We had a huge suite at the Eurostars Grand Marina Hotel in Barcelona. Surrounding the spacious bedroom, there was a sitting room, an office, a giant closet full of blond wood drawers and cabinets, and a multi-room bathroom. The suite had 12 sliding doors within it.
That’s why I had to laugh when I found the soap. Look how tiny it is! About an inch by an inch and a half!
To be fair, I should say that the personal products in the bathroom were plentiful, of high quality, and even tied up with a bow. But what made the strongest impression on me? The ridiculous bar of soap!
You can see three sliding doors and four rooms here.
This is my view out the taxi window. Or rather, this is my view OF the taxi window. I’m outraged. This is the entire window!
Taxi window obstruction
Over-reacting? This is in Stockholm, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I’m just arriving and this is what I see of the city. No gorgeous buildings, no bridges, no sparkling water. And then I’m leaving, on my way to the airport, anticipating a final look at fir trees and birches that seem to grow right out of the granite base of Sweden, and the infinite shades of green that define the countryside. Maybe I’m a first-time visitor—and this is my first impression of Swedish hospitality!
I’m talking to you, TaxiKurir. For a $100-ride to or from the airport, I want my view. I make the trip often—ten or more times every summer and several in between. So maybe you’ll feel my absence when I travel with your competitors instead. Right. I know you won’t.
Believe it or not, the next TaxiKurir cab I took had even less view out the taxi window. In place of the large “F” sticker was an even larger square one. Wondering about the window on the opposite side? Same huge stickers. No view out of either window.
Ignorance or arrogance
With the solid headrest in front of me and windows obliterated left and right, I’m feeling a bit claustrophobic back here. TaxiKurir is not the only cab company in Stockholm.
What are they thinking?
Answer: they’re not.
Strandvagen, one of Stockholm’s many gorgeous sights.
The Pigeon Poop Pickpocket Ploy as perpetrated in Barcelona is devious. We discover the original Pigeon Poop Perp, who pretends to offer goodness. In response, naturally, his victims trust.
The pigeon poop pickpocket. He just happened to have a packet of tissues handy; just happened to have a bottle of water.
The leisurely ploy is perpetrated by the “clean-you-off-clean-you-out” good samaritan impostor. Bob and I met many of his victims before we finally found him—or rather, he found us.
We’d been staking out a suspicious trio at Temple de la Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi’s spectacular cathedral and Barcelona’s number one tourist attraction. It was a long amble back to La Rambla. We zigzagged south and west block by block, with no particular pattern. It was a pleasant route we invented, strolling past fabulous architecture, under lush green trees, while a cool wind blew and pigeons cooed.
At the corner of Consell de Cent and Girona we saw a beautifully ornate pastry shop facade which reminded us of one in Palma de Mallorca. We decided we’d peek in, see if they served coffee. We were still debating and postulating about the pickpocket team at La Sagrada Familia as we crossed the street in front of the pasticeria.
How the pigeon poop pickpocket ploy works
This guy got it good.
As I stepped up onto the curb I felt a slight wetness on the back of my knee below the hem of my skirt, as if I had splashed in a puddle. Not impossible, since it had rained recently. The rain had actually been the day before, but I just sort of knew it had rained, in the back of my mind, without really thinking about it.
Reflex made me glance into the street for the source puddle but in that same instant I knew there was no puddle. I asked Bob to look at my back but I knew what it was. I was horrified and exalted simultaneously. We were about to meet a charlatan, a gentleman thief with a fiction, an ersatz Samaritan and the most elusive of pickpockets.
Bob confirmed my disgusted suspicion: I had thick blobs of brown yuck on the back of my clothes, and so did Bob.
In that instant of offended confusion, while we admired each other’s backsides and laughed and grimaced, before we could organize our thoughts in that tenth of a minute, a man in shorts swept up to us, map in hand, sunglassed and baseball capped.
“Iy, look,” he pointed out. We swung around. “Bird, bird.”
Where did he come from? Out of the blue, it seemed. Still, we knew who he was. We knew what he was.
“Come, I help,” he offered with compassion and authority, ushering us into the pastry shop we’d been headed for. He already had a neat pack of Kleenex tissues in one hand, a small bottle of Evian in the other. He was more prepared than we had expected. Bob put his video in record.
Employees didn’t seem surprised in the pastry shop. They observed our intrusion with the vague interest of ranch hands regarding mating dogs. The man-in-shorts pressed a tissue into Bob’s hand and turned me around by the arm.
“You clean,” he said to Bob politely but insistently, indicating my back. He didn’t want to appear unseemly. You clean her and I’ll clean you—out. That was the idea. We’d heard the story many times from victims. While the husband cleans the wife, the man-in-shorts cleans the husband. Rather, he pretends to clean the husband. What he cleans is the pockets. And disappears before you know it.
