Travel – Page 32 – Thiefhunters in Paradise

Observations of Japan

Just back from Japan with a few shallow thoughts:

I like the Japanese philosophies of beauty and simplicity, love the food, but can’t get used to the unquestioning, obedient nature of the people. Or that all answers are “yes,” even when it means “no.”

High-tech toilets: I like having a warm seat and a control panel. The electronic sound effects are annoying—fake waterfall or babbling brook sounds. The bidet/washing features are—um, too personal for comment.

I appreciate super-fast Asian internet, but my hotel wifi ate a bunch of my outgoing email without telling me. I prefer slow and reliable.

Cherry blossoms make up for the gray, cold, windy, rainy, dreary weather on the March/April cusp.

Yokohama has no trash cans. None. After I needed one, I kept looking the rest of the day as I crisscrossed the city. I never found one. Yep, there was a little trash on the ground, but only a little.

Natto beans with mustard, ready to top rice.

Breakfast: a bowl of rice with 30 different garnishes, 30 different ones every day. Wonderful. The one constant: natto beans, the love ’em or hate ’em fermented beans with a strong ammonia fragrance, which you whip up into a froth of snotty, stringy, viscous liquid, not unlike the stuff okra oozes. When you eat natto beans, the stuff loops from the chopsticks in long, fine, spiderwebby strings that stick to your chin and do feel like actual spider webs a minute or so later when dry.

Astonishing and confounding, how little English is spoken in Japan, including by the young people. What English exists is often amusing. The woman who was assigned to translate our presentation spoke to me beforehand and, pointing to a bald man, innocently called him a skinhead. I saw shops called “Junk Jewels” and another, “Junk & Antiques.” There’s a chain of mini-markets called “Sometimes Fresh.” Passed the “Pay Up Hotel.”

Pocari Sweat, available on every street corner.

If you’re thirsty on the street, you can stop at a vending machine and buy a bottle of “Pocari Sweat.” Vending machines also sell “Full Supporty” stockings, and tickets for full, hot meals, chosen by plastic display and then picked up from a cook nearby with never a word spoken.

Some very tall pine trees looked like cellphone towers.

A digital sign in front of a tollbooth showed an animated cartoon man waving a flag back and forth.

I’ve been to Japan quite a few times. These thoughts are not cumulative, but specifically from this visit.

Confessions of an airport thief

Kharem, a pickpocket we've observed in Barcelona since 2001. — Kharem, a pickpocket we\’ve observed in Barcelona since 2001.

Kharem’s Lucky Haul

Kharem, a pickpocket in Spain, sometimes chooses Barcelona’s airport over the rich pickings of the city. When Bob and I again found Kharem at work on La Rambla, nine months after we’d previously interviewed him, we asked how he’d been.

“Supremely good!” Kharem said. He swept his thumbtip against his forehead, fingers fisted, in a quick, subtle gesture.

“He actually said …˜son-of-a-bitch good,'” our translator clarified. Our friend Terry Jones was tagging along on our prowl that day. His own street crime expertise was more in the bag snatch discipline than the pickpocket branch. Although he’d watched the local thieves with fascination and sometimes wrote about them, he’d never interviewed one. Now he translated our conversation, intrigued and electrified by the novelty.

Kharem at work in Barcelona, carrying a coat with which to hide his thefts.

“But haven’t there been fewer tourists?” Bob asked. We’d last met Kharem just a few weeks before September 11. “Let’s get away from the crowd and talk.”

“The work is good at the airport,” he said. “I robbed an Egyptian there. It was son-of-a-bitch good. But yes, there are fewer tourists and it has affected my business. Also, there are more policemen around.”

The four of us ambled up a narrow side street in Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. I tightened my grip on our camera bag. Bob was filming Kharem openly.

“Do the police arrest you more than they did last year?”

“No, they don’t arrest me. They just take the money and let me go,” Kharem said, flipping his thumbtip against his forehead again. “The police are not very good; they don’t have much experience. I’m better than they are, in the street.” He smiled bashfully and looked at the ground.

“Is there more bag snatching?”

“Yes, but they’re young people who don’t know how to work. If all you want is a wallet, you can take it without violence. But these people don’t know how to work clean. They’re young, and some of them are on drugs. Many children have come from Morocco this year, since Spain and Morocco are side by side. These Moroccan children work in a crude and unsophisticated way.”

