How do you handle going to a country where you don’t speak the language?

People who interact with foreign visitors usually speak at least some English.

The worst situation in this regard was Taiwan because they don’t speak English at all anywhere. And it turns out that you don’t really need to communicate verbally. When you want to check into a hotel, you are there for an obvious reason, so they just show you the room and then the price on a calculator. Same goes for just about any other venue – you are there for an obvious reason, and they need your money. Mind you, all this was before smartphones, and now you can just talk into an app and it will talk to them.