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Come to Rio - watch the Olympians swim in the very dirty water they promised to clean but didn't! Catch zika, then fill out the police and insurance forms after

• blowski 10y ago
  As a middle-income tourist who has had multiple holidays in Rio, the closest I've come to being robbed was by a taxi driver that wanted $200 to travel from Corcovado to Pao de Acucar. Seriously, it's like any other city in the world. If you walk around a dodgy area talking on an iPhone, by yourself, especially late at night, then you're asking for trouble. Be sensible and cautious, and Rio is a lovely place to go on holiday. EDIT: I guess I'm attracted to cities with higher crime rates.
  • cven714 10y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if6GLohPq8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if6GLohPq8k Not that incidents like this don't occur in other cities in the world, but it shows that avoiding dodgy areas at night might not be enough.
    • bitL 10y ago
      Copacabana is a dodgy area already and Zona Norte is a warzone.
      • ramon 10y ago
        Imagine further out like Nova Iguaçu, I must have to go there with War Tanks at least so I can comeback alive!
    • googletazer 10y ago
      You can probably imagine where these people are going in 5, 10, 15 years - worse and worse offenses. Sounds like whoever will replace Dilma needs to legislate firing squads, or conceal carry.
    • matwood 10y ago
      That video is pretty bad. One, it looks like the same kids over and over so the cops clearly do not care. Two, I was wondering what the gun laws were there until some guy chased them with a hand gun. If someone is looking to go have some fun fighting it seems like walking around with a cardboard iPhone might be the ticket. I'm only sort of kidding. I know if some kid grabbed my wife while we were walking down the street there would be a fight. The only other place I have seen it like the above is the gypsy kids in Rome. Even then though they were more slight of hand pick pockets than the blatant assault in the video.
      • blowski 10y ago
        My colleague had his phone stolen as he was talking on it by two guys on a moped - that was in Bond Street, London.
        • matwood 10y ago
          I did not mean to imply it could not happen anywhere. Only that this was exceptionally bad, and Rome was the only other place I had seen with the swarms of kids blatantly stealing.
        • toyg 10y ago
          Lol indeed. I witnessed a lady with huge shopping bags in Bloomsbury getting her iPhone stolen from a bicycle. The guy acted like it was the most normal thing in the world, just snatched the phone while speeding down a cycle lane. Tons of other cyclists around, going as fast as this guy, and nobody cared.
        • GFischer 10y ago
          A few years ago, a coworker was talking on a Motorola Razr when a thief tried to steal it at a run... he ran with the top half and left my coworker with the lower half :P I've had a phone pickpocketed from me too.
      • HillaryBriss 10y ago
        >... what the gun laws were ... Almost 60,000 people were murdered in Brazil in 2014, most with guns. While some Latin American countries have higher per capita murder rates, in absolute numbers, Brazil is the deadliest place in the world outside Syria. Brazilians are far more likely to be shot to death than Americans, a more populous country where there are about 8,000 to 9,000 gun homicides each year. ... Right now, Brazil actually has tough gun laws. More here: http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/03/28/472157969/brazil-has-nearly-60-000-murders-and-it-may-relax-gun-laws http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/03/28/472157969/b...
    • dimino 10y ago
      The only difference between this and what happens to you in NYC is you don't notice.
  • fhsdfgdv 10y ago
    talking on an iPhone, by yourself, especially late at night, then you're asking for trouble. Please don't apply your standards other cities of the world. What you described does not happen in my (capital) city. In fact if you drop something, you will likely get it back.
    • deanCommie 10y ago
      He said in a dodgy area. Pray tell what is this magical city you live in that does not have a single dodgy area.
      • fhsdfgdv 10y ago
        If by dodgy you mean areas where people regularly steal and harass, then no, we don't.
        • blowski 10y ago
          OK, I'll rephrase to "a lot of other cities in the world" - London, New York, Paris, Warsaw, Berlin, Rome. All of them have their fair share of dodgy places that you should approach cautiously. What city do you live in, by the way? The only city I know of deservedly with this reputation is Singapore.
          • mootothemax 10y ago
            > Warsaw I'm deliberately singling this one out as a point of pride: Where in Warsaw can't you walk down the street reading your iPhone? I'll concede pickpocketing can be an issue on buses, and racism is very much an issue in present times. Issues with muggings, though?
            • blowski 10y ago
              I didn't get mugged, but I was getting a coach to Radom, and the bus station didn't feel like a crime-free paradise. That said, I've spent quite a bit of time in Poland as well (mostly in Kaszubia), and the only trouble I had was in Krakow (and it was me being stupid that led to it). So no complaints about Warsaw at all, just pointing out that most of the time, I didn't feel any more or less safe in Warsaw than Rio.
  • fllr 10y ago
    Not that I don't agree with you... I do. But, being brazilian, the idea of walking around at any time with my iphone out makes me cringe. I love my country, and I think everyone should visit it, but just keep away your iphones and anything of value while walking about, and you'll be fine!
    • blowski 10y ago
      Yeah, I lived in BH - I have blonde hair, so I didn't need an iPhone to say I was a rich gringo.
