Scams, rip-offs and cheats

Being a Westerner in the developing world means that many people see you as MoneyBags McGee. They look at you and don't see a person -- they see dollars. And they'll stop at nothing to scam those dollars from you.


I may sound dramatic, but potential scams happen, literally, dozens of times a day. If you're not on guard at all moments, you can kiss your wallet good-bye. We've been scammed for small amounts several times, but we're doing relatively well. Most travelers we've met have lost much larger amounts.

Some of the more common scams include:

-- A tout will follow you around as you're searching for hotels in a new city. (Your backpack is an obvious sign that you need a hotel). You know full well that if you walk into a hotel with him in tow, the hotel will pay him a "commission" and tack it onto your bill. Yet you can't lose him. You tell him to go away. Get lost. Scram. Goodbye. You get stern with him. You yell. He continues to stalk you.

You and your friends devise a "divide and conquer" plan: one of you will stand on the street and engage the stalker/tout in conversation, while the other one ducks into a hotel and looks for a room. This plan fails, because the person who sneaks away immediately attracts the attention of another greedy stalker looking for commission.

-- A really suave tout stands inside the hotel lobby, posing as the staff. He has a copy of the hotel keys and shows you the room. He negotiates the price of the room with you. He helps you check in. Yes, he's a tout, earning a commission, but you might never know it.

-- "The official" -- a man in uniform stands in front of a train station and explains that a given ticket office is closed, or sells tickets to locals only, or doesn't sell tickets as far in advance as the ones you need. He then redirects you to the "foreigner office" or the "advance sales office" or the "after-hours office," which in fact is a scam-office that sells fake tickets.

-- "The counterfeit" -- a person hands you US dollars and asks you to exchange it with them for Egyptian pounds. Then they either hand you counterfeit money or they claim that YOU shortchanged THEM, and demand more money.

True story: some Australians we met got counterfeit money at the DESK of an established Exchange Bureau.

-- You pay for something at a store or a restaurant, and the shopkeeper/server doesn't give you change. You ask for change. They give you PART of it. At this point, most Westerners fail to count their change and they walk away. If you're street-smart, you count your change, then stand your ground. The shopkeeper gives you another portion of it. You continue to stand there with your hand extended. They give you a little more. Then they tell you that they don't have any smaller bills or coins, so they're unable to give you adequate change. At this point, you either demand it and make a fuss, or you ask that they trade you another item in exchange for being shortchanged. Either way, this costs you 10 minutes of your life.

-- The "premise changing" scam. You ask an Egyptian taxi driver how much a ride will cost. "Ten pounds," he'll say. You and your friend get into the cab and complete the ride. Upon exiting, you hand him 10 Egyptian pounds. He looks at you and says, "no, 10 British pounds."

When you refuse, he raises the stakes. "10 British pounds EACH."

-- The "bribery" scam. When you refuse to give the cab driver "10 each," he refuses to unlock the trunk, where your baggage is kept, until you pay him 10 each -- plus another 10 for a "baggage fee," plus a "tip."

-- If people say "everything is included" -- that means NOTHING is.

-- Inventing the amount of time it will take to get from one city to the next by bus, then encouraging you to take a "private car" that gets you there "faster."

I wanted to tell the story of Sayid, the ostensible "driver" of a felucca sailboat that cruised down the Nile River from Aswan to Luxor, who pulled one of the most frustrating and ingenious scams we've countered. But right now it seems our internet time is running short. Stay tuned for the story of Sayid next.

Photos

I've assembled a slideshow of the best photos from the last 6 weeks, taken in Egypt and Israel. Enjoy!

Quirks of the two countries

Quirks about Egypt:

- Mannequins wearing hijab (veils)
- Donkey-carts and horse-drawn buggies driven down six-lane highways of congested urban traffic
- Drivers at night keep their headlights off, and flash them only if they're about to hit you
- Drivers will never brake for a pedestrian or for another car, preferring insted to honk or flash their headlights
- City water pipes lay ON the road, where they can easily get smashed, insted of underneath the road
- Some cafes and street vendors swear that falafel (a delicious fava bean patty) is sold only during the morning hours. Others only offer it past 10 p.m. Some say it's off-limits during Ramadan; others say it can only be sold between 3-5 p.m. every other day.
- Garlic-scented hair conditioner
- Streets filled with sheep
- A donkey cart with "Toyota" painted onto the plywood
- Crazy 7-way intersections with bumpy concrete, manhole covers halfway out, pipes exposed, and the thick clog of diesel burning your lungs
- Buses blast loud low-quality "Allah!" music throughout a 15-hour ride. The bus stops occasionally so passangers can pray at rest stops.
- No one checks when you set off the metal detector. And EVERYONE sets off the metal detector. You could probably walk through a metal detector with a gun slung over your shoulder and no one would say a word.