Kharem, perhaps pleased by our attention, clowns for our video camera. "Let me be in your movies," he said. Our good friend Terry, right, interpreted. — Kharem, perhaps pleased by our attention, clowns for our video camera. \’Let me be in your movies,\’ he said. Our good friend Terry, right, interpreted.

“I think he’s a little proud of his own skill and style,” Terry added.

“Besides La Rambla, I work in the metro and sometimes at the airport. The Egyptian I mentioned—it was a briefcase I took from him just last week in the airport. It had thousands of dollars in it.”

“How did you take it?” Bob asked.

“I threw some money on the floor,” he said, “let me show you.” He bent to take our canvas bag from the cobblestones where it was safely lodged between my feet. I looked at Bob, but he didn’t seem concerned about letting this known thief and now confessed bag snatcher handle our $15,000 sack of stuff.

Kharem lifted the bag and took two steps away. As if in slow motion, I watched our camera, mixer, mic, and tapes of fresh footage retreat, and waited to see Kharem lunge and dash away with a fine fee for little chat. We’d greeted him like old friends, I recalled; we hadn’t criticized his way of life. Must we show this much trust? He’s not our friend. And we certainly are not his. But the alternative was unpredictable.

It's hard not to like Kharem in conversation, but we remind ourselves: he's a thief. — It\’s hard not to like Kharem in conversation, but we remind ourselves: he\’s a thief.

I could have stopped him from taking our bag, or snatched it out of his hands, or just said “sorry, I don’t think so.” And what might Kharem have done then? Did we care about preserving a relationship for the future? Or did we just not care to insult a person who’d revealed to us the most intimate secrets of his life?

Kharem set the bag down gently at Terry’s feet, steadying it so it wouldn’t tip. He tossed a couple of €10 notes and Terry twisted to watch them flutter to the ground.

“He bent to get the money and I just walked off with his briefcase,” Kharem said, lifting our bag once again. He smiled, swiped his thumbtip against his forehead, and handed the bag to me.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Three (part-b): Getting There—With all your Marbles

More about Kharem:
•A pickpocket updates his technique
•Barcelona street crime
•Consorting with thieves
•Stalking a moving target

airport Barcelona pickpocket spain thieves Travel Advisory

Airport danger and the strategist thief

“Did you know you’re wearing mismatched shoes?” a well-dressed Englishman said to our friend, Brooks, at London’s Heathrow airport one day.

Brooks was talking on his phone, frantic at finding out that he was supposed to be at London’s other airport, Gatwick. He locked eyes with the stranger. “I am not!” he said, refusing to be distracted. “And you’ll not succeed in grabbing my briefcase!”

Brooks had become security-obsessed hearing our tales.

“Pardon me, then. But you are.” The man walked away, intentions defeated, whatever they were.

Brooks finished his telephone call, feeling rather smug that he’d thwarted a thief who’d tried to distract him. Then he looked down at his shoes, only to see one tasseled, one buckled loafer.

Everyone knows not to leave bags unattended in airports and, lest we forget, we are relentlessly reminded by annoying announcements. Bag-stealing strategists are devious, though. Even if you aren’t looking away from your things, you may be connived into doing so. Questions by an apparently confused or puzzled foreigner touch our good-natured core and we want to help. A moment’s distraction is all an accomplice requires. Who would suspect that the pretty girl asking to borrow your pen is merely a diversion as her colleagues snag your bag?

Or, here’s a good one: you’re suddenly paged. Who would page you at an airport, possibly a foreign airport, or a stopover? Who even knows you’re there? You rush off to find the white courtesy phone, befuddled and worried. The accented voice on the line sounds unclear, yet urgent. You may be asked to write down a number, requiring some gymnastics while you extract a pen and find a scrap of paper. Have you looked away from your briefcase? Have you lost physical contact with it? Where is it, anyway?

Earlier, the thief had examined the object of his desire, your bag. Its luggage tag informed him of your name. The strategist paged you. He distracted you. He created his own plausible situation. Or, as Bob would say, he created a shituation.

