Tipping and Travel: It's No Easy Equation

"How safety-conscious he is," Kevin Wolf of Arlington thought to himself when an Italian boatsman repeatedly told him to be careful as he transferred from the man's tiny boat to an oceangoing vessel on open water. The man kept warning, "tip," "tip."

"I used my only two words of Italian -- grazie and prego -- many times and got out safely, gesturing the whole time that I was being careful," Wolf says. "Once on the larger boat, I looked back and noticed that all the other tourists in the other little boats were giving their drivers a tip. Oops."

Everyone wants to avoid the "oops" factor. Our clip-and-save cheat sheet (on Page 6) will help in many cases. But given the lack of worldwide standardization, first consider some global tipping tips and philosophies:

· Check the bill. In much of Europe and South America, it's common for a restaurant to put a service charge on the bill, and in fact the obligatory tip can show up anywhere. Unless you like double tipping, it's always wise to see whether you've already been assessed. Then again, the presence of a service charge on a bill isn't a guarantee that the staff's expectations have been met. In Brazil, for example, restaurants typically add a 10 percent service charge, but it's customary to add an extra 5 percent. In France, a service charge is usually included, but if you want to make it clear you're saying thank you, spare change means "merci."

· Do some prep before traveling abroad. Customs change at nearly every national border, and there are even variations within countries. In China, for example, you'll find workers who have never heard of tips, but service workers in larger cities have discovered the joys of tipping, and a gratuity can now be expected. In fact, some restaurants in much-visited places such as Shanghai even add a gratuity to the bill.

In Egypt, it sometimes seems that everyone wants a tip. Then again, a tip could be considered an insult in Japan, Nepal and Taiwan, to name a few countries. In Cuba, it's considered polite to hand the server the tip.

No way around it: You need to investigate tipping customs before you go. Most guidebooks offer a rundown, and a handful of countries are covered at the Original Tipping Page Web site, http://www.tipping.org/ (you'll also find links there that lead to, among other things, a Cornell University study of dozens of other countries). The book "The Itty Bitty Guide to Tipping" by Stacie Krajchir and Carrie Rosten (Chronicle Books, $6.95) gives a detailed report on the United States and a rough rundown of a few dozen countries.

· Learn the currency, or take a crib sheet. Most mistakes, judging from reader reports, aren't because a traveler didn't know the customs. They happened because the traveler didn't know the currency or couldn't do the math quickly enough.

There are bellmen in Zimbabwe who no doubt are still talking about the outrageously generous tips handed out when Thomas Worthington of Cascade, Md., first arrived and hastily converted way in their favor.

On the other hand, Howard Smith of Westminster, Md., meant to tip a Beijing pedicab driver $3 for a long ride and is still feeling bad about realizing too late that he "gave the poor, hardworking man 35 cents."

Memorizing the value of a dollar, a five and a ten in yuan or shekels before you hit a new border could save you either embarrassment, or lots of yuan and shekels. If the translation isn't sticking in your head, don't be too proud to make a cheat sheet ( http://www.oanda.com/ has a good one you can print out; under Currency Tools, click FXCheatSheet). Changing some dollars before leaving home guarantees you'll be ready for the first tip-deserving worker you meet.

· Don't unload U.S. coins. Sam Peach of Ijamsville, Md., woke up in a Mexican hotel and discovered a couple of dollars in U.S. change in the planter outside his door. It was the same change he'd given the bellman the night before, when he'd arrived without pesos or small U.S. bills.