My talk outlines strategies for anthropologists and researchers to communicate effectively on the Arabian Peninsula, with a concentration on Southern Arabia. Using first-person ethnographic accounts, as well as scholarly texts from the fields of history, anthropology, political science, travel writing and literature, this presentation will give clear advice so non-locals can create successful interactions. Rather than discussing a particular theory or place, the focus is on how to meet, interview, explore and write up notes about locals. By reviewing how the practicalities of research intersect with cultural norms, this talk will help scholars navigate the intricacies of fieldwork in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Yemen. The impetus of this presentation is various problematic interactions with other researchers, such as a graduate student telling me that they planned to lie to their Arabian Peninsula informants. “You can’t do that,” I sputtered. They shrugged. Several researchers have told me about that they were going to lie about their living situations or deliberately set up testing situations to try to get “real” opinions. I have also been in situations with researchers and locals in which the researcher infuriated the local, who never showed their anger. These types of events have caused me to shift my concentration from writing about local cultures to investigating how people successfully (and unsuccessfully) conduct research in the GCC and Yemen. As I have lived on the Arabian Peninsula for more than 20 years, this talk is a distillation of observations, academic research and a longstanding, deep involvement within local communities. I have taught cultural studies classes at the graduate and undergraduate level, given lectures about local cultures to visiting expats, done orientation lectures for new faculty, published scholarly and non-fiction articles about cultural interactions, taken classes taught by locals and lived in local communities.