Bambi Vincent – Page 22 – Thiefhunters in Paradise

Violence in Mexico

A few days ago, a foreigner arrived at Mexico City’s international airport and exchanged money there. What he didn’t know was that he was being observed by lookouts. When he left the airport, his car was followed by two others. He was forced off the road and approached by gunmen, who simply shot him in the head when he resisted their demand for the cash.

By now everyone knows that Mexico has become a risky destination, thanks to drug gangs and their brutal operations. Police officers have been steadily targeted by the gangs, and are being killed from the top ranks to the bottom in scary numbers I can’t quote.

Last year, the director of the federal police division monitoring trafficking and contraband was killed, along with his bodyguard. So were other top police officials, including the head of Mexico City’s anti-kidnapping unit, and the director of national police operations against drug traffickers.

Little girls in Mexico playing with bottle caps.

All of Mexico is dangerous now, from the capital city to the most popular resort towns. Acapulco (the city in which Bob and I met), is now called a “violent Mexican resort.”

Tourists to Mexico are in the middle of it all. They are perceived to have cash: either on them, accessible by ATM, or available as ransom.

Mexican police say that the drug gangs now post lookouts at the airport money-exchange booths. The lookouts phone their colleagues outside the airport, who rob the visitors as they leave.

Among its many warnings about Mexico (updated 8/13/08), the U.S. State Department says:

If an ATM must be used, it should be accessed only during the business day at large protected facilities (preferably inside commercial establishments, rather than at glass-enclosed, highly visible ATMs on streets).

About Mexico City specifically, the State Department suggests:

Arriving travelers who need to obtain pesos at the airport should use the exchange counters or ATMs in the arrival/departure gate area, where access is restricted, rather than changing money after passing through Customs, where they can be observed by criminals.

It’s easy and common for criminal gangs to recruit low-level airport employees as conspirators. I wouldn’t feel much safer in the “secure” arrival/departure gate areas.

Mexican citizens have long been the targets of express kidnapping and carjacking, along with the usual burglaries and robberies. Tourists have had to be alert to pickpockets, drink-druggers, taxi-robberies, and psuedo-cops.

Things are getting worse now.

Dead zone

Seeking answers, or shared experiences: On a first class cross-country flight last weekend, the trackpad of Bob’s MacBook Air refused to work. His cursor moved erratically or not at all, or opened contextual menus unasked. He turned off his wifi antenna and made sure bluetooth was off. He restarted. He checked his trackpad prefs. No help.

What worked was raising the laptop 24 or so inches into the air. There, the trackpad worked normally. It also functioned well about a foot below laplevel. Meanwhile, the trackpad on my four-year-old PowerBook was fine in any position, including in Bob’s dead zone.

We were on a Boing 737, row 4, Bob in the aisle seat, if that matters. There was a/c power in the seats, and we were plugged in. We’ve used laptops on airplanes for decades, with and without power, in all cabin classes. This MacBook Air has worked flawlessly on about 30 previous flights.

On the return trip two days later, we had aisle and window seats in row 1 on another B737. Same issue. Bob’s troublesome area ranged from laplevel to tray-table height, with a bad buffer of a foot or so above and below. Again, he was on the aisle.

The Air’s cursor moved normally while on my lap in the window seat, and my machine worked fine in all of Bob’s territory. We did not get up and change seats in order to complete experimentation—perhaps the cause was a combination of Bob’s body on the aisle.

A magnetic field? Or what?

computer laptop planes

Suckers, high and dry

A beheaded octopus drying in the Greek sun.

I can’t remember ever having eaten dried octopus, but I’m not saying I wouldn’t. There they were, looking festive, a row of fresh ones dangling decoratively from a boat’s rigging, like signal flags spelling out a message for dinner.

In Mykonos recently, on a long stroll along the shore, I saw these plump babies strung up, baking in the Greek sun. They had clearly protested their ignoble attachment to a laundry line, given that more than a few had clutched a lifeline with defiant fists.

A boat flies signal flags that spell out dinner.

The sticky-fingered cephalopods had received the ultimate capital punishment—beheading—and for what? Stealing bait? Like a lowlife pickpocket going for our prop wallets, except we throw them back.

Maybe they weren’t destined for food, I don’t know. I’m not one to look at tentacles and think mmm, succulent. There was no one to ask.

Me, I’d put light bulbs in them.

food greece mykonos

Cash or credit card?

Don’t be self-ripped
That means: do your research. Besides knowing the tricks and scams prevalent in your destination, you should be up-to-date on currency. Look up the exchange rate, get familiar with the denominations of the foreign currency and what each note is worth in dollars. Low-value currency can be baffling. Menus and price tags can blind you with zeros in Istanbul, for example, with the Turkish lira at six hundred thousand some to the dollar. Will you pay 21,875,000 lira for your dinner, or 218,750,000? It’s easy to make a mistake. We got so many Zambian kwachas for our $10 once, we kept them and stuck thick wads inside our prop wallets. (That was before we realized that cut paper thickened a wallet just as temptingly.)