Quirks about Israel

- Half-assed security everywhere: entering a bus station or a restaurant or a sandwich shop requires letting a 19-year-old security guard take a cursory glance at your backpack.
- Peanut-butter flavored Cheetos.
- Push/Pull on doors is totally reversed.
- Our friends' lease, for his apartment in Tel Aviv, stipulated that he COULD NOT use electricity on Friday nights or Saturdays, which are considered to be a holy time of the week (Shabbat). If he's caught trying to use electricity on Friday night or Saturday, he could be evicted.
- Tel Aviv's maze-like six-story bus station, which sells clearance thongs.
- Jerusalem's highly organized three-story bus station, which sells yarmulkes.

Jerusalem: A Two-Act Play

Meanwhile, back in America -- looks like the Dow is falling but Britney Spears' popularity is rising. Has the world turned upside-down?

We're in Egypt now, but before I tell stories of our trip here, I'll recap Jerusalem: A Two-Act Play.

SCENE ONE: JERUSALEM'S WAILING WALL.

Bring an engineer to Jerusalem, and he'll be the first to point out that the holiest site in Judiasm is a structural retaining wall.

The "Wailing Wall" is an appropriate name -- hundreds of Jews wail, sob and bow at this otherwise ordinary-looking 2,000-year-old wall at the base of the Temple Mount. A couple milennia ago, Romans destroyed the Jew's holiest temple, and this retaining wall is all that remains.

Three of us -- two girls, one guy -- washed our hands and began walking toward the wall to pay our respects.

On the way, an old woman began yelling at us in Hebrew. We ignored her, figuring she was a beggar, a vendor or just plain crazy. We kept walking. She kept yelling. Walking. Yelling. Walking. Yelling. Finally we figured out what she was trying to tell us -- the Wailing Wall is gender-segregated and the guy was supposed to be on the other side. Oops!

He headed off to the other corner of the wall, where the Hasidic Jews at the enterance handed him what appeared to be a paper take-out cup, like the kind a elementary school cafeteria would serve fries in.

"Put this on your head," they told him. It was, apparently, a McYarmulke. (Pronounced ya-ma-kah .... it's a little cap Jewish men wear over their future bald spot).

It was generous for them to give him one -- they could have required all non-Jewish visitors to buy a Yarmulke at the Yarmulke Stand in the bus station. That's right, the Jerusalem bus station sells every design and size of Yarmulke a man could possibly want.

SCENE TWO: THE SITE OF JESUS' CRUCIFIXION

When Jesus was nailed to the Cross, the scene must have been unglamorous: an angry mob, some wood, and a hammer.

Now, the site where He died is festooned with silver and gold. It looks like a hip-hop video. The site of the crucifixion is some shiny bling-bling.

The angry mob, however, hasn't disappeared. They've just converted into priests.

At the site of the crucifixion, a long line of devout Christians, who are undoubtedly making one of the most important pilgrimages of their lives, wait for their chance to kneel and pray at the location of the Cross. Many of them are elderly and have probably scrimped and saved and waited and prayed for their once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the place of Holy Passion.

But their moment in God's presence is probably ruined by the priests.

These guys have spent too long watching Christian pilgraims, and have lost their patience for crowd-control. They stand next to the worshippers, yelling "hurry up! HURRY UP!," and fly into a tizzy once a worshipper has been at the Cross for longer than a few seconds. Most of the time, the priests begin screaming before a Christian has even had enough time to bow.

One particularly angry priest physically shoved an old lady out of the way. Security rushed him, demanding to know what he was doing. "I asked her to leave!!" he bellowed. Security apologized to the old lady and allowed her to get to the front of the line. "NO!!" the priest yelled, and rushed in for interference. Another priest caught wind of this and ran over, trying to calm the first priest down. Suddenly people are screaming in different languages. Commotion ensues.

Even all the bling-bling in the world can't make the site of the Crucifixion sacrosanct.

Yom Kippur

Zohar invited us to stay at his kibbutz -- a communal village, population 650 -- in northern Israel.
We leapt at the prospect of seeing a communal village, although Laurel was a little hesitant. Should she spend Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, at the kibbutz? Or should she try to spend it with Israeli relatives she's never met before; family with whom she shares a common great-grandfather?

Thanks to strange serendipity, she didn't have to choose. As it turns out, Laurel's relative lives on the same kibbutz. In fact, he's Zohan's next-door neighbor!