Airports give the illusion of safeness, especially now with increased security. The swirling crowd of dazed travelers, lost or rushed or tired, makes a perfect haystack for the needle-like thief. Your bag might disappear before you even get inside, in all the curbside commotion. Long, tedious, check-in lines can be disorderly madness in some airports, inducing inattention when you need it most.

Computers and purses disappear, too, at airport security checkpoints. Guards have their hands full keeping order at the chaotic bottlenecks, and they’re watching for bigger fish than bag thieves. Don’t assume they’ll safeguard your bags.

Practically every television news program has shown this ruse. The scam occurs just after you’ve put your items on the belt. Before you walk through the metal detector, a stranger cuts in front as if in a hurry. The equipment buzzes and he has to back up and remove his watch, his coins, something. Meanwhile, you’re trapped in limboland and your bags are free-for-all on the so-called secure side.

If you’re traveling with another person, make a habit of this: one person goes through security first and collects her and your bags as they appear. The other waits to see that all bags go fully and safely into the x-ray machine, and watches the belt to see that it isn’t reversed, leaving your items vulnerable on the other side. If you’re alone, wait for any crowd at the checkpoint to pass, if you can, or be alert to anyone who barges in front of you after you’ve let go of your things.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Three (part-a): Getting There—With all your Marbles

airport distraction security strategist thieves Travel Advisory

African safari

Just back from safari in South Africa—21 of us on a family trip. My sister Shari wrote this report:

We’re driving along a dirt road at Mala Mala and our ranger says…”smell that?” No. was our answer. We kept driving and then saw vultures. He smelled death again. Then we see a hyena. Just one. We follow it off road in the jeep. It doesn’t even care. Eventually it lays down in the tall grass as though it’s saying ok, that’s enough. I’m not going to lead you to MY food. By then the smell is intolerable. Some of us thought it was the fact that we were parked in a grove of rhino shit. But our guide said that’s the least of it. It was definitely carcass.

Seven or eight hyenas fought over this meal of buffalo.

We keep driving in our land rover, just mowing down trees. We stop and shut down the engine. Our ranger says, “hear that.” No. was our answer. He follows the sound and stops again. “Hear that. They’re chewing and ripping.” Yes! we hear it. He keeps on going and eventually finds a small covered cove where three hyenas are chowing down on a buffalo carcass. It’s evening. The light is getting dim. We’re snapping photos, videotaping and even using flash. Then one jumps up and away. And we hear all kinds of hyena growling and howling. Another hyena wanted to join the feast, but there is a ritual, and the newcomer has to ask permission. We stayed quite awhile for a bit more action, more of the pack joining, and a little scuffle, etc. Amazing…and stinky.
Â

More than a dozen lions frolic after dark, and don't mind being in the spotlight.

We then drive to an open meadow where a pride of lions are lounging. By now isÂ pitch black. We drive right up to them. We’re in an open jeep. We’re in a wide open meadow. We are among at least two mothers, one father, sevenÂ cubs and five teens. It is DARK. WeÂ shine spotlights right on them. They lounge, they wrestle. But they weren’t hungry. They never left to hunt, but it was great to see, to be right among them. We were just four yards from some of them.
Â

Last night we arrivedÂ in Singita, our new place. It was a 15 minute plane ride, and the topography is completely different. We are in a privately run portion of Kruger National Park.Â This portion isÂ many thousands of acres that are only accessible to the lodge guests (which is only our group of 21 family members.) However,Â although privately managed, they still have to follow some of the National Park’s rules and we are not as free to just hightail it off road any time we please. They are only allowed off-roadÂ to trackÂ “the big five.”Â Kruger National Park is the size of Massachusetts.
Â

The sound of hippos was a constant backdrop. More than one is a raft.

WeÂ stopped at the side of the dirt road and took aÂ short walk to the end of some craggy rocks on the edge of a green river filled withÂ hippos. At least 17. We could have watched themÂ do their hippo thing…which is nothing…for hours. I caught one with it’s mouth wide open. I hope it’s not blurry. They’re surprisingly, loudly, vocal (and we hear them all night from our rooms above the river). Later that night, onÂ our way back to the lodge, we sawÂ two hippos out of the water. They look like giant pigs. They’re shy. They ran awayÂ fairly quickly. We felt lucky to see them, because they’re in waterÂ most of the time.
Â

Glass box aerie has an outdoor shower and netted bed on back deck.

