I don't agree with the press. In my opinion it's a fake news invented to get the people curiosity, and may be It has been used to sell additional copies of the newspaper.
Anything like this have ever happened to me since In all my abroad travel. I always manage to speak with local population by english and I have never met some issue like this.
I think that It's important to get more information about our travel before than we leave, In partcular if we are planning to travel in a foreign country, we have to know exactly where we are going, and how many time we spend to get where we want to go.
We can also use internet to translate in local languages all questions that we need, indeed we can type and traslate and aking to local people to read it. I think that it's quiste sure that we will avoid any mistake/misunderstanding.