It never ceases to amaze me how plain daft some people are. You're a stranger in a strange land and you shouldn't expect people to understand everything you say, where even gestures are different. For example, using a finger to beckon someone in Vietnam is an insult, it's used to encourage recalcitrant animals to come forward, such as a rightly suspicious dog when you're trying to get it into the pot for supper. The correct way to beckon a human is a sort of palm down wriggling of fingers, presumably not because you want to eat them for supper.

There was an American colonel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, whose modus operandi when a local didn't understand him was to simply repeat everything he had just said a thousand decibels louder:

'General Farquart here, it's perfectly simple. Speak loudly and clearly and Johnny foreigner will soon understand you. If he doesn't, bayonet the bugger for being impertinent. Now pass the port and thrash the servants soundly.'

You get the idea.

The following occurred while I was in a Saigon restaurant, where a middle aged American was attempting to order his lunch.

Waitress in Vietnamese pidgin English,

'What you want?'

Friendly, unduly optimistic, customer in rapid, broad Americanese:

'I'll have the chilli burger, I want it medium hot, hold the tomayto sauce, I don't want French fries, perhaps I'll have fried potatoes, and the potatoes can I have them sliced into quarters and the dressing, make if low-cal French? No mayonnaise. Hey! What'll I drink? I know! A coke! A diet coke, with 1 cube of ice, wouldn't want to drown it now, and a thin slice of lemon, no, make that a lime.'Â

he said grinning like a five year old schoolboy. I sometimes wonder what planet the Americans are on.The waitress looked at him blankly, a fixed smile on her face. There was a loud pause. Eventually she said,

'What you want?'

The American sighed despairingly,

'Looks like you don't understand American' he sighed in resignation.

Making a great display of his disappointment at her inability to understand him, and clearly unwilling to make repeat performance of his enthusiastic ordering, he gathered his bag and left, muttering,

'Maybe I'll go somewhere that they can speak American.'

The waitress saw me watching the cameo and looked at me quizzically.

'What he want?'

she inquired in her best, um, American. I shrugged,

'Burger?'Â I offered.

'Ah', she nodded, understanding, 'Buggah!'

There was a seconds pause, then she frowned,

'Why he not say?'

But it isn't just the Americans of course, the British can be just as precious. Three pink scrubbed British women with stupid soft toys dangling from their pristine day sacks are invited to inspect a room in a guesthouse next door to the restaurant, where the going rate is $2 a night. They disappear upstairs and I watch, waiting with amusement, I somehow know the outcome of this one. Three, two, one...whoosh! They practically sprint out of the 'guesthouse' entrance in disgust. What was it, cockroaches? Rats? A tub of water for a shower? Nope,

'Did you see that room? I bet it hasn't been dusted in a month!' one of them declares.

I mean, what were they expecting for $2 a night? Do they have any idea what they would get in London for $60 dollars a night? Free cockroaches and rats guaranteed!

yechydda,