      • ececconi 10y ago
        My entire family has blonde hair and they are from Brazil. They're from Florianopolis though.
    • ramon 10y ago
      I keep on walking around with my iPhone everywhere in Rio, so has my wife. Never been stolen! I use it everywhere, it's my only phone. Maybe it's because I'm a big guy, the thiefs might be afraid to steal a big guy? but what about my wife, she's tiny.
      • oscardelben 10y ago
        This is not how statistics work. You can't generalize from just your personal experience.
  • rsync 10y ago
    "Seriously, it's like any other city in the world. If you walk around a dodgy area talking on an iPhone, by yourself, especially late at night, then you're asking for trouble. Be sensible and cautious, and Rio is a lovely place to go on holiday." I generally espouse this view ... that being sensible and street smart are the important parts to visiting different cities and that, in general, they are all fairly safe. However, I also would describe Rio and Sao Paulo as a little further along the danger/risk meter. You know all those warnings and rules of thumb that people pass on about pickpocketing and scams and tricksters and so on ? And they never really pan out or materialize ? In Rio, they do. I would feel more safe (than Rio) in Shanghai or Shenzhen, less safe (than Rio) in Tijuana.
    • tluyben2 10y ago
      Shanghai feels incredibly safe and i've walked around in a lot of places where my colleagues thought it was dodgy (it wasn't; just poorer). I have not one time felt unsafe in Shanghai and I go there a lot. That's quite different from say, Fort Lauderdale, which was the first time in many years I really felt threatened when we stupidly went to a very dodgy gas station. Actually that was second time in that same business trip when actually on the Orlando Disney area in one of the Disney hotels two crackheads got in the lift with us, pretended not to know eachother and followed us to our room. Never had anything remotely look like violence, robbery or even weirdos like that in Shanghai/Suzhou. The time before this US thing (where nothing happened but it made the hairs on my neck stand up and we did realize we were close to getting robbed) was about 10 years ago when I got robbed at knife point in a small town under Barcelona. While feeling completely fine walking through weird neighborhoods in Belize. So you never know... When I was around 8 my teacher in school said 'if you go to Amsterdam, you die; this city is so dangerous that when you go there, you will most surely get robbed, raped and murdered'. Apparently in a certain part of the Netherlands this idea was prevalent as when, 10 odd years later, I went to the university of Amsterdam my grandparents had something like 'Ok, this is it, this is the last time we saw him. He dead.'. Then I lived there and I actually lived in the neighborhood which was 'known' to 'everyone' that you will die there; de Bijlmer. Ofcourse, it was great; all these murderers and thieves offered me beer and food before going to uni in the morning; they invited me to the bars under the flats at night. I walked through that place (and other 'you'll die' places) in the middle of night and never felt anything resembling fear. I want to go to Brazil and I will because of a client soon, but he, born and raised in Sao Paulo, says even he doesn't like it because of the crime. And he knows this city well. I'm not sure what to believe but we'll see... Not bringing any iPhone that's for sure.
• dasil003 10y ago
  Given that you don't know how to spell brasileiro I'm guessing you are not a local and don't even speak portuguese, so I'll take your opinion with a grain of salt.
• ramon 10y ago
  I agree, the waters are dirty! Specially in Lagoa.. it's awful, cannot imagine water sports there!
• outworlder 10y ago
  Rio IS dangerous. Anyone claiming otherwise is either a "patriotic" Brazilian or is trying to generalize from personal (lucky) experience. There are obviously many factors that come into play. The biggest ones are not what you expect: how "gringo" (foreigner) you look, and are you walking around with Brazilian friends? Negatives on both counts will increase your odds of "bad stuff" happening to you dramatically. Also, if you come from a safer place where people do stuff such as routinely leave cars and homes unlocked, casually hail any cab anywhere and walk around with expensive phones(or cameras), you're in for a big surprise. The best safety advice I can give is: assume there is no police whatsoever in the country and act accordingly, even if you do happen to see police around. They are unlikely to do anything to help you. May not even investigate if you die. You should still be mostly OK, statistically speaking. The problem is that, when bad things happen, they tend to be really bad. You are very very lucky that if if is something simple as a purse snatching (as I have seen in other comments). Still very lucky if there's a knife involved. Expect multiple armed thugs in motorcycles, even if you can't see everyone involved, assume there's backup for the criminals. One thing that many have overlooked in the comments is that for Rio and Sao Paulo, the crime trend is down. In São Paulo particularly, I've even seen people casually browsing on their iPads while sitting at bar tables next to a busy road, or people talking on their iphones in barely lit streets near the city center. That was unthinkable a few years ago. However, the trend for other regions is that crime rates are rising dramatically. Some regions, in the Northeast particularly, are worse than some war zones. Avoid, specially if you have no Brazilian friends. Disclaimer: I am Brazilian, lived for 30+ years in the northeast. Fled to the very south, to a very good neighborhood, wife witnessed a drug-related execution in front of our building the week we arrived. Nothing came out of it btw, didn't even make the news. Where I used to live, 20+ violent deaths in a weekend are not worth newspaper pages anymore. Then fled to the Bay Area.