So, know the currency; also consider how much cash you need to carry. Bob and I recommend carrying as little as possible. We’re great proponents of credit cards. Sure, you need enough local currency for small purchases. Taxis, delightful sidewalk coffee and exotic streetfood, craft markets, tips, and all those expensive luxury items you want to buy without a papertrail, all require cash. But for the rest of it, credit cards are a better deal.

When you buy foreign currency, the money dealer makes a profit. You may be charged a poor rate of exchange, a fixed fee, a commission, or all three. Believe it or not, many money changers will Continue reading

cash credit card foreign exchange money Travel Advisory

Bob Arno in Swedish press

First spread of Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet's photo essay on Bob Arno.

Way back on July 7, 2008, I wrote that the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet interviewed Bob Arno, and I promised a link when available.

The interview was on June 30, 2008. The article was finally published in Aftonbladet on December 7, 2008. It hasn’t been uploaded to Aftonbladet’s website, so I’m posting a pdf file. The article has lots of photos, but is written in Swedish, of course.

The pdf file is here: 081207-aftonbladet

Bob Arno newspaper press Sweden

How to cut down a tree; Requiem for a tree

[dropcap letter=”I”]t was a mesquite, 35 or so feet tall, graceful in an awkward way. Craving light, the poor thing crooked its trunk this way and that, having been stupidly planted under a roof and beside a wall. I’ve liked the tree a lot all these years, for its lush green foliage and shade—rare commodities in Las Vegas.

For various reasons, it had to go. And there was only one man for the job.

My brother-in-law, the self-proclaimed Swedish Okie and country bumpkin whom I’ve written about before, single-handedly brought the tree down.

Now you can’t just take a buzz saw to the trunk of a tree in close quarters and yell “timber!” There’s no safe place for the tree to fall, and it’s weight is enormous, full of life juices and wearing a lush canopy of green. There are windows in the proximity, fences, landscapes, tiles, other trees, all of which would suffer damage.

How to cut down a tree

Brother-in-law started with the canopy, removing all the light branches and a great deal of weight, using a hand saw. He did this while standing on a 10-foot ladder he had strapped onto a 16-foot ladder. Each branch was tied, cut, and lowered to the ground. Bob threw them over the wall. I bundled. When I began, the mound of branches was taller than I am. When I’d tied up a dozen bundles, the mountain of branches was just as high.

When it came to the hefty limbs, the lumberjack needed an assistant. The tree was to be dismantled from the top down in bite-sized chunks. A limb was tied, and its rope wound around a lower piece of trunk, pulley-fashion, and Bob was to keep pressure on the rope until it was cut through. When the new log was free, Bob lowered it gently to the ground with the rope. Brilliant system.

My brother-in-law knows all this because, like any good Swede who has the time and money, he has a country house. That is, he built a house in the forest outside of Stockholm. After clearing the land. Most of it he did himself. He’s still working on it, bit by bit, every summer.

The trunk of the mesquite was sawn into 23 gorgeous logs.

Something seems a little missing from my front courtyard now, but only a little. Other than the trunk, the tree’s glory was above the roof. I miss it anyway.

brother-in-law claes Las Vegas Sweden

Nut salad

I got a nut salad in a place we worked recently. Better not name the place…

food

Thieves and witchdoctors

Mondli and Hector purchase herbs from a witchdoctor at a South Africa muti market.

In Johannesburg for a string of corporate shows, we managed to find and talk to three pickpockets, one of whom claimed to be reformed. He is Mondli, seen here on the left, with Hector, 29 years old and still active. With a translator, we and the thieves went to the city’s enormous muti market, sprawled over many acres under a freeway overpass. Muti is traditional African medicine, made of plant and animal parts, and it is dispensed by a sangoma or inyanga, types of witchdoctor.

Mondli and Hector purchased herbs which, when boiled and drunk, and/or bathed in, will “make them invisible to police.” Mondli’s interest in this herb increased our skepticism of his reformed status.

The sangoma dissolved into laughter when the honest thief among us asked her if she had muti to make his penis smaller.

A sangoma's consultation house. — A sangoma\’s consultation house.

Elaborate consultation houses stand in the otherwise haphazard market. This one, on the right, was larger than most; others were precious dollhouses, barely wide enough to contain two adults.

We also interviewed a 24-year-old pickpocket named Sihle, who uses razor blades to slice the back pockets of men looking at magazines in bookshops. (Very specific M.O., no?) The wallet then drops into Sihle’s hand, he explained, while the razor blade is stored in a slit in his shirt cuff.

Medicinal plant and animal parts, plus human feet. Be glad this photo isn't larger! — Medicinal plant and animal parts, plus human feet. Be glad this photo isn\’t larger!

