Traveller Scams: Real-Life Stories

Every globe-trotter fears getting scammed sooner or later while travelling.
Here are a few real-life stories \

How can you avoid being scammed?

• The risk of getting "scammed" is real, especially in countries where the standard of living is much lower than ours. So you need to be on your guard, without becoming paranoid about it.
• Do you have a reliable local contact? Ask them about common scams and tourist traps. That alone will help you avoid some of them.
• Most of the time, scams involve extorting money from you by making you pay an exorbitant price or by "scaring" you. In some cases, these are fake police officers, corrupt law enforcement, or outright organised gangs targeting foreign tourists. (Also read the article: and )
• Leaving official documents or money at the hotel in an unsecured spot always carries some risk of theft, even if only partial.

Real-life stories

There's nothing like a few first-hand accounts. Julie, our globe-trotter, shares a few with us:

1. The fake police officer

When you're carrying a camera, and even more so an SLR, you quickly become a target for scammers of all kinds.
We'd only just started our world tour and were going for our first walk around the centre of Nairobi. We'd barely put our camera away when a man came up to us and said in a stern voice: "You're not allowed to take photos. Follow me to the police station!" That's partly true — photographing official monuments is banned in central Nairobi, but we were still on the outskirts!
Luckily, we'd looked into what tourists can and can't do, and into common scams in Nairobi. The "fake police officer" scam came up often. So we asked him straight away for his police ID, which every law enforcement officer in Kenya must carry. Unable to show it to us, he told us his ID was at the police station and to follow him there. "No thanks, goodbye" ... and we carried on our way, still a little shaken.

2. Corruption

That evening, a Kenyan friend we were staying with invited us to a student party. To avoid risking losing or having our passports stolen, we decided to leave them in our room. Bad idea!

During the evening, 2 police officers doing an ID check handcuffed Michel, my travel companion, on the pretext that he was suspected of being a terrorist because all he had on him was his Belgian ID card and not his passport. The whole thing lasted almost 2 hours. The passport was just a pretext, because once we managed to produce it, the officers started quibbling about the length of the visa, even though it was perfectly in order. What they really wanted was the 1,000 Kenyan shillings they were asking for to leave us alone.

Unfortunately, in this kind of situation, when police officers abuse their power (which also happened to us at border crossings in Asia), there's not much you can do. Knowing your rights often helps bring down the price of the bribe. And above all, report the incident: write to the embassy, the tourist office, etc. They need to hear about these stories to fight corruption more effectively.

3. Money left at the hotel… half of it gone!

That day, we'd decided to go swimming at the Blue Lagoon, a heavenly spot near Luang Prabang in Laos. We'd set off very early to avoid the crowds of tourists who arrive around 11am. To avoid leaving money unattended by the lake, we'd left the 2,000,000 kip we'd just withdrawn from the bank at our guesthouse (around €200).

When we got back, everything was still there: laptops on the beds, smartphones charging on the table. We weren't worried. Then Michel handed me the wad of notes. "Some are missing! The bundle was much thicker." And indeed, there's quite a difference between 100 and 200 notes. Everything else was there, nothing had been stolen, only some of the notes were missing. We doubted ourselves. "Did I put some elsewhere? Did we really withdraw that much?" But yes, the only answer is that they'd been stolen.

Later on our trip, we talked about this with other travellers. "We think the same thing happened to us in another city, but we're not sure. We thought we had a lot more euros in our bag than that, but when we recounted a few days later, some were missing. Then again, maybe we were wrong."

A very clever theft because it's so discreet. You don't see someone walking off with a few notes, you can't accuse anyone, and if you don't count your notes right away, you simply assume you made a mistake — unlike, say, having a phone stolen.

If you don't take everything with you (in a "secret pouch" worn on your body under your clothes), the best approach is to split up your money and keep it in different spots. One extra tip: use freezer bags so you don't lose the odd note here and there. And again, if a theft like this happens to you, report it to the tourist police and file a complaint.

4. "Tourist" prices aren't (thankfully) always a trap

Sometimes you're so afraid of getting scammed that you negotiate… a little too well!
Still in Kenya: on the way to Rusinga Island, we'd paid 250 Ksh for our bus ticket. Coming back a few days later, the seller asked us for 300. We flatly refused and argued as hard as we could.

In the end, we were allowed on board for 250 Ksh. We were handed our ticket a bit on the sly, and, as usual, we asked our neighbour how much they'd paid… 300 Ksh. Oops, we felt a little guilty. When the bus arrived, the driver started laughing and congratulated us. He'd never seen Mzungus (Western tourists) pay less than the locals before!

We were so convinced the seller was trying to scam us that we refused to budge on our price. In fact, for the return trip it was a different, slightly more expensive, bus company.
Proof that, even though you need to be careful, there's no need to be paranoid either!