by Barry Neild
It's that moment the international traveler knows only too well.
After consuming a delicious meal you start to feel queasy, your palms perspire and your eyes desperately rove for the exit signs.
Such symptoms can mean only one of two things. Either the prawn curry was a bad idea, or it's time to figure out how to tip. And what to tip.
Knowing how to tip can be a stressful business, particularly across Asia where reactions can range from delight to displeasure.
To help, we've compiled a guide to gratuities across the region, explaining how to tip and what to tip.
Most people anywhere are going to be happy to get a little something extra.
There?s no escaping wild wealth disparities in Asia, and tipping guidelines seem to exaggerate these further.
Upscale restaurants often add a service charge of up to 15 percent on top of your check.
Don't forget to tip your tour guide. Unless you're in North Korea, like these tourists. Meanwhile, someone working in a popular street restaurant a few storefronts away expects nothing on top of the tiny sum he charges for almost exactly the same meal.
One argument circulated by skinflints is that handing generous tips to poor folk in the service industry discourages them from pursuing a decent education. It also sets a cheapskate precedent that ?ruins it? for other budget travelers.
But look what a good education did for these miserable tourists. It left them believing that by withholding a few extra cents from a guy laboring away at a street cart they're doing a good thing.
Even if they?re right, let?s hope they order the prawn curry.
Tightfisted travelers love countries like China because they assume dirty capitalist concepts like tipping aren?t necessary.
But while running dog rewards might be scorned in backwater canteens, they're almost mandatory (though not required) in the glitzy haunts of China?s urban elite.
The same can be said for Laos and Vietnam.
You can guarantee that if anyone has translated the menu into English, the language of tips will also be spoken.
Tipping isn?t expected in cheaper restaurants, but no one is going to complain if you drop an extra five or 10 percent.
In some restaurants in China's tourist towns, there are two menus. The one with English names usually have higher prices. So consider a gratuity already included.
Likewise, there?ll be no objections from taxi drivers if you want to chuck them some change and round up the fare -- richly deserved if they get you from A to B without mounting the sidewalk.
Tour guides are a different matter. In the cutthroat world of bellowing at visitors through tiny megaphones, wages are often slashed in anticipation of a tourist top-up. If you don?t want to hear a grown adult sob into a cheap electronic amplifier, US$10-a-day should keep the tears at bay.
The communist exception is North Korea. While your tourist dollars would work wonders in the cash-strapped kingdom of the Kims, their possession might land ordinary citizens in a labor camp. Cigs, booze or cosmetics will serve as substitutes.
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