A quick kiss goodbye at the airport or a hand squeeze while crossing a busy street barely registers as a thought for most couples back home. In a handful of countries, though, that same small gesture can trigger a police complaint, a fine, or worse. The line between what feels romantic and what counts as a public order offense shifts dramatically once you cross certain borders, and it’s rarely spelled out clearly on a visa application.
Understanding where these boundaries sit isn’t about avoiding travel to these places. It’s about knowing the local rules well enough to enjoy the trip without an unplanned visit to a police station.
1. United Arab Emirates
The UAE has one of the clearest official positions on this topic anywhere in the world, and it comes straight from the government itself. Public displays of affection should be minimal; holding hands is acceptable but kissing and hugging in public is not, according to the UAE’s official government platform. That guidance applies to Dubai’s glossy malls just as much as to quieter emirates like Sharjah or Ajman.
This isn’t just etiquette advice tucked into a tourism brochure. The rule reflects enforceable law under the UAE Penal Code, and violations can result in legal trouble and deportation. Recent changes mean unmarried couples can now legally share a hotel room, but PDA rules remain conservative regardless of marital status.
2. Qatar
Qatar pairs a reputation for being one of the safest countries in the region with some of the strictest unwritten rules about how couples behave in public. Dress and public behavior are regulated, with visitors expected to cover shoulders and knees and skip hugging and kissing in public. Local guidance for travelers is blunt about the risk involved.
Public display of affection between men, women, and teenagers can lead to arrest in Qatar. Even something as simple as holding hands with a partner of the opposite sex draws attention. Excessive PDA is extremely frowned upon in Qatar, and holding hands with a member of the opposite sex could get a traveler stopped by a police officer. In rare cases involving more overt intimacy, incidents with extreme intimacy displayed in public can even lead to overnight imprisonment.
3. Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia formalized its expectations around public conduct in 2019, right around the time the kingdom opened its doors to tourist visas for the first time. Rules related to public decency were formally approved to ensure visitors and tourists in Saudi Arabia are aware of them, following the introduction of the tourist visa allowing stays of up to 90 days. The regulations cover far more than romance, but affection between partners sits near the top of the list.
Public displays of affection are prohibited under Saudi Arabia’s public decency laws, and this applies to everyone, including married couples, dating couples, and same-sex partners alike. That last detail matters for LGBTQ+ travelers especially, since the U.S. State Department advises visitors to avoid public displays of affection, particularly between same-sex couples. Enforcement against tourists tends to be inconsistent, but the legal exposure is real rather than theoretical.
4. Indonesia (particularly Aceh Province)
Indonesia is a country of contrasts when it comes to this topic, and travelers who assume one set of rules applies nationwide are setting themselves up for a surprise. In most of the country, PDA is culturally discouraged but inconsistently enforced. Bali’s beach clubs and Jakarta’s malls tend to look the other way at a couple holding hands.
Aceh province operates on an entirely different legal footing, and the stakes there are far higher. In Aceh, where Sharia law applies, public affection and premarital relationships can result in public flogging. Travelers often overlook that Indonesia’s laws vary dramatically by region, which makes Aceh one of the more jarring examples of how a single country can hold two very different realities at once.
5. India
India doesn’t have a law that names PDA outright, which creates a strange kind of legal fog rather than a clear rule. While there is no specific national law banning PDA, Section 294 of the Indian Penal Code criminalizes “obscene acts” in public places, leaving room for subjective enforcement. That vagueness means the same behavior can be shrugged off in one city and questioned in another.
In metropolitan cities like Mumbai or Delhi, holding hands or a brief kiss might be tolerated, reflecting a more cosmopolitan outlook, while in smaller towns or rural areas the same actions could attract public censure or even legal action. Mumbai actually goes a step further than most Indian cities on paper. In Mumbai, two persons involved in an obscene act in public can face charges under the Indian Penal Code or Section 110 of the Bombay Police Act, the only state law specifically introduced to address PDA. A kiss might pass without comment on a Delhi Metro platform, yet the same act in a smaller conservative town can draw a crowd and a police complaint.
6. Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s approach to PDA leans heavily on colonial-era legislation that was never designed with modern tourism in mind, yet it still gets applied today. Arrests during periodic “raids” are made under the Vagrants Ordinance, an archaic law that, depending on how officers choose to interpret it, can turn simple acts of kissing or holding hands in public into an offense. These sweeps tend to spike around romantic holidays.
Legal experts in the country have pushed back on how the law gets stretched. A Sri Lankan lawyer has pointed out that showing romantic affection in public is not a crime, and no court in the country has ever deemed it “grossly indecent.” That hasn’t stopped enforcement from happening on the ground, particularly against younger couples. Police in two Sri Lankan towns once detained nearly 200 young couples accused of indecent behavior after locals complained they were kissing, cuddling, or simply holding hands. Tourists in beach resort areas are less likely to face this scrutiny, but the risk rises noticeably outside those zones.
7. Morocco
Morocco sits in a gray zone that trips up a lot of visitors who expect a clear yes or no answer. Moroccan penal code includes laws against “indecent acts” that offend public modesty, and while kissing isn’t named outright, doing so openly in public can be interpreted as falling under these rules. The law technically applies to everyone, though enforcement rarely lands on foreign tourists.
These laws are rarely enforced, and when they are it’s typically only between Moroccan couples rather than foreigners, so a foreign couple sharing a kiss is unlikely to draw any official response. Ramadan changes the calculation significantly, since it’s best to avoid any kissing, hand holding or hugging in public during that month regardless of one’s own faith. Outside of that period, holding hands tends to be the safer, more universally accepted gesture across most of the country.
Travel rules around affection rarely make it into the glossy parts of a guidebook, yet they shape daily decisions more than most other local customs. The safest approach in any of these seven places is the simplest one: save the kiss for later, keep hands where they’re comfortable for the setting, and let a quick glance at local norms guide the rest.
