Travel etiquette 101: Body language

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In Travel Tips

06 May 2011 | By Robert Reid, Lonely Planet

Thumbs up! – the customary greeting in Belize. (Andrew Marshall & Leanne Walker/LPI)

You step over someone’s legs in Nepal and you might not even realize that you committed a grave social taboo! Read below for a list of etiquette tips, complied from Lonely Planet guidebooks and staffers, to help you navigate different parts of the world.

1. In Asia, never touch any part of someone else's body with your foot, which is considered the "lowest" part of the body. If you accidentally do this, apologize by touching your hand to the person's arm and then touching your own head. Do not point at objects or people with your feet, do not prop your feet on chairs or tables while sitting. (From the Thailand travel guide and other Asia books.)

2. Also in Asia, refrain from touching people on the head or ruffling their hair. The head is spiritually the "highest" part of the body. Don't sit on pillows meant as headrests, as it is a variant on this taboo. (From the China travel guide.)

3. Shaking hands was introduced to Fiji in the 19th Century by way of Tonga, and quickly became the established custom. An affectionate handshake can be very long, and may even last throughout an entire conversation. (From the South Pacific phrasebook.)

4. In Nepal, it is bad manners to step over someone's outstretched legs, so avoid doing that, and move your own legs when someone wants to pass. Also do not step over or sit on a monk's cushions in or near a temple, even if no one is sitting on them. Always walk around stupas and chortens (Tibetan-style stupas) in a clockwise direction. (From the Nepal travel guide.)

5. In Japanese baths, called onsen, always wash first before entering the water. The water is considered fouled if someone does not do this, kind of like the American equivalent of peeing in a pool. Also, use a wash cloth to cover your private bits. (From the Japan travel guide.)

6. The people of Italy are emotionally demonstrative, so expect to see lots of cheek kissing among acquaintances, embraces between men who are good friends and lingering handshakes. Italian men and women may walk arm-in-arm. Pushing and shoving in busy places is not considered rude, so do not be offended by it. Try to hold your ground. (From the Italy travel guide.)

7. Shaking hands across a threshold is considered unlucky in Russia, thus some pizza delivery guys will refuse to conduct a transaction across a threshold. You either have to go out to the hall or invite them just inside the door. (From the Russia travel guide.)

8. In India it is possible to pay a tremendous compliment with body language alone. When somebody approaches a person with their tongue between their teeth and gathers the air around the person's head with their hands to draw it into their own personal space, it means they find the person either unbearably beautiful or extraordinarily intelligent. (From the Indian English Language and Culture book.)

9. Do not stick your index finger and middle finger up with the palm of your hand facing towards you in the United Kingdom; it is the equivalent of giving someone the finger. Tip: Do not order two beers in this fashion in UK bars. Doing it palm facing out - the piece sign - is OK. (From a Lonely Planet staffer in the UK).

10. Moroccan greetings can last up to 10 minutes. Shake with your right hand then touch your hand to your heart, to indicate that you are taking the meeting to heart. Good friends may tack on up to four air kisses, accompanied by a stream of well wishes: "How are you? Everything's good with you? I hope your parents are well? Baraka (blessings) upon them!" (From Alison Bing, Lonely Planet Morocco author.)

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'Godzilla' lionfish threatening Cayman paradise

By Tim Ecott Cayman Islands

An explosion in the population of the predatory lionfish in Caribbean waters, where it has no natural predators, is posing a widespread threat to marine wildlife.

Just off the north shore of Little Cayman, I sink into the blue abyss.

No-one knows how the lionfish came to be in the Caribbean waters

I am descending the vertical coral wall at Bloody Bay Marine Park.

Straight ahead and straight down there is nothing but blue - a dizzying empty space where sunlight streams down and down into darker places well beyond my reach.

But up close, the wall of coral is covered in giant barrel sponges as tall as a man, bright purple vase sponges, green and red corals and creatures that creep, crawl and swim within and among them.

