Learn the local language

Wherever he goes, Harry tries to learn at least some of the local language — “whenever you go to a country, try and learn the language.” Even small efforts earn outsized goodwill from locals.

How Harry applies it

In Pakistan he learned bits of Urdu and uses local greetings (assalamu alaikum) constantly. His fort guide in the Hunza Valley told him the British were historically accepted there partly because they wrote to the ruler in Persian — the language effort itself won respect, which Harry cites as exactly the point.

It works hardest where the effort is least expected. On Siargao he greets everyone in Tagalog on an island where Tagalog isn’t the first language — a foreigner speaking the wrong local language, confidently — and it lands better than English would have. Filipino greetings and thanks are in his mouth constantly across the Philippines videos, to the point where locals stop treating him as a tourist mid-sentence.

The mechanism, stated as a procedure

Everything above is about goodwill in the abstract. On a local beach in Aqaba Harry describes it as a repeatable sequence, and it is the most directly usable thing on this page:

They stare at you until you look back. Then you say something in Arabic. Then they are friendly.

He is throwing out whatever he has — a greeting, good evening, how are you, and one phrase he admits he doesn’t know the meaning of and uses because Mac does — and it works every time. His summary is that people love it when you make an effort with their language.

Why this belongs on the page rather than in the Aqaba entry alone: it is the one place where the tip solves a specific, uncomfortable problem rather than generally improving the mood. He and his companions were being looked at hard enough that it is the subject of the previous video, and a handful of Arabic words is what converts it. Compare cover up in conservative countries, where the same situation is handled from the other side.

Demonstrated in

• First Impressions of HUNZA VALLEY, Pakistan 🇵🇰
• Unexpected Encounter with Filipino Police in Siargao 🇵🇭 — Tagalog greetings on an island that speaks something else, which he notes makes them stranger and more welcome, not less.
• I got Kicked out of the Golden Temple for this 🇮🇳 — the most practical use of it on the page: plainclothes police stop him filming at Amritsar airport and demand to see his footage, and a few words of Hindi plus the right form of address ends it with everyone smiling.
• The KINDEST City In The World?! 🇵🇰 — the argument from the other direction. English in Peshawar is poor enough that he spends the day waiting for the occasional fluent speaker, and he promises on camera to return fluent in Urdu because it would improve the experience tenfold.
• $180 Boat Scam in AQABA, JORDAN 🇯🇴 — the staring problem solved with four words of Arabic, stated as a procedure.