Bambi played, Bob wrestled, with a 14-week-old lion cub.

Off duty, we got VIP treatment at private game parks. At 14 weeks old, this lion cub enjoyed its last playdate with humans. Heavy and strong, it began to exercise its instinct to go for the neck, as Bob learned that day.

Bob Arno inyanga johannesburg pickpocket razor blade sangoma South Africa street crime thieves

Flying

It was a long series of flights to South Africa last week, for a three-day visit. We were upgraded to first class on the Denver-to-Frankfurt segment, and got a day room at a Frankfurt airport hotel for a rest and a shower. In total, it took 43 hours to get there.

If we don’t fly business class, we almost always take an exit row, the better to accommodate Bob’s long legs. A number of qualifications must be met in order to sit in the exit rows. You must be over 15, understand English, be physically fit, be willing and able to help in an emergency. We were surprised to see then, on the Vegas-to-Denver segment, a nonagenarian couple in the exit row. When the plane landed, we greeted the couple in the airport and audaciously asked their ages. “75, both,” they claimed, instantly ready with their lies.

Another couple boarded early from wheelchairs on the Frankfurt-to-Cape Town segment. Upon landing, they pushed their way off the plane quickly and rushed to be first in line at immigration—suddenly able-bodied.

On the trip, I listened to the whole four and a half hours of Laurie Anderson’s United States Live. The two-night concert was recorded live in Brooklyn in 1984.

… you know, to be really safe you should always carry a bomb on an airplane. Because the chances of there being one bomb on a plane are pretty small. But the chances of two bombs are almost minuscule. So by carrying a bomb on a plane, the odds of your becoming a hostage or of getting blown up are astronomically reduced.

That was from “New Jersey Turnpike.” “The Night Flight From Houston” is on another Laurie Anderson album I listened to:

It was the night flight from Houston. Almost perfect visibility. You could see the lights from all the little Texas towns far below. And I was sitting next to a fifty-year old woman who had never been on a plane before. And her son had sent her a ticket and said:
“Mom, you’ve raised ten kids; it’s time you got on a plane.”
And she was sitting in a window seat staring out and she kept talking about the Big Dipper and that Little Dipper and pointing; and suddenly I realized that she thought we were in outer space looking down at the stars. And I said:
“You know, I think those lights down there are the lights from little towns.”

The trip home from South Africa was over 33 hours.

flying travel

The tasteful tourist

Pickpocket, left, pretends innocence after stealing a wallet from Diaz, right.

Bob and I looked at each other in disbelief. Only we knew the incredible odds we’d just beaten. To stroll into Rome’s Termini, the main train and subway station, pick a platform, peg a pair of old men as pickpockets, position a victim, and have it all work as if to a script, in under twenty minutes, on Take One… we were flabbergasted, giggly.
The fact that the film crew’s hidden cameras captured it all was merely the cherry on top. This had been our hope and our plan, but we never dreamed we’d pull it off so quickly, if at all. Our prey were Italians; ordinary-looking, regular citizens. Not ethnic minorities, not immigrants, not identifiable outcasts. We’d begun this project for ABC 20/20 with this, the toughest challenge of them all.

Just last night, at dinner in a wonderfully touristy trattoria, investigative reporter Arnold Diaz and segment producer Glenn Ruppel had expressed their severe doubt. They wondered why ABC had allowed this frivolous endeavor, invested the time and significant expense in so improbable a venture. Hidden camera expert Jill Goldstein, serious videographer though she was, just seemed pleased to be along, on her first trip to Europe, her first trip abroad. The five of us ate an innumerable procession of courses any Italian would have pared by half, toasting luck first with Prosecco, then wine, grappa, and finally little glasses of thick, sweet limoncello.

Arnold Diaz interviews Bob Arno about pickpocketing techniques.

Bob and I had worried all the previous two weeks, fretting over myriad potential obstacles. How could we be certain to lead the crew to thieves, get Arnold Diaz pickpocketed, and get it all on film? How would we find the perps in all of Rome?

Our hopes slipped a little when we first met Arnold. With his refined Latin looks and flair for fashion, he blended right in with the local Italian crowd. He didn’t look like a typical American tourist, who may as well have the stars and stripes tattooed across the forehead. Arnold didn’t look like a tourist at all; rather, he looked like a European businessman. So we gave him a five-minute makeover. We slung a backpack on him, put a guidebook in his hand, a camera around his neck, and a “wife” by his side (me!) and, poof—there he was: a tasteful tourist, ready to be ripped off.

All text and photos © copyright 2008-present. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Two (part-g): Research Before You Go

Bob Arno Italy pickpocket Rome street crime subway termini theft thieves tourist tv victim

PICKPOCKETS, CON ARTISTS, GANGSTERS, THIEVES, AND TRAVEL