I spot a seahorse, clinging to a whip coral by its tail, a spider crab with legs almost 3ft (1m) wide and a baby hawksbill turtle rocketing to the surface for a breath of air.

And there, spiralling up from the depths come three graceful Caribbean reef sharks, curious and skittish.

Suddenly, I notice Peter Hillenbrand, my diving buddy, gesticulating angrily - he points with one hand and pulls the trigger on an imaginary gun.

It is not the sharks he is angry at, but a brightly coloured fish covered in feathery spines.

I recognise it immediately as a lionfish - distinctive with its tracery of red-brown stripes and the high venomous spikes all along its back and protruding from its pectoral fins.

I have seen thousands of these fish in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, but they should not be here in the Caribbean.

No invasive tropical fish species has ever survived so successfully outside its own home ecosystem like this Dr Carrie Manfrino

"These fish are like Godzilla," Peter tells me on the boat after we surface.

"Two or three years ago we would see the odd one here and there, but now on every dive they're there.

"I've been diving these reefs for over 30 years and I'm worried that these fish are taking over," he says.

On Little Cayman, I visit the Central Caribbean Marine Institute, where scientists are studying the invasive population of lionfish, more properly known as Pterois volitans.

Morgan Edwards, a post-graduate researcher at the Institute invites me to watch her dissecting them.

Even in death they are beautiful, with a maze of dark red stripes all over their head and body, protective spines covered in a web of fine skin and delicate frilly tassels of skin hanging from their mouths.

After measuring its length, weight and other details, Morgan removes the stomach from each fish and opens it to find out what they have been eating - shrimps, baby grouper, damsel fish and crabs.

"Their stomach can expand up to 30 times its volume," Morgan explains.

"And they can swallow any other fish up to two thirds their own body length.

"But they seem to have no natural predators here in the Caribbean."

Stealthy predators

The facts about lionfish are frightening.

Lionfish have red-brown stripes and long venomous spikes

A female can produce 30,000 eggs every four days. The eggs are unpalatable to other fish.

And lionfish are growing larger than they do in their native waters - up to 18in long (47cm), and they are stealthy ambush predators.

No-one knows how lionfish got into the Caribbean.

One theory says they escaped from a Florida aquarium during a hurricane about 10 years ago.

Others believe that tropical fish keepers released their pets into the sea when they grew too large to keep at home.

One study in the Bahamas showed that lionfish reduced native species populations on one reef by almost 80%

It does not really matter how they got here, but since 1992 they have spread from Florida up the east coast of the United States as far north as Long Island in New York.

About six years ago they crossed the western Atlantic to Bermuda and then drifted south to Bahamas, Jamaica and Cuba.

In 2008 the first lionfish was spotted at Bloody Bay on Little Cayman.

One year later there were hundreds, and now thousands. And they have now gone south as far as Venezuela.

"This isn't just an invasion," explained Dr Carrie Manfrino, Research Director at the Central Caribbean Marine Institute.

"This is an explosion. No invasive tropical fish species has ever survived so successfully outside its own home ecosystem like this."

Appetising

Regular diving expeditions to cull lionfish have been authorised by Cayman Islands Department of the Environment in collaboration with the Institute.

LIONFISH Females can produce 30,000 eggs every four days Grows up to 18 inches long Eat up to 30 times its stomach volume

But no-one is sure that anyone can catch enough lionfish to make a difference.

One study in the Bahamas showed that lionfish reduced native species populations on one reef by almost 80%.

Back on Grand Cayman, 100 miles away from the reefs of Bloody Bay, I make another discovery about lionfish.

They taste delicious.

At Michael's restaurant at the popular Camana Bay waterfront development, well-heeled tourists and residents are being offered a new dish.

Flash fried fillets of lionfish flavoured with chilli, fennel and mustard seed.

Chef Thomas Tennant says he cannot get enough of them.

"They cook beautifully," he tells me enthusiastically.

