When you travel in a country where you can't effectively communicate you become like a child in a way. Willing strangers can help (and never fail to remind me of the famous Tennessee Williams line about "the kindness of strangers") and so can AI tools - but both have their limits. The helpful strangers I enlist are willing but my pleas of "English?" which make me feel slightly obnoxious, are often returned with apologetic looks - our eyes mirror images of helplessness. AI helped translate the menu above, but a little while later the same technology betrayed me by literally translating a street name into something English that doesn't exist. It lead to a sort of absurd comedy scene in the cab as I was riding in as the cabbie and I shouted at each other in languages the other clearly didn't understand even after that truth was clear beyond any shadow of a doubt. "No English!" he yelled at me as I tried once more to enunciate more clearly. Eventually he let me out and we shook hands, bowed, and smiled at each other. I cursed the technology that caused the mishap but that fell on ears that were even deafer.