Neither of us were good researchers this time: I didn’t cooperate fully, out of repulsion. And Bob was too busy filming to do his part. He was supposed to clean me off. But every time the impostor coached Bob in his role, Bob just said okay, fussed with his new camera, and failed to come to the aid of his wife. How could he videotape the scam if he were a participant? But how could the game continue without all the players?
Our man-in-shorts got frustrated and tried to slip away. We managed to waylay him though, outside the shop. We tried to get him to talk to us, to show us his squirt contraption, to tell us where he’s from. He was insistent about no video, no camera, but he didn’t rush off too obviously. He backed away slowly, trying not to look suspicious. Finally, he broke into a little trot and dashed into the handy metro stairway. Was its proximity coincidental? We think not.
Questions about the pigeon poop pickpocket ploy and M.O.
Barcelona police, it turned out, had been looking for the man-in-shorts for years. They knew his M.O., his territory, and that he was Peruvian. And they knew he always wore shorts. That was it. They now had his scam and his face on video.
We walked back toward La Rambla looking over our shoulders, hyper-observant. Bob and I disagree on the participation of the pastry shop people. I say they were in on it. I say the man-in-shorts buys his bread there and always leaves a hefty tip. I say they were awfully quick to bring out a roll of paper towels and laundry detergent when the man-in-shorts left. I say everyone’s a suspect. Bob says it’s impossible, they couldn’t be in on it. It just happened to be the corner where opportunity struck for the man-in-shorts. He couldn’t do his thing on only one corner in all the city.
J. S. Brody, an advertising executive in New York City, was a victim of the man-in-shorts. He remembers being astonished at the amount of bird droppings on his backside and his mother’s. “What do you have here, eagles?” he’d asked. The pigeon poop pickpocket ploy had taken place several blocks away from the pasticeria. For the clean-up operation, the pigeon-poop practitioner had drawn them into the lobby of an apartment house. So much for my theory on location.
Exactly ten years later—to the week!—Bob and I were strolling in the same neighborhood when we were squirted once again. We were astonished to see recognize the very same pigeon poop pickpocket. Read about our reunion with the pigeon poop pickpocket.
The pigeon poop pickpocket—exactly ten years later.
Levitation in Rome.Levitation in Naples.Levitation in Malta.
Living statue street performers in Europe have learned a new trick. Now they levitate.
I’ve seen these floating swamis in several cities this month, all sporting minor variations on the theme. My favorite is the solo act I saw on a sidewalk in Rome. Unfortunately, there were three versions of the act in a row, which takes away a little of the surprise and mystery.
Aside from the lone meditating man in Rome, all the others I saw were duos—still a great effect.
And here’s what I really liked. The actors, and their assistants if they had them, hid their set-up. One morning, I saw a giant gray tent-like cover, billowing in the breeze on a sidewalk, as some mysterious activity took place within it. Though I enjoy watching the better living statues apply their makeup and don their costumes, I would not like to observe the secrets of this effect being revealed. It pleases me that the actors bother to prevent exposure.
How have the cities so suddenly become flooded with floating swamis? Is there one magician somewhere who sells or rents the gear? Does he own the franchise? Or did one clever living statue street performer take his act public, only to see a rush of copycats proliferate all across Europe?
At least one of these groups is from Bangladesh. Perhaps they all are. I didn’t have a chance to ask if they all descend from a single purveyor. Only one group I saw had a guard-assistant-controller nearby, with whom I could speak.
In general across Europe, the quality of living statue street performers has come down. I can be impressed with the creativity of some: their concepts, costumes, stillness, face expressions, and movements to reward a coin donation. But just as often now, they’re disappointing. Boring, with their faces covered by commercial masks, allowing them to lick their lips and twitch and scowl to their hearts’ content. So many now are cheap copies hopping on a bandwagon. If you’re going to be still—and do nothing—you better be really something to look at.
Pickpocket Kharem gets the victim to look back at his right shoulder. Meanwhile, his left hand opens the victim’s left front jacket, exposing the breast pocket.
How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets usually involves the application of something disgusting, much like the pigeon poop pickpocket does. Occasionally, they use a baby—not to apply the gunk, but to stick its little hand into the male victim’s breast pocket.
Kharem shows how the pickpocket’s partner then comes from the front, dipping into the breast pocket while the vic looks in the opposite direction.Bambi plays the distractor while Kharem does the dipping.
A man’s inside breast pocket is one of the safest from pickpockets. It’s one of the hardest pockets to steal from because it’s in front, up close, in a sensitive area. Unless, of course, the jacket is hanging on the back of a chair—then it’s a piece of cake.
