To give a chance or to be suspicious
One of the hidden faces of travelling
A regular day. Just like any other. You are in the middle of your trip. Or at the beginning. Or at the end. The day doesn’t matter.
Basically, you are walking down the street discovering new things. A new city. A big city. Where you have to be alert and not put your guard down.
You have travelled so much that you know all the tricks. And you also know that people kindness is inversely proportional to the number of outsiders or how touristy the place is.
In simple words: fewer tourists, local people are more curious and kind.
So, you find yourself in this situation. Fewer tourists. Therefore, you decide to relax a little bit and put your radar in flying mode.
You let yourself go. Not everyone has an evil heart. Smile and go on.
You hear the well-known “Hello my friend. Where are you from?“. The bait.
You smile and show kindness. Today, you are in that mood.
You answer and keep smiling. Wow! They invite you to tea and everything is smiles and jokes.
Until here, nothing new under the sun. The situation can still go one way or the other.
Wait a moment! Your radar has enabled by itself. Just in case. For a few minutes. However, during one of those silences produced by the lack of commonalities, you switch to flying mode. “Don’t be so mistrustful. Give them a chance.“ - you say to yourself.
“No, don’t go there now. It is too hot and it is crowded inside. Better if we go to this other place.“ - they say.
You trust them.
Again.
They act as tourist guides. Awful ones. Giving away some basic tips about what you have in front of you. You buy into it. After all, if they are doing it genuinely and they only want to be “your friends”, they don’t really have to know.
You hop-on on a bus. How funny that it is full of people and the tourist (me) can’t even move! It is all very funny. And you didn’t have to pay either.
(May the reader want to switch ON the irony and rhetoric button. It is time).
“Well, well, well! We are even going to cross the river in a little boat with a toothless man. This goes from good (or bad) to better (or worse).“. And you didn’t have to pay either.
You offer to pay the return boat and lunch afterwards. They accept the invitation delighted. Lunch with your local “friends”.
You arrive in the other riverbank. “How poor is this!. And the plastic…“. Anyway, that’s another business.
“But how intriguing! We walked for only 2 minutes and we have to scooters waiting for us to show us around.”.
Ok, stop! From this point on, it is obvious that thing just went south.
It is a scam, without any escape now. But, maybe, you want to read the rest of the story.
At this point, you feel fear and a thousand things cross your mind. Stories or legends that you have heard.
The radar, the GPS, the alarms, your Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Senses if you had them and even the grill mode of your oven have switched on.
From now on, you watch what you say or do. You remain kind and don’t let them know that you know what is happening.
You keep acting as usual. You keep acting like a foolish tourist.
But something happens that, for you, is a miracle. Even though you don’t like places full of tourists and you avoid them, seeing two non-local people cheers you up and, at the same time, calms you down.
In the end, they are not going to sell your organs in the black market or extort you for money.
Relieved for a tiny moment and after the miracle, the radar turns off for a microsecond.
“What are you doing, you fool? Enable it again.”.
“Sorry, sorry.“. Click. It’s on again.
They take you to a very poor place. But really poor. A village of shacks (or even worse) of no more than 200 people, where 75% of what you see are children. They talk about how the village was destroyed by a tsunami or typhoon a few years back, which you believe (or not). They also say that kids are illiterate and don’t go to school. You do believe this, it is pretty obvious. But they seem happy while playing marbles.
Your fantastic guides mention something about donations. And, after seeing all that, you are really keen to contribute, to give some money. However, they say “no”, that it is better to donate food. So, the take you to a shop where you can buy rice.
Surprised, you radar turns off again. “Are they doing all this with me to genuinely help these people?“.
The price of the sack of rice in this shop is comparable to the price of caviar. And apparently, you have to buy the whole sack!
The saddest thing of it all is how they can use extreme poverty to get to the bottom of your heart. I think it is really mean and evil. But that’s just my opinion.
Let’s continue with the story.
You have a moral debate in your head. You would only be donating food but paying 10 times the price, so, in the end, it would be as if you were donating money. It seems like a good deal.
It is the first time that money is brought up into the conversation in the whole scam. You only have the third part of the money they are asking for the sack of rice. And, to make it believable and keep pretending you are a foolish tourist, you show them the money.
Newbie error! But actually from P1 of Travelling. They know now how much you have and they are going to squeeze all your money and more.
In your favour, you have been smart enough to split all your money in different pockets and you only show the money you carry for a day or two.
Surprisingly, the next stop of the tour is the last one. It is a temple and, more surprisingly, today is closed. Damn!
There is a conversation between the drivers and the fantastic guides. They are talking about the price you are going to pay. They tell you an astronomical figure… FOR ONE SCOOTER! You pay one scooter and say you don’t have enough money to pay the second one. They look at your bag and that makes you tense. You give them the rest of the money and one of the fantastic guides offers his own phone as a bond. He will come back to get it back once he gets the money to avoid problems.
But, do you remember the little boat? You have to cross the river again. And that costs money. Luckily, one of the fantastic guides has some kindness in his black heart and asks the driver to let you keep the fee for the ferry (this time it won’t be a little boat).
They give you a lift to the pier in one of the scooters and, to your surprise (or it does not even surprise you anymore), your fantastic guides have disappeared.
You pay the ferry, embark and come back.
Safe and sound. At least.
I suppose this is one of the ugly faces of (solo) travelling. One that does not make it to social networks.
But it is there.
And you must assume that one day it will be your turn. However scarred you are, even if you have been travelling for 10 years.
We can start a moral debate, generalize the situation or talk about that not everyone is the same. About if it is better to give a chance or be suspicious. But every day, every moment and in every situation your mood changes and you decide to do one thing or the other.
This story is based on real events and here I leave the video of the events.