Perhaps in the end, that may be the answer. This is one reef fish we can eat with a clean conscience.

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US 'web suicide nurse' William Melchert-Dinkel jailed

A judge said Melchert-Dinkel, shown in February, was not the only factor in the victims' deaths

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A US man who helped persuade an English man and a Canadian woman to commit suicide after finding them online has been given a jail term in Minnesota.

Ex-nurse William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, was convicted in March over the deaths of Mark Drybrough, 32, from Coventry, and Nadia Kajouji, 18, from Ontario.

The judge ordered him to spend an initial 320 days in prison and then for the next 10 years return to jail on the anniversaries of his victims' deaths.

His lawyer plans to lodge an appeal.

Melchert-Dinkel, who wiped away tears as he was sentenced, apologised in a statement read by his lawyer, Terry Watkins, and said he felt "shame and remorse".

The official sentence handed down by Judge Thomas Neuville was six-and-a-half years in jail, with most of it suspended unless Melchert-Dinkel violates the terms of his probation over the next 15 years.

The sentence was structured in such a way that he will have to spend two-day spells in prison on the anniversaries of the deaths of Mr Drybrough and Ms Kajouji over the next decade.

The judge said that while Melchert-Dinkel's actions were directly related to the victims' deaths, other factors were also involved.

Ms Kajouji's mother, Deborah Chevalier, told the Associated Press news agency she was disappointed the sentence was not longer.

Coventry man Mark Drybrough, 32, hanged himself in 2005

Melchert-Dinkel had faced a maximum jail term of 15 years on each count of aiding suicide.

During his trial, the court heard he was obsessed with suicide and hanging.

Prosecutors claimed he hunted down his victims on the internet for "the thrill of the chase" and gave them advice and encouragement, while posing as a female nurse.

US prosecutors said Melchert-Dinkel acknowledged having taken part in online chats about suicide with up to 20 people and entering into fake suicide pacts with about 10, five of whom he believed killed themselves.

Mr Watkins has said his client intends to appeal against the conviction on the grounds his remarks were shielded by the free speech protections of the US constitution.

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Commentary

The power of words are more evident than ever. You can and will be convicted if you use them improperly.

Freedom of speech ends when murder, oppression, and injustice begin.

This man should have been forced to spend 5 years in prison and 1 year of parole. He got off easy in my opinion. You can't toy with other people's lives and get away with it.

Gravity Probe B confirms Einstein effects

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

Gravity Probe B was launched in 2004

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Nasa's Gravity Probe B has produced remarkable new confirmation of some key predictions by Albert Einstein.

The satellite's observations show the massive body of the Earth is very subtly warping space and time, and even pulling them around with it.

Scientists were able to see these effects by studying the behaviour of four perfectly engineered spinning balls carried inside the probe.

The results are published online in the journal Physical Review Letters.

They are significant because they underline once again the genius of the great German-born scientist, but also because they provide more refined tools to understand the physics that drives the cosmos.

On a more human level, the findings represent the culmination of an extraordinary odyssey for the leading lights of the mission, some of whom have dedicated more than five decades to the quest.

These include Francis Everitt, the mission's principal investigator at Stanford University - a researcher who was there at the inception of the Gravity Probe B (GP-B) idea in the late 1950s.

"We've completed this landmark experiment, testing Einstein's Universe - and Einstein survives," he announced on Wednesday.

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“Start Quote

The idea came about three to four decades before the technology was available to test it”

Rex Geveden Former GP-B programme manager

GP-B itself was not launched until 2004, and it has taken since then for the mission team to assess the data and to be sure of its observations.

Part of the group's difficulty has been in showing that some fantastically small measurements were real and not biases introduced by flaws in the experimental set-up. For a while, it looked like the venture might not succeed.

Gravity Probe B was put in space to confirm two important consequences stemming from Einstein's Theory of General Relativity - his description of gravity. The predictions characterise the way space and time will be distorted by the presence of huge objects such as planets and stars.