Clever strategist pickpockets tap directly into their victims’ emotions, the hard-wired ick factor being a useful one. Bob Arno described how, as a youth, he was “stunned at the callousness of using the primeval emotion, fear, to accomplish distraction”:
“In the early sixties leprosy was still a serious threat to the populations of India and Pakistan. It was common to see sufferers in various stages of deterioration roaming the streets of Karachi, Calcutta, Bombay, and New Delhi. Banding together, they often surrounded Western visitors coming out of banks, hotels, and churches. The sight of an outstretched hand with missing or rotting fingers usually caused people to react with horror and drop some coins, if for no other reason to get the infected limbs to go away. Compassion and revulsion metamorphosed into currency. The ploy was effective, diabolical, and unique to Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent.”
This daring face-to-face technique used to steal from inside jacket pockets, no matter how brief and fleeting, is not for every thief. It takes a certain coolness to step up to your potential victim, show him a close-up of your face, and slide your hands all over his body, like a tailor. The pickpocket keeps track of multiple streams: he’s eliciting the ick factor, acting the good Samaritan, and setting up a stealthy steal literally right under the vic’s nose. He’s probably watching out for police and witnesses at the same time. He’s probably sweating.
It doesn’t always work:
Indian Shit Trick
“We were about to cross the street in Delhi,” a British traveler told me. “It was very crowded, people pushing and going in every direction. We stepped off the curb between some parked cars which were very close together. I was just concentrating on getting through them and across the street. A man bumped into my husband as we were squeezing between the cars. He followed as we crossed the street, and as we reached the other side, he pointed to my husband’s shoe. ‘Shit,’ he said. We looked down and saw it. It was shit on my husband’s shoe. The man offered to help us clean it off, but we thought we knew what he was up to. We thought it was a scam. We’d heard that they do that, then demand huge sums of money in payment, and they don’t let you go until you pay. So we said no, and walked away with shit on the shoe.”
How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets
Of course [the prolific and multi-talented Barcelona pickpocket] Kharem has a version of this one. He had led us into a seedy alley, long, dim, and deserted, eager to demo, at Bob’s request, his expertise on inside jacket pockets.
“I don’t want to go much further in this direction,” I said, chicken as usual.
“Don’t worry,” our interpreter soothed me. “I know where we are.” That was Terry Jones, our Barcelona-based friend and bag-snatch authority.
Kharem stopped at a graffitied niche where a stone water fountain was the sole feature.
The only jacket among the four of us on this warm spring afternoon was Kharem’s prop, the “tool” he used over his arm. He put the jacket on Terry and took a fat brown wallet from his own pocket.
“Whose is that?” I asked him.
“Mine!” he laughed, and put it in Terry’s inside breast pocket. I should have asked whose was it.
“Wait till these people pass.” A couple ambled toward us, oblivious to all but themselves.
“Shall I do it on those tourists?” Kharem asked.
“Noooo, we’ll wait,” Bob said, and the rest of us laughed nervously.
“It takes two people,” Kharem explained. “One spits into his hand, then applies the spit onto the victim’s right shoulder.” Standing behind Terry, he showed how to “help” the victim by pointing out the mess. After indicating the shoulder to Terry, who couldn’t see that far behind him, Kharem grasped the upper right sleeve with his right hand and Terry’s left lapel with his left. With both hands, he twisted the jacket slightly around to the right.
This accomplished two necessities. It successfully turned Terry’s attention far to his right, and it intentionally made vulnerable Terry’s left inside breast pocket. With perfect timing, the “pick” of the pair, approaching from the front, would then have free access to the wallet.
It’s hard not to like Kharem in conversation, but we remind ourselves: he’s a thief.
Kharem suggested I be the spitting Samaritan and, as Bob filmed and Terry cooperated, we easily stole the wallet. Kharem high-fived his new partner.
“Eeew,” I said, pulling my hand away. His was wet.
“It’s not spit!” he said. “It’s from the water fountain!” I hadn’t noticed that he’d gotten a quick drink.
Spit, shit, what’s the difference? The object is to apply a substance that the victim wants off now. Something disgusting, something staining, something smelly. In New York they use mustard. In London ice cream. Mix and match. The strategist has created his opportunity complete with an excuse to get up close and personal…to touch…to take.
I’m ready for lousy treatment from airlines. I expect it. Even from U.S. Airways, a member of the Star Alliance, of which I’m a top-tier member (“gold”).
U.S. Airways doesn’t extend any special privilege to me when it comes to economy seating, since my Star Alliance allegiance is to United Airlines, where I am a 1K member.
