Intro

We've tried to calm your fears, showing you that things are much hairier at home than on the road. There is one thing we should tell you. Given a choice between popping an 80-year-old peasant woman or a rotund 50-year-old Rotarian from Cleveland, the choice becomes easy. Tourists are fodder for fiends.

We are pickpocketed in the street when we bend over to give money to a blind old woman, our car window is smashed in and all our clothing is stolen when we are having an audience with the pope, our hotel is ransacked when we visit a village to help a sick child. We are scammed, lied to, beaten, shot, raped and in some cases murdered. Why? Well, look at it from the bad guy's perspective. He has a family to shelter, a vein to feed, a donkey payment, even an employer who will break his nose if he doesn't make the weekly number.

Examine the modern touristicus domesticus. They travel in predictably jabbering gaggles, following well-worn trails. Monolingual, they pay little attention to their environment since they are terrified of being left behind or having the bus leave without them. They are usually wearing outlandish colorful plumage. Gray walking shoes sprout cream of mushroom legs marbled with blue veins topped off by what could be spare tire or a bulging overstuffed money belt. The neck is usually tilted up with a rhythmic swivel bent slightly forward by the weight of their Sears Camcorder and SLR with zoom telephoto, binoculars and silkscreened vinyl camera bag. The right index finger is either pointed at the local attraction or pressing a shutter. The mouth is in a state of continual movement as they talk, not necessarily to each other, but to ensure that they are having a good time and seeing wonderful things. They usually arrive in shiny buses, descending like locusts as they strip souvenir stands clean and cluster in tight groups under the watchful eye of an overly pleasant multilingual guide holding an umbrella.

Tourists are not dumb or bad people, but they are the main source of sustenance for touts, louts and thugs. Some of these tourists do funny things. They sneak away from those bus tour hotels and migrate to seedy places to watch local women take their clothes off. They drink too much. They make friends too easily. They stay out too late. They stagger home at four in the morning singing German drinking songs and get lost. Not bad people, just trusting naive people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There is a subspecies of the touristicus domesticus. It is the fabled touristicus backpackensius. Unlike the much derided domestic version, this species is more likely to be solitary, but most likely will be seen with a same-sex partner. The key indicators are hiking boots or Nike ACG's, hairy legs with knobby knees (often with scabs from mountain bike spills), T-shirts with politically correct slogans, hiking outerwear (with ski tags still attached), UV block sunglasses. The older members will have a gray pony tail. They like to think they are independent, even though they bunch up at the same youth hostels and flophouses each night. The key determinant is the right index finger jammed into the same page on their shoestring guides.

These folks are college educated, world wise and in their minds unlikely to be a victim of any criminal (after all they're not rich and obnoxious, like those other tourists). They are one with the earth and its cultures (they were into world music, waaaay before Sting or Gabriel), giving them a sense of love and harmony.

So what's to worry? Could it be that entire year's supply of money in their "secret" neck pouch? How about that new altimeter, stopwatch, chronometer watch? Those $120 boots are worth a quick $20. And the $400 backpack can fetch another quick $20. These travelers often enjoy entertainment and souvenirs of the narcotic kind, carry everything on their backs and wouldn't be noticed missing for at least a month. Good pickings for the charming bandito or even drug planting polizia.

The point of the two cheap shots above is to tell you that it doesn't matter who you think you are. You are a wealthy unarmed foreigner in a land that is not your own. If you are the victim of crime you will hotfoot to your nearest embassy or the next town. You will not be back to file charges or even see what happened to your favorite watch. So consider yourself the ideal victim. And unlike most books who tell you the same dumb stuff, DP is going to give you some tricks we don't want you to pass on to your friends.

The good news: The major purpose of crime against tourists is to quickly remove money and other valuables. The perpetrator does not want to hurt you or escalate your brief meeting into assault or murder since the federales will be more interested in finding him.

Rape is a function of social cultures clashing-usually a result of unaccompanied western women who travel in rural or sexually frustrated cultures. In a world where "Baywatch" and "The Young and the Restless" are the most syndicated shows in the world, one can do little but hope that they remake and syndicate "The Flying Nun" soon to balance things out.

In the case of homicide or brutal attacks, you have to look at the track record of the country you are going to visit. It is not uncommon for bandits to execute robbery victims simply because they won't get caught. Look for countries where they make tourist attractions out of skulls (Cambodia) or eat smoked monkeys (Congo) to give you a heads up.