One, known as the geodetic effect, is the amount by which the mass of the Earth will warp the local space-time in which it sits.

The other, which physicists refer to as frame-dragging, is the phenomenon that sees the Earth twist local space-time around with it as it rotates.

The quartz gyros (left) were coated with niobium (right). They were described as the most perfect spheres ever engineered

GP-B sought to observe both these effects by measuring tiny drifts in the spin axes of four gyroscopes relative to the position of a star called IM Pegasi (HR 8703).

To ensure accuracy, the balls had to be chilled to near "absolute zero" (-273C) and were flown inside a giant vacuum flask containing super-fluid helium. This and other measures isolated the spheres from any external disturbance.

If Einstein had been wrong in his ideas then the gyros should have spun unhindered by external forces (pressure, heat, magnetic field, gravity, and electrical charges).

But given the physicist has taught us that local space-time around the Earth is curved and frame-dragging then a deviation in their behaviour ought to be expected and measurable - albeit with great difficulty.

Over the course of a year, the anticipated drift in the spin axes of the balls due to the geodetic effect was calculated to reveal itself on the scale of just a few thousand milliarcseconds. The frame-dragging effect was predicted to be even smaller.

"A milliarcsecond is the width of a human hair seen at a distance of 10 miles. It really is a rather small angle, and this is the accuracy Gravity Probe B had to achieve," explained Professor Everitt.

"For the geodetic effect, the predicted relativity effect is 6,606.1 of these milliarcseconds, and the measured result is a little over a quarter of a percent of that. The frame-dragging we've measured to a little better than 20%."

Tech spin-off

The idea for the mission was first proposed in 1959, but the project had to wait until the technologies to carry it through could be invented.

Some 100 students achieved their PhDs by working on some aspect of the mission

"GP-B, while conceptually simple, is technologically an extremely complex experiment," said Rex Geveden, the former programme manager on GP-B and now the president of Teledyne Brown Engineering from Huntsville, Alabama.

"The idea came about three to four decades before the technology was available to test it. Thirteen novel technologies were created for GP-B. The quartz balls were thought to be the roundest objects ever manufactured. The diametric variation across the spheres is about two-tenths of a millionth of an inch."

Innovations from Gravity Probe B have fed directly into improvements in the Global Positioning System (GPS). And a Nasa mission called Cobe that pictured the Universe less than a million years after the Big Bang owed its success to technology developed on Gravity Probe B.

Unending tests

Some 100 students achieved their PhDs by working on some aspect of the mission during the many years it took to develop, build and then fly the probe.

Most of these PhDs were earned at Stanford, and at the universities in Huntsville; and in Aberdeen, UK. More than 350 undergraduate students also worked on GP-B, including one who later became the first female American astronaut in space, Sally Ride. Another was Eric Cornell, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001.

"The precession of a gyroscope in a gravitational field of a rotating body has never been measured before today. While the result in this case does support Einstein, it didn't have to," commented Professor Clifford Will from Washington University, St. Louis.

"Physicists will never cease testing their basic theories, whether in order to confirm them better or in order to reveal new physics beyond those standard theories.

"In some realms the only place to do this, to carry out such experiments, is in space. This was the case with GP-B."

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• 1. The spin axes of the gyroscopes were initially aligned with a guide star. The gyroscopes were then monitored for changes in their angle of spin caused by general relativity effects
• 2. The disturbance due to frame-dragging was expected to cause the spin axes of the super-smooth gyroscopic spheres to change by an angle of just 0.041 arcseconds per year
• 3. For the geodetic effect, the spacecraft expected to see a bigger signal - for the gyroscopes' spin axes to change by an angle of 6.6 arcseconds over a year of observations
• 4. Gravity Probe B's gyroscopes were held inside a vacuum container
• 5. The US space agency (Nasa) satellite was launched on 20 April, 2004

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