on your plate, your host will presume you are still hungry and serve you more until you literally have to beg for mercy to get them to stop. Worse, if there is no more left, they will be mortified that they have not served you enough.
Matters of the sole
In much of Asia and the Middle East, the soles of your feet are considered unclean. That’s why Iraqi journalist Muntadher al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush; he intended to insult the President rather than injure him (he got three years in prison for his trouble).
So don’t show the bottoms of your feet when you sit down. Rather, keep your feet flat on the floor or sit like Buddha with the feet facing in towards you.
Canoodling
Public displays of affection are seriously frowned upon in the Middle East. In 2010, British estate agent Charlotte Adams was jailed for three weeks for kissing a friend in public. She ended up sharing a cell withfive others including a pregnant prostitute.
Michelle Palmer and Vince Acors were also jailed in 2008 for having sex on a Dubai beachand another Briton (not acoincidence; Britons are arrested more often proportionately in the Middle East than any other nationality) was arrested for stripping down to her bikini ina shopping centre after a row with a local woman about herrevealing clothing.
Even if you don’t get hauled off to jail, kissing and cuddling in public is likely to give very widespread offence.
A pat on the head
The head is considered sacred in Asia, so don’t pat children (or adults for that matter) on the head
Keep it right
The left hand is generally considered unclean in most Muslim and Hindu societies, because people use it to perform their ablutions (and toilet paper is not widely used), so it’s imperative to eat only with the right and not to touch people or objects with the left.
Hand signals
Gestures are particularly problematic as they are culture specific. Giving someone the ‘OK’ sign (with thumb and forefinger joined in a circle) in Brazil does not mean everything is alright; it signals “you are an a******”.
In Asian countries, pointingwith the forefinger in public isconsidered quite rude, but the V sign (with palm outwards) is used ubiquitously to mean peace, especially in photographs.
Turn this same gesture around though and you have a rather more offensive gesture favoured mainly by the Brits, Australians and New Zealanders. George Bush discovered this to his cost when he tried to give a group of Australian farmers the peace sign and accidentally flashed them the highly offensive ‘Vs’ instead.
This gesture is said to originate from archers at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, where the French had vowed to cut off the arrow-shooting fingers of the English. The English proved victorious though, and contemptuously showed off their two fingers, still intact.
Snap happy
Photographing people without asking for permission is pretty rude the world over, but in Tibet, some people believe it affects their soul. The aborigines in Australia also ask people not to photograph their sacred sites for the same reason.
Blowing it
In Japan, blowing your nose in public is seen as offensive. You can either join them in sniffing copiously or retire to the bathroom with your tissue.