This relative, Yani, is extremely friendly. He wholeheartedly greeted Laurel when she knocked on his door, and he hosted us for three consecutive dinners. Today he and his wife drove us to Mt. Carmel, took us to a Sufi market, and bought us an amazing hummus, dolma, and lamb kebab lunch.

Devout Jews fast on Yom Kippur, but the kibbutz is populated with kids in their early 20's who care more about fun than fasting. We spent The Day of Judgment hanging out at a campfire with about 25 Israeli youth. We cooked pizzas over the fire, munched on cookies, and enjoyed an unconventional, fasting-free Yom Kippur.

In general, we're better-fed in Israel than we ever were in Egypt. During Ramadan in Egypt, there simply was no food available. We'd get hungry, and climb onto the roof of the hostel, and shake a palm tree until dates fell out. We'd munch on the dates and call it lunch.

We were poor and hungry, and we all lost weight. Here in Israel, we're promptly putting those pounds back on, one scoop of tahina at a time.

The landscape here looks dry -- rust-colored soil, stone settings -- but amazingly, this kibbutz is brimming with fruit. Our days consist of picking pomegranates out of trees, watching quails, walking past the sheep pastures, picking wild herbs to make tea.

We're returning to Tel Aviv tonight.

Don't mess with the Zohar

Zohar is an Israeli man who had a month's vacation from his job in the military last year.

He spent that month traveling through California, Colorado and Texas, and found our house through Couchsurfing.com. We let him sleep in our basement for a few weeks.

Now, good karma comes into play. We're staying at his apartment in Tel Aviv.

It's amazing how a border -- an arbitrary, imaginary line -- changes everything.

As soon as we crossed into Israel, we faced a new language, new code of socially acceptable behavior, and new standards of health and hygene.

The hummus here -- as opposed to in Egypt -- is sold in a safety-sealed plastic package, without flies. The prices here have quadrupled. It's acceptable to wear short skirts here. Instead of people fasting for Ramadan, public transit shuts down for the Sabbath.

We seem to have arrived in both Egypt and Israel exactly in time for their annual religious holidays. We spent Ramadan in Egypt; now we're spending Yom Kippur and Sukkot at Zohar's kibbutz in northern Israel.

I never took the time to describe the "iftar," the breaking of the fast, that happens every sunset in the Arab world. The bustling, crazy, traffic-choked streets clear out. The loud panic subsides to a whisper. For a brief hour, the streets are completely quiet. All you hear is the Call to Prayer singing "Allah Akbar" and all you see are groups of men sitting together on rugs, eating their first meal of the day.

Here in Israel, we're about to witness Yom Kippur, the day of judgment. Everything shuts down on that day -- no public transit, no jobs. Everyone fasts.

Maybe the more countries change, the more things stay the same.

Border crossing

Crossing the border on foot from Egypt into Israel is something everyone should experience once -- and only once.

Yesterday we tried to catch a bus from Dahab (our coral reef resort hangout) to the border. But since the bus only runs once a day (which you have to GO to the bus station to discover), our plans were waylaid for an extra 24 hours.

We caught the bus to the border this morning, but had to bribe the bus driver to take us to the actual border, instead of dropping us off at the central bus station. He demanded an extra 5 Egyptian Pounds from each passanger, under the table.

I got off the bus desperate to change my tampon. I was leaking blood everywhere; my pants were stained deep red from the bus ride.

Unfortuantely, the nearest bathroom was across the border, and a long line of Korean tourists were standing in the way.

With a determined look on my face, I jumped ahead of all of them in line, knocking mothers and little kids out of my path. I did this not just once but twice, through two security checkpoints. I darted into the dirtiest bathroom I've ever seen -- far worse than anything in Nepal -- and took care of business.

We exited Egypt and walked to the Israeli enterance, where my passport was flagged because it shows that I was born in Nepal. Security called for backup, and soon three people stated questioning me:

When did you move to America?
Why?
Why didn't your parents just keep their jobs in Nepal, insted of moving?
What do each of your parents do for work?
What are your parents names?
What did you study in college?
What part-time jobs did you have during college?
How are you paying for this trip?

I found the questioning utterly pointless, given that they have no way of verifying my answers.

And so on. In total, security detained me for more than an hour, suspicious of my ties to Nepal. I don't think they believed me when I claimed that I no longer have a Nepalese passport.

Finally across the border, we caught a bus to Eilat, where we're waiting to take the 1 a.m. bus to Tel Aviv. In total, we'll be in transit for about 24 hours.

Welcome to World Tour, Country #2.