So I expect rotten seats. I get the best I can early, then hope some improvement can be made at check-in. So much for being Star Alliance Gold, the valued frequent-flier.
I followed that practice on our most recent domestic flight. Our client booked Bob and me on separate reservations with seats together in the back. Online, I moved our seats forward to 17A and B.
Airline seat scam
Early to the airport for our red-eye, there was no crowd and a nice agent quickly volunteered to assist. At the passenger check-in terminal, he brought up the seat map on which we saw certain desirable seats marked with dollar signs. I won’t pay for those on principle. The agent pointed out 5A and B on the screen, which showed available, no extra charge. Great. He booked me into 5A, a window seat.
The agent then logged in for Bob’s reservation and clicked to the seat map. 5A showed occupied now—by me. But 5B, a middle seat, was now marked with a dollar sign. It suddenly required an extra charge!
“What happened?” I asked, “it was free just a moment ago. And who charges for middle seats?”
“They charge if you want to sit together,” the agent said. Another agent volunteered that “the system” charges for random seats. But what passenger would pay for a middle seat? Only one who wants to sit next to someone sitting in the adjacent seat, obviously. Not very random, it seems to me. Clearly, an airline seat scam by U.S. Airways.
“Forget it! Just put us back in 17A and B, then.”
The agent fiddled at his own terminal for a few minutes, then informed us that 17A and B were no longer available. He offered something in the 30s.
Bob and I balked, insisting that the agent put us into 5A and B, as he initially suggested, or restore the seats I had reserved online. I waved my printed reservation at him, and he bothered to scrutinize it. We used the words airline seat scam and requested a supervisor.
The agent sweated at his terminal. Magically, 17A and B became available once again. The agent said he “moved someone.” Who knows how these airline seat scams work. Did someone really grab 17A and B during the very few minutes we tried to switch to seats in row 5? Did the agent hit a red “pax balks” button?
So now I’m wondering what triggered the scam, given that Bob and I had separate booking numbers. Could it be that his and my profiles, or frequent flier numbers, show that we usually fly together? Could it be that we booked a window seat, and within two minutes attempted to book the adjacent seat from the same terminal? Could it have been triggered by the agent who volunteered to take over the process? Any of these are possible. Any other instigator I haven’t thought of?
One thing I do not believe is that the seat we wanted was suddenly a “random” charge.
We haven’t experienced everything as very frequent fliers, but we thought we’d at least read everything. This was a first. Charging to sit next to someone? Charging for a middle seat? This is an airline seat scam I hadn’t read of, heard of, or could imagine. Very creative, U.S. Airways!
Here’s another hotel oddity. The Marine Plaza Hotel in Mumbai got it a little wrong. The nice fabric shower curtain is on the inside, and gets soaked. The clear plastic curtain liner hangs on the outside.
Is there some logic I’m not getting? Are all the bathrooms done like this?
I’m not complaining—the hotel was otherwise nice enough. Just… the odd things I find in hotels! It never ceases to amuse me.
Backseat scooter thieves snatch from tuk-tuk passengers.
Bangkok theft has gotten bad enough that police have posted warnings about theft from tuk-tuk passengers. The convenient little auto-rickshaws, ubiquitous on the streets of Bangkok, are completely open and often stuck in traffic. Scooters can maneuver the interstices of clogged roads, sneak up on tuk-tuk passenger, then slither away between vehicles to beat an escape.
It’s a technique long in play in Italy, especially in Naples. There, targets of scippatori, the Italian version of scooter-riding bandits, are more often pedestrians. (Though the thieves have a nasty technique for stealing watches from expensive cars stuck in traffic, even with their windows closed.)
When riding in the three-wheeled open taxis, be sure to keep your bags secured, out-of-sight, or away from the perimeters.
Bangkok theft extends beyond pickpocketing and bag snatching to scams that cost the tourist serious money. Particularly prevalent are gem scams, in which the visitor is brought to a “special sale” and encouraged to buy gems for resale at huge profits in their home countries. And bar scams, and vehicle-rental scams, drink-drugging, and pseudo-cops.
As if all these Bangkok theft issues weren’t enough for a tourist to worry about, there’s more. Road safety is one of the worst in the world, with poor vehicle and driver safety standards, little if any enforcement, few ambulances, and roads too clogged for ambulances to get through anyway. Add to that wild motorcycle riders attempting to speed around traffic by veering suddenly onto sidewalks, and even pedestrians must be seriously watchful.
I strongly recommend that travelers planning to visit Thailand read the U.S. State Department’s Country Specific Information on Thailand. Like all U.S. State Department country profiles, it covers very real ongoing crime and safety issues without exaggeration.