This lodge is amazing. You should look it up!Â We’re in Singita at Lebombo lodge. The entire place is built on stilts above ground, and can be completely dismantled and taken away in 30 days, leaving only a few patches of bare ground. Not to piss you off, but it’s one of the top in world.Â We count ourselves lucky—very lucky—to be here.

Africa safari travel

Golden silk orb weaver spider

Mala Mala and Kruger National Park, South Africa— Spiders were an everpresant danger to a number of our safari group, to the extent that they’d rather lose a leopard we were tracking than drive through the web of a golden silk orb weaver spider. Conversely, other members of the group designated one of our four Range Rovers “the bug car,” devoting significant time to examining insect and reptile life under rocks and logs.

The golden silk orb weaver spider

The golden silk orb weaver spider spins its web between two trees or shrubs—seemingly every two trees or shrubs in the bush. So plowing through its webs was unavoidable on our off-road hunts. Our vehicles, lacking windshields, had only an antenna to break the webs—and our faces, of course.

Female golden silk orb weaver spider's web catches a praying mantis. Male comes running...for dinner? Good example of sexual dimorphism: large female, small male. — Female weaver's web catches a praying mantis. Male comes running...for dinner? Good example of sexual dimorphism: large female, small male.

The screams and wails of the fearful ones were a contrast to their calm excitement five feet from hungry lions, a yard from a hunting leopard. One of the arachnophobes easily handled a six-inch millipede, and tasted a fried grub. I guess for some, spiders are just directly hot-wired to the ick response, and no logic applies.

The golden orb spider is a large, striking arachnid that spins an impressive web of strong yellow silk. Its main bridge line can span 30 or more feet, and feels like fishing line. African kids wrap and roll it into yellow rope bracelets.

Red bill quilia trapped in a golden silk orb weaver spider web. — Red bill quilia trapped in a golden orb web.

Twice, we came upon a bird caught in a web, flapping helplessly. Caving in to pleas from some of our group, our rangers, two different ones, freed the birds. Yes, they’d otherwise be spider dinner.

The web is so strong and sticky that fishermen use it to make nets. They bend a branch into a teardrop shape and wave it back and forth through the golden silk orb weaver’s web.

Despite those who scream eek, we drove through hundreds of webs. Only a few spiders got into the vehicle. None clamped onto anyone’s face. None climbed into anyone’s shirt. Etc.

Instead, most of the victimized spiders ran into the shrubs at one end of their bridge lines. They would then eat the silk of their ruined webs and spin new ones with recycled material within hours.

See some images of fabric made from the undyed silk of the golden silk orb weaver spider.

Golden silk orb weaver spider; Spiders seeming to hang in mid-air. The webs are easy to walk into. — Spiders seeming to hang in mid-air. The webs are easy to walk into.

Golden silk orb weaver spider; Photo by Josh Oakley — Photo by Josh Oakley

Africa safari South Africa

Ragged right

Coogee Beach, Australia— I spend a lot of time on our hotel balcony because the view is spectacular. The weather is glorious and the waves are loud. It’s a fine place to write, with a computer on my lap.

I can see a series of little coves just beyond our beach, and each is separated by a rocky promontory. The sea crashes into these dividers in slow motion, and white clouds of spray just hang there, punctuating each rocky spit of land like a period at the end of a sentence.

Hmmm, take that further: the coast is a paragraph, the country a book, a tome, a history since life began. Its sentences are long and the ragged right runs into the sea. Each sentence is an enigma, ending with a question mark shrouded in mist. The one closest to me ends with an ellipsis of rocks…

Australia travel

Necessity is the mother of…

Coogee Beach, Australia—From our hotel, we walk around the corner to The Globe for “brekkie” every morning. We’re regulars on the stools at the open windows. We order a “tall black” and a “flat white.” Coffee. The Globe serves toasted fruit loaf, slices of a dense loaf packed with dried apricots, figs, dates, currents, and raisons. They toast it properly: dark so it’s as black as its poppy seed crust.

Earlier, I had seen a fruit loaf in a tiny market just across the street; the poster advertising it made me drool. It was called Dallas Fruit Loaf. I asked The Globe’s waitress if their fruit loaf was Dallas. She didn’t know. Anyway, it’s delicious.

