We have all read stories about getting scammed in foreign countries while on vacation. We’re also given all the precautions to save us from the embarrassment and loss of a scam. Then, we prepare mentally and physically for it. Preparing to spot that ominous, slim, shady character walking towards us with a trench coat on. Some even take karate classes in preparation for it.

Enough horseplay. If we knew how a scam worked, we wouldn’t get scammed.  And the scammers know this so they come at us like an innocent dove.

Have you ever seen the reporter doing a story about pickpockets, and this master pick pocket-er literally tells the reporter what he’s going to steal and then steals it by the end? It’s like that I suppose.

I went to Bangkok for a short week and though I wasn’t paranoid, I was still aware of the many stories of people having stuff taken or being taken while vacationing there. So, I did two things:

First, I left my hotel door unlocked for the first 2 days thinking it was locked. Don’t ask – I just thought it was one of those lock-from-the-inside jobs and it was fine. I would come home, insert the key, and be in. That was until I came home the third day, turned the doorknob and just walked right in.

Doh!

Second, I somehow thought this random, older Thai gentleman was just being genuinely friendly when he walked up to me and struck up a conversation. Next thing I knew I was being whisked off in a tuk-tuk (motorbike taxi carriage) en route to a boat tour.

People told me what was going to happen, and then it happened just like the reporter and the pick-pocket.

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