Tipping

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?