One day they didn’t have the fruit loaf. I ordered the “full brekkie,” which Bob gets, and I was sorry. Next day, The Globe was still out of fruit loaf. “But I found out, it is Dallas,” the waitress said. “If I go and buy a loaf, will you toast it for me?” I asked her. “With pleasure,” she said.

So I ran across to the little market and bought a Dallas fruit loaf. The Globe’s waitress toasted three thick slices for me and served it on a plate with a crock of butter. I took the rest of the loaf back to the hotel.

But how will we toast it, Bob and I wondered. It’s soooo delicious toasted! I thought about what we had in the room. We can steam it with our clothes steamer to make it damp, then let it dry out and get hard on the outside. Then we can heat water in the coffee pot and set a cup of hot water on the toast to warm it. No. We can put a slice in the trouser press! Set the timer for 30 minutes… slow, but it might work. What if we forget the bread in the trouser press, Bob wondered. Okay, never mind.

Later, Bob went out for a take-away Thai lunch. I stayed on our balcony and ate an apple. And a slice of Dallas fruit loaf. Toasted.

Yes—I remembered what else we had in our room. An iron!

Why not? It’s teflon coated. I tried just a corner first. The iron wiped clean on a towel. Who needs butter?

food hotel travel

Singapore ice cream

What sounds more scrumptious that “bread ice cream?” Scallion pancakes, Dutch waffles, and durian come to my mind, along with a hundred other street foods.

The lines are long though, at the bread ice cream carts on the streets of Singapore. For a few cents, you get a scoop or a slab of neapolitan ice cream between two slices of soft white bread. Only—the balloon bread is green and pink.

I’d choose bread ice cream over fried grasshoppers, for sure. But it’s nothing like the wonderful Turkish ice cream. And Turkish ice cream comes with entertainment.

Singapore street food

At large in Rome

A woman carrying a child wandering in Rome

We spent some time observing this woman in Rome. She carried a child in a sling and walked with another woman. We thought we knew what they were up to, but we never confirmed anything. When they stopped for ice cream, Bob tried to talk to her. They spoke a bit in a garbled mix of French and German, but there was no real content. She allowed herself and the child to be photographed.

Italy Rome thiefhunting

Taxi trickery

Thieves in Prague: the three front center will get what the taxis don't.

After an eventful overnight train journey we were disgorged into a very foreign Sunday morning. Not a single sign in Prague’s main train terminal was in friendly English, or any other language we could make out; not even an exit sign. The station was haunted by solitary figures standing, smoking, watching, waiting. It took us half an hour to find a dismal tourist information booth. The grouchy attendant, stingy with his every word, pushed a map at us through a slit in his glass barrier and considered himself done. Averse to bribing a public servant, we persisted with our questions, formulating the same query in endless shapes. Finally, we extracted this gem: taxi fare to our hotel ought to be two hundred koruna, about six dollars.

The taxi drivers had something else in mind.

“Meter,” they said, “more fair.”

Our bags were loaded into the trunk and we got in.

“About how much,” we asked.

“Meter,” the driver insisted. Again we pressed for an estimate, and the driver finally said seven hundred. Seven hundred! Out we got, and out with our bags. The driver said something to the other waiting taxi drivers, and we were certain we wouldn’t get a ride from any of them. So we walked.

A few blocks down the street we flagged down a passing taxi. He too, suggested the meter. We said c’mon, about how much. Three hundred, he said. Okay. We watched the meter start spinning. No way was it a legal spin. As the meter crept to four hundred, we protested, and the driver agreed to a flat three hundred.

“The taxi drivers wanted seven hundred koruna!” I exclaimed in outrage to the hotel receptionist.

“They are thieves,” was his simple reply.

But they were not the thieves we were interested in.

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

cab cheat con czech Prague taxi thieves

PICKPOCKETS, CON ARTISTS, GANGSTERS, THIEVES, AND TRAVEL

Observations of Japan

Confessions of an airport thief

Airport danger and the strategist thief

African safari

Golden silk orb weaver spider

The golden silk orb weaver spider

Ragged right

Necessity is the mother of…

Singapore ice cream

Singapore ice cream

At large in Rome

Taxi trickery

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