[mikeash]

You don't need most locals to speak English, just a few will do. For tourism-oriented sectors like hotels, English proficiency is not typically hard to find.

I'm not assuming you have a data plan so much as I am saying that you should have one, so that you can handle eventualities such as this. Failing to plan is planning to fail, as they say. Never assume all of your arrangements will work out exactly as they're supposed to. Always have a backup plan, even if it's nothing more specific than "use my smartphone to figure it out."

If you show up in a foreign country with no way to communicate with anybody and no way to make contingency plans then you're making it likely you'll have a bad experience. Don't do that.