This is the scene at a place called Flightless Bird cafe in Cat Bah Island at 11:30pm. What you can't see is the Gin and Tonics in our hands and what you can't hear is the happy cackling. But the point of this story is that since I left the good ol' US of A, I haven't tipped anybody anything. Not once. Not in New Zealand, or Australia, not Samoa, Bali, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam or Malaysia. Tipping doesn't exist. Sometimes your bill will include a 'service fee' so that's the built in tip, but that is very rare.
I posted the above photo on my facebook page, with the caption, "$1 pedicures" and my sister Kelly commented that we should have tipped $20. But we didn't. No tip. And they were trying to close and we kept them open drinking their $2 Gin and Tonics and making them show us their 5-week old puppies that were supposed to be sleeping upstairs. And, I had not an ounce of guilt over any of it.
Have I become a major jerk-wad? Probably. Yesterday a man put a spoon in my rice because he saw me struggling with my chopsticks and I pushed him away and said, "don't touch my food." In my defense he fingered the bra I was drying on the bus earlier in the night and laughed. When that happened, I pushed him away and said, "don't touch my bra." Also, after Summer took a couple photos of the bus, he grabbed her camera, tugged on her shirt and tried to photograph down it. So like, dude, stay away from my rice, OK?
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