(Hong Kong, China) My “To Do” list for my trip around-the-world is long, but it does not include the goal: “Shut Down A Post Office,” yet somehow as fate would have it there I was at the postal counter in the Tsim Sa Tsu district of Hong Kong nearly positioned, oblivious to me, to do just that.

Where I come from in America, licking a stamp is so common it is pretty much a cliche, and most Americans have some childhood memories involving stamp licking (Mine happening when I was about 12 and had to lick 500 stamps for an event at my church and there was so much glue on the end of my tongue by the end that I licked a hotdog and it stuck). On the other side of the world in Hong Kong, where most days things seem very similar to life in America, I sometimes forget that the smallest cultural differences are actually often the most problematic.

I asked my local friend Catherine to take me to a post office to mail a couple post cards and a parcel, and upon arriving, I asked the postal clerk for eight postcard stamps. He counted them out and passed them my way, and as he weighed my parcel, I absent-mindedly picked-up a stamp, brought it up to my mouth, and licked it…

As the postal clerk glanced up and saw what I was doing, my action was met with a paniced look of shock. Startled he pushed his chair back from the counter, gasped for air, and as politely as a man who had just had his pants pulled down on live television, he said, “Sir….sirr….um….there is ah, ah, water over there….,” pointing to a little moistened sponge that sat on the counter.

“Huh?” I looked up still unaware of my social faux pas. As I paused with the second half-licked stamp hanging from my tongue, I glanced over at my friend Catherine whose face had the unmistakable look of horror, disgust and shock, as if she had just watched me eat a pile of steaming, live cockroaches. “U…use….this….” she stammered, as she pointed at the same moistened sponge and took a step backwards.

You see in Hong Kong, a city that still has scars from the SARS and Avian flu epidemics—and with a long, sordid history with food sanitation and health—there is a much higher level of caution towards germs and dirt in ways I’ve never considered at home in the US (For example, everyone uses straws to drink out of cans of Coke and bottles of juice because who knows where top of the can has been, and it is a common cultural practice to re-wash the dishes you get at a restaurant right at the table, upon first arriving and before using). By licking the stamps, I was breaking a minor but significant cultural norm, that gave the postal worker a partial heart attack and a reason to nearly lock down the post office and quarantine me, my stamp, and my post cards.

As the second stamp cleared my tongue, I still had yet to recognize what I had done, and as I followed the motion of his hand pointing towards the wet sponge on his counter, I said, “Oh, ok, thanks,” and after a short pause I proceeded to press the half-licked stamp right onto his wet sponge….

For the story’s sake I wish I could say I was then arrested, quarantined, deported, and the post office was burned to the ground—but unfortunately (or fortunately) for me I didn’t really realize what I had done until I walked out of the post office—but I imagine the postal worker, incinerated his sponge, quit his job, and became a monk—all because I was just trying to send a letter home to my mom.