I know we all have social anxiety, but I am so very serious about the importance of being able to identify “safe strangers” and be willing to talk to them, especially when you are traveling alone.
It can be hard but like, I always look for people with anime/pokemon/fandom merch. Weeaboos and other nerds can be found all around the world, it doesn’t matter if they speak English or not. Even just pointing at their merch and smiling can do so much good.
Additionally:
If you are some sort of scientist or researcher traveling, reach out to researchers wherever you are going. They want to share their passion with you. *I* want to share my passion with you. Like if someone emailed me like “Hey Nessie, I’m studying mongoose or something on the other side of the world, but I’m coming to the US and want to see a raccoon,” I would 100% make time to pick them up and get them to a raccoon.
For real, I’ve got a bat biologist in Mexico taking me out to look for bats tonight. Do I speak Spanish? No. Does he speak English? No. But frankly it doesn’t matter because science is universal. You would be surprised at how easy it is to communicate when the subject of communication is something like field work and animals.