When you arrive at your destination you will probably be tired, a little disoriented and, unless you have been there a few times before, unsure of where to go. Walking around with bags, looking lost, trying to make sense of a foreign bus, train or cab schedule marks you as the classic ‘just arrived’ vulnerable tourist. Criminals love that, because they know you have pockets full of cash and traveller’s cheques, expensive cameras, credit cards and valuable passports and other documents. When you land you must switch to a state of high alert so that you can identify and avoid trouble.
Baggage Collection
This is an area where people sometimes let their guard down. The possibly long-haul flight is over and you are on the last leg to that luxury hotel. The climate change may have hit you, and you think that you can relax while you wait for your bags to come through. Don’t!
You don’t know who is around you jostling you, pushing to the front. Was that guy who just leaned on you to reach the red suitcase retrieving the suitcase or using it as an excuse to lean on you and dip into your pockets? Stay alert, and don’t join the scrum to get to the carousel first. Chances are yours will be the last bag to come off, and there will probably be a long queue for immigration and customs.
Think About Your Location
When somebody was sick, a friend of mine once had to go on a very short notice business trip. I lc was told at ten past nine that he was on an early afternoon flight to an ex-Soviet satellite state. He was assured that everything had been arranged, and that all he had to do was meet a contact, get some important contract documents signed, then fly back on the return flight the next morning.
He was handed three envelopes. One held the documents to be signed and the name and address of his contact, one contained the tickets and the last one contained his visa documents.
After a flight to Frankfurt he transferred onto a small aircraft operated by an unknown airline. He carried his own baggage to the aircraft and climbed some rusty steps to the cabin. The flight was terrible, nobody spoke English, and no food or drink was available. They landed and rattled down a very long runway
and parked near what looked like a camouflaged ex-military hangar to see a horse and cart being loaded with cases. Thinking that nobody would believe him he took some pictures with his pocket camera, only to be confronted by a soldier waving an automatic rifle. The soldier slapped his camera to the ground and then stamped on it before herding him into an office at gunpoint. Then he belatedly spotted military jets on the edges of the airfield.
Nobody had said it was a military base that accepted the occasional commercial flight. Inside, the man waving the gun spoke to an officer sitting at a desk, then the officer asked for his visa. Grateful that nobody had used words like ‘spying’ or ‘jail’, he presented the visa envelope. Two minutes later he nearly died when the officer tore it open and took out a few hundred US dollars in ten-dollar bills. Luckily the ‘visa’ was accepted and he was released.
Research Local Crime Trends
Your research should have let you know what the crime trends are at your destination. Forewarned is forearmed. When you know what the threats are you will be safer! For example, I did a quick search and found the following:
- Belize City – snatch-and-run thieves.
- Managua – pack slashers (pickpockets) on public buses.
- Thailand – a surge in bogus charity collections, and drugged gifts of food or drink (you eat it then collapse, get robbed and wake up in a back street next day).
- Lahore, Pakistan – backpacks stolen from hotels, public places and transport.
- Guatemala – armed robbery and rape in the hills outside towns.