Learning a few words in a language spoken locally at your target destination really really goes a long long way. Doesn't need to be the native language spoken,

Learning a few words in a language spoken locally at your target destination really really goes a long long way. Doesn't need to be the native language spoken, but Spanish and/or Portuguese will get you pretty far in large parts of the world. I'm more the Africa person but quite a few friends of mine travelled china and Nepal without ever resorting to an uber. It's harder, granted, but not fundamentally impossible.